World Photos by Alex Powers In North Bend High School’s construction class, juniors Isaiah Perkins, left, and Tanner Laiche, work to reinforce a damaged fence last week at nearby North Bend Middle School, along with two other students not pictured, Nathan Smith and Mason Long.

NORTH BEND — Under weight of budget constraints, North Bend High School cut vocational classes for decades. Trade classes such as forestry, electricity, construction and mechanics withered and died while the surviving classes — metals and woods — were scaled back.

Principal Bill Lucero had been looking for a way to bring some of that back. He wanted to start a new construction class. This year, he found his opportunity when the school hired English teacher Rick Taylor.

“We’d been talking about it for several years. He just happened to be the perfect candidate,” Lucero said.

Among other credentials, Taylor has been a professional contractor for 20 years. He taught a building and maintenance class at Douglas High School in Winston for 15 years. When he agreed to teach a similar program at North Bend, the school jumped at the opportunity to budget for tools and schedule a construction class.

The vocational class provides students with hands-on experience, which Taylor said gives his kids skills that they can take to a contractor or even use when improving their own homes.

Taylor also teaches his students the business and community networking aspects of construction work.

“They’ll certainly be able to do their own work,” he said.

The class is a block class, meaning it fills two periods in a row, and is scheduled only once during the school day. Taylor spends the rest of the day teaching English, and his students go about filling their basic math and language requirements.

But for about two hours each day, teacher and roughly two dozen students come together to work.

Taylor uses a direct approach with his pupils as he hands out fix-it assignments or work orders.

“I need five men to go to Clyde Allen,” he said Tuesday afternoon as the class gathered.

The veteran teacher spent several minutes discussing projects — fence patching at North Bend Middle School, some painting and patching work on the high school campus and work in the dugouts at Clyde Allen Baseball Stadium. He then split students into groups and sent them on their way.

Students trooped across campus and down several flights of stairs to the workshop where they collected hand tools. Several teens piled into a pickup Taylor donated to the program and drove to Clyde Allen with lumber and power tools. Several more walked, pliers in hand, toward North Bend Middle School where they planned to reinforce fences.

“I’m hoping to learn every stage of building and framing a house, so I can work for myself,” said sophomore Ty Thurman said. “I’m interested in contracting. I want to start my own company.”

The program is still in its infancy, but the construction class already is drawing support from the community.

“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from area building supply stores and local builders,” Taylor said.

Coos Head Builders Supply in North Bend donated $550 in lumber to the class, and several local contractors have expressed interest in giving students live demonstrations or even first-hand experience performing construction work.

The high school has several large storage sheds and new roofs planned as projects for the construction class, but will have to wait on permits from the city.

The results of the classwork already is visible in the halls at the high school, and Taylor remains optimistic.

“We’ve got a lot of different projects that will offer a variety of building skills,” he said.

“They’re going to have enough skills that they will consider building trades as a vocation.”