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MILLER CITY, OH (WLIO) - United States Representative Bob Latta, State Representative Roy Klopfenstein, and an official from Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted's office took a tour of Miller City High School to see what the district is doing to combat the shortage of skilled labor. Bethany Ulrick has that story.\

Miller City High School might only have 149 students, but of those, 140 are enrolled in at least one career tech program. The district offers courses in agribusiness, welding, biomedical, and engineering. Since COVID, too many jobs in these critical sectors have gone unfilled, and career tech could be the answer.

"Over 75,000 manufacturing jobs in my congressional district, and one of things that I don't care where I'm at, over here in Miller City all the way to Lorain, Ohio, on the other side of the district, I hear the same thing, we can't find people to work," said Bob Latta, (OH-R) U.S. House of Representatives.

"What we are doing is part of the solution to help fill the needs in the labor market and so forth. We're just going to keep moving forward and continuing to try to grow and expand our program and do the types of things that we hope will lead to success for our students. Also maybe serve as an example of what maybe other schools can replicate," commented Kerry Johnson, superintendent of Miller City New Cleveland Local Schools.

The school has something to offer any student, whether they plan to work as soon as they graduate or go to college. Students have many opportunities to earn free college credit, like one biomedical student, who will not only start with nearly a year of college finished and several years' worth of unique learning experiences.

"We do a lot of dissections in anatomy and HOSA is another course I take, everything in there is hands on, like you're constantly doing stuff by yourself and learning all the different things, and our teacher is there to just help add more information on top of that," commented Liz Otto, senior at Miller City High School.

HOSA is the medical equivalent of Future Farmers of America. Through state competitions, students learn soft skills you can't get from a textbook.

"It's face to face discussions, and conflict resolutions, and by participating in these state-wide competitions, they meet their peers, they compete with their peers, and it's also a confidence builder. Because they find out, small rural Ohio can compete and will compete, and in many cases, they will excel past their peers in those metropolitan areas," stated Roy Klopfenstein, (District 82-R) Ohio House of Representatives.

The Miller City School District is working on expanding their programs, with more classes, more projects, and more instructors.