(Editor’s Note: Lake Pend Oreille School District will begin construction of the new Career Technical Education Center of North Idaho with a community groundbreaking ceremony at Sandpoint High School on June 9, 2025, at 9:15 a.m.)

At a welding shop in Sagle or a healthcare center in Sandpoint, homegrown Career Technical Education graduates are plentiful across the North Idaho region. They’re helping patients, fabricating machinery, connecting wireless internet and wiring a breaker box at a lakeside home.

The lifestyle attracts them but it’s the work that allows them to stick around. Most mornings, the work commute around Bonner County is more pleasure than hassle. Frequent wispy fog drifts across Lake Pend Oreille, an ever-changing cerulean blue lake that is 43 miles long, surrounded on

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