Schuyler Central High School offers a construction class taught by Mark Wemhoff, an Industrial Technology teacher. This year a house was built and sold with the help of SCHS students. Overall there have been twenty one new houses built in Schuyler by Schuyler Central High School students. The first fifteen were built by students led by Jim Kasik. Currently this program is led by Mark Wemhoff. This will be Mr. Wemhoff’s sixth house. Classes that are required in order to work the house are; Technology Exploration, Intro to Construction, and CAD is optional. There are also safety measures that have to be taken by law in order to do this type of work. Building this house took approximately six and a half months. It is because of weather conditions that the students started three weeks late. Things that Mr. Wemhoff didn’t have his students do was; cement, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and drywall. According to Mr. Wemhoff the house was sold for approximately $250K. It was presumably sold a couple of times, but the buyer’s financing fell through. The house sold in February. 

 Some difficulties this class had were; making sure all the window and door openings are the correct size before the sheathing and drywall went on, making sure the rafters were very straight to eliminate problems with the roof, and making sure there was enough headroom for the stairs down into the basement. “This year’s biggest obstacle was making sure we had materials on hand to continue to work and there were times we had to shift gears and work on things out of order to allow time for our materials to get here,” Mr. Wemhoff commented. The school partnered with Shelby Lumber in Shelby, Nebraska. “I work specifically with Nate Kracl when materials, plans, and adjustments are to be made,” Mr. Wemhoff explained. 

Angy Raymundo, a senior at Schuyler Central High School, is one of Mr. Wemhoff’s students who helped in building this house. She shared that her favorite part was working with her hands. “My favorite part about building the house was shingling the roof,” Angy commented. Something she found challenging was getting outside in the cold weather. From this experience, she will use her knowledge to major in construction management at college.