Luis Juarez, a 17-year-old Temple High School senior, works on a city of Temple vehicle as part of the school partnership with the city.Â

Luis Juarez, left, a 17-year-old senior at Temple High School, receives advice from David Castillo on how to service vehicles for the city.Â

Temple High School students who elect to take the automotive technology career path are able to work on a wide range of vehicles for the city of Temple.Â

While contemporary education puts a large focus on continuing to a four-year school, there are wide swaths of workers needed in industries that do not require degrees from the hallowed halls of higher education.

There are many jobs beyond high school that, in order to learn and succeed, require hard work. Gaining access to and succeeding in these jobs requires people to get their hands dirty.

One such industry is automotive mechanics. Techs spend long hours working in the heat, moving heavy objects, problem solving and achieving a skill that can't be learned from behind a desk.

That's where the Temple High School career and technical education programs are expanding as they give more students a chance to gain hands-on experience in the field.

One group of students, in the automotive technology pathway, helps to maintain the city of Temple vehicle and equipment fleets as a way of getting that hands-on experience.

“Our overall goal is to keep equipment on the road,” said Timothy Cook, operations division director for the Temple fleet department.

His team works on everything from lawnmowers to excavators to keep the city running. Temple High School students head to the fleet maintenance site on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help work on the equipment.

Through the partnership, students get to learn to work on everything from lawnmowers to large trucks.

“They get the opportunity to come in and work with certified technicians and kind of see how the city of Temple’s maintenance program flows,” Cook said.

“When you get to come here, you get to touch a lot of different types of equipment, a lot of different brands and manufacturers,” he said.

Rocky Buoy, Temple fleet services director, explained that because the maintenance facility is a city facility, not serving customers, techs are able to take the extra time needed to do jobs the best way possible, showing students best practices.

“We can’t have police cruisers breaking down, fire trucks not making it to where they’re going,” Buoy said.

Luis Juarez, a 17-year-old Temple High School senior, was recently working on replacing the shock absorbers on a Ford F-350.

“It came in pretty bad,” he said, noting there was grease leaking from the shocks and they would no longer return to their original position.

He was working with David Castillo, a level one automotive tech with the city, who started last year after graduating from the Temple High School automotive technology pathway.

Castillo said the pathway made it so he could get the job, and he said the Temple High School career programs were a good way for students to learn about various paths.

“They give us all the tools we need. They give us every opportunity and chance to grow,” Castillo said.

BELTON — The family of 7-month-old Nalani Jessica Hendrich listened to excruciating testimony and watched nine disturbing videos over the course of a three and-a-half hour hearing on Thursday before a judge sentenced an ex-Fort Hood soldier to life in prison for causing the infant’s death in 2020.

Last week was an especially busy one in Bell County’s four district courts, where felony criminal cases are decided.

A man in his 50s was left cut and bleeding following an argument with a girlfriend in Killeen earlier this year. Last week, she was found guilty of a second-degree felony charge and sentenced to 10 years of straight probation.