Healdsburg High students contributing to fire relief

CASA students will be helping construct furniture and housing for displaced for victims
Students and teachers from Healdsburg High School’s Construction And Sustainability Academy (CASA) program will be involved in re-homing some of the thousands of people displaced by the firestorm that roared through Sonoma County in early October.
The idea started when the Sonoma County Office of Education’s (SCOE) Career Technical Education (CTE) group visited Terry Pagni’s construction technology class on Oct. 23.
“We were just talking and I said: we have the capability of building a tiny house,” Pagni said. “We’ve done several tiny houses, so I emailed them and said: what we want to do is build some houses.”
CASA has built tiny houses in previous years, but most of them have gone to private homes to be used as art and yoga studios, he said. Pagni envisioned earmarking these tiny houses for renters displaced from the Coffey Park area.
“We made three micro houses last year for people in the area that are being used for various things. They had a loft, and were insulated, and we did all the electrical,” he said. “We didn’t put plumbing in, as nobody wanted it. But, we could easily put plumbing in. We thought to build them so they can be transported and set on piers. The students also came up with a design so you can interlock them together.”
However, as Pagni and his students were pinging ideas off each other, they were contacted again by the CTE group, which is now envisioning a much bigger project, that would encompass many high schools and cover a variety of topics.
“The recent firestorm has created an opportunity for county residents to pull together and help one another in powerful ways,” reads an email from Stephen Jackson, Director of Career Development at SCOE’s CTE unit. “We are heartened by the enthusiasm and motivation exhibited by students and teachers alike to design and build solutions for the thousands of victims of the fire — it is this collective energy that will ultimately lead to a stronger, more connected community. In order to harness the creative efforts of our school communities and generate the greatest impact we can, we are reaching out to you today to tell you about some of the rebuild efforts we are involved with, and to provide guidance on how you can plug in.”
For Pagni and his students, their chosen efforts will be with the furniture and storage units needed to maximize a smaller living space and helping to construct prefab modular homes for displaced victims.
“Dan Blake (Director of Innovation and Partnerships for SCOE) is part of a major cross-sector effort called Homes for Sonoma to create communities of modular homes to be utilized first as interim housing and then potentially transitioned to housing for low income and homeless individuals and families once homes are rebuilt,” wrote Jackson in an email. “A key component of this initiative is involvement of local high school construction tech programs to help fabricate housing components and assemble the modular units. As early as next month, we hope to have a plan to share with schools with specific asks and direction. A good project to engage students in now is to research, design and build home furnishings and innovative, multi-tasking storage solutions that maximize small spaces to make the modular homes livable.”
Pagni’s students have experience with both projects, and he says his students are, “chomping at the bit” to get started helping their community. There are around 60 students in the CASA program at HHS, and they include ninth through 12^th graders.
Pagni has an additional reason to want to help Coffey Park residents — decades ago he was in charge of the site work for the neighborhood.