New Plymouth High School celebrates new ag building

By Sean Ellis

Idaho Farm Bureau Federation

NEW PLYMOUTH – All across Idaho, high school agriculture programs, thanks to a new state grant program, are getting new, modern buildings with the latest technology that will help train the ag industry’s future workforce.

On April 30, New Plymouth High School was the latest school to celebrate its new ag building, with an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Thank you for coming and celebrating this project with us today,” school superintendent Wade Wilson told members of this rural farming community that will rely on the students trained in this new building for their future workforce.

The new building is 9,600 square feet and has office space, a large shop, a storage room and two classrooms. It will also house a new meat-cutting facility.

Chase Shoemaker, the school’s ag teacher and FFA advisor, said the old building served its purpose – for example, seniors in NPHS’s 2025 class were already lined up for good jobs after graduation thanks to the training they received through the school’s ag program.

But the new building has four times as much space and the latest technology that will enable the program to continue to grow and train students well into the future, added Chase, who farms 700 acres and runs a bison operation.

“This is just a game-changer,” Shoemaker said about the new building.

Wilson said the new building is a major upgrade compared with the previous facility, which was built just after World War II.

“This is a big deal for us,” he said. “This building was the dream of a lot of people.”

The new building was enabled with the help of a grant through the state’s Idaho Career Ready Students program, which was created in 2023 as a $45 million investment in career technical education.

The grant program, which received another $20 million in 2024, is administered through the Idaho Department of Education and is focused on rural and remote communities. It is intended to help produce career-ready students for in-demand and highly skilled careers, including in agriculture, forestry, welding, fabrication, mining and the trades.

In the case of New Plymouth High School, a major benefit of the new building is that it will help turn out the next generation of skilled workers for the state’s important agricultural community.  

“We’re educating and training the next group of leaders in agriculture,” Shoemaker said.

Kevin Barker, the ag education teacher at New Plymouth High School immediately before Shoemaker and the parent of a student in the program, said the new building “is going to be awesome for the next generation of students.”

“A modern building like this is going to do exactly what the grant that funded it intended: to provide state-of-the-art training to students so they are able to get a job right out of high school,” said Barker, who serves on the executive board of the Idaho FFA Foundation.

Barker said he dreamed of that type of facility when he was the ag education teacher at New Plymouth High School.

“It’s always been a dream of mine and to actually see it come to fruition … is a dream come true,” he said. “The local farmers are going to benefit from this.”

The bill that created the Idaho Career Ready Students program was introduced and carried by Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale. She represents the district that includes New Plymouth High School and was at the open house.

“I am so excited over this building,” she said.

She’s also still pumped by the ICRS program itself and noted that schools all over the state have used it.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for years,” Boyle said about the program. “It’s a great program for rural Idaho.”