High school students get leg up on industry skills in NEISD meat processing lab

In one North East ISD classroom, it’s a cool 44 degrees Fahrenheit.

The meat processing lab is part of the Agriscience Magnet Program (AMP) where students learn the hands-on way.

In this particular pathway, students develop highly marketable skills aimed toward food processing and service industry jobs.

One of those students is 16-year-old Delaney Morrison.

“I want to work with H-E-B in the butcher shop. I know you can make good money so I was like you know this looks like a pretty good place to start,” the high school junior said.  

The students are a mixture of in-person and virtual and are led by AMP teacher, Tyler Price, whose been with NEISD for six years.

“With a class like this and with a lot of our classes here at AMP, is that we are going to prepare students for careers. If college is not for them, we are going to prepare them to go out and get a job,” he explained.

Price earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Agricultural Education and Agricultural Communications and recently completed his master’s degree in Agricultural Education.  

Price grew up on a small farming town in northwest Oklahoma and has been around traditional agriculture all his life.

“I wanted to come to an urban area to teach the students that are most removed from the agriculture industry. Not every program in Texas or in the nation that offers a Food Science class, or very few of them, have the facility that we do,” he added.

Price’s students learn not only where their food comes from, but how to handle, process and market it.

“Right now, we just have lamb carcasses in here but our goal will be to go through all of the different species. After this we’ll go into poultry and we’ll do some turkey and chicken carcasses. In the spring, we’ll try and do some beef carcasses and market swine as well,” he explained.

16-year-old Brianna Ramos plans to pursue a career in Food Science and earned her food handler’s certification in Price’s class. 

“I work at Whataburger so it helped me with the sanitizing of the dishes and all of the ‘ServSafe’ so I know all of that already so getting that previously before getting a job is very beneficial,” the high-school junior explained.

“If they are competing against someone for a job that doesn’t have that, they can start the next day whereas the other candidate would have to get certified before they could start,” Price added.

Price said he is proud to prepare students for the future while also teaching them skills they can apply as soon as they walk out the door.

“They can be in here and take a carcass and break it down into the exact cuts that they are going to see at H-E-B or when they are at a restaurant. Being at a program that not only can I teach how to process a carcass, but I can actually take the kids out and do it, that’s really unique and something that’s been a real blessing.”

To learn more about North East ISD’s Agriscience Magnet Program, click here: https://www.neisd.net/page/131

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