By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
During the regular Monday night meeting, the Brandon board of education voted 7-0 to hire Sarah Walker as the welding and metal teacher at the high school for the upcoming school year.
“That position has been open for five or six years, and during that time, we periodically posted that position, we were looking for someone, and there were zero applicants. There was no one out there to fill it,” said high school principal Dan Stevens. “We’ve always wanted to fill it, but we could just never find anybody.”
Walker will teach a two hour class for welding and metals, as well as an hour long class for computer aided drafting (CAD).
“I am a welder and welding engineer,” said Walker.

“I specialize in welding and robotics automation, so I’m hoping to bring that to the table and help our students either earn some kind of a job after high school right away if they’re not interested in any kind of post-secondary learning or hopefully move onto community college, trade school or four year degree programs that specialize in some kind of manufacturing or robotics.”
For the CAD class, students would learn old school blue printing and work their way into the CAD designs that engineers use.
“The idea would be that they (the students) will be able to ultimately take state-level test certifications by the end of the classes,” said Stevens.