Desiree Schramm wasn’t looking to become a firefighter when she was choosing electives during her junior year at North Hills High School.
“I was scheduling for classes and, ‘What’s this?’ ” said Schramm, of Ross, now 18 and a senior. “This is actually pretty cool.”
What Schramm stumbled across was the high school entry-level fire training program at the Allegheny County Fire Training Academy, located at the county’s public safety training campus in McCandless.
The program — originating in the Highlands School District — has grown to also include students from the Deer Lakes, North Hills and Shaler Area districts.
“It’s really interesting,” said Evan King, transition coordinator at North Hills. “They do everything from train derailments to different chemical spills to what different color smoke means. They really go in-depth.”
The program will grow again this fall, when students from Plum and Burrell high schools will be able to take the course.
Plum’s school board in January approved adding it to its high school’s program of studies.
“This is terrific news for our volunteer fire departments, who are working extremely hard to recruit new members,” said Plum Councilwoman Vicky Roessler, who oversees public safety for the borough. Plum has four volunteer fire departments.
Burrell is the first district outside Allegheny County to join the program. Burrell students will be learning about the availability of the course soon, high school Principal John Boylan said.
“Hopefully, we can attract students that have an interest,” he said.
Lower Burrell fire Chief Brennan Sites has been championing the program, which he said will be a “huge benefit” to fire departments. While his department has a junior program aimed at getting youths involved, they have only two, down from as many as 10.
“Volunteerism is down. Since the 1990s, it’s been steadily declining. Every fire department in the (Alle-Kiski) Valley and every fire department in Western Pennsylvania is struggling for membership,” he said. “This is another avenue (where) we’re attempting to bolster our numbers to make sure there’s members to help support our community.”
Matt Brown, chief of Allegheny County Emergency Services, said he believes the program is unique in the region, as evidenced by school districts in neighboring counties asking to participate.
“Any program that can promote community service and public safety is a benefit to the community,” he said while visiting the class last Friday.
About 95% of Allegheny County’s 170 fire departments are staffed by volunteers, and the number of volunteers is dwindling to where departments have merged or shut down. That makes what the students are learning so important, Brown said.
The decline in volunteer firefighters in Pennsylvania is staggering. In the 1970s, the state boasted about 300,000 volunteer firefighters, according to a study by the Pennsylvania state House Republican Committee. Currently, there are fewer than 38,000 volunteers in the state, an 87% decline.
“They are absolutely filling a gap and filling a need,” Brown said.
Youngwood fire Chief Lloyd Crago said, while some of his junior firefighters have been involved in a protective services class at Central Westmoreland Career & Technology Center, they don’t have a dedicated volunteer firefighting program like Allegheny County’s, which he said “would be a great asset.”
“We’re always looking for new members and things that can benefit those new members,” he said. “It would be a great recruiting tool.”
Value beyond firefighting
Mike Krzeminski leads the class. A firefighter and former chief of Hilltop Hose in Harrison, Krzeminski started the program in 2007 when he was a social studies teacher at Highlands.
After nine years, the class stopped when Krzeminski left the school district for the county fire academy. It returned for the 2019-20 school year at the academy after being championed by the Highlands Emergency Services Alliance, composed of the eight volunteer fire companies in the school district.
From 2019 through the 2021-22 school year, only students from Highlands were enrolled. North Hills and Shaler joined in 2022-23, followed by Deer Lakes this school year.
The number of students has grown from eight Highlands students in the 2019-20 school year to 29 this school year, its largest group, Krzeminski said. If it grows more, a second section will have to be added, he said.
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Students go to the fire academy 14 days over the course of the school year. It’s offered at no cost to students, and school districts provide transportation.
“It offers entry-level fire training to high school students during the school day,” Krzeminski said. “The high school students receive credits toward graduation as well as their training hours (to become a firefighter).”
In addition to firefighting skills, students learn teamwork, collaboration, problem-solving and decision-making.
“Most of the schools see this as a good pathway to careers and other opportunities,” Krzeminski said. “There is a push that students that graduate high school are better prepared to enter the workforce. It can’t always be about academic concerns.”
Krzeminski disagrees with those who say it’s not a school’s responsibility to help train volunteer firefighters.
The people “protecting their buildings and their people right now is 100% volunteers,” he said. “If we don’t find a way to perpetuate that system, it just means another tax we’re going to have to pay to provide this service.”
Other potential benefits to becoming a volunteer firefighter include a free associate degree from Community College of Allegheny County in exchange for five years of service with a county volunteer fire department. It’s an opportunity Krzeminski said too few take advantage of. Also, in many college towns, fire departments will provide free housing in exchange for volunteering.
“Even if a student does this for a set window of time to give themselves an opportunity for an education or housing while getting an education, that’s a huge benefit,” Krzeminski said.
Plum Principal Patrick Baughman said his school began reviewing the program last spring. That included meeting with Krzeminski and others about staffing at local fire departments and the need to get youth involved.
“We thought it would be a great situation for both our students and our community,” Baughman said. “Anything that we can do to help encourage our kids to look at this possible avenue and help our local community and our fire departments, it’s a win-win for everyone.”
The course will be open to next year’s sophomores, juniors and seniors. Students will select their courses for the 2025-26 school year by early March.
Baughman said he already has heard from a few students who are interested.
“There’s not necessarily a limit on the amount of kids that can sign up for this,” he said. “We’re hoping we get quite a few.”
Volunteering while learning
It is not required that students taking the class volunteer at a fire station. But Krzeminski said all but one of the 29 students in class this school year are involved in a volunteer fire service.
Jonathan Mastandren, 15, a sophomore from Shaler, is a junior firefighter with Bauerstown VFD. Firefighting runs in his family. His father was a firefighter, and his older brother is with Undercliff VFD.
“We’re always learning new stuff,” said Mastandren, who is considering a career in carpentry or as a paid firefighter in Pittsburgh. “There’s never a piece of information we’ll never use.”
Deanna Hoover, 18, of Brackenridge is a senior at Highlands. She volunteers at Citizens Hose Fire-Rescue, where her interest is more in emergency medical services than firefighting. She plans to get her EMT license in August.
She has been involved in the course since her sophomore year after some friends who were in the class convinced her to take it.
“I’m a very hands-on learner. It was nice getting to do the activities and see how things are done,” she said. “Not only are you shown how to do it, you are doing it as well.”
Schramm, the North Hills High senior, said her first year in the class, 2023-24, was initially nerve-wracking.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “In the end, it got really comfortable.”
After her first day, she made the impulse decision to sign up with the Evergreen Fire Company, where she became an active firefighter upon turning 18.
While she plans to work on her family’s farm and go to college for agriculture, Schramm said she also intends to continue as a volunteer firefighter.
“If I didn’t stumble upon it,” she said, “I would’ve known none of this.”