FORKS — It was a good deal, Danielle Headley thought.
The Forks High School student would take a certified nursing assistant’s course offered by the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center in fall 2003.
As long as Headley and her classmates completed the course, which instructed them in the basics of nursing and provided them some real-world hospital experience, they would be awarded 11 college credits transferable only to Peninsula College.
Headley planned to graduate from Forks High this year and then attend Peninsula College to become a registered nurse.
But thanks to a missed filing deadline by a skills center staff member, Headley won’t get any credit for her course when she arrives at Peninsula College.
And that isn’t sitting well with her or her father, Paul Headley, a Quillayute Valley School Board member.
“It’s just disappointing,” said Danielle.
“There are those students who didn’t care about the class, but others took it serious and worked hard.
“We want to make a career out of it and thought it would help out.”
Volunteering in PA
Danielle said in addition to classes taken in Forks, students completed 50 hours of clinical hands-on training by driving into Port Angeles and volunteering at Olympic Medical Center.
“We would pull double shifts, starting at 7 a.m. and going until 7:30 p.m., with no breaks,” Danielle said.
“We did that so we didn’t have to take extra trips [from Forks to Port Angeles].”
Months after completing the semester-long course, Danielle paid a visit to Peninsula College to look at what classes her 11 credits could be transferable for.
“They said they never received anything about credits,” Danielle said.
The skills center nursing instructor was supposed to have filed a form with the college, but didn’t and now it’s too late because the deadline has passed, said Danielle, a senior.
Director acknowledges
North Olympic Skills Center director Clyde Rasmussen acknowledged that the instructor had failed to submit the form.
He also confirmed it was too late to do anything about it for students in Danielle’s class.
But Rasmussen added that the mishap probably only affected one or two students at the most — students who attend Peninsula College after high school and enroll in nursing courses.
