About 1,300 Renton students were expected to attend the Renton School District’s Career and Technical Education Department’s annual Trades Fair at Lindbergh High School on Tuesday. The trades are an option for about half of Renton’s high school students today, educators say.

The event featured about 42 representatives from industry, apprenticeship and training programs from local businesses, community and technical colleges.

Lindbergh senior Dakota Breslin is planning on attending Green River Community College next year; although he’s not sure which trade he’ll go into, he’s excited about exploring the many programs the school has to offer.

“I know that there’s lots of good trades out there and they’re well-paying jobs and you get a pension, so it’s a really good future,” Breslin said.

He was inspired to pursue a career in the trades after taking wood shop classes at Lindbergh for several years. This year he’s taking construction and aerospace classes too.

“All the programs we have here, the shop classes, are great programs,” he said.

Breslin is one of many students in the district who plans to pursue a career in a trade, instead of going to a four-year college, according to Creed Nelsen.

Nelson teaches the industrial technology classes at Lindbergh.

“From my findings here at the high school, I would say that these are viable options for at least 50 percent of the students we have here at the school,” said Nelsen.

Lindbergh, he said, falls within the state average where 20 percent of the students go on to a four-year college and 80 percent need “viable options” for careers.

“These are living wage jobs,” Nelsen said. “These are jobs that have careers that can span as long as they want to be with them. These are much better jobs than working at a fast-food place or making coffee for somebody.”

Representatives at the fair included staff from Kenworth, Boeing, Puget Sound Energy, Renton Police Force, Renton Technical College, Northwest Culinary Institute, HEXCEL, Universal Technical Institute and the Aerospace Joint Apprenticeship Committee to name a few.

In his time at Lindbergh, Nelsen said he’s noticed a cultural shift in staff, administration and the counseling department to being aware that there are more viable options out there for students to go into.

“They’re more supportive of these types of programs,” he said.

Students from all three middle schools and all three high schools who are interested in trade careers were to attend the trades fair.