DONOVAN — It might be surprising to people who are accustomed to seeing high-schoolers in blue and gold FFA jackets all over agricultural Illinois, but Donovan Community Unit School District 3 officials have decided to add vocational agriculture to the curriculum — at both the high school and junior high.

FFA, formerly Future Farmers of America, is a companion activity to vocational agriculture classes all over the country.

Almost any rural resident who drives through the farm-dominated northeastern Iroquois County school district might presume ag-education is at least an option for youngsters there.

Now, it is going to be added to the curriculum under the leadership of new Superintendent Stephen Westrick. And, although vo-ag has been gone for decades from class choices there, “we have had our students express interest in two different surveys during the school year,” he said. “That makes us feel very positive going forward. ... That’s roughly one-third of our high school enrollment of 97.”

Donovan is among nine Illinois school districts that have decided to put vocational agriculture on the curriculum, or back on, for the coming year, according to a Feb. 12 article by Kay Shipman in the Illinois Farm Bureau’s newspaper “FarmWeek.”

Westrick, who has lived at nearby Kentland, Ind., since 2002, might have been as surprised as anyone at the absence of ag education.

“Our biggest industry is agriculture,” he said of the sprawling Donovan school district — which extends from the Indiana state line west about 16 miles to the Iroquois River west of Martinton and as far as 11 miles north to the St. Anne school district and 11 miles south to the Watseka and Milford-Sheldon school districts.

“Collectively, farms are our biggest taxpayers. It only makes sense to me, as superintendent, that we should have vocational agriculture for our students. It is the largest industry in Illinois.”

Students might not end up as farmers, but many potential jobs are tied to agriculture, he said.

Agriculture encompasses 27 million acres in Illinois — 75 percent of Illinois’ land mass — but now has only 75,000 farm operations — down from 164,000 in 1959.

Asked when vocational agriculture was last taught at Donovan, he didn’t have a definite year, but said: “Our school board president (Joe Schultz) graduated in 1978, and they didn’t have it then.”

Reaction in the community to restoring vo-ag has been very positive, Westrick said. “The school board is very supportive.

“We asked what we could add to give our students more elective choices,” he added. “We want to make sure our students get the broadest choices possible. If they didn’t take Spanish or what we used to call home ec, they had no other electives. Ag just makes sense. It is an interesting possibility.”

It also appealed to students. In two separate electives surveys of high school students, vo-ag “was their very highest preference,” he said. “We surveyed twice to make sure they were interested.” In both cases, it was the top choice of more than 30 students — nearly a third of 97 high-schoolers, he said. “That makes us feel very positive going forward.”

When it was last offered at Donovan, vo-ag might not have appealed to girls or they might not have been encouraged to take it. Westrick has no doubt they are interested now. “I talked with teachers in area schools, and many of the students are females,” he said.

Donovan’s newly hired vo-ag teacher fits that bill. She is Madison Sauer, of Streator, now doing student teaching at LeRoy, and soon to be a graduate of Illinois State University.

Eight of the 14 vo-ag teachers and FFA advisers in the Daily Journal region are women.

“I went on the state vo-ag website, and easily the majority of potential ag teachers here in Illinois are women, which I think is great,” Westrick said. “We need more women in the sciences, and I view agriculture education as a science.”

Sauer isn’t a former farm kid, but “her older brother got into FFA when he was in eighth grade and she was in sixth,” Westrick said. “She just kind of tagged along and got hooked about FFA and was an officer twice. She was very active at Illinois State. People there are very positive about her, and we are very thrilled to have her.”

She also will teach a class or two of vo-ag classes at the junior high, and FFA also will be opened to junior high students, he said.

Donovan sends about a dozen students to the Kankakee Area Career Center, where some are “really into welding and construction technology, and one young lady is in auto repair. You don’t find that very often,” he said.

“We were playing a junior high softball game with a team from Lockport, and, literally, right across from the ball field was a pasture with a herd of cattle. Those girls had never seen cattle. They ran across the field to look at them.”

Luke Allen, state ag education program adviser for northeastern Illinois, worked with Donovan under a state budget to expand and improve ag ed.

He provides technical support to help make sure the program meets state standard, with a general framework for ag science and business.