Good afternoon, Beacon readers! Happy Tuesday to you all. Mariah Thomas here — and my gosh, we are in a busy season.

As your resident state politics reporter, I’d be remiss not to remind you all we are exactly two weeks out from primary election day. My dad was texting me just this morning asking questions about his ballot and who was on it… and I made sure to tell him he should take a look through our primary election guide, which is up on the Beacon website for you all to reference as you’re also trying to make decisions about who to vote for in local, state and national races. I, for one, am really proud of our coverage.

Election officials also sent out an important reminder just last week about primaries. Remember, you can only cast one ballot — either for Democrats, Libertarians or Republicans. You should discard your unvoted ballots. And if you’re voting on an absentee ballot, you need to write both your birth year and your signature on the return envelope for your ballot to be counted. I just dropped mine in the mail yesterday, and you can bet that I’ll be making sure it was counted via the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page (if you enter your information, you can click the “Track my Ballot” button to see your ballot’s status).

But that’s enough about elections, which have consumed most of my focus for the past few weeks.

Instead, I want to take a moment to highlight something pretty cool happening with schools tomorrow, which is the other half of my world here at the Beacon.

Kalispell Public Schools has for years championed Personalized Competency Based Education, working to provide students with hands-on learning opportunities and chances to discover careers while they’re still in school.

One of those opportunities is for students to enroll in a vocational course called Housing Construction, where they spend the year learning about all the phases of residential construction… and put those lessons into practice by designing and building a home. Students in the course earn OSHA safety certifications and get to log apprenticeship hours, too.

“Flathead County continues to grow, and the construction industry is looking for the next generation of skilled workers,” said Bryce Wilson, Kalispell Public Schools’ director of work-based learning and adult education. “This program introduces students to the building trades and gives them a head start on a meaningful career, right here in Kalispell.”

And those students will be showing off their work by hosting an open house (literally!) tomorrow. There will be a free, drop-in event to tour the house they spent the school year building, open for members of the public to stop by and check it out.

The home, located at 515 Northridge Drive in Kalispell, will have its doors open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow.

If you stop in, according to KPS, you can expect self-guided tours of the home, a chance to hear directly from the students and instructors who were part of building it, and to connect with local employers, who help make the program a possibility.

To me, it sounds like an awesome chance to celebrate some student achievement — which is forever the biggest highlight of my job as an education reporter. I hope some of you can take a moment to drop in and see it.

And… that’s what I’ve got for you all in today’s Daily Roundup. Read on for more below.