Gilmer High’s College and Career Academy has continued to take shape since the start of the school year.
GHS joined forces with Chattahoochee Technical College to broaden course offerings in an effort to prepare students for college and beyond and fill the workforce needs of the community.
The Technical College System of Georgia’s website states, “Students all over Georgia have access to training in the areas of engineering, biomedicine, technology, logistics, robotics and many more of the skills needed to compete in the global market.
“These students are learning in environments that give them the skills to compete, and with 80 percent of jobs requiring some sort of post-secondary education, the college and career academies are working to fulfill that challenge. The college and career academies are bringing relevance to a high school student’s education and preparing them for college and their career.”
At the board of education’s work session Sept. 16, GHS principal Carla Foley and Career, Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) director Jason Kornegay gave an update on the college and career academy (CCA), which will be located at the Larry Walker Education Center (LWEC).
“We came up with Chattahoochee Tech a couple weeks ago to begin the planning process because they will be the main partnering college we’ll be working with at the college and career academy,” she said. “We currently have classes with them already so we met with them to finalize the plans.”
Distance learning dual enrollment courses with Chattahoochee Tech are already housed at CCA. Students communicate with professors via video and audio software and receive lessons in real time.
Beginning next fall, Chattahoochee Tech will offer certified nursing assistant (CNA) courses, computer science courses and diesel mechanic courses at the CCA. Plans are to add dental assistant courses beginning in fall 2021.
“We met with Chattahoochee Tech to determine which courses they’re willing to bring directly to the college and career academy next year,” Foley said. “We’ve been trying to get the CNA program going at the high school for about four years, and had a hard time staffing a RN (registered nurse) to teach the course. They already have that class staffed and are willing to bring that to the college and career academy along with computer science.
“Provided we can find a person to teach diesel mechanic classes, they’re willing to bring their diesel mechanic program.”
GHS has also began transferring programs to the CCA, which include its teaching pathway, public safety pathway and engineering. English 1101 and U.S. History classes were moved to the CCA this semester, and English 1102 and psychology classes will be housed there starting next semester.
Students will be transported by bus from GHS to the LWEC and Foley discussed how it will impact instructional time.
“Buses leave GHS when the bell rings,” she said. “The bell rings in the morning at 7:40 a.m. for students to get to class. When the 7:45 bell rings, the buses leave to go to the CAA, so students are getting down there about three minutes after classes start. They leave three minutes early so they’re missing about six minutes (of a 90-minute class).”
Gilmer High’s CTAE class offering such as audio visual technology, culinary, work-based learning and its business pathway will move to the CCA next fall.
Pathways that will remain at GHS are construction, auto shop, agriculture and sports medicine.
Gilmer County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shanna Downs reiterated that agriculture will remain at GHS, despite an anonymous letter and petition they received spreading “misinformation.”
“We received a letter with a petition asking that we not move the agriculture program to the college and career academy,” she said. “We had a conversation, not this past spring, but spring ’18, and decided to leave those classes at the high school.
“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of funds to support (the agriculture program) over the years. We have the nicest agriculture education facility in the state of Georgia. We continue to support that and planned to leave that program at GHS the whole time. It was never on the table, at all, whatsoever (to relocate the program).”
She added, “I’m not sure where that’s coming from, but I wanted to clear that up because someone is obviously spreading some misinformation about the support level that our agriculture program gets.”
Downs said no one at the board of education received any calls or concerns about moving the agriculture program prior to the arrival of the letter.
In the coming weeks and months, classes and programs will continue the transition to the CCA.