Paths to Success

Sponsored by East Baton Rouge Parish School System

Starting with the fall semester of 2018, the East Baton Rouge Public School System will offer students another exciting track for planning their high school studies and post-graduation lives. The Career Technology Education Center (CTEC) will cater to students ready to begin careers or career-track certification programs straight from high school, giving kids more opportunities to build successful lives and pursue careers that best make use of their strengths.

As the center’s new executive director Summer Dann explained, some students don’t want to attend college directly after high school, for any number of reasons. While college preparedness is an important part of any high school’s offering, programs that help students with other goals is also a critical component. That’s where CTEC comes in. The new center will function in practical terms much like a magnet school, drawing students from all high schools in the district. Students will spend half the day continuing to take core high school classes at their home campuses but will spend the rest of the school day at CTEC, working on career-path classes that will get them ready for the contemporary job market. Depending on the specific program the student chooses, he or she will graduate with a career certificate, ready to enter a more comprehensive certificate program or well on the way to an associate’s degree. The center will work with Baton Rouge Community College to make these student’s transitions as seamless as can be.

CTEC’s designers consulted with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and regional employers across South Louisiana to come up with tracks that prepare students for the very specialized, high-wage, high-demand occupations that form the area’s economic backbone and will be growing in the coming years. As older members of the workforce retire, they’re not always replaced by younger workers, and so some industries are facing potential shortages of qualified employees in the coming years. Some of these fields are those you’d expect—most people are aware that the United States is currently struggling with a shortage of nurses and other trained medical support staff—but some are surprises: solar photovoltaic installers are expected to be in enormous demand as solar power becomes more popular across the country. The center’s offerings will remain flexible and adaptable over time, as the center continues to receive input from community members and industry leaders via surveys, focus groups, and advisory committees.

The programs offered by CTEC are divided into four “baskets” according to field and specialization: Computer Science/Information Technology, Medical, Manufacturing, and Skilled Crafts. Within these larger groups are opportunities in fields as varied as nursing, automotive repair, HVAC installation and repair, carpentry, computer programming, and many others, with offerings projected to expand as the center develops. Incoming students will go through a short boot camp to help ensure their success, making sure the students come into the program with the basic preparedness they need and catching them up when necessary. Students in the boot camp will also undergo professionalism skills training in areas such as communication styles, conflict management, and leadership, ensuring that they have the soft skills needed to thrive in the workplace along with technical know-how. Students will also have the opportunity to tour facilities in their chosen path, allowing them to better understand what they’ll need to learn to be successful—and giving them a chance to get excited about the rewarding and lucrative careers that lie ahead of them after the completion of their programs.

The program is partially inspired by and based on similar programs in Colorado and Georgia. An internship-heavy high school track similar to what CTEC will offer began in Denver three years ago; it now has 2400 enrollees and has raised graduation rates dramatically—they’re now approximately 20% higher. This dramatic increase in student success and engagement shows what can be accomplished when school systems and administrators take the needs and priorities of all students into account and develop offerings and programs that provide different opportunities for student advancement. With the opening of the new CTEC, East Baton Rouge Public Schools is making sure it live up to this value of meeting the educational need of every student in the district.