When the East Baton Rouge Career and Technical Education Center opens next fall on the campus of the Ardendale urban village in Melrose East, it will address two challenges: the lack of skilled workers needed to fill positions at local companies and plants and the gap between young people and well-paying jobs.
The center, as Business Report details in a feature in the current issue, will offer high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to earn a diploma from their regular high school while also receiving workforce training and industry certification in high-demand fields.
The dual-enrollment facility is a proverbial win-win for the community and promises to put a dent in one of the area’s most pressing challenges.
The $17 million facility, under construction next to the McKay Automotive Training Center at Ardendale, has been in the works for more than a decade and is the product of a collaborative effort between multiple agencies and organizations led by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
CTEC is modeled after a program in Newnan, Georgia, a small city outside of Atlanta that realized back in the early 2000s it was losing its young people after high school, even while good jobs in the community remain unfilled.
“So they did something that sounds so simple but isn’t—they trained young people for jobs that exist,” BRAF President John Spain says.
CTEC plans to do the same thing. The school will focus on providing job training in four high-demand areas: computer science, skilled crafts, medical and manufacturing. Students enrolled in the school—juniors and seniors—will attend class at their regular high school for half the day, then take classes at CTEC for the other half.
“We will try to map business needs and community needs to student needs,” Dann says.
CTEC will also offer “professionalism” classes that help students learn how to find and apply for internships and jobs.
The school plans to enroll 150 students next fall. Those students will be admitted based on an application and interview process. Dann is currently making the rounds at local high schools, meeting with principals to let them know what CTEC has to offer and to enlist their help in encouraging students who would be a good fit for the school to apply.
Eventually, CTEC will be able to accommodate 300 students on its existing campus, and it has available space on its site to expand.
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