The inaugural school year of the new East Baton Rouge Career and Technical Education Center on the campus of the Ardendale urban village in Melrose East is off to a good start, though the school is enrolling about 25% fewer students than originally planned.
Some 112 students are enrolled in the school, a dual enrollment facility that allows high school juniors and seniors to earn a high school diploma from their regular high school while also receiving job training and industry certification in high-demand fields that need skilled workers.
Originally, school administrators had hoped to have as many as 150 students this year. But scheduling conflicts prevented many students from being able to enroll at CTEC.
“We lost a bunch of students who were taking honors classes (at their regular high schools),” says CTEC Executive Director Summer Dann. “If they had advanced math in the morning, for instance, they were only able to take honors English in the afternoon and that meant they couldn’t come here for half the day.”
Under the CTEC model, students attend their regular high school for half the day then attend CTEC classes for the other half in one of four high-demand areas: computer science, skilled crafts, medical or manufacturing.
CTEC also offers “professionalism” classes that help students learn how to find and apply for internships and jobs. Currently, CTEC has 11 faculty members on staff.
Dann says administrators are already working with local East Baton Rouge Parish schools to address the scheduling issues for next year. Eventually, administrators hope to have as many as 300 students at the school.
Aside from the scheduling issues, the new year at CTEC has gone off without a hitch and reaction has been positive, Dann says.
On Sept.18, the school held its first Career and Technical Day—a recruitment day of sorts for the school, which was attended by leaders from 10 local companies and dozens of 10th graders, who are candidates to attend CTEC next year.
“It was a way for us to get them interested and to explain to them what kind of opportunities exist for them with local companies,” she says.
The CTEC is the third school at Ardendale. It joins Baton Rouge Community College’s McKay Automotive Training Center, which opened in March 2017, and the Automotive Collision Training Center, which held a ribbon cutting last week.
