Business program ending at Cedartown High

The Latest Local News from the Cedartown Standard

One program that will not be making the transition from the Career, Technical and Agriculture Education department at the Polk School District is the current structure of the business program, according to College and Career Academy President Katie Thomas and Cedartown High School principal Darrell Wetherington.

The program – previously focused on giving students opportunities to learn about business operations and computer applications – will be re-structured once the new College and Career Academy opens for the first day of school in late summer 2016, Thomas said, and will be mainly focused around areas of advancing greater understanding of computers and technology.

“We’re re-aligning the business program, and adding an accelerated business program for our students to take advantage of earlier,” she said.

One of those business classes – business computer applications (think Microsoft office with some additions) – will be moved down to the middle school level, giving eighth graders the opportunity to leave middle school with yet another high school credit on their transcripts before they arrive to Cedartown or Rockmart High.

Thomas said dropping the program also gives the forthcoming College and Career Academy more freedom to focus in on the needs of what both students and local business and industry partners would prefer to see out of high school graduates in Polk County.

The plan going forward to is focus more of offering students advanced computer science courses, offering up coding and graphics classes instead and allowing for a new business program to be developed after business and industry surveys give the College and Career Academy board and opportunity to plan for what local businesses anticipate their needs will be in the coming years.

She said as the new College and Career Academy is being built and the current CTAE program remains in place, changes are likely to happen as Thomas and adminstrators figure out how to keep the programs going without the class space, currently under demolition at Cedartown High.

“During this transition year, we have to adapt some of our classes based on the facilities, so we’re making adjustments as we have to in order to make everything work,” Thomas said.

Wetherington said the end of the program allows the school system to “move along with the times.”

“It opens up more area in their schedule for dual based learning or work opportunities,” he said.

Source: Cedartown Standard

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