MACON, Ga. — Central High School in the Bibb County School District will now offer a program that helps students begin their careers earlier.
Currently, the school offers an International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma program that allows students to earn college credit while still in high school. What's new is starting next school year, students can be a part of the career-pathways program.
Sophomore Merlin Ramirez-Perez is in the pre-IB program. She hopes to become a doctor because she says there are not a lot of doctors who can speak Spanish and help Spanish-speaking patients.
She knew she wanted to be in the healthcare industry and through the newly expanded program, Ramirez-Perez can begin classes to learn about her dream career field in high school.
"My goal is to be a doctor and so the only way that I found it where I could make sure I wanted to be a doctor was by going into CNA," Ramirez-Perez said.
The sophomore hopes to go to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the CNA program is a good start in the career pathways program.
How it works is the students take IB classes at the high school and complete their career classes at Hutchings College and Career Academy. Students will earn college credit that can be transferred to the University Systems of Georgia colleges and receive an industry certificate once they pass all the required classes.
Students can take a career pathway in Healthcare Industry, Audio/Video Technology, Graphic Design, Cybersecurity, Culinary Arts, and Banking and Finance.
For the last two years, the IB staff has worked to make a proposal to expand the program. The staff visited a school in Atlanta to see how the program works at their school then IB consultants came to visit their school. Central High School principal Chendra Dupree says without the staff the expansion wouldn't be possible and students are already showing interest.
"We may need more teachers in the future depending on the numbers. We do hope to have high numbers and we do expect to have high numbers. Actually, already, my CP-IB coordinator is tracking it. We have 30 students already that want to come to the CPIB program, which is pretty huge for the first year," Dupree said.
Currently, the IB program has a total of 131 students. IB coordinator Joshua McCorkle says within the last year the school went through three rounds of approval.
"We have been visited by IB here at the school, we've been observed, we had to go through our consultation process with an IB consultant and we have passed everything with flying colors," McCorkle said.
The program doesn't cost for students who are accepted because the price is subsidized by the school district.