WATCH: Lakeside awarded over $112k to fund four new CTE programs

The entrance to the Lakeside School District campus is shown recently. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record
The entrance to the Lakeside School District campus is shown recently. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record

The Lakeside School District was recently awarded four grants, totaling $112,601.92, from the Arkansas Department of Education to assist with the development of new programs within its Career and Technical Education initiative.

The district plans to use $44,771.44 for pre-engineering, $29,500 for computer science cybersecurity, $26,877 for computer science programming, and $11,453.48 for work-based learning. The startup grants cover 85% of the costs associated with a new program, with the district covering the rest.

ADE announced on Jan. 10 that 72 applications across the state were selected to receive approximately $2.5 million in CTE State Startup Grants, $144,000, of which, the ADE Office of Computer Science Education provided CTE to fund five additional applications with a focus on computer science.



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Lakeside was one of only two districts in the state -- the other being Bentonville -- to receive four grants.

"We're super excited to have received these four grants," Lakeside High School Principal Blake Campbell said. "A couple of these were tracts that we already had in place, that we were starting to pilot, but that we hadn't adopted the full programs of study. So we're excited to be able to launch these in-full programs where our students can be completers and take these courses for more than one year."

Each year the CTE division receives state funds to assist schools with purchasing appropriate industry-standard equipment needed to start a CTE program. Campbell said Lakeside has applied for and received grants for some of their other programs in the past.

"This year, we kind of just jumped out there and decided we are going to apply for four," he said. "We want to offer these four new programs of study. Not really sure that we'd receive any, or much less, all of them. And to get notified that we received all four, we were stoked."

Campbell said the work-based learning program is one they are really excited about.

"It's one of those things that, you know, it was on the forefront of education for a while and then it went away," he said. "But now it's come back in a form that isn't just 'leaving the school day at half-day and going to work,' but actually having some on-the-job training and off-the-job training on what it means to be a good employee."

With the work-based learning program, students are able to receive up to two credits per year during their junior and senior year, giving them four credits for working with a company or organization the school has partnered with outside of school. Students learn soft skill development while on campus and what it means to be a good employee.

Campbell said their employers are also followed up with to ensure the skills they are being trained with are being utilized on the job.

Lakeside has recognized it has many students interested in the field of engineering and will be able to offer a variety of pre-engineering courses for them.

"We have a lot of students who, when they graduate Lakeside, they go to a university to major in engineering," he said. "And so we wanted to be able to provide them an opportunity to get that baseline information, baseline knowledge, or even just to explore that career path while in high school before they get to college and decide, 'Oh, you know what? Maybe this isn't for me,' or, 'This is exactly what I want to do. I'm so excited.'"

Campbell said the computer science programming tract is one they like to emphasize as there are so many job opportunities in the field. Acting as a baseline computer science program, the school has offered advanced placement computer science, but this allows them to now have a full tract of computer science based on programming. The cybersecurity tract involves actual competing and will allow them to build on the success of its cyber patriot team, led by Lakeside Education Accelerated by Service and Technology Program Facilitator John Stokes.

Campbell said he believes the school's CTE program will continue to grow as more and more programs become available.

"This is my fifth year in administration at Lakeside and we have added programs of study over the course of that five years -- in the fields of bio-med; we've expanded our broadcasting program; and, again, we really dove into the field of computer science," he said.

They have also worked with outside providers like National Park Technical Center and ASU-Three Rivers in Malvern to broaden the locational CTE programs as well, he said.

"Because we definitely see that all of our students need something after high school. A high school diploma isn't going to cut it. They're going to need some kind of postsecondary education, and we want CTE to be able to provide that opportunity for them to know where they want to go and what they want to do," Campbell said.

  photo  Lakeside High School Principal Blake Campbell discusses the new additions coming to Lakeside’s Career and Technical Education program with the recent grants the district received. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record
 
 

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