PRFSC April 2015 Polk County Career Academy Meeting
On Monday evening April 6,2015 PRFSC hosted Polk County School District
Assistant Superintendent John Small along with Poinciana’s Lake Marion Creek
Middle School Principal MaryJo Costine and two of her assistant Principals Ramon
Cruz and Rebecca Kwollek. They spoke about the Polk County School District
Career Academy Program and especially what is being implemented at Lake
Marion Creek Middle School in Poinciana.
John Small introduced the Polk County Schools District Career Academy program.
What he described is an alternative educational curriculum to the standard one
size fits all educational curriculums in schools that has been traditionally offered.
The concept is to offer education focused on introducing students to career
options available in local businesses. The program started out with 3 initial
offerings in 2006 and has been expanded to 110 Academies throughout Polk
County. The success of the program depends on partnering school education with
businesses, colleges and universities countrywide to provide specific career
oriented training to better prepare students for careers after school. To make the
program work the school systems identifies specific career opportunities available
to kids in certain communities and then establishes a curriculum with the input of
local businesses forming advisory councils to establish curriculums to prepare the
kids for jobs and careers after school graduation. The career training offered in a
particular school depends on the wants and needs of the students along with the
availability of jobs in the communities where the schools are located. The career
selections do not depend on government boundaries with schools and
curriculums often share resources across county and even state lines.
Statistics that were presented show an impressive rate of success. John Small
quoted statistics comparing graduation and achievement testing scores for career
academy students vs standard curriculums exceeding the accomplishments of
students enrolled in standard curriculums grades 9 thru 12 in Polk County. What
he identified as very noteworthy is that the success rates based on race and
ethnic background in career academies were exactly reversed as what was
typically found with normal curriculum education. Where in normal curriculums
students from more privileged home backgrounds tended to do better he showed
statistics showing that in career academy curriculums students from minority and
less advantaged background tended to outperform the others. He said that this
initially came as a surprise but upon additional research they found that
disadvantaged students tended to do better in a more focused academic
environment where they could equate the educational tasks as being directly
associated with real live career opportunities beyond school in their communities.
The speakers then focused on the challenges unique to the Polk County side of
Poinciana. Lake Marion Creek Middle School faces the dual challenges of having a
minority student population coming from less privileged backgrounds living in the
Polk side of Poinciana far away from other Polk County commercial centers and
across the county line from the commercialized Osceola County side of Poinciana.
To date they have established medical and culinary career curriculums for kids
attending Lake Marion Middle and they would like to establish more in perhaps
the areas of business, law enforcement and military. There seems to be a lot of
interest on the part of the kids but the challenge is finding Poinciana area
partners willing to volunteer their time to serve on advisory councils which are a
requirement for establishing the programs. Regrettably such businesses simply do
not exist on the Polk side of Poinciana.
One possible solution might be to recruit retired volunteers living in Poinciana
with professional backgrounds in the areas of interest to Poinciana kids to
volunteer their time to serve on advisory councils to assist Lake Marion Middle
School in establishing the curriculums and mentoring the kids?
While Poinciana Polk might suffer from a lack of businesses on the Polk side of
Poinciana we most certainly enjoy of significant number of successful retirees
who achieved success in the types of businesses that Lake Marion Career
curriculums could prepare Poinciana kids for. The question becomes whether or
not enough retired volunteers would be willing of make their time available to
help out Lake Marion School kids prepare themselves for successful careers after
school?
One suggestion is simply to ask Poinciana volunteers to contact either Keith
Laytham ([email protected]) or Lake Marion Creek Principal MaryJo Costine
([email protected]). Another suggestion for those potential volunteers
would be to set up a follow-up session either inside or outside Solivita or both to
allow MaryJo to provide more information on the programs at Lake Marion Creek
Middle and to describe what they are trying to accomplish and what they would
be asking from the volunteers? If people are interested in pursuing either of these
then please contact either Keith or MaryJo at the above E-mail addresses.
PRFSC wants to thank John, MaryJo and her staff for the work they are doing with
Poinciana ‘s kids and especially for sharing their needs with us at our April 6
meeting.