Caroline Bleske, Career and Technical Education Director for Monroe County Schools, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM to talk about what’s going on in our schools.
Premier Pathway is a program sponsored by the Golden Fleece Foundation, and offers rewards to students for achieving industry certifications in information technology.
Bleske said, “So this program has been updated, and it’s sort of new and improved because it’s been around for a couple of years, but this year, we are really pushing for the IT certifications, because we feel those IT certifications are the ones that will make our students the most successful. We offer the curriculum for the accreditation, and we offer the testing right there in our schools. The Golden Fleece Foundation has pledged more than $200,000 this school year for students who meet this new it challenge.”
What will those funds be used for?
Bleske said, “These funds go directly to our students to incentivize them for passing these very difficult certs. This is as early as middle school for our students, and we start with some real basic digital literacy sort of levels and they range from Word processing to Google Docs to database essentials, real basic, fundamental computer skills. Then in high school, they get progressively harder. We have level two and level three certs, which are industry nationally recognized certifications. We’ve got a cyber security cert. We have artificial intelligence, which is really hot right now. We have all the Java Python and JavaScript processing certifications, device and configuration. It gets complicated. These are for industry recognized certifications that are going to take our students really far. Also Adobe. Forgot to mention Adobe. We call them career seat courses, and the IT has a pathway. So a student really has to take the IT class, which is a pathway of three courses, and embedded in each one of those courses are these certifications that our students could attempt to take. They have 45 different certifications they could go after. So as much as they can learn, they could also be earning at the same time. So if they want to run with this program in the classroom, in addition to the normal things that they would do in that class, this is extra and they can go as far as they want with this program.”
Another program is the MOVE program.
Bleske said, “It is really a partnership between our community and Monroe County to provide work experiences for our students. So it’s sort of a win/win. Our mission is two part. One is to provide our students during school hours to learn workforce skills and the second is really to increase the workforce in our community by investing in our young citizens. I think we all can agree that having our students stay in the county and working in the county can help probably solve some of our workforce problems. We like to make sort of a connection between, like our automotive program and placing students in automotive type careers, but we really range in hospitality and retail. We have students actually working from Monroe County School District right now. We’ve hired interns to work as assistants in child care and administrative assistants. So we’re also hiring and bringing on interns into our facility here to help us with some of our needs.”
A career fair is also coming up.
Bleske said, “We’re doing that again this year in February, and I just kind of wanted to give a shout out. You could also contact me about the career fairs, but we’re going to be holding one in Coral shores, in Tavernier on February 25; one in Marathon on the 26th and one at Key West High School on the 27th and it’ll be in the morning from 9 to 11. If you contact me, I can get you a form to fill out, and we can get you registered for that. Last year, we had over 46 employers, and it was wildly successful. Great way for employers to meet our students and our students to see what’s out there.”
What trends has the district been seeing in career path for students?
Bleske said, “We feel that those kinds of skills could really go either way. You could be out in the workforce using those skills, or they can benefit you wildly in college as well. I wanted to mention too that if you earn a level three certification in our high schools, you’re getting college credit for those as well, three hours of college credit. So it really is kind of an Equal Opportunity Program.”