Full enrollment leads Delaware Area Career Center to launch pilot program for seniors
Faced for the first time with full enrollment and waiting lists for its programs, the Delaware Area Career Center plans to launch a pilot program for after-school classes to increase opportunities for area high school students.
Tammy Hall, DACC director of secondary operations, said DACC in late November announced the new initiative, called Flexible Learning Options, and began taking applications for the 2022-23 school year.
The options, she said, include four areas of study that have waiting lists – building-facilities technician, nail technician, application-development programming technician and health-care technician.
Alicia Mowry, DACC public-information officer, characterized Flexible Learning Options as a "one-year, senior-only boot-camp version of the traditional programs."
“The focus of the programs will be to earn industry credentials, explore their career options and graduate with confidence and clarity in their college or career plans," Mowry said.
She said she has worked at DACC for 13 years.
"The idea that our programs would be full with waiting lists seemed outrageous 13 years ago," she said.
DACC notebook:Flexibility, creativity foster student success
In the 2012-13 school year, DACC operated a North Campus on state Route 521 and a South Campus at 4565 Columbus Pike. At that time, Mowry said, DACC had 689 students.
DACC moved all of its operations to the Columbus Pike site in the fall of 2019, with a renovated and expanded building capable of holding 1,200 students. DACC enrollment passed that mark this year, Mowry said.
Hall said students have until Jan. 14 to sign up for the four new flexible options, which can take 25 students each.
She called the planned after-school program the beginning point.
“Hopefully, this will just be a start, and we can look at other programs down the road," she said.
DACC's traditional school day starts about 8 a.m. and runs until 2:30 p.m., similar to the home high schools that most DACC students continue to attend, at least in part, for their academic studies.
The flexible-option sessions will be from 2:30 to 5 p.m., Hall said, adding that DACC adult education classes are held from 6 to 10 p.m.
"We wanted to give our senior students who would enroll in this program some flexibility," said DACC Superintendent Jay Poroda, adding that since the start of the pandemic, students have said they need flexibility.
"We're starting to really understand that school can look different. It just doesn't have to be delivered content between 8 and 2:30, during those magical hours,” Poroda said. “We can be creative in the way we deliver instruction in order to meet the needs of our students.
"This is an example of just a philosophy that we work to meet students where they are and help them achieve what they want to be. The best way we can do that as a district is through creativity, and these flexible types of offerings.
"When you look at our mission to empower, prepare, inspire and connect students, we take those four words really into account when we're making these decisions to ensure that any time we do a new program or a new initiative or whatever that may be, that when it's implemented, it can help us as a district achieve those simple words," he said.
Hall said all of DACC's course programs have waiting lists, and those placed on a waiting list before the current school year will have priority when flexible-learning slots are filled.
She said DACC tracks its graduates, and six months after this year's graduation, 96% were employed, attending postsecondary education or in the military.
Poroda credited that in part to the fact that the school has developed some really strong business connections.
“Our business partners are helping us put the word out that developing skills is beneficial in this growing economy," he said.
Hall said the health-care technician program has one of the largest waiting lists at DACC, which followed an OhioHealth suggestion that some of those students would be well served if DACC were to create a medical-assistant program.
That development, Poroda said, was an example of DACC displaying creativity and listening to its business partners, identifying student interests and studying needs of the labor market.
He cited DACC's goal of "being relevant in innovating and developing programs that people want to participate in – and that people find meaning and value in as they go through the programs.”
“They see the value, and they get a benefit from it," he said.
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