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In honor of Career Tech Education Month, the Chambers County School Board gave an overview on the district’s career tech, Inspire Academy. 

CCSD’s college and career readiness indicator, a metric collected by the state board of education, has increased to 75.6 percent in 2024 from 57 percent in 2023. According to Assistant Superintendent David Owen, state law will require the CCRI to be at 100 percent by 2026.

“By 2030,” Owen said, “we’re projected to have a six and a half million worker shortage in healthcare, infrastructure, manufacturing workforce, but not here in Chambers County, we pray.”

“We have been working really hard,” Owen said. “We have an outstanding principal at Inspire Academy who oversees our on-campus career tech programs at Inspire Academy, as well as those we have at Lafayette High School and Valley High School.”

The district’s JROTC program has over 160 students enrolled. Another popular program is the Hospitality and Tourism program, which has 94 students. The Health Sciences program has 60 students and the Greenpower Steam Engineering program currently has 55 students. 

The Greenpower program, where students build, modify and race battery-powered cars, will have their second race of the year on March 22. The school will be hosting the KIA March Madness race.

One Valley High student, Drew Manley, won first place in the regional Skills USA event this year.

For the second year the Inspired2Serve food pantry has successfully served 20 families at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“And we’re going to do it again for spring break, for our families in the area,” said Inspire Principal Bo Oates.

Students from the Valley High HOSA chapter also qualified for this year’s National competition in Houston, Texas. They won awards in CPR and first aid and prepared for public speaking. 

In March, a student at LaFayette High School was elected state president of the Future Teachers of Alabama.

On Wednesday, 32 students from Fairfax Elementary and Eastside Elementary traveled to the Jet Toy competition of the SAE International A World In Motion® (AWIM®) JetToy Competition, supported by Kia Georgia. 

Fifth-grade students built jet toys and competed with other students from Alabama and Georgia. 

In January, State Senator Randy Price presented Superintendent Dr. Sharon Weldon with a $20,000 check. The funding will support the career tech education program. 

The Health Sciences program in the district has worked with the University of Alabama in Birmingham on Operation Wipeout, a project working to eliminate cervical cancer through HPV vaccinations. 

“We are at the top of the list as a hot spot in the state of Alabama per capita [for cervical cancer],” Owen said. “And our Health Sciences program is working really closely with UAB to see that we’re not on the top of that list any longer.”

The Central Alabama Workforce has donated 3D printers to Inspire Academy’s manufacturing lab.

In Chambers County, we host 626 high school students every day who visit our career tech programs. They learn things that they can carry with them into life,” Owen said.