Atlanta High opens new CTE building
ATLANTA, Texas — The new year brought new beginnings for career-oriented students at Atlanta High School.
“We moved into the new CTE (Career and Technical Education) building at semester, so January. We still have a few little details to finish up, but we’re ready,” Superintendent Jason Harris said. “The kids were really ready. So were teachers.”
The construction of the CTE building cost $5.5 million, Communications Director Rebecca Potter said.
“The decision to build the new CTE center was driven by the growing interest in our health science, culinary arts and AVP (Audio Video Production) programs, as well as the acquisition of a federal grant for state-of-the-art equipment,” Potter said.
Funding for the building came from meticulous planning and careful budget planning, as well as federal grant allocations to avoid any additional cost to taxpayers, the communications director said.
Culinary arts instructor Beth Boyd, also known to her students as the Culinary Queen, said the new culinary arts practice kitchen has been wonderful.
“We were very cramped before, and they have more room to spread out,” Boyd said. “We had some kids doing book work, some would be in the kitchen, now we’re all able to all go over to the kitchen and cook all at the same time.”
Boyd said the students also cater events, such as school board meetings, Atlanta Chamber of Commerce meetings and women’s luncheon meetings.
“We also do the football team dinners, we work at the press box on home games, and we do things for the teachers for meetings,” Boyd said.
Sophomore Gabrielle Mills said she has learned to make components of a breakfast bowl in Boyd’s class.
“I’ve made cheesy eggs, hash browns, someone made bacon, and we put it in a breakfast bowl,” Mills said.
Mills said she learns culinary skills such as cutting onions and hygiene rules.
AVP instructor Aaron Whitehead said the program used to be more classroom-oriented, but the new studio space allows for students to be more hands-on.
“I don’t want to limit any student to one thing, one path, one thing they can learn. So when they come in with a different interest, I’m going to support that, and we get them into whatever they need to make themselves better,” Whitehead said.
Juniors Landon “Boosie” Johnson and Keele Young
blood said they both take time to record segments outside of school and at least a week to write a script for an episode.
The health sciences program exposes students to all different healthcare careers, said nurse and health sciences instructor Kara Gennings.
“Most of the students here want to do patient care, nursing. Some want to do occupational therapy or dental hygiene,” Gennings said.
Sophomore Aniyah Hamilton said she plans to take the information she has learned through the health science classes with her to college.
“I want to go to college for sonography,” Hamilton said. “After I get into sonography for a little bit, I want to go into CNA (certified nursing assistant) and RN (registered nurse)
and stuff like that.”
Hamilton said she likes being able to see how babies grow in development and finds the process cool to see.
AHS Principal Nancy Rinehart said the school has 28 programs of study and they are considering adding law enforcement into the mix.
“We have several different types of programs: business, accounting, welding,” Rinehart said.