ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. (CBS12) — As college tuition keeps climbing, more students are looking at technical career tracks instead of a traditional four-year degree. St. Lucie Public Schools says it’s trying to make sure students don’t have to choose one or the other, and that the district’s technical programs are growing to meet the shift.
Superintendent Dr. Jon R. Prince said the district now runs more than 55 career and technical education programs across its high schools, and every one of them is connected to a local industry.
“We are partnering directly with our local industry, and they’re bringing our students here and working with our students, and then they’re hiring them,” Prince said.
Prince said the district works directly with the county’s Economic Development Council to build new courses around what local employers actually need, especially as new companies move into the area.
“They’re going to need certain technical expertise that our students are going to be able to graduate from and immediately enter the workforce if they’re not going to go to college,” Prince said. “So we have to meet that local need, and we are.”
Those programs train students for careers ranging from forklift operators to 911 dispatchers, Prince said. Last summer, he said, 111 students interned across 83 local businesses, with many landing jobs at those same companies after graduation.
One of the district’s most distinctive technical offerings is at Fort Pierce Central High School, home to the Embry-Riddle Aerospace Academy — a satellite campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Students there are actually enrolled at ERAU while still in high school, taking university-level coursework taught by ERAU faculty and earning an official college transcript, at no cost to their families, according to the district’s own program materials.
St. Lucie County has also been recognized by the state through the Space Florida Academy Program, an initiative that aligns existing technical courses with aerospace industry standards, as companies like Accel International expand into the area.
Prince said the district’s dual enrollment, AP and IB courses let students graduate high school with college already paid for, regardless of which path they take afterward.
“Many of our kids are graduating from our high schools with full Bright Futures because of the opportunities that they have in high school where their college is paid,” Prince said. “If they want to stay local at Indian River State College, they can go into the Promise Program and their college is paid.”
Prince said there are plenty of options for students who forgo the traditional four-year route. He said the district plans to keep adding new technical programs as local industries change, while phasing out programs that no longer match where the jobs are.
“The goal is the same either way, whether a student goes technical or traditional,” Prince said: graduate without a mountain of debt.