The Middle College Program at Putnam County Schools is already seeing growth as the program begins year two.
The Middle College Program provides students with an opportunity through Vol State to graduate from high school with an associate degree. Putnam County Schools Future Ready Supervisor Sam Brooks said the program will start with 17 students this year, compared to 12 students last year.
“We started to publicize it a little bit more, going into the second year, and that led to the increase in students,” Brooks said. “And you know, we look forward to, at the end of this year, that first group will be seniors, or are seniors this year. We think we’ll have five of them that will graduate with their associate degree here at the end of the year.”
Brooks said the program started small in year one to figure out how to best move forward with the program. Brooks said the most noticeable program change headed into year two is expanding the range of students for the program.
“Just working with the counselors at the schools and identification of students who would be interested in this,” Brooks said. “And I think the growth for us is being, we’ve got students who are very involved with extracurricular activities that are taking advantage of this program this year. We didn’t really have any of those students last year. It was students who had a sole purpose of graduating with an associate degree that were interested, and now we’ve got students who are playing sports, who are in the arts programs, who are more involved, and are taking advantage of this program this year.”
Brooks said running the program does have its challenges. Brooks said one challenge is how the program can be perceived as a threat to the schools that are involved with the program.
“You’re actually working with their students, and you know all of these students are actually going over to Vol State for their daily schedule, so they become a full-time college student on the Vol State campus here in Cookeville,” Brooks said. “And it just takes a little while and a little bit of understanding, and a little bit of work with our counselors and administrators at our schools to get them to understand this is something that will help the data at the school, it will help students who are really looking for this.”
Brooks said the program is aiming to take up to 25 juniors each year, to expand the program to 50 students each year. Brooks said as time goes on, Director of Schools Corby King will look at the data and see if the program should expand even more or keep it at 50 students.
“We are getting into a crowding situation in our schools also,” Brooks said. “So it’s actually gonna help with overcrowding in some of our classrooms also.”
