Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

COVER STORY continued from 28
was recently moved from south Augusta’s Richmond County
Technical Career Magnet School to the downtown Craig-
Houghton Building on Fourth Street to be closer to the Georgia
Cyber Center, where 16 students are earning college credits
through a dual enrollment in Augusta Technical College’s cyber
program.
Although the academy is not a magnet school, it draws students
district-wide through an application process, said Marquez Hall,
the academy’s program specialist.
“There are no perceived barriers to actually becoming a cybersecurity
professional through our program,” Hall said. “We just
need kids who are interested. We don’t want kids to think there is
a certain type of student we’re looking for, because a cybersecurity
professional can be anyone.”
Richmond County’s “CyberPatriot” teams increased from eight
in 2016 to more than 80 last year. The Air Force Association’s
CyberPatriot Program Office, which oversees the national high
school initiative to promote careers in cybersecurity, earlier this
year named Richmond County’s program a CyberPatriot Center of
ExcellenceCyber, making the local program the 15th in the nation
– and the only one in Georgia and South Carolina – to receive the
honor.
A fringe benefit of the academy is that it will pay for students to
take CompTIA A+ certification tests – a nearly $400 set of exams.
The certification is a virtual foot-in-the-door in the computer
network-security industry.
“If they pass that (CompTIA A+ text), they can go, let’s say to
Unisys, and be ready to work,” Hall said. “I’ve heard of kids fresh
out of high school making up to $40,000 a year.”
The other reason the cyber academy was moved downtown is
that it had outgrown its space at the county’s Technical Career
Magnet School. The program now has 140 students rotating in on
morning and afternoon schedules.
“Next semester we’ll have 50 more kids enrolling,” Hall said.
to do something of this sort,” Lewis said.
Lewis said he knows of several students who have maintained
relationships with their employers, including one student participant
who continues to work part time at Starbucks’ soluble beverage and
roasting plant in south Augusta.
Because the program is open to students who are at least 16 with
a valid driver’s license, a handful of next year’s participants will be
those who participated in the program’s inaugural year. The experience
will be valuable bullet points on job and college applications.
“There’s a cohort of kids who will have three, eight-week internships
when they go to college,” Lewis said. “Most college graduates
don’t have that.”
Bradshaw said such community partnerships will play a key role in
improving the school system going forward, particularly in the urban
core, where revitalization efforts in inner-city neighborhoods are
attracting young professionals seeking quality schools.
Although there is a five-year gap in Bradshaw’s institutional
knowledge – he retired from the district in 2014 before returning this
year from Chattanooga, Tenn., where he was chief operations officer
of the Hamilton County School District – he said he is well aware the
urban core is in the throes of a transformation being fueled by jobs at
the Georgia Cyber Center, new investment from tech companies and
millennials seeking an urban lifestyle.
As superintendent, his job is to promote excellence at all of the
system’s four-dozen schools in the county. But he acknowledges the
need to prepare schools in the urban core for an influx of residents.
“There’s been a major, what I call just an energy, downtown,”
Bradshaw said. “So we are expecting a lot of growth in that area,
so we are posturing to prepare for that growth.”
COMMUNITY BUY-IN CRITICAL
Richmond County’s 75.1% graduation rate is below the state average
of 81% and the national average of 85%. But a higher percentage
of students in the county earn diplomas than they did a decade ago,
when the school system’s graduation rate was 68.4%.
School officials say the ongoing campaign to raise the bar requires
community involvement.
“I think the reason we have we’ve gained momentum ... with many
of the challenges is working closely with our business partners,”
Bradshaw said. “It really takes the community to make it happen. The
rallying of the community right now is really setting the model for
success.”
A prime example of increased support is the Augusta Metro
Chamber’s Students2Work program, the brainchild of Fran
Forehand, a Georgia Power executive and member of the chamber’s
Business Education Advisory Council member. Forehand left
Augusta earlier this year to take a job with the utility’s parent company
in Louisiana.
DeMargo Lewis, the system’s community engagement specialist,
said business and industry throughout the county welcomed the
students with open arms for eight-week, $8-an-hour internships.
“The community had a rumbling for a couple of years about trying
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