Franklin Co. To Build New Career Academy With New E-SPLOST

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

Now that Franklin County voters have voted to continue the education special purpose local option sales tax, or E-SPLOST, for another five years, attention is turning to beginning work on the main project, the Career Academy at Franklin County High School.

Franklin County School Superintendent Dr. Ruth O’Dell said she believes voters saw the importance of continuing the E-SPLOST and the construction of a new Career Academy.

“The projects themselves appeal to people; especially the Career Academy,” O’Dell said. “That will affect everybody and will really cap off what we started at the high school; with the new academic building, now we’ll have a Career Academy. The Career Academy will go far beyond just a building.”

O’Dell went on to say that once opened, the new Career Academy will give students a chance to investigate a number of different options for post secondary education as well as technology and agriculture careers.

“It will house state of the art CTAE programs, so we really need a new building in order to have a quality CTAE program; the kind that will launch students into career fields,” O’Dell said.

O’Dell said currently, the high school students who want to take college classes at Emmanuel College or North Georgia Tech’s Currahee Campus have to find their own way.

Next year, she said the school will be busing students to those locations, but that will be eliminated with the new Career Academy.

“This will connect us more seamlessly with North Georgia Tech and if we get this on campus it will be even better,” O’Dell said. “We want our students to go somewhere else after high school. They cannot stop their education at that point. Not everyone is interested in an academic career that comes with going to a four-year school. They’re interested in technical fields, which are highly employable these days.”

Dr. O’Dell said the next step is to write a grant to help pay for the Career Academy and apply for some $3 million in funding from the state.

She said they are also working on finishing up projects in the current e-SPLOST.