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Thursday April 25, 2024
Local Connection
Yesterday, Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) Superintendent Dr. Donna Hargens announced a $65,000 grant from GE Appliances, a Haier company, to support a project manager that will work to accelerate the Talent Development Academy initiative already underway at JCPS and facilitate alignment between high schools, higher education, workforce development, and industry.
JCPS Talent Development Academies are small learning communities organized around career themes that show students links between their academic subjects and real-world applications and career experience. The academies involve employers and higher education institutions in preparing students for college and careers.
“These academies will offer career pathways from healthcare to manufacturing and engineering, and students will be able to see what they are learning in English, math and science come alive in ways that apply to their career themes,” Dr. Hargens said. “This is exciting, and I appreciate GE Appliances’ generous gift through the Jefferson County Public Education Foundation to help kick start this project.”
The academies differ from traditional academic and vocational education models because they prepare high school students for both college and careers. The JCPS Talent Development Academies will align with the identified industry clusters for our region – healthcare, advanced manufacturing/engineering, business services, information technology, hospitality & tourism, and skilled trades. The integrated curriculum will provide broad information about a field and weave this theme into an academic curriculum that prepares students for postsecondary enrollment. Many students will also graduate from high school with career certifications and/or college credit. Studies have found that students in college and career academies perform better in high school and are more likely to continue into postsecondary education.
The project manager position will focus on supporting the execution of a comprehensive project plan that aligns industry focus with school curriculums. In partnership with KentuckianaWorks, Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI), and JCPS, the project manager will work to develop career roadmaps that detail education, skills, and training for progression in careers across the six identified industries. The project manager will also work to develop and coordinate an approach, processes, tools and systems that will facilitate the ongoing engagement of employers in the JCPS Talent Development Academies.
The academies are created with input from local business and economic development leaders. The idea is to create a workforce with skills currently needed by local employers and to align resources with growing career opportunities for students.
“The JCPS Talent Development Academies will inspire, engage and educate students in a way that helps them better prepare for relevant careers in today’s economy,” said GE Appliances President & CEO Chip Blankenship. “We’re thrilled to provide this grant to help accelerate the initiative for the benefit of students, their parents, employers and our community. This is another step in the journey GE Appliances is on with our great partners at JCPS to educate and excite students about careers in manufacturing. Education is not one size fits all. This is a program that will encourage every student to follow a track that will best apply their talents so they can enter college or the workplace ready for the opportunities that await them.”
Supported by the Ford Next Generation Learning Network, which has more than 35 partner communities across the United States, JCPS is leveraging best practices to implement the academy model. All 23 comprehensive and magnet high schools in JCPS were eligible to submit a proposal to join the initiative. After a review process, 11 JCPS high schools will begin transformation to the academy model in the fall of 2017, pending a $2.7 million budget request and approval from the JCPS Board of Education. The transformation would occur over a three-year period. By 2020, the goal is that 100 percent of JCPS graduates are college or career ready.
Through a partnership of KentuckianaWorks, GLI, and Jefferson County Public Schools, community engagement in this process is being driven by a local launch team and a guiding team comprised of business/industry, community, and education leaders. The launch team, convened by Tom Quick of GE Appliances, a Haier company, focuses on aligning the transitions between education and workforce, as well as ensuring curriculum aligns with skills desired by employers. The guiding team sets the overall community engagement objectives for the work and is setting up a structure to ensure that all programs have business/industry partners advising them and providing experiential learning opportunities for students, such as field trips, job shadowing, real-world projects, and internships.
JCPS envisions that all graduates of Talent Development Academies will be prepared, empowered, and inspired, as stated in the JCPS strategic plan, Vision 2020.
“They will be prepared by graduating with a high school diploma, an industry recognized credential, and six to nine hours of college credit,” said Dr. Hargens. “They will be empowered because they will have built workplace skills through team projects and experiential learning. They will be inspired because they know what their next steps are and are passionate about future educational and career opportunities.”
Kentucky is participating in a three-state effort to test white-tailed deer for the presence of bovine tuberculosis.
While bovine tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that primarily affects cattle, it also can infect deer. The disease has not been detected in Kentucky’s deer herd.
Wildlife officials in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio recently launched a joint monitoring effort for the disease after an infected deer was discovered in southeastern Indiana. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources will operate a check station in Boone County during the first two weekends of modern gun season for deer, Nov. 12-13 and Nov. 19-20, as part of that monitoring.
The department also will operate check stations in Bath, Nicholas and Fleming counties on those same weekends in a monitoring follow-up after the discovery of an infected cow in that area in 2010. Hunters will be asked to bring their deer by the check station so biologists can take tissue samples for testing.
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Veterinarian Iga Stasiak said the state agencies intend to stop the disease from spreading further. “These efforts will help us determine whether or not bovine tuberculosis is present in our deer,” she said. “Participation in this effort may help ensure the long-term health and stability of wild deer populations in Kentucky.”
Testing will consist of collecting a few lymph nodes from the deer’s head. Hunters who wish to have their deer mounted can provide the name of the taxidermist so that arrangements can be made to collect samples from that location. The voluntary testing, which is designed to obtain samples from 500 deer from each of the two regions, is part of a joint monitoring effort by Kentucky Fish and Wildlife, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Kentucky’s check stations will be open from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. (Eastern) Nov 12-13, and during the same hours Nov 19-20. Locations include:
- Boone County: Boone County Cooperative Extension office, 6028 Camp Ernst Road, Burlington, Ky.
- Bath County: Bath County Cooperative Extension office, 2914 East U.S. 60, Owingsville, Ky.
- Nicholas County: Nicholas County Cooperative Extension office, 268 East Main St., Carlisle, Ky.
- Fleming County: Fleming County Cooperative Extension office, 1384 Elizaville Road, Flemingsburg, Ky.
Hunters outside of these areas can assist with the monitoring project as well. Hunters who see swollen lymph nodes, nodules in the lungs or chest cavity in any deer they are field dressing should report this to Kentucky Fish and Wildlife as soon as possible by calling 1-800-858-1549.
For more information, visit the bovine tuberculosis surveillance online site at http://fw.ky.gov/Wildlife/Pages/Bovine-Tuberculosis.aspx.
The two day long Louder Than Life music festival rocked heavy metal and rock fans from all over this past weekend with a jam-packed lineup of nearly 40 acts from around the world for the third annual celebration of bourbon, music, and gourmet man food.
Music fans made the journey to Louisville’s Champions Park in massive numbers despite the rain and chilly temperatures early on the first day. Once inside the venue, they were treated to a series of unforgettable shows from their favorite artists – along with all the staples of a good music festival: food, booze, dancing, and band merch.
The three-dozen-plus bands shredded, pounded, screamed, and, yes, even bagpipe-ed for the electric crowds in front of the festival’s three stages. Although the two main Monster Energy stages were side-by-side at one end, the third was located at the far opposite corner of the venue – good for not having bands drown each other out, bad for trekking back and forth.
As the performers thrilled festival goers, thousands of fans packed as far forward toward the stages in a closer-than-usually-socially-acceptable mass of humanity that smelled of unwashed campers, smoked turkey legs, smoked pork, and other, possibly illicit, smoked items. Dancing, hugging, fist bumping, fist pumping, moshing, and getting knocked down only to be helped back up was the routine throughout the crowd.
Despite the signs warning the faint of heart against the potential dangers, crowd surfing fans could be seen during nearly every performance. This activity started off slow until, on day one of the festival, Michigan metalcore rockers I Prevail instructed everyone to make with the crowd surfing. After this, the waves of surfers grew throughout the weekend until Sunday’s headline acts Korn, Disturbed, and Slipknot were greeted by an absolute sea of bodies skimming the surface of the crowd toward the stage where they were helped down and escorted back into the audience by the alert security staff. The smaller venue at the Zorn stage – where bands like Clutch, Zakk Sabbath, Kyng, Being As An Ocean, and Bishop Gunn played – had minimal crowd surfing and only a small handful of mini-mosh pits.
Likely thanks to the easy going nature of rock fans, despite some of the crazy outfits, and the large presence of event security and LMPD officers, Louder Than Life attendees were on their best behavior. I did see one possibly dehydrated, likely inebriated reveler being carted off by medical staff to be checked out. The condition was apparently not serious enough that I didn’t spot him back out in the crowd later with a bandage on his arm – perhaps from an IV to help recover from the dehydration brought on by all-day dancing in the heat. Continue reading
