The Knox Community School Corporation is looking to partner with Ivy Tech Community College to help students meet the state’s new graduation requirements. During a recent school board meeting, Knox Schools Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart said that he and a couple other school officials met with representatives from Ivy Tech. He said Ivy Tech is willing to form a partnership with Knox Schools based on Indiana’s new Graduation Pathways. “They really want to get involved with Knox Community Schools,” Reichhart told board members. “They made that quite clear to us. And I believe that we want to get involved with them, as well.”
Among other things, the new Graduation Pathways require high school students to complete at least one “postsecondary-ready” competency. Options for that include dual credit courses or an industry certification. That’s where Ivy Tech comes in.
“Remember, anything through high school is free, in terms of dual credit with Ivy Tech, so if we can get our kids to have 15, 20 credit hours, those will transfer to any college, as long as those are approved classes in the state,” Reichhart explained. “So they can take those 20 credit hours and go to Purdue. They could go to Indiana. They could go to Ball State, Trine, wherever they want to go, with those classes.” Students who don’t plan to get a four-year degree could work toward various certifications.
In certain cases, Reichhart says Ivy Tech professors could bring their classes to Knox. “We have 12 girls and guys that are interested in health care and could not get into our CTE program, and Ivy Tech said that they’d be willing to have an instructor-in-loan program. We’d have to pay a fee for that. I think it was around $4,700. But they would come down and teach that class, if we wanted them to.”
Reichhart came away from the discussion impressed with what Ivy Tech has to offer, especially when it comes to its nursing program. “They have these mannequins that are like $100,000,” he said. “We watched one give birth to a baby. And the baby actually comes out, and they can make it have complications. They can make it have sounds, blood, anything. And she actually gives birth and the placenta.”
Reichhart told the school board he wants to keep the discussion with Ivy Tech moving ahead. The next step will be to work with the high school guidance counselors and Principal Dr. Elizabeth Ratliff, to think about what the potential partnership should look like.
