LAFAYETTE -- Carencro High's Academy of Information Technology will showcase its program and community partnerships next week during a workshop for other career-based academies across the United States.
Carencro High's academy was selected by the National Academy Foundation, a consortium of the 500 career-themed academies, to host an ASPIRE Design workshop Oct. 6 through Oct. 8.
The academy's innovative partnerships with parents and businesses piqued the interest of the National Academy Foundation, said Patti Smith, senior director of network services for the foundation.
"They do an excellent job of engaging their community. It's something that we want the rest of our network to be able to know about," Smith said.
Academy staff, advisory boards and businesses associated with academies in San Francisco, Miami, New York, Waco, Texas, and Apex, N.C., have also been invited to the workshop.
Each academy will have an opportunity to learn from each other's best practices, Smith said.
The academy model provides students with industry-vetted curriculum, but internships and work-based learning experiences are imperative to a student's success, Smith said.
"We know that we can only do these things when we have a strong connection to the community outside the school," Smith said.
Carencro's Academy of Information Technology boasts a 100 percent placement for its students in paid internships, said Kit Becnel, the academy's director.
The record is "unheard of, especially during these economic times," Becnel said.
"We have no agency helping us with placement. It's the community: parents, advisory board, parents, students, faculty," she said.
Those strategies will be shared during the workshop.
"ASPIRE really encourages high-performance leadership and leading us to the next level," Becnel said.