Story written by student journalist Cadyn Smithson
(VEVAY, Ind.) -- Switzerland County High School’s new addition will open on Wednesday, January 31.
It is called the Academic Connector and the school plans to host an open house for the community from 4:30-6 p.m. on Wednesday.
Rod Hite, superintendent of Switzerland County School Corporation, tells us that the bottom floor of the building will be called the “Freshman Academy.” The academy will hold 9th grade gen-ed classes, such as: English, Algebra, Social Studies, and Biology. All elective courses for high school credit will be held on the second floor and in the main building.
Each classroom on the bottom floor, with an exception of Biology, has a beam that is designed to be able to split the classroom in two. Right now, the classrooms are DOUBLE the size of a standard classroom. One reason the classrooms were designed like this is for safety. Because the classrooms are so large and were built to accommodate social distancing, it also allowed the school corporation to use over $4 million in COVID relief funds.
“The large classrooms allow us to double-up or spread out six feet if needed to,” Mr. Hite said.
On the top floor you will find elective classes, such as: the all-new “Pacer Productions” studios, a manufacturing shop, a redesigned art classroom, the agricultural courses classroom, and a career readiness class for dual credit students.
The “Pacer Production” studios has a built-in, fully equipped podcast room. Mr. Hite says within the next few years, the school hopes to start a live radio broadcast.
The school’s manufacturing program will also get an upgrade. The new room is equipped with: a soldering/electrical board, a CNC programming system, two GlowForge (3-D designing/laser etching) systems, and – what everyone is talking about – a crane cockpit simulator.
“When [the students] leave this area, they will receive their certification for overhead cranes, cab over cranes, and then the off-track cranes,” Mr. Hite started. He also added that students will leave the school with an OSHA-10 certification as well as being lockout/tagout trained. All of these certifications will be beneficial if the students decide to go work at NAS or NUCOR. Saving them thousands of dollars in training, anyone taking these classes will easily make $90,000 to $100,000 a year straight out of high school.
When asked about funding, Mr. Hite said: “This has been a vision in process. This is my sixth year here, and we actually talked about it in my job interview; however, due to COVID, we shut down and stopped talking about the addition. But the silver lining of COVID was the money that became available.” Mr. Hite said that the school requested $4 million from the state, and although that wasn’t enough for the whole project, the school corporation sought out additional funding. They requested that the Endowment and the county council would continue payment of the county debt service. With their support of the school corporation’s vision, the connector was able to be built without an impact to the local taxpayers.
The new school is set for an open house this Wednesday. Students will start class on Thursday, February 1st.
Written by Cadyn Smithson who is a student journalist for The 812 covering Switzerland County Schools. He is also a published children's author.
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