South Bend charter network cuts ribbon on new high school building
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The South Bend-based Career Academy Network of Public Schools on Friday marked the grand opening of the Portage School of Leaders, a new high school located within the Temple Beth El building in downtown South Bend.
The building, which has undergone a $16 million renovation, also includes the new Club Teen Center and Future Lab, both of which have a goal of providing a special emphasis on workforce development and career exploration.
“We designed the space to be collaborative and for students to have the opportunity to work together and learn those communication skills, learn how to think critically, and all those different things working with people, because we know that that’s what employers are looking for,” said Superintendent Jeremy Lugbill.
Lugbill told Inside INdiana Business the new high school creates a “high trust, high reward” environment where students can think creatively.
“We’re trying in this high school to have students develop agency and take ownership of their learning,” he said. “I would say that connection is a big part of what this high school is going to be. We’re going to get students out into the community, and they’re going to be making connections not only with themselves, but the projects that they’re going to be working on and looking at problems of the community, and then going through that process of looking for solutions and working with our community partners.”
The school is also taking a different approach to how students earn credits beyond the traditional system by using what Lugbill calls a mastery or competency-based model.
“There’s a set of competencies, whether it’s in algebra or biology, and students have time to complete those, and they’re going to complete them and master them at their own pace,” he said. “Then we’re going to move on to the next skill. We’re going to move on to the next competency. So it’s very individualized process and very personalized process.”
Another part of the learning process, Lugbill said, will be employability skills to give students a better opportunity at landing a job. Such skills include collaboration, communication, and problem solving.
But along with the high school itself comes the Club Teen Center, which is part of the Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County. Lugbill notes that the center will serve all teens in the community, not just the students at the school.
The goal of the center is to provide programming in collaboration with local businesses to give teens practical skills and exposure to mentorship and career opportunities.
But the Club Teen Center will also seek to address the emotional needs of the youth that show up with the help of an on-staff therapist.
“Research shows that there’s a strong tie to students’ emotional well-being and where they’re at in their personal lives with their ability to be successful in the classroom, in the community and beyond,” Lugbill said. “So, it all works together, and you can’t just focus on one of those things; there has to be a collaboration between the services that we provide as well as the academics.”
The final piece of the puzzle with the new building is the Future Lab, which is designed to give kids access to state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. The charter network said the lab will have a focus on engineering, computer science, precision machining and entrepreneurship programming.
Lugbill said a previously awarded $4.4 million grant from the Indiana Department of Education allowed the network and its partners to come up with the idea for what would become the Future Lab.
“That funding allowed us to ideate around what would it look like if we created space that was career focused and exposed kids to entrepreneurship, you know, starting a business and going through the marketing process and building out products?” he said. “What if we had a space that was focused on engineering, and students went through the design process and learned how to identify problems, research in depth, and then ideate possible solutions, evaluate those solutions, and then creating prototypes and testing and troubleshooting and making improvements until that product is ready to be released?”
The school said all kids served at every Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County location will have access to the Future Lab.
Lugbill noted that the three aspects of the new building will not be segmented off. He said there will be integration among the high school, Club Teen Center and Future Lab to give students as much opportunity to collaborate as possible.
“We believe that the equipment that students are going to be engaging with, alongside mentorship coaching, and then coupled with wraparound services and certified teachers, counselors, social workers and so on, and those trusted relationships with adults, we believe there’s power in that combination of having all of that under one roof,” he said.
The Career Academy Network currently serves about 1,600 students across all of its schools. Lugbill said he anticipates big growth at the Portage School of Leaders in the years to come, particularly as more feedback from students and parents is given.