Principal Tim Phares works on his laptop. Phares said school administration is preparing for the new polytechnic department, which will emphasize project-based and experiential learning and provide alternate graduation pathways for students starting in the 2023-24 school year.

According to Principal Tim Phares, the administration is continuing to prepare for the new polytechnic department, with construction set to begin as soon as Oct. 2023.

“There have been some more proposals about looking at the areas we want to propose (for expansion),” Phares said. “Timeline-wise, this would probably be two, three years down the road. It’s not anything real fast, because (you’ve) got to kind of follow those processes.”

Phares said administrators are drawing inspiration from other schools part of the Large School Consortium, such as Allen High School in Allen, Texas, where the building contains a student-run restaurant as a part of their culinary arts department.

“One of the areas I did look at when I was (at Allen) was their culinary kitchen,” Phares said. “The culinary program here is something we need to really update, and I say that in a way (that) our kitchens are built currently for what was deemed appropriate back in the 80s and 90s of a family kitchen—Family (and) Consumer Sciences. Whereas nowadays, it’s flipped so much more to a kitchen that is a business, a culinary space where it’s a line of preparing and cooking food for a restaurant, not just for families.”

In addition to building renovations, Phares noted the addition of a criminal justice class to the Program of Studies as part of a renewed focus on experiential and career-based education.

“Now, some people may just take it to better understand criminal justice and maybe what it looks like to do a crime scene, and we’ve got other courses that do some of those things to forensics. With that being said, that’s kind of the process we use, you know,” he said. “But, it doesn’t mean just because we put it in the Program of Studies, doesn’t mean it will happen. We have to wait and see how many course requests we get.”

Senior Morgan Lawson said, “Specifically, the introduction of the criminal (justice) class, that’s one where that was an interest (as) a major of mine at some point. (It’s) an opportunity I would have enjoyed, that I would have wanted to take. I think that’s cool that they’re bringing that.”