(UPDATE: APS’ Scott King talks with parents at the High Schools Showcase. Listen here.)
Natasha Radford (pictured above, bottom row/middle) is an eighth-grader at Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy. She moved diligently with the rest of her classmates from an orientation session in a conference room on the Atlanta Metropolitan College campus over to the school gym for the “showcase” part of APS’ annual High Schools Showcase. And she was excited about what she was about to experience.
In the orientation she learned the basic requirements of high school: the number of units needed to graduate, the number of community-service hours, etc. But then came a sneak peek at the high schools and the gateway to her future. “You don’t want to be off track or behind when you start high school,” said Radford, who’s slotted to attend Douglass High School next fall. “You want to be able to know what to expect in high school. I’m excited about high school because I want to be a pediatrician.”
Inside the gym, Radford and her classmates walked by the Douglass High School booth, with a video providing highlights of the newly transformed school. Under APS Superintendent Dr. Beverly L. Hall‘s High School Transformation Initiative (HSTI), Douglass now features schools of Business and Entrepreneurship, Communications and Journalism, a Center for Engineering and Applied Technology, and Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing.