It’s generally expected for graduating seniors to have some idea of what they’ll do after high school. Many have already accepted college offers and started planning where they’ll stay or what their major will be next fall. Others have accepted job offers and are ready ready to enter the workforce.

For those who don’t know what they’ll do, Limestone County Schools is offering a new option — the Ready-to-Work program. In addition to Alabama Industrial Development Training soft skills, students will get “a focused training curriculum from specific industries represented in their region.”

For Limestone County, that, of course, includes automotive, but it can also mean training in health care, logistics and distribution, hospitality or construction. Limestone County Career Technical Center will pilot the program starting in January, and Principal Vince Green said he’s been looking forward to this since 2014.

“All of our students are going to benefit from it, I promise you,” Green told The News Courier.

Green said he first learned about simulated workplace, already in use at the tech center, in 2014. At the time, it was a chance to teach students how to clock in or out of work, the importance of showing up on time and letting an employer know if they’ll be absent, and working on projects with others.

“But with all of that, they just got the training in each of the programs,” Green said. “With Ready-to-Work, it does the same thing but there’s two things at the end of the class.”

First, students get training specific to the industry they’ll be working in. Second, they get the chance at certifications that can be extremely valuable to potential employers, including the Alabama Certified Work Certificate from AIDT and National Career Readiness Certificate from ACT.

To get certified, students must have a 95% attendance and punctuality rate, 70% or higher grade on required assignments and successful completion of Work Keys assessment with Level 3 or higher. The Work Keys assessment in particular was valuable to the county schools, as it can improve LCS’ report card from the state, Green said.

Superintendent Randy Shearouse also praised the program during Tuesday’s meeting of the Limestone County Board of Education.

“It’s all about providing opportunities for our students to enter the workforce,” Shearouse told board members. “This area is bursting at the seams with opportunities. … What I like about this program is it looks at seniors who don’t really have a path. They haven’t decided on college, they don’t really have a job — this would target those students.”

While the tech center is starting the program next month, it won’t be available at the county high schools until next fall. Green explained the program will run slightly differently at the tech center than at the other schools, with tech students participating for the full block over the course of one semester while students participating at their base school would spend one class period over the course of an academic school year.

A sample schedule provided at the LCBOE meeting showed students spending the first nine weeks of a semester earning their NCRC and/or ACWC, followed by eight weeks of industry-specific learning, a week of Work Keys testing and a week of job interview preparation.

A sample curriculum listed social networking, budgeting fundamentals, how to set up and maintain a checking account, time management, conflict resolution, resume writing and more among the topics students would learn.