The Central

Educational Center is Coweta County School System's first charter school,

created through a partnership among the Coweta County School System, West

Central Technical College, and the Coweta County business and industry

community.

CEC is housed

in the former Central Middle School building, at 160 Martin Luther King

Jr. Drive, in Newnan, Ga. The original building, built in the mid-'50s,

was renovated and expanded in 1987 and again in 2000.

CEC began classes

during the 2000-2001 school year, offering high school, articulated and

technical college classes to high school students during the day, while

serving as a West Central campus for regular adult students, a night high

school and work force training center during the evening hours.

Now starting

its second year, construction is ongoing at the campus, with two new wings

being added on the northern and eastern sides of the original building.

Those wings adding 65,000 square feet of space and effectively doubling

instructional space at Central are funded by $7 million requested by the

local CEC organizers and Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, and provided by

the Georgia General Assembly during the 2000 session, to help make CEC

the model for seamless education in Georgia.

The two new

wings will include room for trade and industrial programs, electronics,

precision machining, and new dental assisting, health occupations and

computer labs.

The new wings

are also expected to free up more space in the existing school for technology

and allied health programs.

Students from

all three Coweta high schools attend CEC. Classes are offered during all

four blocks of time.

Transitions

occur throughout the day with students returning to their base high schools

while others arrive at the CEC.

Students can

gain both high school and post-secondary credit in a number of technical

educational areas. At the close of the 2001-02 school year, 107 technical

college industry-recognized certifications were earned by high school

students who "graduated" from CEC.

The same students

attended their base high school graduations and received their high school

diplomas the following week.

CEC offers

a number of technical college and industry recognized certification programs

based in four career tracks.

The tracks

are

Business and

information systems

Health and

medical.

Technical and

engineering.

Services.

CEC served

approximately 1,300 high school students during its first year. This year,

CEC's staff anticipates 2,100 to 2,200 students over two semesters, or

approximately 1,000 to 1,100 team members per term.

CEC is also

opening the year with a new Freshman Academy program, which will provide

freshmen students with an overview of the programs CEC offers, and will

ask them to declare a "major," so that a course of study at

CEC can be determined.