‘Future ready’: Inside TCC's new charter school on campus, Tallahassee Collegiate Academy
School is back in session, but it's a first for Tallahassee Collegiate Academy as the new charter school in town.
The STEM-based school’s doors officially open Thursday with 150 to 200 students in grades 9-11 from Leon, Gadsden and Wakulla counties being taught by nine teachers on Tallahassee Community College’s campus in what used to be TCC’s three-story Academic Computing Center building.
The single-building school off Appleyard Drive is decked with its blue, yellow and white spirit colors inside and greets students with the words “Welcome to Tallahassee Collegiate Academy” written across a wall on the first floor, along with the slogan “The future belongs to those who prepare for it. Let’s get future ready.”
Although the school’s bare hallway walls give it a soft appearance, TCA administrators and faculty members hope to fill them up throughout the year with bulletin boards made up of their students’ work.
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“The synergy that we have with TCC, the students and the teachers and bringing all of that value to the community is something I’m looking forward to,” said TCA Dean of Students Matt Gregory, who has almost 20 years of experience in human resource management.
An incentive by Gov. Ron DeSantis in February 2022 is what led to the charter school’s creation, with the goal of boosting workforce programs in Florida.
DeSantis gave $2 million to TCC to sponsor the STEM charter school on its campus while the same amount was distributed to four other community colleges in the state that will also be sponsoring charter schools of their own — Miami-Dade College, Northwest Florida State College, Santa Fe College and St. Petersburg College.
The academy's operations will be supervised by TCC instead of the Leon County School District.
While attending TCA, students will have the opportunity to earn both a high school diploma and an associate in science degree by the time they graduate, with the A.S. degree offerings being cyber security, computer programming and web development, engineering technology, dental hygiene, nursing (R.N.), building automation systems and video game design.
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‘Meaningful’ learning
Most of the students enrolled at TCA are coming from other charter schools, such as Tallahassee School of Math and Science, the School of Arts and Sciences at The Centre, the School of Arts & Sciences on Thomasville Road and Crossroad Academy Charter School in Gadsden County.
A sprinkle of students from Florida A&M University's Developmental Research School, Florida State University School, Florida Virtual School and home schooling will also be joining the new STEM charter school.
While 83% of the students are from Leon County and 13% are from Gadsden County, 4% will be coming from Wakulla County.
When it comes to TCA’s instructors, the nine teachers on board started their positions July 10 and will receive the same benefits as TCC employees. The small group was selected out of a pool of over 100 applicants, and most of them have been named Teacher of the Year at some point in their careers.
“To have a whole school full of teachers that are so dedicated to students and that are engaged makes me so excited to see what our students can do,” TCA Assistant Principal Patricia Pagozalski said. She joins the charter school after serving as Tallahassee School of Math and Science’s assistant principal for nearly 15 years.
The starting salary for the teachers is $50,000, according to TCA Principal Jessica Chapman.
Chapman — who was hired in May — says she trusts her teachers will meet and follow the curriculum created by the school and state benchmark standards while following a project-based learning model that allows teachers creative control over how they present the standards to students.
“Project-based learning really takes all of the standards that you uncover, and the teacher breaks it down to solve a real world problem,” Chapman said. “We're really looking at how to apply learning in a way that's meaningful, so we're anchoring it to something instead of just learning it.”
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Math teacher Marilynn Griffith will combine poetry and geometry to address the growth of artificial intelligence in the workforce for her students’ first project.
“Over the next three to five years, 300 million jobs are going to be eliminated,” Griffith shared. “So what we have to do here is give the students a certain level of thinking and a certain level of future reading skills.”
A look inside Tallahassee Collegiate Academy
While the new charter high school is starting off with less than 200 students, future growth is anticipated as the building on TCC’s campus has a capacity for 400 students.
What each floor of the building has in common are flat screen TVs to display announcements to students and chairs on wheels in each classroom to easily change the seating structures when needed.
But while the school’s first floor consists of the main office and a cafeteria, the second floor above it is where students can find a think tank and a yoga studio with mats and cushions to accommodate for their physical education requirement.
The second floor also has a faculty lounge along with the school’s math, science, world history and Spanish classrooms.
In addition, the top floor of the charter school consists of an academic center for excellence, which includes a guidance counselor's office, Dual Enrollment study rooms and a student lounge.
Chapman says the lounge is one of the charter school’s “coolest rooms,” equipped with a microwave, refrigerator, teapot and Keurig brewing machine to help students feel comfortable.
A biology classroom with dissection tables and two English classrooms with a writing lab in between them are also located on the third floor.
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More details on the charter school’s operation
Unlike traditional public schools, TCA will not be offering transportation this school year since it does not have enough of a ridership to sustain the bus contract needed to provide the service, Chapman says.
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The charter school’s lunch time won’t have traditional cafeteria workers, either.
The administrative team along with two front office staff and a school resource officer (SRO) will switch roles during lunch periods to serve the students.
“We’re a small but mighty team,” Chapman said. “We don’t really have a lunch staff, but eventually as we add more students we’ll be able to add additional positions.”
But similar to other schools in the area, TCA will have extracurricular activities available for students, with a different club being led by each of the school’s nine teachers.
At the same time, some of the clubs offered on TCC’s campus will also be open to the students under the condition of them being accompanied by a high school chaperone, according to Chapman.
“When you hire dynamic people, they can really do anything,” she said.
Although Thursday marks the first day of school — from 8 a.m. to 2:05 p.m. — interested students will still be able to enroll into TCA throughout the academic school year.
Contact Democrat staff writer Alaijah Brown at abrown1@Gannett.com. Contact Tarah Jean at tjean@tallahassee.com or follow her on twitter @tarahjean_.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee Collegiate Academy gets ready for first day of school
