Hart District Superintendent Vicki Engbrecht recently joined KHTS Co-Owner Carl Goldman on the radio waves, discussing the vision of the district’s governing board for the upcoming Castaic High School.

Slated to open to its first class of freshmen in August 2019, Castaic High School is set to be the seventh comprehensive high school in the William S. Hart Union High School District, according to Engbrecht.

“Our ‘Countdown to Castaic’ event (was) just about a month ago, and it is gratifying to see about 400 people from the community and from across Santa Clarita come out for the first public unveiling of what’s going to be a state-of-the-art campus in a beautiful location,” Engbrecht said. “(It’s) very exciting.”

Related: Future Castaic High School Students Talk About The School’s Fall 2019 Grand Opening

While the Hart District governing board is committed to providing college and career readiness programs at all district schools, Engbrecht noted that the brand new campus will have a particular emphasis in this area.

“We have the unique opportunity, since Castaic High School is going to be the first school we’ve opened in 12 years, to do things from the ground up,” she said. “So there is a special wing of buildings that’s going to be dedicated towards Career Technical Education (with) strong focus on getting kids both ready for college and careers.”

The Castaic High School campus is set to feature an innovation lab, a makerspace and much more, according to Engbrecht.

“We have already gone into the planning of a dental lab, where students can actually go through a program and end up with certification,” she said. “We’re looking at medical programs, computer technology.”

This specialized focus at Castaic High School is part of what Engbrecht described as a “boom” in Career Technical Education for high school students over the last six years.

“One of the goals of our board, a vision, was to make sure that each student had the opportunity to be connected with something that they could do after graduation, and we’ve been able to develop 28 different career paths in the district,” Engbrecht said.

She continued, “We have been able to secure almost $9 million in CTE grants to build programs just within the last five, six years, and at this point, 87 percent of our kids district-wide will have taken a CTE course by the time they graduate. So that’s become a real area of focus.”

Castaic High School is a highly anticipated Hart District school expected to open to students for the Fall 2019 semester. Melanie Hagman has been named the school’s founding principal by the William S. Hart Union High School District Governing Board. In addition to athletics and performing arts departments, Castaic High School is expected to have a strong emphasis on career technical education in partnership with College of the Canyons.

Castaic High School Project

Castaic High School – Castaic

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