New Magnet School to Open at Knoxville College

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Knox County commissioners approved a lease agreement in December with the Tennessee Board of Regents on behalf of the new magnet school at Pellissippi State Community College’s Strawberry Plains Pike campus in Knoxville.

The new school, called the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Magnet High School at Pellissippi State, will gear high school students for college by allowing them to take college courses that would count towards an associate’s degree. The school will focus on four different career areas: teacher preparations, homeland security, sustainable living and advanced manufacturing.

The school board approved a plan back in September to allocate almost $4 million to the new magnet high school, which is scheduled to open in fall 2014.

The goal of the curriculum is to teach Knoxville-area students the skills required for high-demand occupations. In June, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce helped in the planning of the magnet school’s curriculum in hopes that the school will help attract high-paying employers to the area.

The chamber of commerce surveyed about 50 employers to help develop the program. The advanced manufacturing cluster, for instance, will have two paths of study — a maintenance technician path, with classes dealing with electrical, mechanical and machinist fields; and an operating technician path, dealing with lean manufacturing/quality systems and robotics/automation. The classes will be designed to give students about 90 percent of the knowledge they will need for any advanced manufacturing job, with the idea that employers will customize the rest of their training to fit the operation. The Knoxville News Sentinel also reported that the chamber of commerce plans to work with Pellissippi State to develop a “mega lab” with all the equipment students will need for their classes.