Watch: BJ Ace 2025 Board Report BJ ACE May 2025 Board Report Show Transcript hi there my name is Mike Leo I'm the director of ace the opportunity to work with um many of your board members for quite some time however I realize some of you are new so a little bit about me I'm in my ninth year um at Ace as the Director um prior to that I was in Boston as a high school and middle school principal assistant principal before that and way back when a United States history and world history teacher um thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a little bit about Ace for those of you who are interested afterwards please feel free to email me you are more than welcome to come by the facility and tours while our students are there it's gives great insight to the day-to-day workings and getting to see the students in action is is really um quite the sight today I'm going to be talking about a few things to update the board um 1 is a little bit of the background or Ace history in our current structure I'm going to look at some data specifically relating to Jasper County School District I'm going to give a little recap of our past school year and then I'm going to talk about our Capital Improvements that are needed in our building I think the best way to provide a little bit of information about our programs is through our student voices and this is a recent video we had made about 2 to 3 weeks ago and it was student LED so I'm going to sit back and let you guys enjoy this to get a little background on Ace before I continue hello welcome to Ace the B for Jasper Academy for career Excellence at as we offer 12 Dynamic career has been acceptable education programs for students from both the Buford County and Jasper County school districts while at a students gain valuable hands-on experience and earn industry recognized certifications in their chosen fields and something we're very proud of in 2024 Ace was recognized as the first career center to win Palmetto's finest School 1 of the top honors a school Canon Chief now let's go explore the outstanding programs offered here at Ace in culinary arts it is a 1 semester the program where we learn the basics of getting into the culinary business you could earn a certification for surf safe and also your managerial which can help you get into the culinary world and they'll take we learn sculpture now J Nails regular polish French polish pedicures and manicures at the end of the program we take a state board exam to get our license here at the htms we prepare to take our national registered EMT test at the end of our course and here we go over everything from patient assessment to managing Airway to doing CPR and we get our basic life support certification with that we also do clinicals at different Memorial Hospital and then we also do ambulance ride alongs with a bunch of organizations around the low country this is Marine technology and here we learn how to service on engines and we earn multiple types of certifications such as Yamaha and abyc we do hair care Nail Care facial care the programs and the certifications you guys will earn is your certification of Cosmetology license you will also get your garbage site certification and you will get the OSHA certification when welding we learned stick Mig and Tig we do numerous projects if you come to Ace you can get your AWS for welding and it'll send you straight into the workforce and barbering we learned how to braid hair we learned how to shave the certifications get OSHA we get the hair braiding certification we get Barber size certification CPR and then at the end of the course that we take we prepare for state board and we get our license so we're ready to go out in the world and start our journey and the barber industry there's an auto collision we learned a fixed Cars Repair dents put Bondo on cars the whole process of that we learned how to pull frames we learned how to weld we get our make certification our ocean 10 our IC car certification CPR and stop the bleed we're in electricity and here we learned to wire up light fixtures which is outlets and by the time we're finished we get all our certifications like our nccer and our ocean this is a construction program we learned a lot of things over here like Plumbing electrician how to build a house weed plants and how plants we just practiced class and at the end of the class we get our 35 minutes certificates in Auto technology we gain our certification through a bunch of trainings that we do I just recently got my OSHA certification we also learned how to work on cars we do various types of repairs we do oil changes we change race we also get to work on your own car we also help community members as well for a reduced cost when students come to a they can also take designed to build a to prepare them for their in the course students write technical documents and resumes and cover letters there are also a focus of communication as soon as learn problem solving skills participation and mock interviews and more hey so what are you waiting for come be a part of something great and start your career at Ace well as you can see our kids are talented in many different areas and and once again I would like to extend an invitation to any board member who would like to come by and either toilet facilities or get a service in 1 of our many different um Human Services programs a little about the history of Ace for those of you who are familiar Ace was founded by state legislation in 1975 um the funding is 2/3 Buford County and 1/3 Jasper County and that funding formula is part of the original legislation however despite the 2/3 1/3 operational cost split the facilities and Capital Improvements are 50/50 Buford and Jasper now I was curious about this and found this data really interesting the population of each County when we were founded in 1975 and their current population in the percent increase over that time period And as you can see both have grown exponentially um Buford had a faster growth from my expectation with the new building um it's coming the New Port as well as a lot of the um manufacturing coming to Jasper County I think those numbers are going to even out over the next decade or so uh 1 of the other facts that isn't included in the state legislature is over the past 10 years when I've been there biewer county has ALS taken over complete control of the ace Human Resources as well as the ace financials um to divide up the school budget this is what currently constitutes our funding um as I mentioned there's a 2/3 1/3 split between Buford and Jasper that's for the operations that is in Orange our eia state funds which is about 99,000 that is used for equipment and other purchases the state also provides us with eia industry certification money and this year it's about 38,000 that money is used specifically for student industry certifications so if a student comes to Ace they're not paying for OSHA or any other professional license not includes um the state cosmetology license the state barbering license the state CNA license Ace is allowed to use that industry certification fund to make sure every student full experience at Ace is free of charge unless they're purchasing individual equipment in barbering or cosmetology so we cover all of the State Testing the last source of we have is Perkins which is very limited in terms of what we can spend it on that's usually for things such as our trip to skills USA we take about 60 students 65 students up to um Columbia and let them compete against other CTE schools and we also use that for equipment per purchases and some consumables we were level funded for about my first 5 or 6 years at Ace uh we've had small increases over the past few years and a lot of that stems from the inflation and Rising costs associated with the consumables we use items such as metal for welding wood for construction food for culinary arts we've seen a lot of um inflationary increases in those over the past 3 to 4 years and that's resulted in increases in our budget costs uh on a yearly basis our enrollment data I divided It Up by semesters 1 of the things you have to take note of with Ace is when we start primarily our new students start second semester junior year the reason being is this allows them to complete their graduation requirements at their feet or school so when they come to us they really only need to complete their Junior and Senior year Ela classes as well as their CTE class and then they have a choice of either returning to their feeder School are going out doing work-based learning or graduating early so I look at our population by our semesters and usually our fall is a little lighter than our spring because we start our new students in the spring and as you can see right now on campus we have 205 students in the spring 158 from Buford and 47 from Jasper now if you want to look at the percentage of total enrollment I looked at the whole year which was fall and spring and Jasper has 19% of the enrollment and Buford county has 81 1% I dug deeper with this data and this is the graph in the bottom right and this looks at actually the percentage of 11th grade students that we had on campus this year and Ace is actually serving 24% of the grade 11 students in Jasper County and 8% of the grade 11 students in Buford County which I thought was a really interesting Deep dive into the data that relates to each of the school districts and the services provided at Ace next thing I want to talk about his recruitment we're making a few changes um for the upcoming school year to help streamline the process this is going to include tours of H uh in the spring of 2026 each feeder School invite 10th grade students to tour Ace this is going for years and is a great opportunity for students to get on our campus and explore each program in student-led tours they get to pop in each program see what's going on but also talk to current students in the past we held this in the fall but we feel like students will be identified a lot easier and get a chance to step on our campus in the spring allowing for additional exposure and more targeted students in the past the administration and counselors have just chosen the students that have attended these and we're hoping by flipping the script we'll have more students in attendance the next thing I want to talk about a school visits in the past we've done these in the spring but we're moving them in 20125 to the fall these see myself as well as my school counselor and students that attend each feeder will return to their feeder school to talk to the 10th grade students about the different programs that Ace and different things they can expect it's very informal and allows students to ask questions not only to school administration and guidance but to their peers this is a great opportunity where we collect data of students who are interested we follow up with emails to school counselors emails to parents and we contact students as well as the school counselors to make sure those students apply having this change to the fall from the spring will allow students to come on the tours of Ace after the New Year we feel that this change is going to increase our visibility and increase our communication with the feeder schools as well as give the counselors a better opportunity to Target students at an earlier time who are interested in Ace the last thing we do is our counselor meetings these are where our counselor goes over and meets with the feeder school counselors to talk about CTE 1 of the biggest challenges we face is a lot of the counselors that our feeder schools have gone through the traditional educational pathway and haven't had the exposure to a lot of careers and this gives our counselor an opportunity to meet with those feeder school counselors and educate them on Ace the opportunities we have as well as the opportunities Beyond meaning college career and Military throughout the year we do presentations and tours of elementary and middle schools and those are upon request so we frequently are setting our students down and you can see a picture in the top left 2 different schools as well as hosting schools on tour dates and 1 of our bigger events is our friends and family day which happens every November I would encourage any member of the board to please come out because our students are all there on a Saturday parents come in they get services and they get a real taste of what it is like to attend Ace it also gives those students who are interested in opportunity to tour the school with their parents it's a large commitment to ask students just to show up to a new school on the first day of school so much like when you go off to college we want them to be comfortable have step foot on campus before the first day of school and have an understanding of what goes on at our school next I want to talk about program capacity and waiting list this is for the current students on campus so this data is reflective of the students who started at Ace in January these are the students who are on the waiting list currently or who were on the waiting list some of these students might have gone in for their second or third choice it's our goal to place as many students that apply to Ace in a programs as possible now with the 2/3 1/3 funding formula what we try to do is take and Reserve those seats based on that funding so for instance we see build a construction they have 18 students so 12 of those seats right off the bat will be reserved for Buford County 6 of those seats right off the bat are reserved for Jasper County now when we go through the selection process we try to match students who we know are going to be able to meet the academic requirements meaning they're on track to graduate and being out of their school for 2 semesters won't impact their graduation requirements in addition to students who may be able to be trusted in situations such as we haven't built construction where we have students outside working on a shed outside of the classroom they may be on the roof they may be doing framing then we have students inside the shop who might be using saws such as table saws and miter saws and students in the classrooms at time so we have 1 instructor who's rotating among these 3 areas and we want to make sure the students there are mature enough to be trusted and are able to work independently so we go through our waiting list and as you can see we've done a really good job of Distributing um for instance Jasper account only got a about 4 students that didn't get into their first choice and unless they didn't choose a second choice we try to get them into their second choice and that's worked out pretty well and you can look at the biewer county to see they've had a lot more students placed on the waiting list in areas such as cosmetology culinary um and barbering we are working to expand our programs for next year as we are adding a new barbering instructor in reducing law enforcement law enforcement has been under enrolled the past 3 years so we're going to put our resources in an area that is awaiting list that we can better serve students in both counties talk about the uh fiscal year 2026 data and this is the students who applied whose applications were currently sorting through who will be receiving notification of acceptance within the next few weeks and will be starting an ace in January 2026 I first looked at um favorite programs of the Jasper County students and this cohort that applied was spread significantly even so there was no 1 group that was really favored amongst the different groups um of the applications you can see they were down 17% which is why we're doing a little research into changing up our recruitment process we want to make sure when we go to the feeder schools we get the entire 10th grade in front of us so they hear about Ace and the opportunities we have and we're going to work with the school administration and counselors to make sure that um in terms of acceptances as I said earlier we look at a number of variables but the most important thing is is the student on Pace to graduate do they have all the credits needed that if they came to Ace for 2 semesters it wouldn't impact their graduation and this is something we work with the counselors and feeder School administration to make sure it happens uh next I want to talk about some of our data currently um if you look at this data it's our Perkins funding report and what this does is we don't get a school report card in the career center but we do get Perkins indicators and those indicators are based on 3 different areas 1 is placement rate where we have to contact all of our students who graduated last year so over the past month all of my staff members have been calling former students who graduated last June and find out if they're in college career or military reporting that to report to the state and if you see we're above State average in our placement rate we've been above State average for the past 3 years in our next 1 is non-traditional this is the students who are categorized in a non-traditional program and an example would be if we had a male student in nail technology or a female student in building construction and again we've placed above State average the past 4 4 years in this and we've done really well the last indicator is students who obtain an industry certification so that means they've completed their program at Ace and earned an industry certification that's recognized by the state meaning they return return to their feeder School College and Career ready and we've been at 99 or 100% for the last 3 years and we've been 60% overstate average so we've done a great job in that area and getting students back to all 8 of our feeder high schools College and Career ready okay the next thing I want to talk with the board about is our industry Partnerships um Ace continues to develop local state and National Industry Partnerships and examples might be Genesis electric as a local partner uh that's a form of Jasper County student who was an ace graduate who works with us and works with our students on electricity um a state partner is Boeing and as you can see they are pictured we're 1 of a handful of schools that have a partnership with them uh they're working with our Juniors to give them summer internships and as you can see student um Michael atonal who's from RSE was chosen as our first a student to work this summer in Boeing and was given a really really nice package to go up there and he's able to afford to live in that area over the summer from what he received which is something we're really proud of they're also returning Ace to work with students who are seniors who are going to be graduating who are interested in entry-level positions we also have National Partners like Yamaha and Great Clips who not only employ our students but make numerous donations of equipment to our different programs some of the other things we're working on um we're starting now to working towards becoming the first Career Center in the state to earn cognia stem certification that process is as I said began now will continue over the summer with uh hopefully a site visit um next fall which will determine if we have been accepted and certified as a stem School um in skills USA we had 25 student medalists this past March as well as 4 state champions 2 of which are going to be going to Atlanta to compete in the end of June in the national championships and 1 of the things that I'm most proudest of and is really a reflection of our culture as our attendance rate overall we have a 94% daily attendance rate um which is very high and when you consider that we have students coming from 1700 square miles of low country to get here um a lot of them take the bus to their feeder School on a second bus come to Ace and in the afternoon repeat that so this is something we're really proud of next is our Capital Improvements these are areas that are desperately needed in our school we look at it short-term and long term um in FY 25 Jasper County School District board approved a 1 million um initial funding to help with that and Beaver County Board has agreed to match that um once we have access to that money we are going to look at getting some architects in to begin a long-term plan to work on that and as you can see with Jasper's referendum and biewer County agreeing to match that we'll have some money to make some significant changes to the facilities um some of the things that we need to work on immediately lie is a water boiler which we had to install we had no hot water in our um cafeteria kitchen or Culinary Kitchen so that was something that we had no choice but to upgrade our exterior doors our bathrooms our PA system and most importantly electrical upgrades the building has the original electrical setup since the mid-70s and as equipment has become more advanced there are certain welders and things that we cannot access and use in our program to meet our students needs because of the outdated electrical so those are the hopefully the first areas that the Architects will identify for those upgrades I just wanted to take a moment and thank the board for having me I look forward to meeting you in person and if you have any questions please feel free to ask and I hope to see each of you at Ace for a tour in the near future thank you Print