EdAdvance expands post-secondary options

LITCHFIELD — EdAdvance, one of the state’s six Regional Educational Service Centers (RESC), has announced the creation of a new alternative for high schoolers in Northwest Connecticut. 

The College & Career Accelerator (CCA) program, beginning in the 2024-25 school year, will offer high school students of partnering districts in the region customized postsecondary opportunities in four key pathways: public safety; healthcare; education; manufacturing and engineering. 

At a meeting of the Northwest Hills Council of Governments (COG) on Oct. 12, Jeffrey Kitching, executive director of EdAdvance, presented the new program to regional leaders. He said EdAdvance recently purchased the East School from the City of Torrington, which will serve as the headquarters for CCA.

The three pillars of the program will be to enhance workforce readiness, college readiness, and college access for participants. Through CCA, students can gain hands-on experience and internship opportunities while earning college credits.

Dan Cocchiola was hired to head up the CCA. The program was modeled after Cocchiola’s similar workforce readiness effort in Hamden, which enabled some participants to earn up to $30 per hour while still juniors in high school. Students of the Hamden program also graduated with up to 60 college credits. 

“We are partnering with Northwest Community College to try to provide some of the same opportunities. We have a lot of the structure in place to do this already. We’ve got 85 vans that crisscross school districts every day, so we can get kids to different programs,” said Kitching. 

As school districts throughout the region join CCA, specialized programs offered in certain districts can become available to other students and can become funded by CCA. 

“All you have to do is allow us to get kids from surrounding high schools access to that box, so we can have them teaching 20 kids a period [instead of eight],” said Kitching on an example of a mechanical physics teacher who was nearly laid off due to low class enrollment. 

“It’s a great idea,” said Litchfield’s First Selectman Denise Raap following the Oct. 12 presentation. “In Litchfield we’re working on our merger right now, but we had to cut so many classes…because there just aren’t enough students.”

“In the end, we all work towards the same thing: Making the communities we serve in this region better,” said Kitching.

Visit edadvance.org/college-and-career-accelerator for more information.