David Campbell and Vicksburg Warren School District Superintendent Chad Shealy have a dream.

“Our goal is that in about five years we want students to be able to walk across the stage not only with a high school diploma, but also with an associate’s degree,” Campbell, school district assistant superintendent, told the Vicksburg Lions Club.

Campbell’s revelation was part of his discussion of the programs planned by school district officials to reduce the district’s dropout rate and better prepare students to compete for jobs after graduation.

He said the school district will begin implementing an academy approach at high school where students will be able in the ninth grade to select a career path and follow it through their four years of high school. The first year will feature three programs, engineering, biomedical and a general career program.

Eventually, he said the school district will offer 16 career areas.

Ninth-graders, Campbell said, will be able to make a choice of those and receive general instruction with specific course work will begin in the 10th grade.

“By the 11th grade, with their course work, they should have enough credits to graduate if they choose,” he said. “That is not what we’re going to recommend. We’re not trying to push out a bunch of 11th graders with diplomas. We’re going to give them the opportunity for dual enrollment through Hinds Community College.”

While the school district has offered dual enrollment through Hinds in the past, he said, students will be able to take up to 12 semester hours per semester at a cost of $100 per semester. He added the school district will soon begin investigating a scholarship program for students who may not be able to handle the cost of the classes.

“That will give them the opportunity to go on to college, choose a four-year college and only spend two years in that four-year college,” he said. “It also opens the door for kids who may not can spend four years in college (to be prepared to go to work).”

To get students to the point where they will be able to benefit from the future changes at the high school level, Campbell said school district officials are implementing other programs to keep students in school and improve reading levels.

“There are two reasons kids drop out from school,” he said. “One is the literacy piece, that simply, they don’t know how to read. They can’t decode the word, they can’t comprehend. they don’t know.”

The other, he said, it relativity, which causes a lack of interest by the student, because they’re not doing active work.

“We’re working very hard at the elementary level to fix the literacy piece and make sure its kids starting in kindergarten and going on through sixth-grade that they comprehend, they know how to rad, they understand everything they need, in math and language arts.

In the junior high schools, the effort involves reducing classroom size to improve the learning environment.

“Scholastic academy attempt at that,” he said. “We’ve shored it up over the last year, year-and-a-half. It has a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) flair to it.”

Participation is by application, and students must qualify academically, have good attendance and good conduct. Enrollment, he said, has grown from 150 to almost 350 in the past two years.

Campbell said the school district has received a $700,000 state grant for its Star Academy, which takes eight-grade students who are two years behind in work and brings them up to grade level.

“It puts the eighth-grade on a half-year program, where they intensely work on the eighth grade subjects, and in January, they became 9th graders. Will be able to start the next school year in the 10th grade.”

Campbell also touched on the Leader in Me programs at Bowmar and Bovina Elementary schools, adding the program has been expanded to five other schools in the district.

“Things are going to continue to happen, and you are going to see a turnaround that’s going to start from our children,” he said. “There are communities that are already doing this, and we are looking at what they’re doing. We are trying every way we can.”