Additional high school vocational training “academies” are being readied for Vicksburg Warren School District students for the 2013-14 school year, Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Swinford told about 70 members of the district’s Job Training Advisory Council at its spring meeting Tuesday.

The programs will provide course selections preparatory to teaching, business, hospitality and tourism, information technology and allied health careers, Swinford said.

“We’re setting up to build these academies in our school system,” Swinford said. “It’s an ambitious starting point… and the Mississippi Department of Education is behind us.”

Swinford said the current vocational offerings will continue in conjunction with Hinds Community College Vicksburg campus. These include preparation for such trades as construction, welding, auto and diesel mechanics and other skilled labor fields, Swinford said.

“That’s the goal — to provide them with a career so they graduate, they earn their money and become good taxpayers,” she said.

Hinds will be a part of the new programs, also, as many of the courses will be taught at the college’s Mississippi 27 campus.

VWSD Trustee Joe Loviza, a former dean of Hinds’ Vicksburg campus who is the advisory council’s secretary and moderates the meetings, said the district has partnered with Hinds since the 1970s to bring vocational education, job training and employment opportunities to the area’s high school students.

In 2010, the state education department implemented a career pathways option for students that leads to a standard diploma but includes credits in career and technical courses selected from a student’s chosen course of study. Beginning this year, the state required all eighth grade students to have an “Individualized Career and Academic Plan” prior to graduating from eighth grade.

The Job Training Advisory Council meets twice a year, in April and October, and brings together representatives from local industry and businesses, elected county and state officials and staffs of relevant agencies.

Speakers at Tuesday’s meeting also addressed the current and prospective job outlook in the county.

Economic development and recruitment of new industry to the area is “quite slow right now,” but employment at existing companies is healthy, said Wayne Mansfield, executive director of the Warren County Port Commission.

For example, Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex newcomer Laclede Chain Manufacturing Company, which opened in the fall, is hoping to increase its employment slots from 25 to 50 by the end of the year, and Ergon Refinery is in “very preliminary” stages of expansion, Mansfield said.

Tim Crudup of the Mississippi Department of Employment Security said unemployment numbers for Warren County topped 11 percent in the fall but have fallen to 10 percent. Statewide, the number is 9.5 percent, with 8.2 percent nationally, Crudup said.

“We are making progress,” he said.