Students will have the chance to apply for admission to a new career development program at Austin ISD’s Lanier High School for the 2018-19 school year thanks to a $50,000 grant from the Texas Education Agency.

AISD administrators held a press conference Wednesday to announce details of the program, known as Pathways to Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, which was designed by IBM.

Through partnerships with Austin Community College and IBM, AISD’s P-TECH program will allow Lanier High School students to enroll in technology-focused, college level courses as early as ninth grade.

Sandy Dochen, Texas-area manager of corporate citizenship for IBM, said the program could help the disconnect between jobs available in Austin and the skills that job seekers living in Austin have.

“If we can do a better job growing our own, the people we have right here and give them the skills they need and that our companies need then you see the magic in that partnership,” Dochen said. “We can do that right here in Austin. IBM is 5 miles from [Lanier High School].”

The goal of the program is to have students graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree at no additional cost to the students, said Shasta Buchanan, ACC executive director of high school relations.

“We want to develop that whole student. It’s not just about the instruction they're getting in the classroom, it’s about everything else they need to understand about what they need going into the workplace,” Buchanan said.

Students can complete the program in four to six years, Buchanan said, while participating in work-based education and paid internships. 120 schools across the U.S. and abroad offer P-TECH programs and partner with over 450 companies in addition to IBM, according to a press release from AISD.

AISD Superintendent Paul Cruz said adding the program fit with the district’s strategic plan.

“We also want to make sure we're focused on students who might even be first-time college going students and so Lanier fit for IBM and IBM fit for Lanier,” Cruz said.

State lawmakers in Texas passed legislation to allow public school districts to adopt the P-TECH program in 2017. In New York, where the program has been available for several years, Dochen said students and businesses are seeing results. He said IBM has hired 16 students from a single high school.

“It’s part of what our agreement is, to hire as many as we have jobs for. They're young and they're bright and they're showing the older IBM-ers how its done,” Dochen said.