- November 15, 2024
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A group of Flagler Palm Coast High School kids will get a chance to put down their pencils and calculators and take up fire helmets and hoses this coming year.
The new free, four-year program — The Flagler Palm Coast High School Fire Academy — will prepare students for careers as firefighters and first responders, and help them earn professional certifications including Firefighter 1, Firefighter 2, NIMS, Wildland Firefighter, EMS First Responder, and Emergency Medical Technician.
"It’s local training for a local need," County Commissioner Nate McLaughlin said after Flagler County Fire Chief Don Petito explained the program to commissioners at a County Commission workshop Feb. 1. "They can come out of there, and go to work for one of the local fire departments. ... One of the big problems we’ve been dealing with, with the schools, is kids go off to college and we have nothing to bring them back to."
Students would otherwise have to pay for college-level classes to earn those certifications, which amount to about a year of coursework in a standard two-year first responder training program. Students who graduate from the program at FPC could then go straight into paramedic training, which is generally the second year of coursework and itself takes about a year, and then be eligible to work.
"Ideally, if we can develop this process, we can develop a pipeline for these folks," County Administrator Craig Coffey told commissioners at the workshop.
Flagler County Fire Instructors would teach the Fire Academy students for an hour per day, and the program would supplement, not replace, students' regular academic work, Petito said.
The firefighting classes would count as electives. Students would have to maintain at least a 2.5 grade point average to stay enrolled, and they'd wear uniforms.
Some certifications that require hazardous hands-on training would be completed after the student turns 18, and the program would involve an additional two months of hazardous hands-on training after students graduate.
Petito said the program will not cost the county money, except for some staff time, and the county would not need to hire more employees for it.
The county will use its own equipment — including a fire engine, ambulance, hoses, nozzles and gear, and EKG machine and EMT and paramedic supplies — to teach the students, and the Flagler School district will provide classroom space, course credits and media equipment.
Petito has worked to develop the program for about two years, he said, and it has the support of the State Bureau of Fire Training and Standards and the State Fire Marshals Office, the Flagler County School Board and the Palm Coast and Flagler Beach Fire Departments.
There are about 10 similar high school firefighter/EMT training programs across the state, Petito said, but Flagler County's will include more advanced coursework than the others.
"What I like about it is that yet again, Flagler County will be in first, across the state," County Commissioner Barbara Revels said.
"It's good stuff," McLaughlin replied.
The first class of students is expected to enter the program in the upcoming school year, and graduate in 2019.
