PORT ALLEN - The West Baton Rouge school system is offering a unique opportunity for kids to set a career path before they go on to college or the workforce. It's called the WBR Career Academy.

The academy, which sits between the West Baton Rouge Parish School Board and Port Allen High School, opened in October and has 237 students taking advantage of it this year.

"Our biggest goal is that students learn career skills, regardless of what field they're in. We want them to learn how to be quality professionals in their field," Career Academy Supervisor Candice Breaux said.

Students from Port Allen and Brusly High School attend the academy to excel in career and technical education courses.

"When students graduate from either Port Allen High School or Brusly High School, they leave with a diploma in one hand and something else in the other hand, whether it's a certification, a basic or an advanced credential to go out into the world of work," WBR Superintendent Chandler Smith said.

Thursday, WBRZ was able to see eight different classes that the academy offers.

The first class was cooking, where students were cracking eggs and whisking them to make omelets. Right down the hall from them was cosmetology. Students there got to work on hair and nails in different ways, such as braiding and painting.

The third class that was shown was carpentry. Much of the work the courses do benefits other courses or the school district as a whole. For example, the carpentry students were creating puzzles for the elementary schools in West Baton Rouge.

Across the hall from them was welding, where WBRZ was shown several fire pits that had been welded by the students. The pits had a fleur-de-lis design that was welded into the side.

The fifth class shown was the electrical class. On Thursday, students in that class were learning about conduit bending.

"For like to run wires through it, like the walls and any structure that a wire needs to be run through. Everything is hands-on experience and you actually get to experience what would really happen in the real world," Port Allen senior Abari Smith said.

The next two classes were nursing class and EMR, which teaches about emergency medical response. The nursing students have an exam in a few weeks to earn a medical assistance certification.

The EMR students were practicing CPR and learning about working with patients in an ambulance.

The final class WBRZ got to see was robotics.

"We're working on our bot, we call her Nessie for the FRC competition. I saw it on our schedule, and we're like "Our school's offering robotics?" now, and we were like what?" Port Allen junior Travis Loucks said.

In West Baton Rouge, the chronic absenteeism rate has gone down compared to other parishes across the state, which have gone up. The school district credits the academy for helping with that.

"When kids have a reason to come to school and they are excited to come to school about what they're learning, about the offerings that we have, they're more apt to show up. Especially with high school, that's our hardest age group when it comes to attendance," Smith said.

The academy also holds career camps for younger kids. They're free for the students.