Of the three academies offered at Warren Central and Vicksburg high schools, the CAB (Communication, Arts and Business) academy is the most diverse.

The CAB academy caters to the artists at the two schools including painters, singers and musicians, but the academy also includes programs for students who want to own a business, become journalist or go into a field where good communication skills are important, such as being a lawyer. 

For Warren Central junior Kevon Porter, the choice to join the CAB academy was an easy one because it enabled him to pursue his love of music in the choir and school musical, while also working towards his goal of one day owning a funeral home.

“I have been singing my whole life, but to actually work with someone hands-on was really great for me,” Porter said of one of the benefits he’s gotten from CAB. “I want to start my own business in mortuary science because I want to help people. It is a hard time for them, but people like me who actually like to do this job, you can take the bad and turn it into something good. I like the aspect of helping people.” 

Students in the CAB academies played major roles in Warren Central’s performance of Hairspray and Vicksburg’s performance of Cinderella. They also won awards in the student art show hosted by the Vicksburg Art Association and will soon be serving as the camera operators at high school sporting events.

“We have honors art and we are about to start a broadcasting class to focus on students interested in the film side of it,” Krystal Cole, Warren Central’s CAB lead teacher, said.

Students in Warren Central’s CAB academy worked on a project with the Vicksburg Community Garden this year where they researched information about the various plants being grown and made handcrafted signs with different factoids about the plants.

At Vicksburg, CAB students are helping to lead a project researching the history of the school dating back to when students attended Rosa A. Temple and Cooper high schools prior to integration.

“It is a lot of work and is basically how we came about. There are a lot of pieces to it and trying to piece it all together,”Alaina Warnock, a junior at Vicksburg, said. “It is having to reach out and find all those people after years and years of them being out of high school.”

Warnock said she has also received a huge benefit from being able to have a work block in her schedule so she can have a job and gain work experience.

Both high schools are also working towards opening student-led stores in the schools where they will handle every stage of the business from creating school branded merchandise to running the store and handling supply needs.

“We call it The Gator. The entrepreneurship class, the tech foundations class and all those courses that are under business help the students to go in there to create T-shirts, caps, mugs, all types of Vicksburg High Gator Kelly green paraphernalia that can be bought and sold,” said Brad Blake, the VHS assistant principal over the CAB academy. “It allows students to be involved in the production of those items, the distribution of those items and the selling of the items. Then they bring the money back and it goes into the store.”