Etowah High student wins national championship at JAG conference; another places in top 10

The Jobs for America's Graduates program at Etowah High School has been providing valuable practical skills to students for more than a decade, and two of them recently brought home honors from the organization's National Career Development Conference in St. Louis.

Sophomore Sadie Brannon claimed the national championship in Financial Literacy and senior Drayton Gross posted a seventh-place finish in Employability Skills in the event held April 17-20.

The Financial Literacy competition featured a written test on basic budgeting skills; credit, debit and prepaid card usage; identity and financial data protection; credit score control; money management; and living independently.

Those may sound like routine, painfully simple concepts to adults, but in recent years they've taken a back seat in schools that because of testing requirements must prioritize academic subjects.

“It's a great general thing to know for life,” said Brannon, who also won the district championship in the category.

Gross said the exercise focused on showing “what can you go in and do for a company, and what can you get in return?”

He continued, “Can you walk in there and think on your feet; can you make good decisions? Or are you going to walk in there and make bad decisions and hurt a company?”

Other competitive events at the conference included Business Plan, Career Preparation, Creative Decision Making, National Career Association Knowledge Bowl (a team event), NCA Outstanding Chapter (covers achievements over an entire year), NCA Service Project (chapters support an outside partner through fundraising and volunteer work), Project Based Learning, Prepared Speaking and Lifting Our Voices for Equity project (chapters seek solutiones for inequities in their communities).

There were also various educational workshops and work expos, social events and “state patriotism and good food,” Brannon said.

Both students said the JAG program at Etowah — which specialist and mentor Darione Adkison said has been in place since 2012, and currently has 45 students in grades 9 through 12 — prepared them for the competition.

“None of the questions surprised me,” Brannon said, while noting that she'd spent “all her spare time” studying. “I felt I was ready.”

Brannon plans to pursue a career in aerospace engineering. Gross said he'd put agriculture on his paperwork — he's active at the school's impressive greenhouse — but noted that his interests have grown to include “everything above the moon” so he's still trying to dial in a career path.

JAG has its origins in a program launched in 1979 by former Gov. Pete du Pont of Delaware and his educational adviser, Kenneth Smith.

According to the group's website, Delaware at the time had the nation's highest unemployment and income rates and the second-highest dropout rate, and businesses were fleeing the state.

The program successfully attacked those issues from the bottom up by training students for a role in an effective workforce, and JAG went national a year later.

Its programs have influenced 1.7 million students over the years, according to the group's website; the 2023 numbers were 79,228 students in 36 states.

The high school graduation rate of 96% for JAG students is 10% above the national average, according to the website, and 84% of participants find full-time work after high school, while others seek postsecondary education.

Etowah has the only JAG program in Etowah County at present. There are 48 programs in Alabama, Adkison said, and more are in the works.

He's been in charge at Etowah for four years and said the program needed a little rebuilding when he got there. “It's taken some time to get the program where it needs to go,” he said. “We've still got a long way to go, but we're going to finish strong.”

Etowah Principal Ryan McClendon praised the students and Adkison — “I can't say enough about Darione,” he said. “He does an outstanding job working with the kids” — and is a strong supporter of JAG.

“It gives our kids the opportunity to learn those important job skills,” McClendon said. “It helps them develop as (people) and develop leadership skills. It gives kids the confidence to go out there and 'attack' it.”

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Etowah High students make strong showing at national JAG conference