GULF SHORES, Ala. – Ernie Rosado has 16 years of working summers in preparation for the opening of school, 11 of those as an administrator.

But in all those years he has never experienced the excitement he has enjoyed during the summer of 2012.

“This has been the busiest, but it’s been fun busy,” he said. “You know some summers we’re just dragging and trying to get there. It’s been so busy. We hired a chef - the real deal – and a nurse.”

Rosado and staff have been spent the summer applying the final touches to the Coastal Baldwin Education Enrichment Foundation’s Learning for Life initiative into place for students who arrive on Monday.

The effort includes two areas of concentration. Career academies for high school students. Second is a digital Renaissance for every student grade four through 12, which means a laptop computer for students in those grades.

“Gen. (Colin) Powell said one team, ‘one fight’ and that’s what we’re all about,” Rosado said. “Our fight is to produce the best productive citizen with 21st century skills.”

Rosado quickly points out the two initiatives wouldn’t be possible if three other components failed to come together.

“First, Dr. (Alan) Lee with the county,” he said. “They gave us permission. The city of Gulf Shores, because they provided some teacher units for this. And, finally, the teachers. If the teachers did not get certified in all these other areas and take their certification tests, I wouldn’t have moved any place.

“There were three major elements or groups that we had to not only convince, but they had to agree with it.”

A major commitment was $988,000, during four years, from the city to fund computers, Rosetta Stone foreign language materials and additional teaching units including foreign language teacher units at the three schools in Gulf Shores.

Parts of the new program aren’t exactly unique, Rosado says.

“This has been done,” he said. “But it’s new to Baldwin County. They’ve had a couple of different academies throughout the county.”

But the combination of the two is a unique approach.

“Two things that are unique are every kid has a laptop in every class academically and that opens up the world,” he said. “The second thing that is unique is that every kid is in an academy.”

Every student in Gulf Shores High School will be enrolled in one of 10 career academies in addition to their regularly mandated course of study.

“Hoover, which we modeled off of, Spain Park, they have two or three academies,” he said. “So not everyone is in an academy. “We’re small enough. You can’t have that in a large school, like Foley.”

The academy courses come under the elective portion of the students’ courses.

“Every student will be in an academic diploma and will select an academic track,” Rosado said. “Their electives will be in a career academy. We’re putting practicality back into the electives.”

Rosado said in the past, some electives were chosen for students because of class sizes and availability. Under this system, the students have some say in the direction their studies will take.

“Now they will select three academies and we’ll try to get them in one of the three,” he said. “So they will have their academic courses and then they will have their electives in an actual career academy.

“They will graduate with an academic diploma and with a certification in an area.”

The academies are in education, engineering, fine arts, audio visual, health

sciences, architecture and horticulture, law, business and finance, informational

technology, hospitality, tourism and culinary.

“All of them are set up and ready to go,” Rosado said.

Local businesses with expertise in the fields of academy studies have stepped in to provide help with several academies having several businesses involved.

Two academies have been completely taken over, the health academy by South Baldwin Regional Medical Center, and the architecture and horticulture academy by the city of Gulf Shores.

“They have put in over $20,000 to set this up, ready to go to help us,” Rosado said of the hospital. “We hired the nurse. They’ve got half of the Medical Arts building over in Orange Beach for us.

“Equipment, man hours, they’re getting T-shirts for the kids, they’re going to look at scrubs. You should see that place. It’s fully equipped. They wanted exclusive rights to this academy.”

More than 130 students have signed up for the academy.

This year’s juniors and seniors won’t see the full benefit of the new programs because they are too far along in their studies.

“The 12th graders, they’re not going to get the full benefit because each of the academies has three courses and then an internship,” Rosado said. “The 11th graders, they’re on a certain track , there’ not much opening in their schedule. They might just take one or two, and that’s it.”

Incoming freshmen and sophomores will be the first to completely immerse themselves into the new programs completely.

“We’re really concentrating on those ninth, 10th graders because those are the ones who can finish it up,” Rosado said. “It’s really the ninth and 10th graders that are going to get the complete benefit of the full package.”

All and all, Rosado can’t contain his fervor for the new programs and getting them started on Monday.

“The teachers are excited, the students when they came in and registered and picked the academies, they were really excited,” he said.