Many young children look up at a shiny red fire truck and choose it for their future profession, but not all follow through in their pursuit. At Loften High School, the Professional Academies Magnet’s Academy of Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) offers freshmen the training to enter that field immediately upon graduation.
The program starts off the same for all freshmen, with health foundations and a broad overview of public service jobs, from lawyers to firefighters, paramedics and parole officers.
In 10th grade, students are eligible to begin taking firefighting classes, so program director Chief Mark Smith has them in Anatomy & Physiology in the fall and Firefighting 1 in the spring— he said he tries to keep them in one health class and one firefighting class each year, alternating semesters.
Most students take Firefighting 1, which Smith said teaches firefighting life skills basics like building construction, fire behavior, fire dynamics and forcible entry.
Starting in their junior year, students are able to continue on the firefighting and EMS track, or branch into a newly introduced certification option: Public Safety Telecommunicator. These students can still finish their medical certification as well, but they have also opened the door to another in-demand job.
Upperclassmen who have settled on a track have several opportunities. In their senior year, cadets can dual enroll in Santa Fe College’s Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) program, and the summer after senior year, when they are 18 years old, students can finish earning their Florida State Firefighter I certification in the final live burn scenarios.
The telecommunicator certification requires 232 hours of training, and only students in grades 11 and 12 are eligible, so they study the same basics in grade 9 and usually take Firefighting 1 in their sophomore year. Smith said the telecommunicator route is a good option for students who decide they are not interested in firefighting.
Serenity Blanton is a senior in the telecommunicator program, shadowing at the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office’s Combined Communication Center (CCC). She said communication with the people she shadows has been the most difficult thing to learn.
Blanton said if someone calls and asks for the police for a ridiculous reason, no one can say so until after the call, and Blanton said she must hold most of her questions until the call is resolved so the caller doesn’t pick her up as background noise.
On her first day at the CCC, Blanton shadowed a call-taker she calls “Miss Joy,” and the first call she heard was someone wanting to commit suicide. It was a stressful start, but Blanton said Miss Joy is her favorite person in the center now, and her job as a shadower does not feel too stressful because it is like a job.
“They’d practice fire and medical stuff [at Loften],” Blanton said. “So those three years I was going, you totally pick up how to handle a fire call or a paramedic call. So this was just like an extra step that you’re gonna have to take.”
Blanton said eighth-graders considering the program should make sure it is something they really want to do, but they also should not doubt themselves. She said though the fire and EMS program starts slow with a lot of bookwork, when students start getting to work hands-on it is all worth it.
The program also opens up a smooth road to fill much-needed jobs for students straight out of high school, Smith said.
“The evidence is there right now,” Smith said in a phone interview. “Every department in the area is hiring non-certified employees… Because there aren’t enough certified people fill the positions, to fill the need.”
Smith also pointed out that the program offers a solid start for students who want to get into the medical field, even if it does have “fire” in the title.
Smith said when students enter his program as freshmen, they are young and inexperienced, so he starts in from the very beginning with a storytelling style of teaching to help them wrap their minds around the world of emergency response.
As he walks students through stories from his decades of experience, Smith said he explains not only what happened, but also how it could have gone wrong, or how it could have gone better. He breaks down different ways a situation could be handled, and how those methods could affect the outcome.
“They start to realize pretty quickly, it’s not just a big red truck driving down the road with lights and sirens and people getting out of their way,” Smith said. “Or it’s not just the quote-unquote ‘doctor’ in the back of the truck, taking care of the patient to the hospital, you know, saving lives and all that stuff. There are real consequences to it.”
Editor’s Note: This is the first story in a series highlighting some of the magnet programs available through Alachua County Public Schools. Magnet applications for the 2024-2025 school year will open Jan. 16, and close at 4 p.m. on Feb. 13.