What’s Right With Our Schools: Catoosa College and Career Academy New 9-1-1 Computers

RINGGOLD, GA (WDEF) – When the Catoosa County College and Career Academy needed new computers for their 9-1-1 center, they knew right where to look. Students on that same campus immediately sprang into action. That’s a great example of what’s right with our schools.

Scott Czerneski is the I-T Director for Catoosa County.

He remembers, “The 911 Center here at the College and Career Academy that covers the Catoosa County area was in need of some new computers. I just recently moved in and I was going to have to build those. The idea came from talking to my son about what they did that day; that he was building computers here at school. And the light bulb went off, and we said, ‘Why can’t we turn this into some sort of collaboration between Catoosa County government and Catoosa County School System?’ ”

His son Mike adds, “Since we’re moving into a new age technology, it’s certainly becoming more useful, and having people who know how to build it and work it, protect it, is very important.”

The elder Cznerneski chips in, “From there it’s just kind of snowballed into this great project where we’ve been excited to get the computers, and they get excited. We love to see the smiles on their faces where they’re building, and the discussions that come from that.

Tanner Morgan is a senior at Heritage High.

He explains, “My focus is more towards what it can do for the people around here, for the community. You know them getting you know a return on investment for the faith that they’ve put into us here at CCA. So, them getting the 911 computers down there to help further the community safety, it really means a lot to me that we’re able to do something so impactful.”

Scott Czerneski says, ” The computers are special computers. They’re not your standard everyday computer, but they’re mission critical. They have to run 24/7 for five or six years, and so the students are getting to see the specialized parts and put them together, and then realize when they install them that you know the dispatchers are going to be using them to serve the community, and so as they hear calls they be like, ‘Hey that phone call was processed on the computer I built.’ ”

Bryan Ratliff is the Cyber Security Instructor at CCA.

He says, “The first thing that went through my head coming from the private sector was, this is a great opportunity for them; this is a real-life scenario. And they’re being able to apply the skills at a higher level because of different technology for the small form factor PCS that they’re doing. This is something they normally wouldn’t get to touch in a work world. You can look at a manual all day long, but whenever you have the opportunity to physically get your hands on something and every PC is different. Every PC build is different. So, the schematics, the layouts of it, everything that they have to look at, they have to learn from. It gives me a chance to kind of be a little hands-off on some of the things that they do. And gives them more of an opportunity to do more hands-on and question and dig and look for the right answer.”

Scott Czerneski concludes, ” I’d love to say thank you very much. Um also let them know that the students are doing A+ work. It’s been absolutely wonderful watching, watching them and looking at the computers as they’ve done them, the wire management that’s gone on inside them they have exceeded every dream that I had about what could come from this, and thank you. We appreciate the collaboration and the efforts that have been returned. Everything we’ve put in, we’ve gotten 10-fold back.”