A public high school in Kenton County is keeping business in mind when it comes to education.

The Ignite Institute, located in Erlanger, works with industry partners to develop curriculum and provide mentorship opportunities to prepare students for in-demand jobs.

And it's partnerships with local universities is giving some students the chance to earn an associates degree before they even get their high school diploma.

People always want to know what the secret is like.

What makes Ignite different?

It's one of the only regional schools in the state where kids from multiple counties can come to it free of charge.

And then when they come here, they in our system, they enter one of one of six colleges that we have, which are design, education, engineering, allied health, biomed and computer science.

Ignite is about preparing students for the future in the industry that they're interested in.

So students who are looking at design and biomedical sciences are going to go into the areas as a career out in the field with professionals, professional businesses, organization options and such.

So the first thing that drew me to ignite was the specific pathways.

Every scholar, regardless of their college, has to do a yearlong project.

But Ford Design, specifically my freshman and sophomore year, what we had to do was we had to contact a local business and ask to collaborate and like almost intern there.

And I think that's a really unique opportunity to ignite, especially with the pathways, because I wouldn't have been able to do like any of that, a regular high school.

I think it's a lot more hands on project based learning and we have some pretty cool opportunities like our senior year internships that you wouldn't regularly have during a normal school year.

I think that it really makes things exciting and there's like a really fun end goal connecting with companies and networking with them.

Get your foot in the door for when you're ready to actually graduate and go into the industry.

I think one of the big strengths is all our regional partnerships, you know, NQ Gateway, all the industries that we work with, we have 186 different business partners.

Our kids are place.

The internships are where they're coming here.

Judging our student work, you know, is very important.

And without those partnerships, Ignite is a special place that it is.

There is a lot of people who support me here, and they have given me every opportunity to succeed, like getting my associate's degree early.

So you have.

Kids graduating from college before they actually graduate from high school.

They just put me in dual credit early.

So then I just kept doing classes throughout all of my years.

And then I graduated with my associate's degree last year.

So now I have to graduate high school.

I think it's great for the jumpstart into the career.

I really feel like this area is a big hub for a lot of the areas that we're teaching right now, creating an early start for our students and getting them right into the workforce as quickly as possible.

With all due credit classes being at a discounted rate, I feel like this is just so incredibly accessible and practical for a lot of our students in the northern Kentucky region.

I mean, I just think it's a really great opportunity.

Like sometimes I come to school and I'm like, I can't even believe that this is a real school because it just it's so fun to me.

What a great opportunity.

The Ignite Institute is located on the former site of Toyota's Northern American engineering and manufacturing headquarters.

Toyota donated the building after it moved their headquarters to Texas in 2017.