LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. — Soaring to success.
One Palm Beach County high school is wrapping up its first year teaching valuable, hands-on skills in a high-demand career field: operating drones.
This new, one-of-a-kind program at Seminole Ridge Community High School is helping students fly to new heights.
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"This one is very complicated to control because it's so fast," student Triton Addabbo said while operating a drone.
Addabbo didn't know much about flying a drone before coming to Eddie Mull's technical design class.
And now?
"I feel like it's amazing because you could have a really great career for it," Addabbo said.
"There's a lot of things you can do with a drone nowadays," Mull said.
Mull took the opportunity to start the drone program at Seminole Ridge.
"It's safety, safety, safety," Mull said.
After that, it's exploring recreational and commercial drone use, rules and regulations, flying simulators, and, of course, the highlight of operating the drones themselves, both inside and outside the classroom.
"The students that are in drone class want to be here. And I've never had students more engaged and participate more and want to do it more than in the drone class," Mull said.
And it shows. Student Todd Williamson spends a lot of extra time in the classroom practicing his skills.
"I enjoy we actually get physical with the drones," Williamson said. "We're in school, but we're having fun while we're in school."
But it's about more than fun and flying. The course is giving students practical, marketable, in-demand skills that can lead these future pilots to high flying and high paying jobs.
At the end of the course, students at least 16 years old can sit for the Federal Aviation Administration commercial drone pilot exam. At least one student has already passed.
"A student leaves high school with a drone pilot license. They buy a drone, and they are ready to go to work with one economical, practical drone," Mull said.
So while this is only year one, the class is already hitting its mark.
"It was a little complicated, but we made it happen," Addabbo said.
There are 38 students currently in the program, and 11 of them are old enough to take the exam. The testing is done through a third party at the airport.
Mull hopes to expand the program at Seminole Ridge Community High School to include a level two course, which would cover how to program a drone, among other topics.
