The Franklin-Roberts Future Ready Center, a centralized hub where multiple high schools will send students to learn skills for career fields, will house a Volkswagen engineering preparatory program.
As many students whose interests we could pique in elementary school, but who we can train beginning in middle school and high school for these careers, that's the way I think you sustainably build a great community," Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp told reporters. "That's a way that we can ensure that as Volkswagen grows its footprint, as other companies invest here and as this economy grows, our people are benefiting as a part of that."
Volkswagen Group of America's more than $3 million investment in the center will support the development and operations of the program. The partnership is meant to create engineering and university pathways from the school system to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Volkswagen, Wamp said.
Since Volkswagen came to Chattanooga, the company has partnered with the school system on several occasions, particularly by helping place digital fabrication labs, known as eLabs, in dozens of district schools. Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson said he saw the new engineering pathway as an extension of the work the two do with eLabs.
"We have a lot of kids in this community that have been far from opportunity that now can see themselves early on — kindergarten through 12th grade — in this pathway, and that's why it matters," Robertson said during a press conference. "That's why I think it's a big deal that Volkswagen is the first corporate sponsor. ... This really is building on the legs of work that we've done in Hamilton County Schools with Volkswagen."
The Franklin-Roberts Future Ready Center will be the district's third centralized hub, joining the ones at Harrison Bay and North River. The name honors John P. Franklin Sr., the first elected Black official in Chattanooga and former vice mayor, and Dalton Roberts, the first Hamilton County executive.
The North River Future Ready Center welcomed its inaugural students this fall as it began its transition from being Sequoyah High. The building's freshman class is three times larger than the previous year. Robertson said that shows that there's an appetite for this type of opportunity.
The path to launching the newest future ready center began in May 2023 when Hamilton County leaders first expressed interest in acquiring the former BlueCross BlueShield building at West M.L. King Boulevard and Gateway Avenue, invoking the long-shuttered Kirkman Technical High School as an inspiration for the project. After it was purchased, several potential options for the building were explored, and in November 2024, the Hamilton County school board approved renovating it into a career and technical center for high school students.
Starting next year, there will be opportunities for middle school students to do career exploration in the building, and the Volkswagen pathway and other yet-to-be-announced programs are expected to be open by August 2027, Robertson said. The future ready center is expected to serve students from The Howard School, Brainerd High, Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, Red Bank High, Lookout Valley Middle/High, East Ridge High and Signal Mountain Middle/High, according to a press release.
State Sen. Bo Watson, R-North Chattanooga, said the goal of the center is to provide students and their families with the best opportunities to achieve the education and career success they see for themselves. It needs the private sector to do that, he said.
For years, the business and industry communities have said they need a better trained workforce, but stood on the sidelines while the state struggled to do that, Watson said.
"We cannot be in silos," he said during the press conference. "We have to work cooperatively or collaboratively if we are going to be successful for the students that we are all here to represent and to encourage. And so I want to thank Volkswagen for being the first, but I expect that there will be others. As a matter of fact, I would demand that there will be others. The state needs our private sector to align with our public sector as we provide the best education system that we can.
© 2025 the Chattanooga Times/Free Press (Chattanooga, Tenn.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
