Legacy Campus honors first signing day for career-bound students

Legacy Campus turned a familiar athletic ritual into a career milestone on May 14, recognizing eight students who had already secured jobs, apprenticeships or other industry commitments before graduation. At Douglas County School District’s Career & Technical Education center in Lone Tree, the event underscored a shift that is increasingly central to workforce planning in south metro Denver: high school can end with a signed apprenticeship, a job offer or a clear path into a licensed trade.

Five students in Building Controls Technology signed apprenticeships with Carlton Electric, beginning a route toward journeyman licenses. Another student accepted a mechanical and electrical fabrication job with Lockheed Martin. Other commitments tied students to Great Divide Brewery in Castle Rock and Convergint Technologies, showing how the campus is linking coursework to employers in construction, manufacturing, food service and safety systems.

The district framed the event as more than a ceremony. Legacy Campus is designed to connect students to real-world learning, advanced coursework and industry partnerships that lead to workforce readiness after high school. That mission matters in Douglas County, where employers continue to compete for skilled workers and where the district is trying to show that career training can be an alternative to the college-only track rather than a second-tier option.

The campus sits at 10035 S. Peoria St. in Lone Tree and serves students from across Douglas County. Arapahoe Community College also operates there, offering concurrent enrollment and adult career and technical pathways aligned with fields such as aerospace, technology, advanced manufacturing and health care. That mix makes Legacy Campus more than a single program site. It is becoming a regional training hub tied to both high school credit and postsecondary credentials.

District leaders have treated the campus as a long-term investment. Douglas County School District bought the former Wildlife Experience in December 2021 and converted the roughly 175,000-square-foot building into the Legacy Campus, which opened after renovation work in 2023. Future expansion plans call for six additional career pathways, including advanced manufacturing and construction trades such as carpentry, electrical, plumbing and HVAC.

With about 61,000 students, Douglas County School District is Colorado’s third-largest district, and the scale matters. If Legacy Campus keeps turning coursework into apprenticeships and jobs, it could become one of the district’s clearest answers to the county’s skilled-labor gap, while giving students a faster and more visible route from classroom to paycheck.