Lebanon schools expand workplace pathways, adjust to new state graduation requirements and prepare students for AI

Dr. John Milliman, superintendent of the Lebanon Community School Corporation, said new state graduation requirements will emphasize diploma seals and workplace participation paths beginning with this year’s eighth graders, and the district is expanding internship and workplace partnerships to meet those needs.

“A big part of that is workplace participation,” Milliman said on the Love and Lebanon podcast. He described the state’s approach as offering multiple diploma seals tied to postsecondary enrollment, military enlistment and direct employment, and said several of those lanes include workplace participation components by design.

Why it matters: the change shifts some student planning toward internships, apprenticeships and employer‑based experiences, and the district is competing with neighboring systems for placements. Milliman named partnerships with local governments and municipal departments — including the City of Lebanon and the Town of Whitestown — and with police and fire departments, as sources of internship opportunities.

Milliman said the district will need to grow internships and workplace placements to meet demand from students and families, noting competition for placements with nearby districts such as Western Boone, Zionsville, Brownsburg, Tri‑West and Clinton Prairie and Frankfort.

He credited staff members who helped build the program: “Taylor a lot of credit for that. You know, he he really kind of set that in motion 2 or 3 years before I arrived in 2019 and really got that off the ground. And so, then Kristen Scott took it and took it to to to new places. Now we have Kelly Dennis there, and Kristen, of course, still with us as an assistant principal to high school.”

Milliman said the district is “proud to be a 1 to 1 technology school district,” with devices for students across grade levels, and that the district is discussing how to use artificial intelligence as a tool while teaching ethical use: “Our students need to understand the ethics of that tool.” He said staff use AI for efficiency, for example to draft job postings and descriptions, but emphasized educators must teach ethical use.

Milliman also noted the district’s language diversity: “We have 40, I think, 40 plus languages in the district right now,” he said, and praised partnerships with municipalities and employers that host student placements.

Practical next steps mentioned on the podcast included the district continuing to foster employer relationships, the host saying he would publish contact information for Kelly Dennis in the podcast notes, and the superintendent offering to bring school staff to a future episode to explain graduation‑requirements details in depth.

“We're very proud of our partnerships that we have, City of Lebanon being one of them, City Of Whitestown or Town Of Whitestown being another,” Milliman said, urging local employers to contact the district about internship opportunities.