COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — High school dropouts can earn their diploma tuition-free through a program new to Muscogee County.

Catapult Academy, with 23 sites (17 in Florida and six in Georgia), is located in Columbus at the former Edgewood Elementary School, 3835 Forrest Road, which also houses the Muscogee County School District’s alternative center for students who have been temporarily removed from their school for violating rules.

The academy is open to Muscogee County residents ages 16-20 who have dropped out of school and aren’t enrolled in the district. Students with disabilities and younger than 22 also are eligible. Participants must have a valid government-issued photo ID, birth certificate and Social Security card.

After they apply and are accepted, academy students can choose one of two five-hour sessions: 7 a.m. to noon or noon to 5 p.m. Approximately 80 percent of the instruction is conducted online and 20 percent from a teacher in the classroom.

The program is not only free to the students but also budget neutral for the district because, when dropouts return to school, the district recaptures lost state funding based on enrollment. Catapult Academy is paid with money from that new revenue. The rate ranges between $3,596 and $6,994 per student, according to the contract, depending on the program model and whether English language or special-education support is required.

The most recent statistics from the Georgia Department of Education show Muscogee County’s graduation rate of 72.8 percent surpasses the state average of 71.5 percent, but MCSD superintendent David Lewis insists that isn’t good enough.”

I recommended the program because I think it is important to assist every student in reaching their potential, which includes those students who have dropped out of our Muscogee County schools,” Lewis said in a news release. “Catapult Academy is not an adult education program. It is not a GED program. Students are interviewed and are approved to enroll in Catapult Academy to earn their required high school credits and complete required tests successfully to earn their MCSD high school diploma. Many of our students who dropped out were already at risk of not earning their diploma with their graduation cohort.”

Catapult Academy is a subsidiary of Catapult Learning, which has 35 years of experience in school intervention, helping more than 300 school districts nationwide with improvement plans, professional development and curriculum support, Catapult Learning vice president for marketing Meg Roe said Wednesday from the company’s headquarters in Camden, N.J.

This is the first full school year for Catapult Academy. Catapult Learning announced in February its acquisition of Drop Back In Academy, which operated 30 dropout recovery programs comprising more than 2,000 students in Florida and Georgia. In the 2013-14 school year, 277 high school seniors earned their diploma from those programs and collected a total of $253,770 in college scholarships, Roe said. Although the graduation rate was only 43 percent, Roe noted Catapult hasn’t had a full school year running the academies and she emphasized the following perspective:

“These are students who the school districts no longer had a place for them without this program,” she said. “They had withdrawn. So taking them from zero to 43 percent, we were able to turn that many students back into the community to earn more wages and be less likely to get in trouble. That’s a big number.”

As of Tuesday, 66 Muscogee County students were enrolled in the program, Catapult Academy regional director Levi Williams told the Ledger-Enquirer. The Edgewood Student Services Center has room for 80-100 students in the four classrooms dedicated to the academy, with no more than 25 students in each classroom, he said.

Williams praised district officials for smoothly implementing the program.

“They’ve been more than helpful,” he said. “Mr. Lewis and his staff have been furthering this cause. This has been a great relationship and partnership. You don’t get this kind of cooperation in many other districts.”