Registration at the Newton College and Career Academy (NCCA) has been an area of some innificiencies, with some students not getting registered in timely manner.

Thanks to a group of 23 students, who were the first of their age group to undertake a business certification class, that problem may soon be solved.

The Covington-Newton County Chamber of Commerce partnered with NCCA to bring Lean Six Sigma Training to the school. For three days the students, from Alcovy, Eastside and Newton high schools, learned how to problem solve, and trim waste under the methodology and training of Peter Sherman of Riverwood Associations.

Thursday the NCCA students received their Yellow Belt level certifications in Lean Six Sigma.

“These kids learned what I call life skills; skills that are going to be with them in the future,” Sherman said. “What are they? They’re problem solving and critical thinking. This is what industry needs.”

The students learned how to define the problem, measure it, run process maps and root-cause analysis and come up with a solution.

Once they gained these skills, the team of students took on the real-life problem of NCCA’s registration and admission.

“We tried to solve the registration problem by talking about it and doing some process mapping,” NCCA and Newton High School student Ebony Wilson said. “The problem was it was taking so long and some people weren’t getting registered due to lost paper work. So basically we told them (NCCA administration) that we should do it all online.”

During the certification-award ceremony NCCA Principal Chad Walker announced to the group that the school would be adopting its solution.

The real-world problem taught the students how the Lean Six Sigma principles can be applied to life and business.
“When you think about the wants of the customer, you think about making sure everything you do for the customer is satisfactory for them, to make them come back and keep spending more money,” Wilson said.

In all, the students completed eight hours of work in the methodology, and were, according to Sherman and Chamber President Hunter Hall, the first high school students in Georgia to be yellow belt certified.

the Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certified students are: Freshmen: Warren Wilson and Jordan Lilly; sophomores; Johnny Thao, Jasmine Blackwell, Christopher Bobo, Lauren Beshears, Madison McCrorey, Amani Baker and Cody Brooks; juniors Nick Character, Madison Damiani , Ebony Wilson, Jarrett, Mobley, Courtney Cammarata, Ta'Nell Boley, Savannah Bray, Alexis Dibuccio, Gerardo Diaz, Dennis Godnyuk, Siaguan Maddox; seniors: Logan House, Anna Squires and Olivia Arnold.