The city of Cumming will sponsor a new middle school program designed to get younger students thinking about their future career.

The Cumming City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to become a sponsor of the Jun-ior Achievement Mike and Lynn Cottrell Discovery Center at North Georgia, which will be on the property of the Alliance Academy for Innovation of Cumming-Forsyth County, a career and workforce development high school currently under construction to open August 2018.

“It’s a separate building from the high school, but it’s a financial literacy and entrepreneurship program for middle school students,” said Valery Lowe, director of college and career development for Forsyth County Schools.

“Our sixth graders will go through entrepreneurship training; they participate in the classroom then go through the day at the Discovery Center. Our seventh and eighth graders take part in financial literacy training and then they spend the day at the Discovery Center.”

The campus is on Lanier 400 Parkway near Ga. 400 in Cumming. Lowe said construction of the Junior Academy is slightly behind the high school. Unlike the high school, students will not attend the center full-time and will instead visit it.

The center will house JA BizTown and JA Finance Park, immersive simulations where middle school students explore industries and careers and obtain foundational knowledge in select business and finance operations.

“They learn how to work, how to go to work, how to live in an economy, buying and selling, those kinds of things. These centers are developed to resemble the communities they’re in,” Lowe said.  “Kids come in, they elect a mayor, they get citations for speeding, they pay traffic tickets, every-thing you and I do on a day-to-day basis with interacting within a city they do as part of this experience.”

Delta Airlines and Georgia United Credit Union are among the companies expected to have “storefronts,” and the city’s sponsorship means it will likely have one, as well.

“This is going to be a great future for Cumming and Forsyth County,” Mayor Ford Gravitt said.

The center will be open to students from Hall, Lumpkin, Dawson counties and the cities of Gainesville and Calhoun and will be the third in the state. Similar centers exist in Gwinnett and Atlanta.

Students at the University of North Georgia will also work at the center on a volunteer-basis.

“What we’re going to be doing,” said Fonda Harrison, associate superintendent for teaching and learn-ing for the school system, “is life changing.”