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Students at Memorial High School have a new course that sets them on a career path — real estate.

Teacher Derrick Freeman, who is also a real estate broker, leads the course that currently has 11 senior students.

The Real Estate program is a Texas Education Agency program of study that falls under the Business, Marketing and Finance Career Cluster, Dr. Lovette Martin-Davis, director of Career and Technical Education at Memorial High School, said.

Students who successfully engage in the courses will gain key concepts on how to not only sustain themselves financially through a career in real estate, but also receive knowledge of ways to best benefit Port Arthur’s real estate needs, Martin-Davis said.

“It is an excellent opportunity for our students to become ambassadors in a career that has underrepresentation from the minority community,” she said. “Port Arthur ISD Memorial High School Career and Technical Education Center is excited to offer the Real Estate program and look forward to the benefits it will bring to both the students and the community.”

Freeman explained students will take 180 hours of Real Estate fundamentals and when they turn 18 they will have this portion of their education completed. From there they can take the real estate exam and become a licensed Realtor in the State of Texas, Freeman said.

There is also a practicum portion to the course as well. That’s when they will be able to see how real estate works by visiting with businesses such as Capital Title and intern with real estate agencies.

On Wednesday students in the class were learning about Commission Disbursement Authorization and commission splits.

“These kids are raising the property value,” Freeman said as his students worked at their computers.

“We’ve been making the correlation and the connection of how our school district and our classes and our test scores really affect the property value,” he said.

Autumn Jones and Haley Walker are looking forward to a career in the real estate field.

Jones has enlisted in the U.S. Navy and plans to get her real estate license and flip houses in the future.

Walker sees the real estate field as a way to gain more experience in life and as a career in the future.

A majority of PAISD consists of minority students and students such as the ones in the real estate course are breaking ground into a career field and joining other successful individuals.

“PAISD is proud of our amazing alumni that are minority real estate agents in Port Arthur: Charlotte Moses, RaNysha Roberts, Nasondra Fontenette, and Derrick Freeman are a few of them,” Lott said. “The majority of our district is made up of minority students and we celebrate our diversity on every platform at every level.  We are confident our new CTE program will ultimately increase the number of minority real estate agents and brokers in our city and also beyond our city limits.”