TAYLORSVILLE — Itineris. It's Latin for the word "route."

And the route here is one students will soon be taking at a New Century High School, to be called Itineris, on Salt Lake Community College's campus in West Jordan.

The college's Board of Trustees this past week approved an agreement with Jordan School District that paves the way for Itineris to open by fall 2004.

It's being billed as an "early college" high school, where students in grades 11 and 12 focus on math, science, technology and biotechnology. Students can earn one of two associate's degrees before graduation.

Itineris' journey to fruition is the result of former Gov. Mike Leavitt's plan to see six such high-tech high schools churning out students who are better prepared and can enter the workforce more quickly. Granite and Salt Lake City districts already have the Academy of Math Engineering and Science.

Stephen Jolley, the new school's principal, said one idea is to attract students who are from low-income and/or minority backgrounds and, in particular, those who appear to be under-served by public education. For example, the student who may do well with computers or math but is failing everything else would be considered a likely candidate.

"There are a number of students in our schools who are not working at their potential who are ready to move on to a more adult-like learning environment," Jolley said.

It's a mix that's already working at the college's Jordan campus, where space is shared with students from the school district.

"It just became natural for them to extend their involvement in the partnership already established with Salt Lake Community College," said the school's vice president of business services, Don Porter.

Being around adult students who are more "serious" about learning and who have made the connection between education and the job market is touted as a positive for the new school.

"Anything we do to involve high school students in the atmosphere of higher education helps all of us at both levels of the education spectrum," Porter said. "It helps us to develop an awareness of the felt need in the minds of students, so they value the whole education experience."

Itineris will be considered a charter school with its own governing body, as opposed to a district board of education. District officials are expected to grant Itineris its charter within the next two months.

When next fall rolls around, the high school should open with 50 students in existing facilities on the college's Jordan campus. By fall 2005, the school's new building should be in place on the same campus.

Jolley predicts there will be a pool of 500 to 700 potential candidates for the new school. By its fourth year of operation, however, enrollment is expected to be only about 350 — the goal is to keep that number below 400 in order to maintain smaller class sizes.

Start-up funds come by way of $541,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, $750,000 in state funds and federal grant money school officials will go after once the charter is established. That could be as much as $170,000 a year over a three-year span.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com