First new high school to open in Collier in 19 years is Aubrey Rogers High School.

This week saw the opening of Aubrey Rogers High School, the newest A-rated high school in Collier County Public Schools. In its first academic year of 2023–2024, the 60-acre campus at 15100 Veterans Memorial Blvd. will house about 1,200 students, 100 teaching members, and staff people. It can accommodate 1,880 students when full. The school, which will accommodate an expansion in North Naples’ population, is said to have cost close to $100 million to develop.

The brand-new, cutting-edge high school in North Naples will be led by Ellen Keegan, according to a statement from Collier County Public Schools. For the past 27 years, Ms. Keegan has worked as an educator. She worked in New York City Public Schools for her first nine years of her career before moving on to CCPS where she has worked for the past 18 years. She has worked as a principal, academic coach, assistant principal of curriculum and instruction, and classroom teacher. She has worked as a secondary school administrator for the last ten years. Her most recent position was as principal of Naples High School for the 2021–2022 academic year after four years as the principal of Lely High School.

The first new high school to open in Collier in 19 years is Aubrey Rogers High School. The Collier County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) Youth Relations program was founded in 1977 and is named after former Collier County Sheriff Aubrey Rogers, whose dedication to the neighborhood’s children and teenagers inspired him to introduce the then-revolutionary idea of placing deputies on school campuses. At the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Administrative Center on September 12, 2022, the regular meeting of the school board took community suggestions into consideration before deciding on the name.

In the 1960s, Sheriff Rogers played a key role in creating the Collier County Junior Deputy League, which gave kids the chance to go camping and be supervised by deputies. Later, he was instrumental in starting what is now known as Junior Deputy Day at the Collier County Fair. The Patriots will serve as the school’s mascot, which is also appropriate given Sheriff Rogers’ time in the U.S. Army.

Sheriff Rogers moved to Naples in 1957 when he was 31 years old. He was born on August 27, 1926, in Fort Myers. Rogers started considering a career in police enforcement in his freshman year of high school. When he was young, his best friend’s father was a police officer and his great-uncle was a U.S. marshal. They had a significant impact on his decision to pursue a career in law enforcement, and in 1948, when he was 22 years old and the Fort Myers Police Department only had a few officers, he started working there. Rogers was appointed as the sheriff of Collier County’s chief deputy by E. A. Doug Hendry in 1957. Reuben Askew, the governor of Florida at the time, appointed Rogers to succeed Hendry as sheriff of Collier County on November 19, 1975. Rogers was the sheriff from 1977 until 1989. He passed away on March 10, 2010, at the age of 83.

The original article can be found at Florida Weekly