As of early afternoon Wednesday, committee chairperson Melinda Lemmon said the group has received about 70 responses.
"Our hope is we get as many Bartow County employers represented as possible between now and the end of the week," Lemmon said, adding the survey takes about 15 minutes and can be found at www.bartow.k12.ga.us.
Lemmon said the data received thus far shows a 1.4 percent response from retail, 15.7 percent response from hospitality, 18.6 percent response from service, 20 percent response from manufacturing, 4.3 percent response from government, 17.1 percent response from nonprofits, 7.1 percent response from medical, 1.4 percent response from public safety and 14.3 percent response from what are considered "other" industries.
"The importance of the survey is not just for the charter of the college and career academy or the grant application but, most importantly, for the curriculum they'll be offering there," Lemmon said. "For example, culinary arts -- if the hospitality and tourism [industries] are going to need heavy future workforce needs in the culinary arts, then the career academy needs to plan for certain equipment to go in that lab and prepare the curriculum for that. But if culinary arts is not going to be a high demand job in the future here, that [curriculum] may not be as justified as we think it to be."
She added, "We're looking at current workforce needs as well as future workforce needs for existing companies and for those we hope to attract."
Lemmon said the businesses who responded, as a whole, have more than 6,400 employees. While she said the businesses who respond will be kept anonymous, she did point out some trends in the responses.
"Work ethic is very important -- we've received some very good responses in that regard that work ethic is important across the board," Lemmon said. "One of the questions asks about potential growth within the companies as far as job growth and hiring in the future, and there's a reasonably healthy response in that regard."
She said, however, there was not enough data to draw conclusions at this time.
"[The survey] is not a big time commitment and it's not something we're going to pester [the business community] with often, but it's a very important project," Lemmon said.
The committee will begin analyzing the data next week.
Superintendent John Harper has said his vision is to provide college and career training for students seeking an alternate route when acquiring their high school diploma.