“The schedule, the buses, the insurance — the logistics will kill it first.”

The schedule. The master schedule is the real policy document — it says what a school actually values. Working patterns exist at every intensity: block structures, half-day cohorts (Michigan's shared-time centers run on them), alternating academic/technical weeks (Southeastern Regional's model), and advisory-embedded time. The Plug-In Start exists precisely so the schedule conversation doesn't kill year one: roughly an hour a week fits inside almost any schedule while the district learns what it wants to commit to.

The buses. Transportation is a real cost and also a pedagogical question. Region 10's hard-won lesson — "integrate, don't shuttle" — is that the half-day shuttle fractures the student experience. Weigh transportation spend against the alternatives: bringing the work in-house, bringing academics to the career site, or clustering placements so travel happens once, not daily.

The liability. Mostly solvable, occasionally a hard wall — and the wall is field-specific. Healthcare is the sharpest case: minor-age rules restrict clinical exposure, so strong programs design around the wall — front-loading certifiable content (anatomy, terminology, CPR, safety credentials) so students arrive at clinical placements fully documented, and treating compliance as curriculum rather than paperwork. Ages for clinical and work placements vary by state and credential. See Working with Minors in CTE Pathways. Workers' compensation, insurance riders, and child-labor rules vary by state and field; our research catalogs the architecture, and your carrier and counsel should see the design early, not at launch.