Next fall, about 25 East and LaFollette high school juniors won’t be spending much time walking the schools’ locker-lined halls. They will be attending Madison Area Technical College full time earning high school and college credit at no cost as part of a new early college STEM academy.

The program is a pilot for a new partnership between the Madison School District and MATC, also known as Madison College. Details of the program were presented Wednesday by coordinators at a joint meeting of the Madison School Board and MATC’s Board of Trustees...