Career-tech program may get a promotion
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
11/26/07
By Simone Sebastian
Seth Goddard wrangles a fire hose during a fire-service class at the Northwest Career Center.
Columbus school officials are planning a number of upgrades to the district’s vocational programs in coming years that they hope will better prepare students to enter the work force immediately after graduation.
Several administrators and school board members said they want to expand vocational education, also known as career and technical education, for high-school students. Apprenticeships with local trade unions and new career-focused academic courses are among their plans to beef up occupational training.
If all goes as planned, the program improvements will coincide with the December 2008 opening of the district’s $25 million Downtown high school, which would house many of the career-tech programs.
“We know that college isn’t for everyone,” said school board President Terry Boyd. “Some youth don’t want to go; some can’t afford to go. We don’t want their potential to earn income to be stymied.”
Boyd said district officials have been meeting with local trade unions to create programs that would use apprenticeships to ease students’ transitions from school into jobs in carpentry, electrical work and other industries.
Currently, the school district’s four career centers offer 101 programs in about 60 industries including culinary arts, landscaping, firefighting and information technology.
About 1,660 students are enrolled in career center programs. The district has a total of about 15,600 high-school students.
Three of the career centers — Northeast, Northwest and Southeast — will close after the opening of the new Downtown school. Their programs will be consolidated into the Fort Hayes career center and the Downtown building, which is being built on Mound Street between 4th and 5th streets.
Career-tech students split their school day between the career centers and their main high schools. District administrators hope to change that with the opening of the Downtown school.
Pete Maneff, the district’s executive director of high-school curriculum, said he hopes the career center curriculum will have a college-like approach. Students’ career choices will be treated like majors, so academic courses will relate to those occupations.
District Superintendent Gene Harris said the push to expand career-tech education does not conflict with efforts to prepare students for college.
“We want our kids to have options,” Harris said. “They can say, ‘I want to go into cosmetology, but I can go to Ohio State, too.’ ”
School board member W. Shawna Gibbs agreed, and said that career-tech students can benefit from college-prep courses and students preparing for college can benefit from learning a skill.
“I don’t see it as a compromise. I see it as an enhancement,” Gibbs said.
The changes to Columbus’ career-tech program could better prepare students for the job market.
Despite outsourcing and mechanization in certain industries, many jobs that do not require a college degree will remain in high demand during the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The outlook is particularly good for skilled workers who have a solid grasp of academics, said Jon Sargent, a bureau economist.
“Manufacturing has been declining quite a bit, but the jobs being lost are more of the unskilled jobs,” Sargent said. “They need skilled workers with good basic writing and arithmetic who can read a manual.”
Columbus school officials hope to add trade union apprenticeships and new career-focused courses.
On the Web • For an audio slide show on the Northwest Career Center, go to Dispatch.com/multimedia.
Copyright © 2007, The Columbus Dispatch
