Class of ’87 Comes With an Extended Warranty

The graduating seniors of 1987 at high schools in Huntington Beach, Westminster and Fountain Valley will have something besides “Pomp and Circumstance” and a diploma next June.

Each of them will be guaranteed.

In a move believed to be a first in California, the Huntington Beach Union High School District on Monday began mailing out letters to businesses telling them that the seven high schools in the district will stand behind their products.

District Supt. Marie Otto said that beginning with the class of 1987, graduates are guaranteed to be able to read, write and calculate at the high school level. If a business finds a “defective” graduate from the district, the district will retrain the graduate at no cost to the company.

Otto said the letters being mailed to Orange County businesses urge them to take the offer seriously.

“I don’t think we’ll get massive complaints,” she said, “but we’re dead serious about providing free remedial training. We don’t think business should have to pay for teaching high school graduates what they should have learned in high school. We’ll pick up the bill.”

Retraining, if necessary, would take place in the high school’s existing adult education programs, whose classes are mostly held at night. Any extra money needed to make good on the guarantee, she said, would come from the state in the form of adult education funding.

She added that the district might have to rethink its position if it were to get a lot of immediate negative feedback about past graduates.

The action produced a gleeful response in the state Department of Education offices in Sacramento.

“Wow!” exclaimed Susie Lange, spokeswoman for the department, after learning of the high school district’s “guaranteed graduates” letter.

“This is something new. It’s great. It really expresses confidence in their students. (State schools superintendent) Bill Honig is going to like this,” she said.

In addition to next summer’s crop of seniors, the district will also guarantee the high school graduates of its adult evening school, Otto said. Last year, there were about 3,700 graduates from the district’s high schools.

Otto’s letter, which is being mailed to about 2,000 employers in Orange County, says, “If any graduate of this district is found to be lacking in the basic skills, we will provide retraining at no cost to the employer.”

The guarantee goes into effect with the current crop of seniors, but Otto said Monday that the district may also provide free remedial training for previous graduates if the need is shown.

“We think we can make the guarantee because we have excellent students and excellent teachers in our district,” she said.

Lapsing, with tongue in cheek, into industrial jargon, she added, “We utilize a series of quality control factors as students pass through our system, and we’re very proud of our product.”