Land Costs, Population Put the Squeeze on Agriculture Classes : Education of Future Farmers Faces a Drought

The turf war over a Valley Center oat field appears, at first glance, to be just a tussle between a popular agricultural instructor protecting his farmland and school administrators who insist that an elementary school must be built there.

But a statewide survey conducted by “ag” instructional aide Adele Hoppe shows that Valley Center is far from the only farm program threatened.

Vocational agriculture is on the decline statewide, and the once-popular elective courses are disappearing from school curriculums from Ukiah to Poway.

In Orange County, for instance, a commercial center is rising on the former Brea High School farm and, when the new high school is completed, the entire 42 acres of the current campus will be razed to make way for a shopping center complex. The new campus won’t have an ag farm.

In Poway, where the residents brag that they live in “a city in the country,” high school administrators closed down the farm at Poway High last summer to clear the acreage for portable classrooms and a larger parking lot.

Poway school administrators have relented to allow 4-H and Future Farmers of America youngsters to raise their four-legged critters on the still-vacant school site this spring.

High Growth Has Hurt

Agricultural programs in schools in North County and throughout Southern California have been the hardest hit by escalating land costs, population growth and the housing boom that has resulted in urbanization of formerly rural areas.

But even in Northern California’s rural Mendocino County, the complaint is heard that the vocational agriculture program is being gutted. The popular hands-on training that attracted many non-college bound students is being cut back.

At Ukiah High, FFA member Lisa Norgard reported in response to Hoppe’s survey that “our ag program has done nothing but suffer for the past five years,” and ag classes have been reduced from six to two.

Hoppe, who is still receiving replies to the survey sent out to 344 California ag instructors statewide, said that the response rate has passed 50% and, of those, nearly three-quarters said they believed their programs are threatened.

All of this in a state where agriculture is one of the top industries, bringing in more money than any other segment of the state’s robust economy and outstripping the production totals of Iowa and Texas--the two runners-up.

So where are the trained farm managers of the future going to come from if the majority of high school students graduate without ever having seen a cow or a field of oats?

Hoppe and Valley Center Middle School agricultural teacher Kenneth Klundt admit their bias toward the vocational agriculture program and their pride in the 26-acre spread remaining after the district built an elementary school on a portion of the property two years ago.

Klundt believes that school district administrators “will stop at nothing” until they build a second school on the farm property, leaving him with what he considers an unusable hillside and the land on which the school farm buildings are located.

Referring to district Supt. Harry Weinberg, Klundt said: “He recently told me, ‘(Kenneth), you have to keep up with the times. Agriculture is on its way out.’ ”

Weinberg concedes that from Klundt’s viewpoint, the district is taking his farm. But he stressed that the land is owned by the school district and was purchased in 1974 for future school sites.

The time has come to build, and the school farm that Klundt has built into one of the middle school’s most popular classes must give way, Weinberg said.

Build or Spend

The district has a letter from Wales Woodard, a field representative for the state Office of Local Assistance, informing officials that because the district owns a suitable vacant site for an elementary school, the proposed new school must be built there or the district must spend its own money to acquire another site, and every school site needed in the future.

“I can imagine what kind of a row it would cause if we used $150,000 of the district’s general funds to purchase a school site when we own a perfectly good one now,” Weinberg said.

Warren Reed, the state Department of Education’s program manager for vocational agriculture, is familiar with the Valley Center farm and believes that the controversy may be one of misunderstanding on the part of the state.

The Martin Gang Learning Center’s oat field, pumpkin patch, Christmas tree farm, orchards and vegetable gardens are not “available vacant land,” he said.

He sees them as “laboratories,” in the same sense that chemistry labs or auto shops are adjuncts to classrooms, and should not be classified as available school sites.

In Orange County, a Brea-Olinda district high school farm was sitting on valuable land across the road from a shopping mall. A financially astute school board leased the land to commercial developers on a long-term lease, then borrowed against the anticipated revenues to build a new campus elsewhere.

When completed in September, 1989, the new high school will cost $35 million and will not include a farm. Students who want to take vocational agriculture classes can attend Regional Occupational Program classes in two nearby Fullerton high schools, according to Assistant Supt. Pete Boothroyd.

“There was an agricultural center in the plans for the new campus, initially,” Boothroyd explained. “The ag program was flourishing at one time. But as the district changed from rural to urban, the demand diminished for agricultural classes and the program was dropped.”

Educators across the state echoed Boothroyd’s explanation for the decline in school ag enrollments as lack of interest and falling enrollments. Some mentioned the preemption of school farmland for school sites; others cited budgetary pinches as the cause for curtailment of the more costly vocational programs, including agriculture.

Agricultural instructors disagree.

They concede that ag enrollments are down, but argue that the agricultural program has been caught in a vicious budgetary circle. Loss of popular outdoor classes causes loss of student enrollment, which in turn causes further ag class cancellations.

Hoppe said that her survey showed that the threat to vocational agriculture comes most often from within the school system, not from the urbanizing community outside.

One reason cited for declining enrollment in agricultural classes is the trend toward increasingly stringent graduation requirements, which leave most teen-agers with only one or two elective courses per semester.

Some school districts give academic credit for ag science courses, but most do not.

Reed, the state ag program manager, has doubts about the gloom-and-doom import of Hoppe’s survey, pointing out that secondary school enrollments are declining nationally, not just in the state and not just in agricultural classes.

Increased academic course requirements are cutting into all vocational program enrollments, but the discouragement voiced by ag teachers in response to Hoppe’s survey is unwarranted, Reed said.

Need to Tailor Classes

Agriculture employs more than a quarter of the state’s workers and continues to grow, so the challenge is to tailor vocational ag classes to meet the needs of the industry and the interests of the students, he said.

Tom Furrer of Casa Grande High School in Petaluma did just that and reaped the rewards of increased enrollments.

As Petaluma changed from a farming center to a bedroom community of San Francisco, two thriving high school farms bit the dust, but Furrer revamped his curriculum into a “natural resources” offering--complete with fish hatchery--and thrived.

Even so, Furrer admits, his classes are suffering from the new state graduation requirements.

At Poway High, animal science courses counted toward science requirements for graduation, but the school’s ag science classes have been canceled along with the school farm.

Associate Supt. Don Hurst admits that the vocational agriculture program will suffer from the loss of animal science classes, but points out that the growing enrollments in the Poway district require more classroom space.

The choice between classrooms or animals at Poway High is no choice at all, he said.

The Poway school district’s other high school--Mt. Carmel High in Rancho Penasquitos--is located in the fastest-growing area of San Diego but has a spacious pastureland adjacent to its campus. Still, Hurst said that the Mt. Carmel farm may not be around much longer because it is located within the City of San Diego.

“I am sure that there are rules against the keeping of animals. It’s only a matter of time until the first neighbor complains.”

Linda Harkleroad, a 4-H leader and one of the few remaining Poway residents with a “real farm” home, admits to discouragement at her efforts to keep the community’s youth interested in the agricultural projects that have sent generations before them to the winner’s circle at the annual Del Mar Fair.

“It’s really sad,” she said. “We tried to tell them how important the school farm is to us, but I guess we didn’t get our message across,” she said, describing an emotional appeal made by young 4-H and FFA members to the Poway school board recently.

This spring’s crop of lambs and veal calves will be the last on Poway High’s campus, the end of an era in the once-rural community.