High Schoolers Get Early Start on Careers in Unusual Partnership

About 25 Centinela Valley Union High School District students will enroll in automotive technology courses at El Camino College next year, part of what school officials say is a developing trend to integrate secondary and post-secondary education.

Starting with the spring semester, juniors selected for the program will take 2-hour, college-credit courses twice a week at El Camino while keeping up with their regular high school classes, officials said. As seniors, the youngsters are expected to go on to an expanded second-year schedule at the college while a fresh crop of 25 juniors enters the program.

Students who earn high school diplomas and transfer to El Camino will then be on a fast track to associate degrees--and good-paying jobs in the increasingly technical auto repair field, officials said.

Some costs of the program are being underwritten by Toyota Motor Sales; successful graduates will be likely applicants for jobs at Toyota dealerships where beginning mechanics are paid about $30,000 a year.

“Our goal is to give our youngsters an extra advantage in the labor market of the future,” said McKinley Nash, superintendent of the 6,000-student high school district. “We want to get them started early and provide at each step of the way the technical and academic training they will need to be successful.”

Noting that as many as 85% of future jobs in all fields will require more than a secondary education, Nash said the auto mechanics project is “only the beginning.” He said the school district is exploring ways of expanding its college-campus offerings into other technical fields, such as electronics, hydraulics and computer-aided drafting.

In the broader picture, educators also see academic subject areas--such as math, science and sociology--being taught in cooperative programs between high schools and colleges, with an increasing number of secondary students combining a variety of learning experiences at both levels to earn their high school diplomas.

Two South Bay schools, Los Angeles Southwest College and Cal State Dominguez Hills, are among institutions that would like to go a step further. Both are planning full-time high schools on their campuses, though the opening dates are uncertain.

Camino College President Sam Schauerman said more integration of high school and college teaching is “the wave of the future in education.” Reducing the traditional separation, he said, will help ensure that more students develop a career goal and are kept on that path beyond their high school graduations.

He said the state is providing grants for various pilot programs based on closer cooperation between high schools and colleges, and federal support may be forthcoming.

Partners in many of the programs, Schauerman said, are industries that need well-trained technicians. He said the project at El Camino began when Toyota Motor Sales offered to help set up the training program for college students. El Camino is one of 50 colleges nationwide picked by Toyota for the training project, Schauerman said, and most other auto makers are sponsoring similar programs.

Toyota initially donated about $65,000 in services, equipment and scholarships to get the program under way this year with college students alone, El Camino spokeswoman Mary Ann Keating said. Schauerman said Nash, the Centinela Valley superintendent, heard about the program and it was expanded to include the high school students, who will start taking courses at the college during the spring semester.

As part of the agreement, Centinela Valley officials said, Toyota will contribute about $15,000 to the school district to help with its costs. The firm also will lease three vans at $1 each a year to the district to transport students to El Camino and offer various scholarships, they said.

Fits Into District Strategy

Nash said the El Camino program fits into the district’s strategy of using more off-campus facilities for technical training. He said more emphasis will be placed on training vocational students at the Southern California Regional Occupational Center (SCROC) in Torrance and on sending technical students to community college campuses.

“Even if we could afford state-of-the-art equipment and training here, much of what our students learned would be obsolete by the time they reached college or the job market,” he said. “We need more joint ventures that avoid costly duplication and that give our youngsters the best education available through a combination of resources.”

Other area districts are experimenting with various programs aimed at giving high school students a running start in college, either by bringing community college instructors to their classes or by sending students to college campuses.

In the South Bay Union High School District, for example, gifted juniors and seniors attend El Camino courses in such academic subjects as economics, math, languages and social studies.

The South Bay district has developed its own advanced training in auto repair, while others rely more on the Torrance occupational center for technical and vocational training.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District sends about 30 gifted juniors and seniors to Harbor College and Dominguez Hills to take advanced academic courses not available at their home schools, Deputy Supt. Jon Knickerbocker said. He said the district is open to other proposals for closer cooperation with colleges.