OJAI : Students Get Lesson on the Bottom Line

Against a backdrop of high country tranquillity, 11th- and 12th-graders from around the county surrendered a week of their summer vacations to labor over profit margins, spreadsheets and the bottom line.

Fueled by private donations and volunteer business people, the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. brought together 56 students from 13 schools for California Business Week.

The students congregated at Thacher School at the edge of Los Padres National Forest for seminars, workshops and hands-on exposure to the business world.

“The No. 1 thing we want to teach these kids is that profit is not a dirty word,” said program co-chairwoman Priscilla McDaniel. “We want to give them a sense of what the business world is like, to let them know that free enterprise is the American way.”

A rigorous 10-hour-a-day schedule had the students touring Ojai businesses, working on their own weeklong business projects and seeking out advice from a string of speakers representing businesses ranging from hospitals and mortuaries to banks and real estate agencies to restaurants and hotels.

“I was really impressed with the targeted, intelligent questions they asked,” said Kay Dornbusch, sales manager for the Ojai Valley Inn. “They wanted to know who our clients were and what it cost to run the inn.”

The students may have been collecting data for their own business projects. Students formed teams and competed against each other to develop and market products and turn a profit by the end of the week.