HUNTINGTON BEACH : Academy’s Students Are All Business

This was real-life business.

A home-building company needed a logo for its new development. And students at Ocean View High School’s Business Academy busily toiled at their computers to create designs.

The guest instructor, Glen Polson, appreciatively eyed one student’s proposed logo.

“This is very good,” Polson told the student, Jeff Taylor, 15. “Now you’ve got to figure out what color to use.”

Polson is vice president of sales and marketing for New Urban West. That company and Seacliff Partners, both of Santa Monica, are part of the business-education partnership for the Business Academy.

Polson and other real-life business people lecture at least twice a month to the academy classes.

Taylor, a sophomore, said the 2-year-old academy is great for career preparation.

“You learn about computers and stuff and things you’re going to need later in life,” he said. “I want to enter the medical profession, and so when I intern (with a business) next year, I’m going to ask to be with a hospital or something like that.”

The Ocean View Business Academy is a magnet school of the Huntington Beach Union High School District. Students volunteer for the program, entering the academy in their sophomore year.

“The students intern with a business their junior year, and they must have a paying job and work at least 300 hours in it during their senior year,” said Ocean View teacher Audrey Hendry. “They also take college courses their junior and senior years.”

Roy Batelli, another Ocean View teacher, said there is a limit of 36 students each in the academy’s sophomore, junior and senior classes.

“I tell students this is a program for those who want to improve their lives--who want to be a success in the future,” Batelli said.

Polson, the guest lecturer, said the academy students are motivated and eager to learn about business.

And, he noted, his company thinks enough of them to solicit their ideas for a logo for its new Hampton Seacliff development in Huntington Beach.

“One of these ideas very well might be what we use as our logo,” he said.