School Staff Reaps Benefits of Trade Students’ Labors : Education: Critics say use of free manpower may suggest improprieties in occupational training programs.

Adult school Principal Harlan Barbanell’s front yard has new sprinklers, a thick covering of red apple ground cover and 100 blooming bougainvillea and daisy plants--the work of landscaping students from his school who spent two months there earning a course certificate.

Barbanell, principal of the West Valley Occupational Center, didn’t break any Los Angeles Unified School District rules.

But the work is drawing criticism--and attention--to the longstanding practice among adult school staff members of getting free work from students learning career trades.

Los Angeles city school teachers, administrators and clerks have their cars tuned, engines rebuilt, sofas reupholstered, hair and nails done, even their kitchens remodeled at dramatically low costs. The reason is the students by state law must perform the work for free while in vocational school.

“Everyone on staff has had the perks and privilege of having some work done,” said Janine Quint, the teachers union representative at the West Valley Occupational Center, who had her home wallpapered and her car tuned by students. “Maybe it would seem that it wouldn’t be right, but that’s the way occupational schools are.”

Some Los Angeles Board of Education members say the practice should change. They suggest guidelines be drawn to ensure that community members--as well as city schools--share in the benefits being enjoyed by a limited number of school employees and local residents.

Free labor by students in a variety of services and trades, though available to anyone, is rarely advertised. At best, schools list the services on school marquees.

So students learning trades end up working for school employees--a practice, said school board President Mark Slavkin, with the potential for abuse.

“My concern is that teachers, principals or anyone else with authority over students . . . should be very sensitive and very careful to avoid any appearance of exploiting their authority for any personal advantage,” Slavkin said.

Principal Barbanell, whose Encino hills home was landscaped last spring, called his decision to use student workers “a win-win” situation.

“The students won, the school won,” he said. “It met their needs and it met my needs.”

In Barbanell’s home landscaping project, students dug 100 holes for the one-gallon plants, installed an irrigation system and planted the ground cover. Barbanell said he paid $2,500 for the plants and materials, and also made donations to a school fund-raising effort.

Over the last five years, the West Valley landscaping class has worked on about 20 off-campus projects--including six private homes. Three of those belonged to school workers and the principal.

Said landscaping student Thomas Hochbrueckner: “I learned quite a bit” working at the principal’s house. The irrigation work, especially, “was a very good opportunity.”

But school board member George Kiriyama, a former adult school principal, said he would never ask a student to work at his home for course credit.

“That’s a touchy one. I just wouldn’t do it,” Kiriyama said.

Other administrators and board members echoed that view.

“I’d probably never do anything like that personally,” said Donald Gaskin, principal at the North Valley Occupational Center. “Is it right for the students to come to my home? I’m not so sure. I just wouldn’t want my neighbors saying, ‘Don had these students up here for three weeks putting in that new brick driveway.’ It just doesn’t sit well with me.”

School board member David Tokofsky said the practice of using student labor for school employees penalizes city schools, which, for example, are only painted every 100 years because of district money troubles. “Forget the larger community for a minute; we have schools that could use the help,” he said.

A few campuses do, in fact, benefit from the students’ services at the district’s dozen occupational and skills centers. North Valley Occupational Center carpentry students rebuilt the school’s benches recently and West Valley Occupational Center students landscaped portions of Cleveland and Aliso high schools, as well as Woodlake Elementary School.

Adult school teachers say they are always looking for projects to complement classroom instruction with hands-on experience. The vocational schools, open to students 18 and older, offer courses such as auto repair, printing, landscaping, cosmetology and electronics.

Under state law, schools are prohibited from either charging for labor or earning a profit. The state Education Code restricts the revenues of vocational schools to the cost of instruction and operation. So city schools charge, for example, a nominal $10 fee on work to cover administrative costs. Customers are charged only for new parts needed for car repairs and other services.

“It’s not the intent of the program to run a business and make money,” said Assistant Supt. Jim Figueroa, who oversees adult education. “Advertising would draw in a lot more people than we could handle and probably, we’d have a public relations problem when we started turning people away.”

Besides, administrators and teachers say they are wary of advertising their services to the public who might be more demanding customers. Students need more time to complete these jobs and they cannot be held liable for poor work, they say.

But Lani DeVincentis, who oversees adult education at the Glendale Unified School District, said regardless, the public should have the first shot at school services.

“You don’t run a program like this with taxpayer dollars to benefit school district employees,” DeVincentis said. “You do it by advertising the service. . . . You have to say, ‘How would this appear to the public?’ And, you need to make [the service] fairly well known to the public.

“Did they advertise it in a brochure for interested people? Did they call the newspaper and say this class could make a good human interest story?” she said.

The Simi Valley Unified School District advertises its adult schools’ cosmetology classes in local newspapers several times a month but keeps its auto repair program open to students’ vehicles only.

Los Angeles school district policy allows adult schools to establish their own rules governing student work. Teachers, mostly, are responsible for selecting class projects.

“We don’t tell them, ‘Thou shalt go out and do this work,’ ” said Wayne Morrison, director of curriculum and guidance for the school district’s adult schools. “They decide how to best reach their educational goals. They just don’t go to work, they go to learn.”

And work is one of the best ways for students to learn their trades, educators say. Bob Robinson, a Belmont High School teacher and president of the Los Angeles Industrial Technology Education Assn., who had his truck reupholstered and the engine rebuilt by students, said he believes the projects are the only way students will learn their trade.

“It gives them the practice they really need,” Robinson said.