Educators Seek Ways to Circumvent Board’s Vote to Refuse Grant : Job training: The county panel’s rejection is seen as a turning point. Some school districts are trying to arrange to handle the federal funding if it is awarded.

Angered by the county school board’s decision to turn down a $500,000 federal jobs-training grant, Ventura County’s leading educators say they are not about to let the money slip away from them without a fight.

The 3-2 vote last week to refuse the one-year grant that the district has applied for is a turning point, school officials say, pitting the conservative board against the mainstream of educators in Ventura County.

Their decision was not about condom distribution or AIDS education--issues that in the past have united religious-right trustees Wendy Larner and Angela N. Miller and conservative Marty Bates, but have had little local impact, educators say.

Their vote Monday was an attempt to kill an initiative that has broad support in the education community, officials said. And some superintendents, school board members and teachers think it was based more on political conviction than on whether the job-training programs would be beneficial for district students and area employers.

“This grant is a very important program and it would be foolish of us to lose an opportunity to get this money or any other money,” said Dolores Beaubien, a trustee for the Conejo Valley Unified School District. “It’s a sad turn of events that the county board saw fit to ignore every school district in Ventura County.”

Bates defended the board’s decision and said he is not worried about fallout from the education establishment. He has received a “ton” of phone calls, most of them complimentary, Bates said,

“Educators firmly believe that the best way to educate a child is to give them more money and make them work less,” he said. “I firmly believe we represented the taxpayer, the parents, the grandparents and the citizens.”

Nor is Miller surprised that educators are up in arms. They would also benefit from the lucrative federal grant, she said.

“They got it all set up for a whole ‘nother group of administrators to get up there and have a gig,” she said.

Noting that she and Larner have recently survived recall attempts based on their votes to exclude representatives of Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care from teacher-training seminars, Miller said she isn’t afraid of making controversial decisions.

“The recall encouraged me to move forward with what I think is right,” she said. “And not on popular opinion.”

But those in education increasingly are viewing the county board as an obstacle. And they have already taken several steps to begin working around the board’s vote.

Ventura Unified School District officials are exploring the possibility of administering the complex grant through the city district’s business office, Supt. Joseph Spirito said. The school board will vote on the matter Dec. 12, he said.

Community College District officials are also weighing whether they should take on the task, said Jeff Marsee, vice chancellor of administrative services.

And Beaubien of the Conejo district said that she would like to see her own governing board form partnerships with other school districts to receive project funding.

Though less efficient, it is better than relying on the cooperation of the county Board of Education, Beaubien said.

The internships, business mentors and job-shadowing programs that would be paid for by the grant, educators say, would better prepare teen-agers throughout Ventura County for the work force after high school. The superintendent of schools office expects to learn in January whether Ventura County will be granted any share of the $15-million federal pot set aside for the federal jobs program.

Bates said the grant duplicates job-preparedness programs already offered by vocational schools and private industry. And all three board members said accepting the money would give federal lawmakers too much control over how students are educated.

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Superintendent of Schools Charles Weis said he is worried that Beaubien and other officials will conclude that they can no longer do business with his office.

The county office, with an annual budget of $34 million, in the past has provided a variety of administrative services to the county’s 20 local districts, including providing payroll for teachers, organizing teacher-training workshops and administering grants.

“If [the Board of Education] can erode the confidence of the local districts in our office, then they put us out of business,” Weis said. “And maybe that is what they want to do.”

Weis spent two days last week in Sacramento, where he met with state education officials and attorneys to find out what alternatives are available to bring the grant money to Ventura County.

He is also talking to superintendents and other school officials in Ventura County, Weis said.

“We are looking diligently for a solution and I hope to have it within a week or so,” he said.

The debate, meanwhile, has sparked closer review of the complex program the grant would create.

It is modeled after the 3-year-old Ventura County Tech Prep Consortium, an initiative sponsored by the county’s business leaders and educators.

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Since 1992, consortium leaders have placed high school seniors in part-time jobs after school, arranged for business owners to speak to classes and scheduled student visits to work sites.

But work experience opportunities are fragmented, officials say. The School-to-Work plan would bring the vocational programs together under one central office and make them available at every high school in Ventura County, they say.

A student who focuses on a particular field, automotive mechanics for instance, would emphasize training in that area and could eventually earn a certificate of mastery, according to the grant application.

That certificate could be used to show local employers that a student has successfully completed training, officials said. It does not, however, carry the same weight as a high school diploma, they added.

Although the focus is in high school, career-awareness programs would extend all the way to kindergarten, according to the grant application. Children would be exposed to different careers by having professionals visit the classroom, officials said.

And a math lesson in elementary school, for instance, might include instruction on how to count back change, officials said.

In order to ease the transition from high school to community college, the community college district is also involved, Marsee said. New agreements will make it easier for a student to take accounting at college, for example, without duplicating high school classes, he said.

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These programs are needed to prepare high school graduates for work, Marsee and other educators said. Much more comprehensive apprenticeship programs have been in place in Europe for decades, Marsee said.

“In Germany, Mercedes-Benz will pick up high school students and let them spend part of the day working on computers in a plant,” he said. “By the time they graduate, they are ready to go directly into the workplace.”

But critics of the School-to-Work plan say channeling high school students into a particular field limits their ability to choose a career.

“I really don’t think children have the ability to decide what they want to be until they are adults,” said Coleen Ary, who leads a Simi Valley-based group called Citizens for Truth in Education.

Instead of preparing some students for vocations and some for college, all students should be required to complete academic courses that set high standards, she said. And those classes should focus on such basics as writing, reading and math, Ary said.

“I think schools should teach and businesses should train,” she said. “And until they get teaching down right, why should public schools venture into training?”

Ventura’s Spirito said his board seems receptive to the idea of taking over the School-to-Work grant if the county schools office is unable to do so. The length of the full grant is five years; it would bring a total of $2.5 million to local schools if fully funded.

Managing the funds will take considerable staff time, Spirito said. But he is committed to making sure those tax dollars do not end up in some other county.

“I am concerned that we shouldn’t just sit back and do nothing now,” Spirito said. “We can’t afford to wait.”

Finding another entity to manage the funds is especially critical in a small district like Santa Paula Union High School District, said Supt. Robert Fisher. Small districts like his have relied in the past on the county schools office for assistance in getting a shot at federal dollars.

“If we tried to do these grants by ourselves, we couldn’t compete,” Fisher said. “We need to be in consortiums. And if we have to form a new consortium, we will. Then we’ll know how we’re going to do it on the next grant we apply for.”