School Plans to Expand Computer-Repair Class

A computer revolution at Royal High School is starting small with a team of students dispatched to handle computer glitches around campus.

Five boys began meeting this year during first period each morning to tinker with broken machines, refurbish donated computers and install new software. When they are finished, the hard-working students hook up their handiwork in classrooms.

Although this small-scale operation is helpful to Royal High, Assistant Principal Lou Lichtl has bigger plans for next year.

He hopes to expand the computer-repair class to at least 50 students--girls as well as boys--who will annually fix at least 200 computers. Royal High then will send the machines out across the state, helping other school districts in need.

“We need more vocational classes, especially in technology,” said Lichtl, who came to Royal two years ago. “This is a skill the kids will be able to market right away.”

Not all of Royal High’s students will end up at four-year colleges, Lichtl said. At least 40% of the school’s graduates do not immediately go on to higher education, he said.

“This is another avenue for these kids to join the work force right out of high school,” he said.

Many of the current computer repair students already have jobs--or are looking for them--in the field.

“I worked at a Thousand Oaks computer store over the summer,” said 15-year-old Logan Pelter, who spent one recent morning hunting for problems with a hard drive. “I’ll probably get a similar job this summer.”

Logan’s classmate, 17-year-old David Higbee, agreed that after-school jobs working with computers sure beat flipping burgers.

David has been fascinated with computers since he was 12, built his own machine when he was 14, and now has a small side business repairing other people’s machines. Because of his know-how, David is regarded as one of the class leaders, showing others how to format hard drives, change video cards, add memory and trouble-shoot software.

The repair class has received 54 donated computers so far this year, and expects to fix up 150 by summer.

Although Royal students and staff have shown enthusiasm for next year’s bigger and better computer repair program, Lichtl has a few hurdles to clear.

Most important, he wants to form an official relationship with Ventura County’s Regional Occupational Program, which was formed almost three decades ago to train students for specific labor market needs.

To date, high schools in Ojai, Fillmore, Ventura, Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks, Westlake, Camarillo and Oxnard are involved with the county’s occupational program. Each school stresses a different career path, ranging from automotive to allied health, from computer-assisted drafting to fashion retail merchandising.

Royal High’s partnership with the county would help defray some of the expenses for the Simi Valley Unified School District for the computer-repair program. Among the costs the county would pick up is about $50,000 a year for the instructor’s salary.

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The county would be happy to include Royal High in its program as long as additional state money comes through this summer or fall, said Jim Compton, the county’s director of secondary education. The occupational program’s nearly $3-million budget is used up this year, but Compton said Royal High’s request is solid and its computer repair program has a good shot of passing county approval.

Simi Valley’s school board also will have to approve Royal’s computer-repair program. Administrators concurred that the program shows real potential as long as it receives the proper funding.

If he successfully persuades district and county administrators to give the nod toward a future Royal computer repair program, Lichtl has been assured that Royal High will get all the run-down, busted-up computers it needs for at least a year.

The La Jolla-based Detwiler Foundation--started in 1991 by John Detwiler of San Diego and his daughter, Diana--has guaranteed Royal High officials that it will donate hundreds of surplus computers that it receives from major corporations, including Boeing, IBM, Southern California Edison, Pacific Belland Charles Schwab & Co. throughout the year, Lichtl said.

In the last six years, the foundation’s Computers for Schools Program has distributed more than 37,000 computers to 1,800 public and private schools in California, including 43 in Ventura County.

Although it has partnerships with several California school districts to refurbish those machines before they are distributed, Detwiler’s main focus is sending computers to 13 of the state’s prisons, where inmates learn repair skills. In Ventura County, Royal High and the Ventura County Jail are Detwiler’s only repair centers.

After the computers are overhauled, 80% of them will be sent to needy school districts in California. Royal High gets to keep 20% of what it fixes.

Lichtl said he realizes that the ambitious computer repair course is going to take time, money and lots of outside support--all of which he is determined to get.

“We’re going to make it work somehow,” he said. “We really do feel that it’s a need.”