Students Catered Political Fund-Raiser

A public vocational-education district will hammer out new ethical work rules for students after a cooking class was assigned to cater a Democratic fund-raiser at the home of a district trustee--at no pay.

“When I heard about this, I thought, ‘Uh-oh, we need to look at this,’ ” said Karin Freeman, president of the board of trustees for the North Orange County Regional Occupational Program. “We need to make sure we know what is appropriate and allowed under education law.”

Freeman said the use of students’ services to benefit a political fund-raiser might have been illegal and certainly involved students in partisan politics inappropriately.

Board member Kathy Smith acknowledged Tuesday that she had asked the teacher of a culinary-arts class to provide students’ cooking services for free at a fund-raiser she held Oct. 22 for Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim). Students cooked the food in the school kitchen, then teachers delivered the food to the fund-raiser, Smith said.

Correa’s campaign paid for the hors d’oeuvres, but not the students’ work.

Smith, who also sits on the Anaheim Union High School District board, defended her actions as a “win-win” situation for Correa and the culinary students. Correa got a nice fund-raising party, and the students got a chance to practice their skills in a “real, live situation,” she said.

“The affair was held at my home, and the total cost was borne by Mr. Correa’s campaign,” Smith said.

Chris Leo, Correa’s chief of staff, said he could understand administrators’ concerns about students working for a political event. But Leo said he doesn’t feel students were involved because they just prepared the food but did not actually serve it.

“I can see where they’re coming from,” he said. “But we got an invoice for the food and we’re going to pay it . . . and it will come out of our campaign account.” The students’ labor, which the campaign was not billed for, will not be recorded as a gift to the campaign because their work was part of their education, Leo said.

Freeman said she became concerned about the fund-raiser after hearing about the controversy surrounding two Southern California public-school bands involved in Republican Party election efforts.

Members of the Canyon High School band in Anaheim earned money for their school’s music program by walking precincts for the Republican Party on election day. In La Canada Flintridge, members of the high school band were released early from school one day to play at an event for presidential candidate George W. Bush.

Although students defended the activity as civic work, and in the case of Canyon High School, as a much needed fund-raiser, education lawyers blasted the activities as potentially illegal partisan politicking. Administrators at both schools promised such activities would never happen again.

The state’s regional occupational programs provide vocational training at nominal cost to high school students and adults. A key component of many ROP programs involves teaching students trade skills on the job, said Thomas Kurtz, superintendent of the North Orange County program, which serves the Anaheim, Placentia-Yorba Linda, Brea-Olinda, Los Alamitos and Fullerton school districts and is one of the largest such programs in California.

ROP instructors must constantly make sure that the work students do--whether constructing barbecue pits for community parks, building walls for nonprofit organizations or reading to toddlers in child care programs--fits their instructional program, Kurtz said.

Instructors are also expected to guard students from being put to work for free in the guise of learning a trade. Kurtz noted that regional occupational programs have politely refused a number of job offers this year because the work would not have taught students anything.

Because catering is an integral part of learning the culinary trade, however, teachers in the 3-year-old culinary program felt that cooking for Smith’s event would be appropriate, Kurtz said.

Kurtz said that when he investigated the affair, he decided his teachers needed guidelines.

“We had looked at it as more of a private party,” he said. “But it did turn out as a fund-raiser, so in that regard, we’re going to put together a policy.”

Kurtz said, however, he believes students’ participation in the fund-raiser was legal.

Roger Wolfertz, the attorney for the state Department of Education, agreed. The Education Code prohibits schools from promoting activities that urge the support or defeat of any candidate, but just because students cooked for Correa’s fund-raiser does not mean they were working on his behalf, Wolfertz said.

Students in the cooking course were being instructed in catering while they cooked for the event, Wolfertz said, and so arguably, their participation might be seen as an appropriate civic exercise.

Students who cooked for the fund-raiser could not be reached for comment.

Administrators of the Orange County program said they plan to draft policies that will keep students from working at future political events.

“If there are some areas where we can avoid having a controversy, we might as well,” Kurtz said.