Bilingual Job Training Is Molding Opportunities

Maynor Reyes found his future crumpled in the trash can at his minimum-wage job.

There, the Guatemalan immigrant fished out a flier for a bilingual program in plastics at Norwalk-based Cerritos College, one of a limited number of vocational programs statewide targeting Spanish speakers. Reyes traded his dead-end night job for a chance to move into manufacturing.

Two years later, he is earning $9.50 an hour with benefits at Los Angeles-based CCL Plastic Packaging, which makes injection-molded bottle caps. In keeping with the goals of the Cerritos programs, Reyes’ language skills have improved enough to enable him to take technical quality-control classes in English, boding well for future promotions.

“I was a materials hauler working the graveyard shift,” said the 30-year-old Reyes, who arrived in Los Angeles from Guatemala five years ago. “Now I’m a technician. I work in the daytime . . . and I’m still in school because I believe in education. . . . That’s a big difference.”

Since the bilingual plastics program was launched three years ago, the community college has added others for welders, drafters, computer technicians, automotive technicians and pharmacy clerks, and next month will launch yet another in machine tools.

An orientation for interested bilingual students will be held at the college Saturday.

The nascent efforts to cater to a Latino immigrant work force come as the community college system statewide reassesses its approach to vocational education in an effort to be more receptive to employers’ needs, said Nick Kremer, Cerritos College executive dean of Community, Industry & Technology Education. It also comes as community development experts bemoan the region’s shortage of skilled workers.

Other community colleges offer a smattering of similar courses. Los Angeles Mission College, for example, has a bilingual program for food-service technicians. And many--Cerritos included--offer contract education, on-site training paid for by employers. Requests for such training in Spanish, as well as Vietnamese and Chinese, are on the rise, said Norma Alvarado, director of economic and work force development for the western region of Los Angeles County Community Colleges.

But Cerritos appears to offer the most varied on-campus menu of bilingual programs and has expanded significantly over the last year.

The college also takes an unusual approach by pairing technical course work in Spanish with simultaneous instruction in vocational English, so by the third semester most students are ready to take courses in English, Alvarado said.

Still, the programs are surprisingly rare in a region whose work force is increasingly Spanish-speaking--particularly on the manufacturing room floor.

Sharon Tate, dean of work force development at East Los Angeles College, said offering instruction in a language other than English can be tricky for colleges that serve immigrants from many countries.

But the programs work well at Cerritos because “our primary audience is Spanish speakers,” Kremer said.

The classes have found a dedicated following among students like Reyes. Businesses from as far away as Rancho Cucamonga and Santa Clarita also have responded eagerly, hiring students out of the program or paying their workers to attend.

Montebello-based Minson Corp., a manufacturer of welded patio furniture, has hired students from the program and found the Spanish-language instruction enabled them to pick up the necessary welding skills more thoroughly, said human resource manager Maggie Velasquez.

The Cerritos students also “were able to move up faster” to a higher pay scale, she said.

For Cerritos, a Spanish-language marketing blitz has helped boost flagging enrollment that has plagued vocational programs across the community college system, said Linda Wong, director of the Los Angeles County Work Force Preparation and Economic Development Collaborative.

“They filled their classes to capacity,” Wong said. “Other colleges haven’t taken the same steps, for whatever reason.”