Unnecessary Arguments : Business, Education Leaders Fight While Local Schools Find Solutions

At one of the many conferences held recently on the outlook for Los Angeles and the Southern California region five years after the riots, experts from the worlds of business and education called for more vocational training to prepare youngsters for local industries.

Yet there was confusion over the very terms “training,” “vocational” and “education.” Industrial representatives complained that schools were turning out graduates unfit for work, and educators said industry was only paying lip service to business-education partnerships. Both sides got bogged down in arguments over training and jobs.

But the arguments were unnecessary. Both business people and educators at the Milken Institute conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center wanted the same thing: high school graduates and job entrants who can think for themselves and communicate.

Those qualities, along with computer skills, it was understood, would allow youngsters to tackle jobs as varied as that of fabric cutter in the apparel industry or animator in the motion picture industry--jobs that are available right now at $20,000 to $40,000 a year for high school graduates.

But nobody was calling for classes in specific industrial skills. The movie industry wants people who “know how to learn,” said Kathleen Milnes, vice president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. On-the-job training can teach the more specialized skills.

The apparel industry “needs graduates who can read, write, communicate and be presentable,” said Ilse Metchek, director of the California Fashion Assn. The knowledge of fabric can be learned in entry-level jobs.

Times have changed. Business people are asking for a new approach to vocational training, something broader than traditional vocational education, which is declining in enrollment.

And, as it happens, there are new approaches being introduced now at Narbonne and San Pedro high schools, Dana Middle School and 25 other Harbor area elementary, middle and high schools.

At Narbonne, in Harbor City, 30 students have created a computer network and opened it up for Internet accounts, which 1,000 other students use, says teacher Patrick Luce.

“The students manage the network and maintain it,” Luce explains.

At Dana Middle School in San Pedro, students get to experiment at home with new, specially designed laptop computers called e-Mates, a new product from Apple Computer Inc.

“They get to familiarize themselves with word processing,” says teacher John Lenhardt.

Computer networks link schools in the Narbonne-San Pedro area with Boys and Girls Clubs, where students organize community phone banks, explains Richard Vladovic, administrator of the regional school cluster.

These are not technology courses, Lenhardt explains.

“The students are not merely learning computer programs, but how to communicate and learn, to organize and work with others.”

The Narbonne-San Pedro schools are part of Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN), the 300-school reform program begun in 1993 to decentralize school decision-making and to foster collaboration with business.

A grant from the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC helped them buy 67 e-Mates at $700 apiece. AT&T; has given a grant to keep media labs at Dana open extra hours. Students who become proficient on computers earn Microsoft “engineer certificates.”

“Some of my students at the high school have job offers from computer firms,” Luce reports. “But a very small percentage will go into computer fields,” he says. Rather, “they will all work with computers to do whatever job they choose: teacher, chemist, factory worker,” says Luce, whose training is in chemistry, a subject he still teaches in a 65-hour workweek that includes his duties as team leader of the Narbonne-San Pedro cluster.

The program’s significance is that it aims to take students from early elementary through high school in an integrated curriculum and to prepare them not only for college but also for jobs directly after high school.

There are many such jobs around these days. Movie and television production is enjoying its greatest boom in history, says Milnes. The industry, which is hiring cartoon animators while still in high school, has jobs that young people can take while going to community colleges to further their knowledge and careers.

Similarly, the apparel industry, which employs more than 150,000 in Los Angeles and Orange counties, is eager to hire “pattern makers and cutters, but also shipping clerks, salespeople,” says Metchek. People who enter the industry can further their education at six community colleges that teach design, production and merchandising.

If there is a problem, it’s that the young people from many backgrounds who today fill Southern California may not know about the opportunities--may not know, in fact, how businesses work or jobs are done.

“They need to be told about work they can do, jobs they can get with a high school education,” says Day Higuchi, the reform-minded president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles union.

Business needs to reach out and tell them, says Patsy Flanigan, head of Flanigan Farms (no relation to the columnist), a Culver City producer of health foods. “More field trips need to be available so that students can get a sense of what business is all about,” she says.

The movie industry has a good record of reaching out to bring students in on field trips--Paramount with Hollywood High, 20th Century Fox with Dorsey High, Sony Pictures with the Culver City schools and so forth.

But not every industry does such a good job and that’s a source of contention, says Michael Roos, head of the LEARN program.

Still, if there is one message in all the conferences being held at this time, it’s that contention must yield to cooperation. In Southern California, fortunately, we have jobs that need doing and people who need work. If we can bring the two together, the next five years will be a time to look forward to.

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Vocational Volume

Enrollment in traditional vocational education programs offered by the Los Angeles Unified School District fell from 51,700 in 1993-94 to 44,210 in 1995-96

Technology: 17,288

Business: 11,517

Consumer home economics **: 8,821

Trade/industrial: 2,783

Occupational home economics***: 1,571

Agriculture: 1,312

Health careers: 418

* Numbers are for secondary school programs only and do not include students registered for regional occupational programs offered through the district’s adult education division.

** Includes culinary arts

*** Includes child development

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District

Researched by JENNIFER OLDHAM / Los Angeles Times