Charting a career path early


At Golden Sierra High School, up on the Georgetown Divide in El Dorado County, the community has embraced a program that many California schools have turned their backs on.
Brochures tout Golden Sierra's award-winning drafting program as part of the region's industrial history, where logging remains a thriving enterprise. School district press releases extol the success of projects done by local drafting students at the California State Fair.
And the community's lone grocery store donates a percentage of its receipts to help pay for up-to-date classroom drafting equipment.
It's no wonder students like senior Micah Willette are willing to forgo the four-year college fast track for a community college drafting certificate that can lead to a job as a drafting technician, interior designer, architectural illustrator, kitchen/bath designer or engineering aide.
"All my friends are trying to do the four-year thing and they're stressing out taking language and math classes. My plan is to go to Sierra College and get a job," Willette said.
Willette and fellow drafting students at Golden Sierra High, in Garden Valley, an hour's drive northeast of Sacramento, belong to a nationally honored vocational education program that's part of a seamless link that has students learning drafting from middle school through college.
Their rural El Dorado County school district could be the perfect example for what state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell had in mind when he established something called a "P-16 Council" last year. The aim was to better coordinate California education from preschool through college.
The council was overdue, O'Connell said, because different segments of California's education system "have been working in isolation too long."

That's not the case in the 1,900-student Black Oak Mine Unified School District, where a potential drafting career can begin at Georgetown School, a kindergarten through eighth-grade campus just down the winding road from Garden Valley.
There, middle school students will find Matt Souza, who's been teaching the basics of drafting for 23 years. They can continue drafting at nearby Golden Sierra High School, where they can take a half-dozen classes, including one in architecture. Then it's off to Sierra College in Rocklin, where an extensive Design Drafting program could lead straight to a job.
"In terms of career technical education, this is the kind of thing the superintendent would like to see," said Sue Stickel, California deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction and liaison to the P-16 Council.
A growing number of educators say vocational ed programs - commonly referred to as career technical education - have been neglected in middle schools and high schools as school districts focus their attention on academic coursework designed to prepare students for four-year colleges.
"Career technical programs have been decimated in the last 10 to 12 years. A lot of kids got left out," said Skip Davies, California Community Colleges interim vice chancellor.
Middle school, he said, is a critical juncture for getting students interested in career technical education programs such as drafting.
"Seventh and eighth grade is where kids start falling off the college academic track," Davies said.
He said he believes the $20 million in grants pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to help strengthen the link between middle school, high school and community college vocational education programs will help.
Fred Kendell, Golden Sierra's drafting teacher since 1999, knows he's bucking the odds by plugging ahead with his program.
"The education system has systematically gotten rid of vocational education," Kendell said. "I want kids to be able to walk into Sierra College and have drafting be their easiest class."
Sierra College's Design Drafting program offers associate of arts and associate of science degrees and certificates with either an architectural or a mechanical orientation.
Steve Jung, Sierra College drafting instructor, said the job opportunities for drafting students, particularly in places like booming south Placer County, are very good.
Jung lived in Georgetown for 17 years. He said drafting, and vocational education in general, are a fixture in the local schools because of "the culture of the community."
"They're blue-collar people, they're trade people," he said of the area's residents. "They don't have any false impressions that all their kids are going to be doctors and lawyers."
Without that community connection, teachers like Kendell say they'd be hard-pressed to continue their programs. Over the years, he's had to rely on alternate funding sources - including money from selling garage plans designed by Kendell's mechanical and architectural drawing students.
Virgil Toothaker, an El Dorado County building department supervisor, came up with the idea of selling the plans at the county office while he was helping a Golden Sierra shop teacher grade student-drawn work.

"I noticed the plans were getting better and better," Toothaker said. "I said these plans are as nice if not nicer than professional architects' plans."
He soon created the High School Garage Project, tapping into a popular market. Toothaker said people who came to his department to purchase custom garage plans were impressed. "The kids did this?" he said they would ask.
The project brings in about $2,500 a year to Kendell's drafting program. Union Mine High, another El Dorado County school, also is now involved.
Mar-Val? Food Store, Georgetown's lone full-service grocery store, also assists financially. Since 1993, Mar-Val? has contributed more than $134,000 to programs in the Black Oak district, including about $2,800 annually to the drafting programs at Georgetown and Golden Sierra, said Greg Marquardt, the store's manager.
At Georgetown School, about 100 students are enrolled in Souza's Industrial Technology Explorations program. The 12-week course emphasizes hands-on learning and includes units on sheet metal, race car mass production, computer applications and, of course, drafting.
Instead of the computers and other technology that's available five miles away at Golden Sierra High, Souza's students use drafting tools from time immemorial: protractors, triangles, compasses and pencils.
During a recent class, eighth-grader Brittana McCullen? was drawing plans for a three-bedroom, two-bath house. She took drafting because her father wanted her to. "He was good at it, and he thought I would be," she said.
Like the majority of the 21 students in her class, McCullen? intends to continue her drafting education at Golden Sierra.
Souza began teaching at Georgetown School in 1982. He replaced Jung, who moved on to Golden Sierra High before finally landing at Sierra College.
It's that background that gives Jung his understanding of how the "seamless integration" of learning from middle school to high school to college works. He was doing P-16 years before O'Connell put P-16 on the state's agenda.
"The state superintendent hasn't been in office long," he said.
About the writer:
• The Bee's Walter Yost can be reached at (916) 608-7449 or wyost@sacbee.com.

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