Sweetwater Union High School District Superintendent Jesus Gandara has big plans for reinvigorating what used to be called vocational education.
Gandara said that what's now called career technical education isn't about teaching students to be plumbers, but about giving them the skills to own the plumbing business. Gandara wants those who choose not to go to college to graduate with skills that will give them an edge for jobs such as deep-sea welder or mason.
His vision calls for tapping into Gates Foundation money, getting a piece of city land to build a new school, enlisting Stanford University experts to guide reforms and hiring a career technical education czar.
It's but a dream at the moment. Gandara acknowledged that Stanford and Gates don't even know about his plans yet, and Chula Vista's mayor said the city is a long way from a land deal with the Sweetwater district.
And some think Gandara has taken a step backward by recommending that Sweetwater withdraw from a South County task force on career technical education. The task force had brought together representatives from Sweetwater, Southwestern College, union leaders, a construction trades school director and elected officials to chart the course for job training for South County students.
County school board member Nick Aguilar has championed the regional approach and helped organize the task force in late 2006. Last month, Sweetwater district trustees considered adopting Gandara's recommendation to abandon the task force, but Aguilar persuaded them to put off a vote until their meeting on Monday.
Aguilar called Sweetwater's possible withdrawal from the task force “troubling.”
“I felt like Gandara hijacked the task force and kicked off Southwestern College,” he said.
Southwestern College President Raj Chopra doesn't agree. He said the college has already developed many career preparation paths, including automotive technology, police academy, dental hygiene and surgical technology. Chopra said the college stands ready to support Sweetwater once the high school district decides what it wants to teach and how it wants to teach it.
Gandara said the task force had too many players and philosophies.
“We need to first determine ourselves what we're going to do,” he said. Possibilities include building a construction trades high school, creating career prep academies within existing high schools, retooling South County's high school for dropouts as a job training campus, and more.
Aguilar acknowledged that the task force, co-chaired by the Sweetwater superintendent and the Southwestern president, has made little progress since it was launched in late 2006. It was slowed in part by leadership changes. Gandara signed on as a co-chair just months into his arrival as superintendent, and Southwestern had three different presidents last year.
One of those presidents was Greg Sandoval. Because he's also a trustee of the Sweetwater district, his ascension to the interim presidency of the college – and therefore to co-chairman of the task force – put a third Sweetwater board member on the task force.
Three is a majority of the five-member Sweetwater board, and the task force stalled over worries that action taken by the task force could therefore also be construed as an action by the Sweetwater district without all its trustees' input, Aguilar said.
Gandara said college preparation courses will be the default curriculum for the 42,000 seventh-through 12th-graders who attend Sweetwater schools. The goal is for Sweetwater's curriculum to do a better job of preparing high school students simultaneously for college and work.
Sweetwater's career tech push has picked up momentum since Gandara's arrival two years ago.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has widely promoted career technical education and pushed to increase funding for high school job training. Recent legislation has redirected job-training funds into high schools from adult education programs. Sweetwater's recently completed strategic plan states that the district's mission is the “development of the skills necessary to succeed in higher education and the world of work.”
Chris Moran: (619) 498-6637; chris.moran@uniontrib.com
