Monday, January 25, 1999
High-schoolers learn at work
Variety of job choices open
BY ANDREA TORTORA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
ERLANGER — Banks, hotels and fast food restaurants will soon serve as classrooms for some Northern Kentucky students.
A partnership between businesses and schools is creating a program to educate students about available jobs and give them real-world experience at the same time.
“So many times, students come out of high school and they have general training but they are not sure where they want to go,” said Roxann Platek, assistant vice president at Huntington Bank. “It takes them a while to find the career best suited for them. We hope this will help students make that choice sooner and be better prepared.”
Sponsored by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the partnership pulled together school administrators, teachers and business leaders to create six career programs.
Two of those courses — hospitality industry and customer service/finance — will start as pilot projects in the next few weeks.
Lloyd High School in Erlanger will start the hospitality program. Conner High School in Hebron will kick off the finance course.
Students from all schools in the region will be able to participate. The goal is to have a different program at different high schools.
“This is an opportunity to extend the campus to all of Northern Kentucky,” Erlanger-Elsmere Superintendent James Molley said. “The thing about it is there are so many school districts businesses just can't partner up with one school district.”
That means teachers like Jane Arnold at Lloyd High would help students from several schools learn about jobs in food service and hospitality.
And people in the business, such as Jack Bell from the Drawbridge Estates and McDonald's, would serve as mentors.
“We are hoping we can get students to try out the work world and have some well-trained people work with them,” Ms. Arnold said.
Students are showing interest in the program. And some graduating seniors wish the program had started earlier.
“I've got one student who wants to go to culinary school and he thinks this idea would have helped him,” Ms. Arnold said.
Sue Sorrell, finance teacher at Conner High, said these elective classes will allow students to earn credits while learning real-world skills.
That means knowing what managers want and what's required for the jobs students like best.
Plans for future offerings include aviation, computer service, medical services and construction trades.
Mr. Molley said he would like to see Northern Kentucky have a program similar to what American Airlines does in Texas high schools. In that state, students who finish high school and the American Airlines aviation and travel booking classes are licensed as travel agents.
The program is an extension of the old school-to-work program. But in this case, businesses gain employees with more than basic training.
And there are plenty of students who can benefit. At Lloyd High, for example, 40 percent of graduates go to college and 60 percent go straight to work.
“The work force is saying they are having trouble finding people and we have students that can benefit from this training,” Kenton County Schools Superintendent Neil Stiegelmeyer said.
The classes, which will meet at job sites, might extend into weekend and evening work to give students the flexibility to attend.
Judy Gibbons, vice-chairwoman of the chamber's work force development committee, said she would like to see businesses conducting job fairs at the high schools.
“We realize this is not the final product,” Ms. Gibbons said. “This is a work in progress.”
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