DeStefano chats with sophomores Kyle Duffy (left) and Daniel Frizzell (center) about calzones and careers.
Searching for ways to help public-school kids who won’t get college scholarships, New Haven officials took a look inside the bakery and auto shops of a Massachusetts school.
Mayor John DeStefano made a trip Wednesday with seven city and school leaders to Shawsheen Regional Technical High School in Billerica, Mass.
The prospecting trip came as they probe the idea of opening a vocational-technical program closer to home — and in so doing, create an alternate pathway for the kids who don’t have the grades or the aspiration to snag Yale-funded college scholarships through the city’s school reform drive.
The trip began at 7 a.m. outside City Hall. DeStefano climbed into his 2004 Toyota Prius, where Alderman Marcus Paca was already waiting in the back seat. Mayoral staffer Elizabeth Benton, who specializes in education policy for the mayor, took the wheel. In total, eight city and school officials headed north, with two reporters in tow.
From the front seat, between paging through through The New York Times, Hartford Courant and Wall Street Journal, DeStefano outlined the motive behind the trip.
He said he aims to come up with a counterpart to New Haven Promise, a college scholarship program funded by Yale University and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. The program offers full tuition at state colleges for kids who live in the city, attend a public school, and keep up good behavior, a B average and 90 percent attendance.
DeStefano said when he started talking about Promise, he got a common reaction: “Oh, that’s great, but there’s a lot of kids who don’t go to college.” What about them?
The city has some vocational training scattered through high schools like Cooperative Arts and Humanities High, Career High and the new Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS). The New Haven Board of Ed runs Sound School, a regional vocational aquaculture school. But it has no comprehensive vo-tech school that prepares kids to be plumbers, bakers, hairdressers or auto mechanics.
For those trades, about 300 New Haven kids per year head over the town border to Eli Whitney Technical High School, a state-run vo-tech school in Hamden.
DeStefano said the city has long been interested in creating a more intensive program like Eli Whitney. Now might just be the time: As the state grapples with a fiscal crisis, Gov. Dannel Malloy has proposed shifting control of the state’s 17 vo-tech schools to local school districts.
New Haven is interested in taking over Eli Whitney, DeStefano said, though no concrete plans have been made.
With an eye on that possibility, he plugged Shawsheen Tech’s address into a dashboard navigator. As Benton drove through the rain and fog up I‑91, the dashboard showed the car was getting between 40 and 47 miles per gallon of city-bought gas.
After a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts, the car pulled into the U‑shaped driveway of the Shawsheen school at 100 Cook St., where a large complex breaks up a residential neighborhood.
Superintendent Charlie Lyons welcomed in the visitors, calling DeStefano a “very dear friend.” He led him directly to his office, where a picture of the mayor hangs on a wall above his desk. “I look at you every day,” said Lyons.
Lyons, a former first-selectman of Arlington, served as president of the National League of Cities right after DeStefano did.
He is now in his 25th year as director of the high school, which serves 1,340 students from five surrounding towns. Before arriving, DeStefano said Lyons has told him a lot about the school over the years. “What struck me most,” he said, was his description of the school’s relationships with employers, and the academic performance of its graduates.
“Mayor John DeStephano and our New Haven friends Welcome to Shawsheen Technical,” read the beginning of a PowerPoint presentation.
Lyons ran through some quick facts about the school, which opened in 1970. The application process is competitive — about 600 to 700 eighth-graders apply each year, and only 350 get in. It’s a “lily-white” district serving the middle class, quite different from New Haven. To get in, kids are judged based on past attendance, grades and recommendations — a process that Mayo said is prohibited in Connecticut if a school wants any state funding. Lyons rattled off some top-ranking test scores.
Then he sent sent the visitors to see the school in action.
Christine Shaw (at left in photo), the school’s director of guidance and admissions, led DeStefano, Paca and Economic Development Corporation chief Anne Haynes on a tour of the building.
The school has 19 different “shops” where kids learn technical skills.
In the bakery, culinary student Taylor Kelley, a sophomore, squeezed icing onto a Cookie Monster cupcake.
Standing by a rack of hot calzones, DeStefano talked to two other students about their career aspirations. Kyle Duffy said baking and cooking run in his family. He’s exploring whether to follow suit.
In the hair salon, the mayor chatted with cosmetology students about a recent field trip. The students are working toward becoming licensed hair dressers.
At a barber stool nearby, Melina Leon curled Danni Blais’s hair. Danni said she hits the school salon for all her hair needs.
The two seniors are among half the student body that’s focusing on career skills this week. At Shawsheen, kids alternate weeks: One week, they take all technical classes; the next, they take academic courses.
In the HVAC shop, Shaw showed off the work of some students learning how to build a refrigerator.
Students also run a small lunch operation called the Ram’s Head Restaurant, in honor of the school’s mascot. Erin Higgins served a plate of shrimp creole to a table of seven elderly ladies.
Entering the dining room, DeStefano made a beeline for the ladies’ table. They said the food is delicious, and a great deal. A main dish, such as “tender sea scallops glazed with honey butter,” costs just $6.95. A cup of coffee costs 50 cents.
“We’ve been coming here for 10 years, and we’ll be coming here 10 more,” reported one of the diners, Marion Sheridan.
The school has 42 separate businesses within it, according to Lyons. At the beginning of the year, the school gives the business a few hundred dollars. Then the business charges customers enough to cover operating costs, but not to make a profit.
The most sustainable business, according to Shaw, is the auto collision shop. It doesn’t take auto insurance, because the intent is to avoid competing with neighborhood autobody shops. The shop gets plenty of business fixing cars of students and district staff. On Wednesday, senior Ryan Fitzgerald was getting a taste of the business by power-sanding a VW, getting it ready for a new paint job.
“I might go with this trade, but I’m not positive,” he said.
Meanwhile, autobody shop instructor Dan Simard reported that he had just landed an internship for a female student, which is difficult in a male-dominated industry. “I feel pretty good,” he said.
Right now 145 seniors and 54 juniors have paid apprenticeships.
New Haven Public Schools offer some technical training — Wilbur Cross has a new automotive repair class, and students take design classes at Co-op — noted DeStefano. But there’s nothing as intensive as what Shawsheen has.
DeStefano told Shaw that New Haven’s technical offerings are fragmented between several schools. “Do you think that by clustering the technical services, you get more energy” surrounding the careers?
Shaw said yes.
DeStefano said if New Haven doesn’t take over Eli Whitney, he could see replicating a vo-tech program as a “school within a school.” If technical training is more concentrated, he predicted, the outcomes would be less “haphazard” then they are now.
Shaw stopped to show off some of the school’s outcomes pinned to a bulletin board in the hallway. They show post-secondary education and jobs as well: One kid is heading to Curry College; another has landed a welding job.
The school does a lot to keep current, said Lyons.
The school is overseen by an advisory board of 300 volunteers from the business community. They make valuable connections with the kids and often end up giving them jobs. They help keep an eye on the labor market, keep the curriculum updated, and advise the school on what equipment to buy.
Some of that advice was on display in the machine technology shop, where DeStefano chatted with instructors Joe Barrett (at center in photo) and George Squires (at right).
In the rear of the room, Shaw showed off what she described as a high-end, computer-run manufacturing machine.
EDC’s Haynes said the machine looks just like the type of equipment used in New Haven at plants like Assa Abloy and Radiall. Those places have a full workforce, she said. But when workers retire, it would be good to have a pipeline of young workers trained in city schools to replace them.
As industry changes, New Haven has quite a few technical jobs that kids could be trained for. The jobs are in information technology, engineering, software, medical devices, telecommunications and advanced manufacturing, and as lab techs, she said. Students would benefit from training for the jobs — as well as learning some soft skills for job readiness, she said.
Equipment like those manufacturing machines doesn’t come cheap. The school spends $18,500 per student. By comparison, New Haven spends about $13,000 per student, according to Superintendent Mayo. Half of Shawsheen’s operating money, and 100 percent of its transportation funding, comes from the state.
After taking his own tour, Mayo (at right in photo) said he liked what he saw. He said years ago vo-tech schools were reserved for “lower-academic achievers,” while higher achievers went to other schools. “Now that’s shifted.” He said on his tour, he saw kids engaged in a number of different ways — in the classroom as well as the shop.
“I was impressed. We certainly will be talking about this” in New Haven, Mayo said.
A vo-tech program would be a good solution for kids who won’t benefit from Promise, he said: “Not every kid is going to go to college.”
DeStefano agreed. “For a lot of our kids, it will present a pathway not necessarily to college, but to career success, wealth and happiness,” he said.
He got back back into his Prius, resolved, he said, to take a second trip: To the Eli Whitney in Hamden, to see what skills city students are learning back home.
Why was Mayo not in on this tour? Would that make too much sense. I bet he was in meetings all day. to busy being busy
[Note: The story notes that Mayo was on the trip. He's quoted. His picture's in the story too.]