At the Table and in the Mix.

IMPROVING THE IMAGE OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION CONTINUES TO RANK AMONG THE GREATEST JOB CHALLENGES FOR VOC ED ADMINISTRATORS. WHEN IT COMES TO PRESERVING AND PROMOTING PROGRAMS, YOU'LL FIND THEM IN THE FOREFRONT.

Whether they're dealing with wary communities, intractable counselors, skeptical businesses or uninformed politicians, administrators are vocational education's first line of offense in the battle to move career and technical education from "over there" to the mainstream. They're employing a variety of strategies to do that.

"Historically, there are two questions, two points that sort of stick in my craw," sighs Gerald Paist, superintendent of Pathfinder Regional Vocational-Technical High School in Palmer, Massachusetts. "One of them is, `You're not doing well at the local high school. Why don't you try Pathfinder?' and the other is, `You don't want to go to Pathfinder. You're too smart for that, and you can't go to college from there."

These are times of daunting, heightened challenges for vocational administrators, requiring expertise in wooing business partners, providing the budget-busting technologies and equipment students need for today's workplace, keeping up with an array of new government programs and mandates, and discerning voc ed's role in their implementation. Yet the more things change the more they remain the same. Along with all the 21st-century issues, vocational administrators still face a maddening carryover from decades past: the struggle to upgrade vocational education's image internally and externally, in communities and counselors' offices alike.

Battling misconceptions about voc ed continues to be "a big challenge," says Jim Orr, president of the 1,100-member National Council of Local Administrators, an organization of individuals whose main responsibility is managing vo-tech programs.

It's "still an important part of the job," echoes Jacqueline Cullen, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Vocational Administrators. And the key to upgrading that image, vocational administrators agree--and to meeting the demands of the changing workplace--is simply getting out and stumping for career and technical education.

"I talked to a [vocational] director who kept a record last year of all the evening meetings he had attended. It came to 105," Cullen recalls. "It might be the Rotary Club, it might be PTAs, it might be meeting with different businesses and industries, it might be school board meetings. I don't know that 105 is atypical. If you're doing the job you need to be out there. If you're not at the table you're going to be dealt out."

Image is everything

Around the nation, vocational administrators are claiming their places at the table and pounding home positive messages about voc ed in a number of ways. Paist is active in the state school superintendents' association and is a past president of the local chamber of commerce. Construction trades students from Pathfinder have built homes that the chamber sold in fundraisers. Pathfinder also has hosted after-school and summer programs for elementary and middle school students, and the school's guidance counselors regularly visit sending high schools armed with recruiting brochures and videos.

Across the country in Bremerton, Wash., Mourine Anduiza works at "destroying the myths that off-site facilities are for `those' kids" by having students at Kitsap Peninsula Vocational Skills Center make promotional visits to the sending high schools. Anduiza, the center's director, also scouts out newsworthy stories about Kitsap's people and programs, with a goal of getting the center at least one positive mention each month in the local newspaper. She even sees to it that passersby are denied cheap ammunition against voc ed--by double-checking the spelling and grammar of all announcements appearing on the center's roadside message board.

At Lenape Vocational-Technical School in Ford City, Pa., "We attempt to get our students as active in the community as we can," says Assistant Director Dawn Kocher-Taylor. Culinary students set up a display at a local home show. A "literacy group" of students tutors and reads to elementary school children and people in public housing and long-term care facilities. A fall Pioneer Festival put on by the school's agriculture science department is a community favorite, featuring everything from hayrides to a car show.

"We also try to cooperate with as many community agencies as we can when they need a location to host a meeting," Kocher-Taylor adds. "For instance, this past year we hosted the first county summit on workforce development. That really brought the movers and shakers into our building."

Cliff Migal, who deals with 36 different school districts as chief executive officer of the Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development in Cincinnati, Ohio, characterizes what he does as "a public relations role, a systems-building role." He talks of the need to constantly "sell" his "wares" to schools, to "keep a handle on all the agencies public and private that want to play a role in training and workforce development, to "get the federal and state politicians into our buildings as often as we can."

It's "a constant sell," Migal says, "because voc ed still today does not have the image it should have. We need to convey that vocational education is an integral part of the total education system."

But sometimes the biggest image-building challenge facing vocational administrators comes not from the community but from inside the schools. Orr, director of Graft Career Center in Springfield, Mo., says his facility has strong business and industry support but adds with chagrin, "Our biggest battle is the sending-school counselors."

Orr has recently initiated several strategies to dissuade counselors from steering college-bound students away from Graff--inviting them to luncheons at the center, dispatching Graft counselors to meet with their peers at sending schools and sharing surveys showing that many students benefit from and enjoy vocational education. The jury's still out on the results.

Cullen says her group is "addressing [counselors' misconceptions] as an association by working with our [comprehensive high school] counselors' association in Pennsylvania." She adds, "We've also worked with our school boards association, and they're going to be sponsoring some activities this year to promote vocational-technical education and clear up some of the myths.... We have a strong relationship with the Pennsylvania Builders Association--they're engaged in a number of activities related to working with counselors, developing career fairs and developing public relations materials for vocational-technical education."

"As an association what we've really tried to do in the past five years," Cullen sums up, "is build coalitions with different groups--both business and industry based and education based."

In Alaska, Anchorage School District Vocational Director Jerry Balistreri says he's been "blessed" by strong business support and a $400,000 annual allotment from the local school board the past five years for equipment upgrades. Along with the makeover has come a new name for voc ed--"career technology." Even so, Balistreri faces counselors who think college-track youths have no business in vocational education and experiences loss of staff to academic subjects--"Like when Principal X wants to start a Japanese-language program and says, `Hmm, I've got a [vocational] retirement over here.'"

With ever-mounting evidence that workforce education is badly needed in the nation's schools to foster a pool of skilled and job-ready workers, Balistreri hopes for a "pendulum swing" toward voc ed in the coming years. In the meantime, he buttresses himself with the observation, "I wouldn't be in education--and in particular in vocational education administration--if I didn't like a challenge."

Equipped to impress

Few things improve vocational education's image more effectively than state-of-the-art equipment that meets workplace standards and students' definition of cool. But finding the money to secure the latest technology is another major challenge for vocational administrators.

"There's no way I can have a 30-station AutoCAD with Pentium 233s and AutoCAD 13," says Mike Murphy, director of secondary education for the Monroe School District in Washington state. "Never be able to afford it. So I need to keep current, but the reality is I'll never be able to keep current. It's not going to happen."

Paist notes that "if anyone wants to really poke criticism at any of the technical high schools I think that's where they start--with the observation that we're way behind local business and industry in terms of the equipment we have." Pathfinder recently secured more than $200,000 for technological equipment from surrounding town councils and is ranked No. 1 in technology among schools in western Massachusetts, Paist says. Even so, he anticipates needing to seek a bond issue before long to finance technology upgrades.

"People mistake `technology' for a bank of computers," Kocher-Taylor comments. "We need that bank of computers, but we also need applied technology and to keep pace with industry" by accessing other advanced equipment. It's vital, she says, that vocational administrators aggressively seek out grants and gifts, and that they snap up recent-vintage equipment being retired by industry. Even if it's not the latest model, "it still might be the most modern thing we've ever seen," she notes, and can still be a useful vehicle for training.

Cullen's group is working to get state or federal funds set aside for vocational equipment costs, asking business and industry to donate items to schools, and seeking out work-based learning sites where students can use advanced technology. "We're also proposing a piece of legislation that would allow businesses to get a state tax credit for donating state-of-the-art equipment," she adds.

Close interaction with business and industry is key to meeting students' technology needs, Migal stresses. Even at Great Oaks--with its four campuses, $70 million budget and reputation for being on the cutting edge of career education--money can only go so far. Students must still go to industry sites to view and use some of the more sophisticated technologies, such as advanced robotics.

"It's strategic partnering that allows you to take advantage of what the industry base has," Migal says. "If you don't do that, and don't keep up, you get in trouble."

It's the law

School to work. Welfare to work. Community sentencing. Tech prep. Job-training initiatives. Perkins reauthorization.

"One of challenges facing any vocational director across the country is keeping up with legislation," Balistreri says. "It's tough to get up to speed on developments and to understand what the implications are for your home state, your local school districts and other institutions to which you might have sensitivities."

Vocational administrators are "bombarded" by initiatives, Cullen agrees. "It's hard to tie them all together into some kind of coherent program," she says, and the inevitable consequences are "more meetings, more paperwork."

Such is particularly the case for vocational administrators whose facilities serve adults as well as secondary students.

"In Missouri we've got the one-stop-shop initiatives, welfare-to-work initiatives," says Orr. "They're filtering down, and I've found I'm more involved all the time in trying to keep up so I can have programs in place and ready to go. It's tough to keep ahead the way Congress works. They approve programs and then you're supposed to start them in July but the rules and regs aren't out until December. So you're playing a guessing game."

Greg Pierce, superintendent of Pontotoc Area Vocational-Technical School in Ada, Okla., and vice president for the administration division on the American Vocational Association's board of directors, believes community sentencing and drug court initiatives that give nonviolent offenders a chance at rehabilitation through education and technical training will have "a tremendous impact on public education."

Refining assessment systems and taking other steps to ensure the smooth implementation of such initiatives are among the many challenges on Pierce's plate.

Even established initiatives can raise vexing questions for vocational administrators. "I think we still struggle in voc ed and school-to-work about what those terms mean and who we are," says Marty Hawkins, director of industrial support services for Highline School District near Seattle, Wash.

"We have a lot of rigorous debates among my colleagues around the region and state about that. There are those traditionalists who still think, `We're voc ed, and school-to-work should be separate,' and others who think the two are very closely related."

While vocational administrators have no choice but to play the hand they're dealt by lawmakers, they hold cards that can influence future initiatives and funding decisions, Migal advises.

Great Oaks invites local, state and national politicians to visit its campuses and encourages lawmakers to attend the institute's business partnership meetings. The four campuses even organize special days in politicians' honor. The idea is not to "badger" lawmakers, Migal says, but to get Great Oaks' viewpoints across and--perhaps more important--to show elected officials what Great Oaks students can do. "That's where it really happens--once you get them involved with the kids," Migal says. "That's where the rubber meets the road."

The payback 

Marty Hawkins finds himself spending increasing amounts of time and money evaluating program effectiveness--something his school board is "really big on." It's a bit of a headache, he allows, but he's not complaining. In fact, he likes what it says about how far voc ed has come in Washington state.

"If you go back to the '80s, nobody cared how well we were doing," he recalls. "We were that program over there, the one [about which people thought], `We need a safety valve, so you guys just do your thing and don't create any waves, and we'll leave you alone.' But now we're a valued partner and, because of that, they want to know if what we're doing is working."

Kocher-Taylor doesn't need data to tell her what she's doing is working, though she can supply those facts and figures, too. For her, the proof of her own and her school's effectiveness is "the kid holding something he made," "the cake that someone's actually going to use at their wedding reception," the "spark" in the eyes of a student returning from a job shadowing or mentoring experience.

"Even with the challenges and the long days and the aggravation, when those kids succeed it makes it all worthwhile," Kocher-Taylor says.

Murphy says he's still in voc ed after 21 years because he loves "the awesome responsibility of creating a positive future for kids" and "the dynamic nature of the business of education." He calls his job "the most exciting work I've ever done."

Paist concurs, adding his appreciation of "the wonderful community of very talented, very skilled, very committed teachers" with whom he works.

Balistreri calls student success "the greatest joy" of being a vocational administrator. But he hopes it won't "sound dumb" if he adds that he genuinely likes even such mundane aspects of the job as budgeting and paperwork.

Orr figures he must be having a good time because he's still at his desk even though he no longer needs the paycheck.

"I've got 32 years in. I can retire at 30. So when it's not fun anymore I can pack it in," he says. "But I thoroughly enjoy everything I do right now. So I'm going to hang in there for a while."

RELATED ARTICLE: DIFFERENT SETTINGS, SAME CHALLENGES

Some lead vocational centers, while others are vocational directors for school systems. Some do their job at a "part-time" center where students from comprehensive high schools take vocational courses for a few hours a day. Others work at vocational high schools where students spend their entire school day receiving both vocational-technical and academic instruction.

Vocational administrators inhabit a variety of settings, and each job carries its own advantages and drawbacks.

Mourine Anduiza, director of the Kitsap Peninsula Vocational Skills Center in Bremerton, Wash., loves the "immediate student contact" in her work. "I get to know students and I get to see them grow," she says. "Whereas, when I was in a district position I was more removed from that."

On the other hand, she's responsible for student discipline, too--and program planning, budgeting, even finding qualified substitute teachers. "The best way to say it," she says, "is that I'm responsible for everything that happens on this campus."

Mike Murphy, like Anduiza, is a vocational administrator in the greater Seattle area. But he's the director of secondary education for the Monroe School District. He envies skills center directors like Anduiza, their "100 percent control over budget" and the chance to lead "their own [educational] team." In a comprehensive high school environment, he says, people in positions like his are "just one piece in a very complex organization.

Yet, Murphy suggests, "I'm in a position to influence a greater number of people" [than a skills center director]. He cites, for instance, an applied learning workshop for academic teachers he recently led, and his role in developing a districtwide guidance plan that includes "a lot" of vocational assessment. "I can influence the other 80 percent of kids who may not take a vocational class," Murphy argues, "and help them understand that job requirements and workplace skills have changed."

Dawn Kocher-Taylor was an administrator at a part-time vocational center before taking the reins as assistant director of Lenape Vocational-Technical School in Ford City, Pa.--a comprehensive vocational high school for 11th and 12th graders. Discipline is more of a problem in the full-time environment, she says, since students have more hours in which to misbehave.

There is much, however, that she prefers about the full-time setup. "It's a better educational environment," she says, "because of the way the curriculum can be structured and the opportunities for students. Everybody is focused on the same page, and that's career education."

Superintendent Gerald Paist likes the way students at Pathfinder Regional Vocational-Technical High School in Palmer, Mass., can get a real sense of what it's like to work for a living, five days a week. At Pathfinder, students alternate weeks working in their vocational areas and meeting their academic requirements. Culinary students have the time to cook entire meals and clean up afterward, Paist notes, and automotive students can begin and complete a brake job.

Whatever their job title or institutional setting, vocational administrators need flexibility, leadership and an "all kids" vision, Murphy says.

"Lots of public relations, lots of communication, lots of listening," Anduiza offers. "I think you have to listen a lot to do what we do." --E.R.