The Weekly Newspaper of Manhattan Beach Herald Publications - El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hawthorne, Lawndale, & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 Vol. 6, No. 4 March 14, 2013 Inside Education Program UncertainFuture of Career Technical This Issue Calendar...............................2 Classifieds ...........................2 Food ..................................6-7 People ..................................2 Police Reports....................2 Politically Speaking...........3 Part of the California public school system, the Southern California Regional Occupational Center, SoCal ROC, offers high schools students as well as adults in the South Bay theory-based instructional programs that apply the knowledge through hands-on experience. Without a budget for the upcoming year, the center that has served the South Bay for 46 years is now working with local and state officials to keep the center open. Read more below. Photo courtesy of SoCal ROC. Pets.......................................5 Regional Occupational Center: Puzzle Fun ...........................4 Impacting Lives for 46 Years By Cristian Vasquez in construction or fashion design, the guidance medical assisting in nursing, which doesn’t Providing career technical education has specialists are there to speak with students seem like much but there is a major been the mission of the Southern California and to help them.” distinction,” El Segundo High School senior Regional Occupation Center since its inception These guidance counselors emphasize to Kyra Noel Wopschall said “The people you in 1967. However, the status of services and students that they can study classes pertaining meet here are great. It takes about a week resources provided by this unique educational to any career interest they might have while or two to get comfortable with the class, but resource is in an uncertain situation. in high school so that the student can obtain once you do you make a lot of good friends. Weekend across the state would receive zero dollars the courses offered at SoCal ROC also meet Also, I really wanted to be in the medicalthat I have connected with and one of themactually wrote me a letter of recommendation.entails and what type of schooling will beinvolved. In addition, more than 20 percent ofBased on Governor Jerry Brown’s recentI have also had some really excellent teachersa better understanding of what the careerbudget proposal, regional occupational centersin funding, putting at risk the continued Forecast existence of places like SoCal ROC. requirement courses, which appeal to many 4.0 student, so I found a way of getting aheadfield. I don’t have straight As and I’m not athe University of California’s A-G entrance“The unfortunate part where we are right now is that programs like ours, regional of the high school students. in my medical field career. This really helps.” occupational centers, and other career technical “I really enjoyed it here. I took the Wopschall, who will be attending Mt. education programs have no budget,” SoCal fundamentals of nursing class two semesters St. Mary’s College in the fall to complete Friday ROC Superintendent Christine A. Hoffman ago and I found out the differences between See SoCal ROC, page 2 Mostly has always funded ROC/Ps in the state ofsaid. “For the past 30-plus years, the State Cloudy California. You can imagine that is very 69˚/58˚ been here for 46 years and it is really andisconcerting to us because this place has icon in the South Bay in terms of providing career technical education to more than 9,000 Saturday students and adults.” AM Clouds/ reach high school students in six of theThe courses provided by SoCal ROC PM Sun surrounding school districts (Torrance, Palos 69˚/58˚ Beach, El Segundo and Inglewood), whichVerdes Peninsula, Redondo Beach, Manhattan agreed to participate as a consortium under a joint powers authority. As a result, all Sunday high school students in these districts have Partly at the SoCal ROC location.priority registration for the courses offered Cloudy “Guidance specialists are assigned to 69˚/57˚ districts and they will go out and talk withwork with the high schools within those the students about what their future career interests are,” Hoffman said. “Whether they want to be engineers, doctors, welders, work
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