As thousands of area students head off to college in the coming days, eager to begin the studies that will lay the foundation for their future, some of their former high school classmates have already launched their careers.
These individuals have chosen to enter the work force straight out of high school, in professions that call for hands-on experience over lengthy academic résumés.
“We’re still looking for our students to go on to postsecondary education, but it (technical education) may be a different avenue for them,” said Beverly Gushue, director of career and technical education for the City School District. “We definitely want to push the postsecondary. We’re supportive of students moving on.”
However, some say, students choosing the right career can — and most often do — earn
a good living without the benefit of a four-year college degree.
“It depends on what field you’re looking at and what field they are in,” said Joyce Esch, director of Career and Technical Education for Board of Cooperative Educational Services 1 in Perinton. “There’s huge growth in skilled industries, and they may want to open up their own business. … Electricians, plumbers and masonry workers are in demand and they earn a good salary and we all need them.”
Scores of area high school students are taking advantage of technical training programs available in city and suburban high schools.
Ryan Del Re, 18, of Henrietta began his career as an auto body technician at Vogel’s Collision on North Winton Road in June.
“I kind of fell into it. I didn’t like school. I really hated school. It really wasn’t working for me. I talked to my counselor and she was like, ‘We also have alternatives,’” Del Re said. “I finally realized this is something that I would want to do. Seeing how much you can make doing this, I said, ‘Why not?’”
With two years of technical training at BOCES combined with classroom work at Sperry High School, Del Re is starting out in a career he estimates could bring him $60,000 a year or more.
Similarly, after an internship and two years of culinary classes at BOCES 1, Tiffany Kolody, a 2007 graduate of Webster Schroeder High School, has also just begun her culinary career at Vanilla Swirls Cookie Company in Fairport Village Plaza.
“I just like working with food. It’s fun. I like to bake, that’s my main thing,” Kolody said of her decision to select a career that calls for on-the-job training.
She plans to eventually open her own bakery. She will attend Monroe Community College full time this fall and plans to eventually gain a bachelor’s degree so that she can run her own business.
Her earning potential may depend on business conditions and follow-through.
Kolody’s decision to mix vocational and academics coincides with a key finding in the U.S. Department of Education’s 2004 National Assessment of Vocational Education, which says: “Students who take both a strong academic curriculum and a vocational program of study may have better outcomes than those who take one or the other.”
Just 13 percent of high school graduates nationally are doing this, the report says.
Vanilla Swirls owner Tina Bennett, who has a college degree in business and started her business four years ago after years in another profession, agrees that a college degree helps. But, she estimates, 90 percent of people with successful culinary arts careers don’t have college degrees.
“That’s what people typically think, that you have to go straight to college in order to get a job. But there are some people that are incredibly successful that didn’t, that did training (in a field) and then went on to open their own business,” Bennett said. “When you’re finally doing what you love, it’s not a job anymore.”
In public schools in Monroe County, as elsewhere in the state, vocational education is chiefly the domain of BOCES, which has trained thousands of students from suburban school districts for technical careers.
Kolody’s path is just what Esch said students educated in the trades should do — continue learning as they work. In fact, Esch said, many BOCES students do go on to college — evidenced by the agency’s 60 percent to 70 percent college placement rate.
Agency officials say there’s been a greater emphasis on blending technical and academic skills within the last dozen years, in part because workplaces have changed over the years.
“Studies show most people will change careers seven times in their lives,” Esch said. “The days when you will be with a same company for life are gone.”
While high tech has been promoted as the key to future growth across the region, there’s still a great need for such traditional hands-on careers as plumbers, electricians, masons, carpenters, auto mechanics, health care and cosmeticians.
The U.S. Departments of Labor and Education say advanced manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, construction, energy, financial services, health care, homeland security, information technology, transportation and retail are “high growth industries.” But a shortage of skilled workers in such areas as health care and construction has sent employers scrambling to fill vacancies.
“There’s always a demand for construction, even in our town, where Kodak is going away and Xerox is shrinking,” said Carl Colotti, apprentice training coordinator for Plumbing & Heating Union Local 13. “There’s always a need for new buildings and remodeling.”
Local 13 is one of many unions in the area accepting applications for apprenticeships each year. Others include carpenters, electricians, sheet metal workers, painters, sprinkler fitters, roofers, ironworkers and outside line repair apprenticeships.
Union apprenticeships — which generally last five years — can prepare workers for more complex work at higher pay as journeymen, or when combined with college courses and other specialized training courses can lead to careers in construction management, design or planning.
Through partnerships with colleges, some union programs allow apprentices to earn college credits while being trained.
Rick D’Ambrosia, 32, of Chili has been a working plumber for seven years. He offered advice for high schoolers who want to pursue a construction-related career, after recently taking a union-required, 30-question math exam at Plumbers Union Local 13.
“Go to join a union and work in skilled labor, and get your education. That’s the only way to go.”
D’Ambrosia has done just that. He began working part time as a plumber at Wegmans in 1993, and after high school he enrolled at the State University College of Technology at Alfred to study plumbing, heating and air conditioning, earning an associate degree in 1995.
Since graduating, he’s done mechanical and refrigeration work for Wegmans.
Unions in the Rochester region usually fill 10 to 20 open apprentice training positions each year. Eligibility requirements include being 18 or older, having a high school diploma, reliable transportation and, in some cases, passing a math aptitude test.
First-year apprentices’ starting hourly salary is usually in the low teens. When apprentices earn journeyman status, their salaries plus benefits range from $25 to $30 an hour.
“There’s a big difference between owing $80,000 by the time you get out of college and earning $180,000 during those same years,” said Carl Nasca, training coordinator with the Carpentry Union Local No. 85 training center in Chili.
Steering students toward trade careers isn’t a high priority in high schools.
“There aren’t very many guidance counselors that point anybody toward the trades. … We need people in the offices — the school administrators themselves — to start pointing people, or at least giving the option. That’s where I think the ball gets dropped, there’s not that option. Everyone in school points them toward school (college) again,” said Carl Colotti, apprentice training coordinator for Plumbing and Heating Local No. 13 in Rochester.
Jimmy Haynes, training director of Laborers Local No. 435, said his union has a working membership of about 700, and most of the union’s 40 apprentices are working. However, he sees a lack of commitment by young people in doing such things as enduring 200 hours of classroom training in Oswego.
Increasing the pool of apprentices in Rochester — particularly among minorities — is key to relieving the downward spiral of poverty, Haynes said.
“We have a lot of people out there working. These people are making good money. You have to work for it. You have to want it.”
The lack of skilled precision workers in the area is prompting businesses in our area to recruit in Canada, said Esch.
And there’s a general concern among employers in some trade professions about the lack of skilled laborers.
When asked about the availability of young skilled workers in the auto trades, Barry Holtz, owner of Vogel’s Collision, said, “There’s not many people that want to do this kind of work anymore. It’s hard work.”
The educational challenge, said Esch, is to not only train students technically, but also teach them “fundamental workplace skills such as problem-solving, teamwork, self-advocacy, communication skills.”
She said area employers generally say that although they can “teach someone a new skill set on a job, I can’t teach them how to problem-solve or how to work as a team or be flexible.”
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 72 percent of 10th-graders planned to get a bachelor’s degree or higher. That’s up from 41 percent and 59 percent of sophomores in 1980 and 1990, respectively, the report said.
Over the years the emphasis on vocational training — now called technical education — has decreased with the greater emphasis on standardized testing and academically preparing students to compete globally.
The City School District is seeking to provide career options, with programs such as one at East High School that trains students to become city firefighters.
Most technical education programs are based in the district’s four themed high schools at Edison, where masonry, carpentry, HVAC, electrical, photography and digital imaging and the bulk of other technical training is taught. But tech ed is being added at other city high schools, with the hope that increasing options will improve the district’s low graduation rate.
“We want to have them in all high schools,” said Gushue. “People (within the district) are realizing that English, math and social studies aren’t for everybody.”
GMCLENDN@DemocratandChronicle.com
Gary McLendon
Staff writer
