Sunday, March 05, 2006
BY JOE RYAN
Star-Ledger Staff

Josan Jorvina leaned over a keyboard at Union County Magnet High School last week and designed her dream home, click by click.

The two-story Georgian included a backyard deck and a dance floor in the living room. Jorvina, an 18-year-old senior from Rahway, laid out the plans with state-of-the-art architecture software her school bought through the Carl D. Perkins Act.

The act provides vocational-technical schools with money for hands-on equipment. For the second straight year, President Bush is proposing to scrap it.

"That would have a dramatic effect on all county vocational programs throughout the state," said Thomas Bistocchi, superintendent of the Union County Vocational Technical Schools, including the Magnet High School.

New Jersey received about $24.7 million of the $1.3 billion in Perkins aid awarded in Washington last year. County vocational schools and community colleges in New Jersey used it for an array of equipment to help students learn the ropes of engineering, plumbing, cosmetology, welding and a host of other trades.

The president's proposed budget, released last month, would eliminate most of the money and redirect the remainder through No Child Left Behind initiatives to high schools emphasizing traditional academics.

"Some of these programs focus on too few students and help too few students," said Chad Colby, U.S. Department of Education spokesman, referring to vocational and technical schools.

Congress rejected the move last year. Bistocchi and supporters of vocational schools nationwide are pushing lawmakers to do the same when they vote on the budget this fall.

Perkins funding accounts for about $500,000 of the Union County Vocational Technical Schools' $16 million budget. The institution, on a grassy campus beside the Ash Brook Reservation in Scotch Plains, serves about 1,400 students enrolled in four separate schools.

The selective Magnet High School specializes in engineering, math, science and technology. Students graduate with up to a year of college credit. Classrooms buzz with young men and women deconstructing hard-drives and designing robots.

A few yards away, inside the Vocational Technical High School, young men in jeans and work boots last week were installing metal air conditioning ducts over a skeleton of 2-by-4s, amid the whir of electric drills.
The silver ducts, the 2-by-4s and the drills all came through Perkins money. Steve Hanyecz teaches heating, air conditioning and ventilation at the school. He said it would be tough to run his class without the supplies.
"The hands-on is imperative to our trade," he said. "You can't learn this stuff from books."

Down the hall, Frank Furino showed off his cosmetology classroom stocked with barber's chairs, blow dryers and PowerPoint computer equipment to display the latest beauty techniques.
"Every computer we have came through Perkins," said Furino, who has been busy on-line lobbying lawmakers to reject the cuts.

Judy Savage is executive director of the New Jersey Council of County Vocational-Technical Schools and said Perkins is one of the only sources for schools to keep pace with technology.

"This money is really what makes the difference between classroom learning and real hands-on learning," she said.

Joe Ryan may be reached at jryan@starledger.com or (908) 302-1508.

©2006 The Star Ledger