Recreating Emerson

The Buffalo City School District wants to create more schools like Emerson Vocational High School (my name, not theirs). Emerson is a vocational school (read job training) with a focus on the “culinary arts” - a fancy way of saying cooking. It also has a restaurant management program in it as well. The school is so popular that it is turning down applicants and opened up a 9^th grade “feeder schools” at former PS #28. This feeder school targets the 9^th grade classes while Emerson focuses on the 10^th graders  on up. Because of the popularity of the school, there is talk of expanding to a second school and looking at different job training areas as well.
In 9^th grade the students focus on the basics of education and of restaurant work and the standards language arts, social studies, science, and mathematics curriculum. Formal kitchen work begins in the 10^th grade. The school even has, in the districts words, a successful restaurant that the students run.
This sounds nice – and I've seen “problem” students leave standard public schools, go to vocational schools and become “successful students.” This means that they graduate on time (in four years) and can go out in the world and find a job.
I've also seen them be prepared for nothing more than wage labor. They have their certificates in cooking, auto work, agriculture, etc. and can do nothing else. They are pigeon-holed into a specific field. And if they bottom out in those careers, the only way is down the wage ladder. From auto mechanic to grocery clerk or other menial labor. Rare is it, in my 15 years as a teacher, that I have seen a vocational ed student actually climb the “ladder of success.” The only time that has happened is because their parents have money and the students go out with rich parents backing them up and covering their failures for them or setting them up for “success.”
Everyone else? Chose the wrong birth parents I guess.
And focusing on the field of restaurant work – having worked in the restaurant field for over a decade of my life, I never broke $20,000 a year. Working full time and grabbing all the overtime I could get. Adjusted for inflation, will these students do any better? If they don't get into management, with longer hours, probably not.
And Buffalo / Western New York's restaurant field is saturated beyond capacity with workers. There is an over-staffing of the surplus army of cooks, which keeps wages and benefits down. On top of that, I read in the Buffalo News every week (almost) of another restaurant closing down. Sure another pops up, but can the communities of WNY support all these restaurants? Even with the hopeful growth of the Buffalo – Niagara Medical Corridor?
Let's face it - The Emerson / job training school idea is nice, but it prepares students for one thing only. And restaurant workers are a dime a dozen. Granted, there are some places that pay good (Salvatore's anything, the Marriott, to name two), but the competition to get in there is high and the turnover is low.
I could put auto shops in there as well. Computer repair shops. Beauty salons. Coffee & Dessert shops. You name it. The community can only support only so much and then – poof. Dream goes down the drain or up in smoke (choose your metaphor).
About the management courses: Do they teach about co-ops? Democratic operation of the business? Or do they focus on the sole proprietorship? (All profits for one and that one is me.) Richard Wolfe and Gar Alperowitz both speak and write about worker owned, worker run cooperatives. It's a different way of running a business, and granted, in a capitalist economy you still have to deal with monopoly competition and the problems of capitalism. My question is – can they begin to make a difference in breaking us away from capitalism? First at the local level and then building up? Granted this is optimistic thinking about changing the way people think about the economy. Some people call it “pie in the sky” thinking.
That's a piece of pie that I'll take a slice of. And enjoy.
Blueberry please.
Leave the raspberry for the capitalists.


Update November 22, 2015
Emerson's proper name is the “Emerson School of Hospitality.” Nice sound. To bad the future for people in restaurant work isn't so nice sounding. Low wages, long hours, and for the food servers (formerly waiters and waitresses) lousy tips.
A few interesting facts:

• 80% of the school is minority (African, Latino(a), and Asian)
  
• 25% of the school is special education
  
• The graduation rate for the school is 80%
  

First: The article admits that not every student that graduates is going into the “hospitality” business. So, why are they being funneled into the program? One would think that the district would be trying to educate people in this program that wanted to go into it. That's logical.

Second: The large minority population concerns me. Why are they being funneled into this program? In my reading of the Transitional Program for Black Americans it points out how government efforts to help build up “black capitalism” focused on businesses that met the “needs” of the black community. It also raised the question on how many barbershops and hair salons a community needs (or can support). I would add restaurants and food trucks to this. And if the Buffalo School District gets its way, computer stores and repair shops and other small businesses that employ very few people and pay very little.

Third: 25% of the school is special education? Why? Is that all these students are capable of is vocational education? I have special education students that are taking Honors and Advanced Placement classes and do quite well in them. The tag of “special education” should never condemn a person to a mediocre or sub-standard education. These students are bright, talented, gifted, and, when given a a chance and the support that they need, very highly capable. Many of them learn to work with their “learning style” and go on to college and succeed in their chosen career fields. That requires society to get over the idea that special education = stupid. It means changing our attitude towards them.

While I see vocational education programs as being a part of the “recipe for success,” the Buffalo School District, and others, needs to make sure that they avoid using these programs as a dumping ground for undesirable students and a quick path to increasing graduation rates.

It's about success in life that counts.

Is that being taught?

What's that recipe look like?