A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

California

Baldwin Park Unified School District

The Baldwin Park Unified School District is located in Los Angeles County, 20 miles from Los Angeles. The region is very urban, and 74.1 percent of its 17,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

The district has requested $12 million under the QZAB program to establish two Computer Technology Academies at Sierra Vista and Baldwin Park High Schools. The academies would focus on vocational technology, specifically through the "A+ Service Technician" and the "Network+ Technician" certification programs. These two programs provide students with skills necessary to become certified as service and network technicians based on a worldwide standard of competency. Students will have the opportunity to obtain industry-recognized certifications upon graduation that prepare them for ongoing technology education and careers. Teachers would receive ongoing professional technology training with the most up-to-date equipment available. All high school students in the Baldwin Park district will be able to enroll in academy classes.

The bond itself will be used to modernize the structure and technology of the two sites in order to support the programs. The schools? primary partner is Intel, which has donated over $1.2 million for teacher training, development, equipment, materials and consulting services. JES & Co., a non-profit education organization, will provide the academies with curriculum, materials, and teacher training. The district expects the academies to open in the fall of 2000.

Clovis Unified School District/Fresno Unified School District

The Clovis and Fresno Unified School Districts are located in urban areas of Fresno County. In the two districts together, there are 110,000 students in 120 schools. Approximately 45 to 50 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

The districts jointly applied for $12 million under the QZAB program. Funds are being used to rehabilitate an existing warehouse/manufacturing plant to establish the 11 technological academies of the Center for Advanced Research and Technology (CART). The technological laboratory suites will be available to more than 1,600 students from the two school districts and will provide relevant, specialized experiences in agriculture, biomedicine, chemistry, design/engineering, environment, financing, information, logistics/spatial, manufacturing, and telecommunications.

The school?s partners are Microsoft (total contribution: $1,200,000), Grundfos Pump Corporation (total contribution: $563,272), Johanson Transportation (total contribution: $84,000), and Richard Lake CPA (total contribution: $60,000). These contributions from the business community, totaling $2 million, are well above the required $1,200,000. The Foundation for Clovis Schools pledged an additional $100,700 for the CART project.

In using QZABs, each district will save more than $6 million in interest payments.

Pomona Unified School District

Pomona Unified School District serves 32,701 students in 38 schools. The district has a high enrollment growth rate. In addition, 72.5 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Pomona issued $12 million in QZABs for the implementation of two educational programs in four academies. The programs are located in The Village at Indian Hill, which is within the Pueblo Elementary School site. The majority of the funds will be used to renovate two existing commercial facilities (a former mall) in order to accommodate 60 classroom spaces, a multipurpose room, a technology/multimedia production center, a commercial kitchen facility, a health academy clinical training center, and a teacher training center.

The first program includes a Technology Academy and a Hospitality Academy. These academies are known as the Business & Education, Standards in Technology and Tourism Academy Consortium (BESTT ACT). The curricula of both Academies are designed for pre-kindergarten to 12^th grade. The BESTT ACT program began in the spring of 1997 to support and organize an up-to-date approach to hospitality- and technology-centered core curriculum development within the district. The existing core curriculum in the district has been restructured and teachers are receiving help to enrich curricula.

The second program funded through QZABs is Health, Education, and Professional Teaching (HEART), which will comprise a Teaching Academy and a Health Academy. The curriculum of each academy will be geared toward professional development in the respective area. The academies will be technologically based, including the resources of field experts via the Internet and teleconferencing, and will be connected on the district?s fiber optic wide area network. Not only will students, teachers, and administrators be connected to each other, but they will also be able to access their individual portfolios via the Internet from anywhere in the world. The HEART curriculum will be available for implementation throughout the district.

Private partners in the QZAB program are FAIRPLEX/Los Angeles County Fair Association, an association of businesses such as Sheraton Hotels and Lewis Homes; the Pomona Valley Educational Foundation, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/National Aeronautical Space Administration (JPL/NASA).

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