SAN FRANCISCO -- When Mark Alvarado was hired at Mission High School five years ago to help build its activities program, he noticed the students were struggling with bigger problems than getting a date for the prom.
Situated in a tough urban neighborhood of San Francisco, Mission High School was rife with truancy problems, drugs and gang violence. Alvarado believed these kids needed to be taught practical skills to capture their interest and to keep them out of trouble.
Most Mission High kids were not on the fast track to college, Alvarado said, and needed a realistic approach to entering the job market immediately following graduation.
Thus the Multicultural Foundation for Technology and Science was born. Its purpose was to teach students from all backgrounds computer programming and multimedia skills in order to give them skills to earn a livable salary, offer a strong network to help place them in jobs, as well as adding a healthy dose of self-esteem.
"The kids graduating from Mission High are Web masters," Alvarado said, weaving his way through the computer lab rooms, each filled with a sea of technical equipment. "Not only are they learning advanced programming and multimedia skills, they are also managing the infrastructure of the foundation."
This self-supporting framework sets the foundation apart from other career-track curricula. The computers, software and servers are maintained by the students, and the foundation is funded by night computer classes taught to members of the community, who pay for classes on a sliding scale.
Mission High School was one of the first high schools in California to receive Digital High funding from the government -- a grant which stipulates that by 2015 all high schools in California will have up-to-date computer equipment.
Although the night classes help support the organization financially, the funds are not covering all of the costs. And despite a $20,000 grant from the Gap Foundation, the money is running out.
"Failure is not an option," Alvarado said. "The kids here aren't falling through the cracks. They're falling down. The foundation helps some of them get back up."
Because Mission High School is a career high school, students can choose from one of four tracks: health, law, business or technology. The students on the technology track decide whether they want to take the programming or multimedia route, and, for four years, learn such programs as Java, Visual Basic and Dreamweaver.
Along with the programming classes, students are also taught "soft skills" such as how to conduct themselves during a job interview, proper work attire and manners.
Alvarado said the school board and the administration have been unanimously supportive of the foundation's presence in the high school, but some of its biggest critics come from the teachers themselves.
"They'll say, 'Why are we buying computers when I don't have enough books in my class?'" Alvarado said. "I don't blame them for being angry."
Some critics believe incorporating technology into the curriculum shouldn't come at the expense of teaching the basics.
"We need to have high expectations for all kids," said Alan Warhaftig, coordinator for Learning in the Real World, a nonprofit organization that examines the pros and cons of computers in schools. "What have they subtracted in their curriculum to give more importance to technology? It would be wrong to take a kid out of a high school in 2001 without computing skills. But I don't know that looking at a computer screen makes you smarter, or a more knowledgeable voter."
While this may be true, Erik Espinoza was on the verge of dropping out of Mission High before he enrolled in the program. Now he works at the high school maintaining the network and consults for private businesses on the side, sometimes demanding $150 an hour.
"Oh yeah, it's a good career," said Espinoza, who graduated in 1999 and was one of the foundation's first employees. "I got this interest that just won't go away. I became a big computer nerd."
