Vocational Education

The Kennett Consolidated School District will spend about $20,000 to comply with federal asbestos-removal regulations. The school board voted 9-0 Monday night to hire Hall-Kimbrell Environmental Management Inc. to complete a study of where asbestos exists in school property by Oct. 12, as required by federal law. Joseph Boyle, school board secretary, said that he expected all the districts in the county to join in hiring the consultant....

The Delaware County Intermediate Unit is seeking a $500,000 federal grant to assist local vocational-education students who need help in basic reading and math skills. The computer-assisted program, which also uses individual instruction, would help students with the math and reading skills that they need to succeed in their classes, said Thomas Pivnichny, director of vocational education. Pre-employment skills, such as interviewing and resume writing, also would be incorporated into the program, Pivnichny said after the Intermediate Unit board meeting Thursday night.

Daniel Borelli, 75, an educator in the Lower Camden County Regional School District for nearly three decades, died Tuesday at Underwood-Memorial Hospital, Woodbury. He was a lifelong resident of the Malaga section of Franklin Township. Mr. Borelli was the district's director of vocational education when he retired in 1986. He joined the district in 1958 as an industrial-arts teacher at Edgewood Regional High School in Winslow. He was promoted to supervisor of vocational education for the district in 1975 and held several administrative posts over the years.

Gloucester County Vocational-Technical School officials last night unveiled a five-year plan that includes beginning several new programs and acquiring new equipment to be funded mainly through state and federal money. During a news conference at the Deptford Township school, Superintendent Victor C. Morella said the school plans to begin a program this summer to train displaced female workers in machine work, welding, plumbing and heating and air-conditioning repair Morella said the federally funded Job Training Partnership Act would pay the $3,025 cost for tuition, books and supplies for each of the 45 women the program will enroll.

A resident who said he was "disillusioned by a lack of positive feedback" from the schools for high-achieving students has called on the Winslow Township school board to establish a student-recognition policy. Fred Jacques of Berlin, whose three children attend one of the district's four schools, told board members at a meeting Tuesday night that he was concerned because two of his children have become less enthusiastic about school. Jacques stressed that "the teachers on an individual basis are doing a good job" in responding positively to high-achieving students.

Glassboro State College will lose several degree programs, reduce enrollment by 200 students and cut about 25 faculty positions under a strategic plan its board of trustees unanimously adopted yesterday. It will also take on several new initiatives, among them a school of engineering, a department of athletics, a school of communications and a distinguished professor chair. The vote on the plan turned out to be a referendum on College President Herman James. The college has been thrown into an uproar over the plan, and James has been at the center of much of the controversy.

A 38-member advisory council has recommended that the Northern Chester Vocational Technical School in Phoenixville and the Central Vocational Technical School in Caln be managed by the same operating committee as part of an effort to overcome declining enrollment at the schools. The committee, in a report released Wednesday, recommended a number of program changes designed to make vocational education attractive to more students, including allowing college-bound students to take vocational courses and opening classes to adults.

An educational program run by civic leader Samuel L. Evans, who has been seeking a $600,000 emergency grant from the city, costs twice as much to operate per student as similar programs in the Philadelphia area, a state education official concluded before the program's state funding was suspended last summer. But the same official, John Meerbach, chief of student services for the state Department of Education, stated in a memorandum June 2 that Evans' American Foundation for Negro Affairs (AFNA)

A majority of Chester County's public school districts have voted to approve a 16.4 percent increase in the Chester County Intermediate Unit's 1988-89 budget. The Intermediate Unit is a countywide education service financed by local school districts and state money. It provides special education programs for students of all 12 Chester County public school districts and sponsors teacher-training courses and special programs for schools. Nine of the county's 12 school districts have already approved the Intermediate Unit budget.

MARION B.W. HOLMES had a passion for education, especially the kind that prepares students for good jobs after they leave school. It's called vocational training, and for years Marion directed the teaching of useful skills for young people in the Philadelphia School District. Among the problems she dealt with was a bureacratic snafu in the state Department of Education in the early '90s that left many shop classes in city schools closed and dark. It seemed that the state had established a kind of Catch-22 by requiring high-school students to take 21 academic courses to graduate, while also requiring vocational-technical students to take three vocational classes a day. There weren't enough hours in a day to meet those rules.