Each year for the past quarter century, a group of students from Glenbrook High School District 225 has planned, designed and built a house on prime north suburban land.
Each house was a tangible symbol-worth several hundred thousand dollars- of the ingenuity and teamwork of students in that year`s class.
But last week, school officials revealed that they had decided to scuttle the building-trades program at Glenbrook North and South High Schools.
The program has fallen victim to shrinking student interest and changing times, factors that add up to too much money being spent to justify the return, according to Supt. Jean McGrew.
About 99 percent of the 4,000 students at the two schools in Glenview and Northbrook are headed for college. Enrollment in the building program, geared for those headed toward vocational careers, has diminished over seven or eight years to the point that it has only 15 students.
”We have to redirect our industrial education energies into high-tech areas like robotics if we are going to meet the vocational students` needs in the `90s and through the year 2000,” McGrew said.
But building-trades educators say the demise of the Glenbrook program is an anomaly. In Illinois, there are about two dozen such programs at the more than 670 high schools, and that number is ”holding steady,” said John Kolpatz, a consultant with the state Board of Education.
”There is a continuing demand from the construction industry (for building-trades students), so I would say the building-trades schools are healthy and doing well,” he said.
The house-building program at Lake County Area Vocational Center/System in Grayslake is robust and has grown steadily since its foundation in 1977, according to Dick Glogovsky, the school`s director.
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”We started with about 65 students and now have about 113,” Glogovsky said. ”About 60 to 70 percent of our students go on to the trades, while the rest go to higher education, either a two-year or a four-year college.”
The vocational center draws students from the 15 Lake County high schools and from three in McHenry County. Those districts pay students`
tuition to the center.
The home-building in Glenbrook goes beyond carpentry, plumbing and wiring: Interior-design students decorate the houses, horticulture students plan and plant the landscaping and architecture students compete to have designs picked for the house that will be built the next year.
In Lake County, Glogovsky said, students are trained in electrical skills, plumbing, carpentry and other skills. ”Some open their own contracting businesses,” Glogovsky said.
His program earns about 20 percent profit a year from the students`
construction projects, but Glogovsky declined to give figures.
”All of that money goes right back into the program to buy supplies and tools,” Glogovsky said.
In recent years, profit margins on the Glenview houses have declined, McGrew said. The district made only $6,000 on the last house it sold, which went for $430,000, he said.
”Although our intention is instruction, not profit, the money made from one house is needed to put into the next,” he said. Last year`s student- built house is up for sale at $487,500, so the profit has yet to be realized.
For several years, Glenbrook`s homes have been built on 1/2 acres of prime lots the district owns at the edge of Sportsman Golf Course in Northbrook.
”The location could command larger houses and more money,” the superintendent said. He said the district`s vacant property at the site is worth about $700,000 to $900,000.
”That amount of money sunk into the ground could better be used elsewhere,” McGrew said, adding that the district plans to sell the land and channel the money into other programs.
But the decision to cease construction does not mean the district will abandon vocational training, McGrew said.
The school district`s industrial education committee will meet with business and industry officials to learn about alternative training programs to give students hands-on experience, he said. One option might be teaming students with private builders, McGrew said.
In Lake County, Glogovsky`s students are building this year`s house just a few blocks from the school, under the supervision of two teachers and a teacher`s aide.
”We`re doing well,” Glogovsky said.