"Long gone are the days when you could "get your car fixed in a jiffy" by a cigar-chomping, greasy coverall-wearing, bearded gas station attendant, according to Tom Martin, an auto-tech teacher at Eastside Technical Center and ASE Certified Master Engine Mechanic.
As cars become more complex, so does the knowledge needed to repair them; hence more in-depth and continuing education is needed for mechanics, beginning in high school. The process of fixing everyday automotive problems is becoming more advanced, and so is the compensation for today's mechanics. Fortunately for Lexington students who want an automotive career, Eastside has recently been awarded the Automotive Industry Planning Council's Award of Excellence, making it first in the nation among high school automotive programs.
The higher skill set and salary expectation awaiting the mechanics of tomorrow, as well as other careers tackled by Lexington's technical schools, has started to lift the stigma of attending a vocational school, Eastside guidance counselor Johnetta Grant said.
Coming to Eastside, whether it is to concentrate on the auto-tech program, IT, agricultural sciences or TV and broadcasting, is a much different experience from the vocational schools of old, according to Grant, and it has become easier to convince skeptical parents of that in recent years.
"I think parents in the community are beginning to see not every student needs a four-year degree," Grant said, though it can be a bitter pill to swallow, especially for parents with multiple degrees.
Last school year, she said she worked hard to convince professional parents that their son's wish of going to an 18-month post-secondary school for mechanics would deliver him a comfortable life doing what he enjoyed.
"I've got nine years of college now, and their son is going to graduate from a post-secondary program in 18 months and probably make more than I do, and they didn't realize that," she said. "He didn't want to be a medical doctor or engineer, and I was able to work that out."
Student's work at Eastside extends far beyond the classroom as auto-tech students can participate in the Automotive Youth Educational System, which places the top students in dealership service departments around town. These placements often lead to full-time jobs down the road to go with the part-time pay and on-the-job experience students gain while still in high school.
Katrina Tyree, a third-year student at Eastside and a senior at her home school of Henry Clay, not only is the first female student to complete the Automotive YES program, but she is Eastside's only all-day student this year. She is taking on an extra workload, studying science and social studies via a correspondence course from Henry Clay and taking math and English at Eastside so she can stay all day to hone her skills for her future career.
She is already enrolled to begin an 18-month program at Universal Technical Institute, where she plans to study automotive, service writing and "just for a little fun," hot rods.
For the Automotive YES program, she served as and is still a customer service representative for Don Jacobs, where she acts as a liaison for customers and the auto techs. "It's kind of like you're a translator; you take the tech words and translate them into English for the customer," she said.
Being one of few females in what has been predominately a man's world doesn't faze Katrina, who started her time under the hood with her dad and four brothers. "That's all we did when I was little," she said. But it wasn't until she started with classes that she realized her hobby was something she could do for a living.
"I knew it was just something that I was good at, I could learn it and I could take in the information easily... and then I learned that I could take it so much further and make a profit from it," she said. And with some education in business while at UTI next year and the experience she stands to gain while working at Don Jacobs now and other jobs down the road, she hopes to someday be the boss of her own shop.
One of her classmates and fellow Automotive YES participants, Shayne Langdon, has accelerated to the top realm of the class at Eastside in just his second year at the school. A senior at Lafayette, Langdon won SkillsUSA local, state and regional awards last school year for converting a trashed $45 moped into a partially pedal-powered chopper that even the Orange County Chopper's Tuddle family from Discovery's "American Chopper" could take pleasure in.
"The engine, everything, looked like it had sat underwater," Langdon said. So he tore down the engine, completely rebuilt it, gave it some new components, rebuilt the carburetor, added a 27-inch extension between the front and back and threw on a subwoofer and speakers, "and about anything else you would never need on a moped."
While he's not sure if the moped is legal for street use, Langdon said it's a fun ride around a parking lot and a good thing to talk about with his coworkers in the service department at Freedom Dodge.
Even if students don't get involved in the Automotive YES program, Eastside provides plenty of opportunities to work on everything from small passenger cars to diesel-powered school buses and semi-truck cabs.
"There's dealerships that want more students than what we've got to give them," auto-tech teacher Greg Jones said. "We don't push out students unless we're confident that they're going to do OK. If a student wants be dedicated and get in here and work and not act like a 14-year-old, then they can go wherever they want to go, and that's what we tell them."
The students have a seeming endless supply of engines that fill the classrooms and from floor to ceiling of two storage units, along with 30-40 vehicles to work on during the school year for everything from oil changes to major body work. Jobs waiting for them right out of school can start in the $30,000 range and according to Jones, "if you're dedicated, the sky's the limit."
One recent graduate, Joseph Hampton, has the sky within reach as he is training at UTI's NASCAR Technical Institute and working for Team Penske, the gold standard of race teams. Soon he could become an over-the-wall pit crew member during NASCAR races, making a six-figure salary, according to Jones and his fellow teacher Martin.
Martin says his current students can learn from Hampton, who went to work for Team Penske without getting paid anything other than experience and was quickly put on the payroll. Though Automotive YES students do get compensated to the tune of $8 an hour, "we want them to buy into the concept that they're learning a career, so who cares (about the money now)," Martin said.
Students and staff rebuild cars for needy families
Putting their skills to the test, students in Eastside's auto-tech program will soon start their second year of repairing cars for the less fortunate, free of cost.
In its first year, the Society of Automotive Technicians (SAT) had about 20 students volunteer their evenings to work side-by-side with their teachers in fixing cars for families who were in tough financial situations and could not afford to get the work done themselves.
"The great thing is the students bought into the theory that they have to come here and work at night, that they have to be professional," Eastside auto-tech teacher Tom Martin said.
"Nobody asked 'Whose car is this?'" Martin said. "It doesn't matter whose car it is; you're not going to know. I don't know." But it does matter to the people whose cars are brought back to them, not only in safe operating condition, but looking like they were just driven off the lot.
The program's first car last year was a fairly new Kia that needed to have part of its brake assembly replaced. Martin learned that, for unknown reasons, the needed parts had been on order for months but were still in Kia's home country of Korea and weren't expected to be shipped to the West Coast for more than a month. The group was able to find a used part and get the car back together. They even detailed it for the owner, a recently divorced mother of two who was losing $400 a week because she could not get to work in a car with no brakes, the Eastside team later found out.
"This car looked good," Martin said. "It was red, it looked good when we got done with it. When (Eastside Principal Joe Norman) drove that car in the driveway, this lady came out of her trailer and tears were running down her faceIt was like Christmas. They felt so good being able to give this lady back a car that had been absolutely useless, because you can't drive a car with no brakes, and nobody could fix it because there were no parts for it."
The group also fixed up a car donated by a church for a family of immigrants whose father had to walk for miles to a bus stop to and from work everyday because they didn't have a car.
The program depends solely on donations, and Martin is planning a road rally fundraiser for the second year in a row to help raise money. He figures last year, on the handful of cars they were able to bring back to life, his SAT students did about $4,000 in work to the vehicles. The winner of the rally received a 50-inch trophy donated by NAPA Auto Parts.
Anyone interested in helping with donations can contact Tom Martin at thomas.martin@fayette.kyschools.us"