Ruskin

Learning lessons for a lifetime

The South County Career Center provides teenagers a second chance at a high school diploma as well as a career for the future.

The black and white table linens are wrinkle-free, the napkins folded like fans brim from glasses.

In the kitchen, 16-year-old Justoniel Cintron fries up diced potatoes. Eddie Castaneda, 17, brushes a wash of beaten eggs on the rolls before they go into the oven. The baked chicken is in the warmer, and the lemon pepper fish is baking. Peach cobbler bubbles temptingly in a restaurant-size baking pan.

As the residents from Freedom Plaza in Sun City Center sit down at South County Career Center's bistro to enjoy it all, they smile. Why not, when a lunch as grand as this is free?

The food is served by polite, professional students - teens who once seemed doomed to drop out of school. South County students preparing for careers in construction, auto repair, culinary arts and agricultural mechanics provide the lunches and other free services to showcase what they've learned.

Students 15 and older attend South County because they aren't succeeding with the traditional high school model. By the time they get here, many have been held back and seem unlikely to finish school.

Students earn a traditional high school diploma and learn to be chefs and construction managers at the same time. They spend half their days in academic classes that prepare them for the FCAT and GED; the rest of their time goes to career training courses that prepare the students for jobs.

The school's 42 culinary students last week prepared the first of many lunches for Freedom Plaza residents. In the months to come, the retirement facility's residents will get free golf cart safety inspections and car detailing.

The freebies are covered with South County's share of a $200,000 Florida Department of Education grant recently awarded to South County and D.W. Waters Career Center in Tampa.

Students enrolled in the automotive repair program will detail Freedom Plaza residents' cars, four a week, at no charge. The agriculture mechanics students are making arrangements for a mobile golf cart maintenance and safety inspection program.

Freedom Plaza, a residential facility in Sun City Center, was chosen in large part because of the community's longstanding reputation for volunteering.

But recreation centers and other groups in the area will get something, too: Thirty picnic benches built by students in South County's construction program.

The outreach comes as the 2-year-old school establishes a tutoring and mentoring program that pairs adult volunteers with struggling students.

"I was always in trouble in school, never did well, before I came here," said Castaneda, a senior who makes a mean chocolate chip pecan pie. "This is the first time I've actually liked school."

Castaneda's peach cobbler was a hit with the diners - members of the residents group that provides posthigh school scholarships for young Freedom Plaza employees.

"This is great," Claire Leverault said. "People will definitely take advantage of this. Lots of us are on fixed incomes. And we like to have young people around us!"

To learn more

For information about South County's volunteer program or the outreach efforts, call Steve Briant at 233-3335.