Pre-engineering students Braden Cain, Jonathan Bae and Mario Hernandez race their rubber-band-powered cars. All three are juniors at Memorial High.

  By AL CARTER
  Pasadena ISD Communications
  The dismissal bell never rings on David Scarcella's pre-engineering class at the Pasadena ISD's L.P. Card Career and Technical Center. His wife does.
  On school days, they hang around by the dozens -- wide-eyed students immersed in an after-school maze of wood blocks, Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and soda bottles. Bells ring. Buses leave. And still they linger.
  "I have to literally kick them out," Scarcella says. "They don't want to leave."
The lights go off when the phone rings.
  "It's time for you to come home," Laurie Scarcella says on the other end. And so ends another 13-hour teaching day for husband David, a first-year faculty addition from Galena Park who has made L.P. Card's new pre-engineering course one of the district's hottest curriculum choices -- for students of all academic ranks .
  Scarcella teaches students with real designs of attending schools like Princeton, Rice and Vanderbilt. He has other students with leaning handicaps who thrive in the Rube Goldberg environment of his classroom.
  He has students who excel at building wind-up cars with CD disks for wheels. He has others who dream of designing spacecraft for travel to Mars.
  "I get excited about giving a kid a pile of stuff and saying, 'Do this!'" Scarcella says. "And then watching him while he does it."
  Watching Scarcella build a pre-engineering program from scratch has district administrators excited.
  "We were worried at first that we might not have enough kids in the program," says Sarah Wrobleski, director of the L.P. Card Center. "But David has made it contagious. Most afternoons, even on weekends, he's got a roomful of kids, all working on projects."
  Scarcella teaches students from all five district high schools in a portable building in the back of the L.P. Card. Hired away from the Galena Park ISD over the summer, he inherited the last vacant classroom.
  Scarcella says he hopes to see that change dramatically in the next few years.
  A major part of the Pasadena ISD bond proposal now on early-voting ballots calls for the construction of a Career Tech High School, a full-size campus that would expand the district's technology curriculum and combine it with core courses. Ask Scarcella about the impact of bond passage and his eyes turn as saucer-round as those of his students.
  "I have big thoughts," he says.
  "I'd be excited just for the fact that we'll be able to show core teachers just what we're about," he says. "Plus, we'll be able to get those core teachers involved in what we're doing -- all in one location. It would be huge."
Scarcella has a ready example to offer -- catapults.
  As any history teacher will attest, the Roman and Greeks built them. Soon, so will Scarcella's pre-engineering students. The plan is to start small -- small enough to fling frozen Tater Tots across the room -- and then upgrade to where small vegetables can be hurled hundreds of feet.
  Suggest watermelons and watch Scarcella smile . His enthusiasm for the project is almost kid-like.
  "We are going to build catapults," he says. "We are going to launch some food!"
  "The first week we started building rubber-band cars and that was fun," says Austin Gonzalez, a junior from Memorial High. "Now we're designing things on the computer and that's really cool."
  Earlier this month, Scarcella launched the district's first foray into robotics competition. Although he doesn't teach a robotics class -- the only one offered is at Sam Rayburn High -- Scarcella helped organize three teams of students from four district high schools.
  Two weeks ago, one of Scarcella's teams won a robotics competition in Galveston and, with the victory, a berth in world competition next April in Anaheim, Calif. The connection between pre-engineering and robotics is simple, Scarcella says.
  "We want to get engineering students hooked -- and robotics is one way to do it," he says. "It teaches you the value of working together as a team, which is an important part of being an engineer."
  Which happens to be Scarcella's project as an educator.
  "The need for engineers is huge right now," he says. "So many engineers are retiring. We're just going to have to create some more."
  Scarcella's background isn't exactly rooted in the engineering field. Before going into teaching, he worked five years as a police dispatcher. But the seeds sown by his high-school training in industrial arts -- and the influence of his career-educator parents -- blossomed into what has been a rewarding reign in the classroom.
  His father, David Scarcella Sr., was a long-time choir director at Pasadena High. His mother, Michelle, taught kindergarten at Bailey Elementary for more than 20 years. Wife Laurie teaches autistic students at Bailey.
  Son Cody, although only 12, is an advanced robotics student at Deer Park Junior High -- so advanced that he served as a coach for his dad's Pasadena ISD robotics teams.
  Scarcella taught technology courses in Friendswood before moving over to Galena Park, where he headed up "Project Lead the Way." His success with that program caught the attention of Wrobleski, who was head of technical education for Galena Park schools at the time.
  Last summer, as the Pasadena ISD was making inroads into enhancing science- and math-based programs, Wrobleski lured Scarcella to Pasadena to start a pre-engineering course -- a "spin-off," as she calls it, of the district's robotics program.
  For his students' first assignment -- to design and construct rubber-band cars -- Scarcella set a firm deadline for competition entries. The day before the contest, 16 groups of students showed up after school to apply finishing touches.
  "Two of the cars went farther than 50 feet," Scarcella says. "And one of them didn't even have wheels. It used skids."
  Scarcella says he was pleased to discover that one student showed his car to his physics teacher, who promptly turned the idea into a lesson in mechanics for other physics students.
  Based upon knowledge gained in his physics class, the student redesigned his car and doubled its previous distance capacity.
  Those are the kinds of cooperative advantages, Scarcella says, that would become commonplace in a Career Tech High School format.
  "We've done more in six weeks here than we did in 10 years at Galena Park," he says. "The reason is the amount of technical support we're getting from Sarah and from Troy [McCarley, the Pasadena ISD's Associate Superintendent for Campus Development.]"
  But Scarcella says he's eager to take the program several steps forward, and he intends to start next year. He plans to teach a robotics class and also an advanced pre-engineering course for the benefit of current students who want to stay in the program.
  "We'll be designing, testing and presenting for real engineers," he says. "We want to offer concepts that will lead to advanced studies in everything from architecture to aerospace to robotics."

Scarcella coaches two of his robotics team members -- Memorial seniors Jacob Perez and Hammad Lodhi -- on how to put a block-toting robot through its paces.

Scarcella helps Mario Hernandez assemble the "drive train" on his rubber-band car.

On to the next project: Scarcella goes over a list of items to be brought from home for the construction of a Tater Tot-tossing catapult.

Dobie students line the back of an overcrowded classroom.

  Enrollment in Pasadena ISD schools continues to climb, according to figures reported for the start of the 2011-2012 school year. And enrollment at Dobie High School now tops 3,500, a record for any district school.
  A total of 52,834 students are enrolled on district campuses, an increase of 620 students from this time last year. That represents a 1.2 percent increase -- in line with district enrollment growth for the past five years.
  Proposals related to enrollment growth are part of the Pasadena ISD bond that will go before the voters on Nov. 8. The district is seeking $270.1 million in funding for several projects, including a new Career and Technical High School and three new middle schools.
  The bond plan carries no tax hike.
  District growth since 2007 surpassed the size of an average high school - a net gain of 3,270 students, or a 6.6 percent increase.
  The bond would provide for a sixth district high school, built specifically to expand the district's Career and Technical program. An estimated 1,500 to 1,700 students would be enrolled in the school, which would provide students the opportunity to pursue pathways in programs such as Health Science; Business and Public Service; Agriculture; Technology, Engineering and Energy; Construction and Manufacturing; and Transportation and Shipping.
  The program, currently housed at the L.P. Card Career and Technical Center, would be expanded to incorporate a full high-school curriculum, thereby relieving overcrowding issues at all five existing high schools.
  Enrollment numbers underscore the overcrowding issues at Dobie High.
Over a five-year period, the school's enrollment has jumped 25.2 percent to its current total of 3,568.
  "This is the biggest Dobie has ever been," School Superintendent Dr. Kirk Lewis said.
  No other district high school has ever hit the 3,500 mark. The Pasadena High, South Houston and Sam Rayburn campuses inched over the 3,000 mark before the opening of the Memorial High campus in 2004 relieved crowded conditions on those campuses.
  The bond would also provide for three new middle schools, which would complete the district's adoption of the Middle School Concept.
  Two of the new schools would feed Queens Intermediate and Park View Intermediate, which currently follow the Grade 6-8 model. One would be built to relieve overcrowding at Lomax and Melillo middle schools.
  Both Lomax and Melillo topped 950 students during 2011-2012 year.
  Projected cost for the four new schools, including the Career and Technical High School, is $101.8 million.
  Early voting for the election has been set for Oct. 24 through Nov. 4.

Photos on this page feature Career and Technical Education facilities around Texas and are for illustration purposes only. They do not represent any design proposals for future Pasadena ISD facilities.

  The Pasadena ISD's plan to build a full-campus high school dedicated to Career and Technical Education represents an expansion of the district's current technical education structure, district officials say.
  Implementation of the plan awaits voter approval on Nov. 8 of a $270.1 million school bond proposal. The Career and Technical Education High School is one of four new campuses proposed under the bond. Three new middle school campuses are also planned.
  The bond proposal carries no tax rate increase.
  The total construction cost for the four new campuses is placed at $101.8 million. Cost of the new Career and Technical High School is placed at $46.2 million.
  "The Career/Tech Center was part of the recommendation that the Future Facilities Committee made to our school board," said Dr. Kirk Lewis, the Pasadena ISD Superintendent of Schools.
  "It will increase the number of opportunities for our students and allow us greater opportunities to work with area employers to meet their needs."
  District officials say the Career and Technical Education High School would provide three primary benefits:
  • It would better meet the specific employee-skill needs of businesses in the community and provide students with curriculums that better emphasize and develop those skills.
  • It would consolidate many technical education programs now scattered across various district facilities and broadly expand the scope of technical training to 31 different fields. Current programs provide 20 different career pathways.
  • It would help relieve crowded conditions at some of the Pasadena ISD's five other high-school campuses, especially Dobie High School. Dobie enrollment currently stands at 3,550.
  Many of the district's Career and Technical Education programs are currently housed at the L.P. Card Center, an annex-type facility adjacent to Memorial High School. Others are offered at select high-school campuses, a situation that requires special transportation services for students enrolled at other high schools.
  The bond plan would establish a fully contained high school campus just for Career and Technical Education students. District officials expect the high school to serve between 1,500 and 1,700 students.
  Negotiations are ongoing with San Jacinto College for partnership agreements in some of the programs. Successful completion of course work in some programs would earn students an associate degree, certification and/or licensure at the time of their high-school graduation.
  "The Career and Technical Education High School will meet a growing need to prepare students for careers in health care, business, technology, engineering and manufacturing," said Ben Meador, the owner of Meador Staffing Services in Pasadena and past chairman of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.
  "The many job opportunities that will be created by employers in our community will require specific education and skills that allow students to define, support and meet their career goals and for employers to remain competitive in maintaining a quality workforce."
  Preliminary plans call for the high school to be divided into six "academies:" Health Services, Business and Public Services, Agriculture, Technology and Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing, and Transportation and Shipping. The academies could be structured as follows: 
  HEALTH SERVICES: Programs leading to careers as a nurse assistant, vocational nurse, dental assistant, emergency medical technician and pharmacy technician. Estimated enrollment: 200. 
  BUSINESS AND PUBLIC SERVICES: Programs in Hospital and Tourism; Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security; Human Services; and Finance. Possible career paths include travel agent, restaurant manager, culinary specialist, policeman, police dispatcher, cosmetologist, childhood educational aide, small business owner and accountant. Estimated enrollment: 550. 
  AGRICULTURE: Possible career paths include veterinary assistant, floral designer and landscape architect. Estimated enrollment: 100. 
  TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING: Programs in Information Technology; Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; and Arts, Audio/Visual Technology and Communications. Possible career paths include computer technician, network administrator, graphic artist and video technician. Estimated enrollment: 350. 
  CONSTRUCTION AND MANUFACTURING: Possible career paths include welder, draftsman, construction engineer, electrical engineer and heating and air-conditioning technician. Estimated enrollment: 250. 
  TRANSPORTATION AND SHIPPING: Possible career paths include automotive technician, collision repair technician and maritime specialist. Estimated enrollment: 250.
  Plans called for students to attend high school exclusively on the Career and Technical Education campus.
  Official say a plan will be developed to allow students at the school to participate in social and extracurricular activities - such as prom, athletics and fine arts --at their home high schools.
  Plans call for the new high school to open in the fall of 2014, pending passage of the bond.