Freshmen are the focus these days at Parkway West Career and Technology Center in North Fayette.

The center recently welcomed 488 ninth-graders from nine of its 12 member school districts for its first Career Exploration Day.

Instead of shadowing a class, which has been the traditional way students are introduced to Parkway West programs, the freshmen got the opportunity to do two hands-on projects and interact directly with instructors.

At the end of the day, 71 percent indicated on a survey that they would be interested in attending the vocational-technical school.

Future Career Exploration Days, however, might be for eighth-graders instead of freshmen because the center is applying for permission to expand its program to include ninth-graders. Currently, the center serves 10th- through 12th-graders. If approved, the change would mean students would attend Career Exploration Day as eighth-graders.

Center director Jack Highfield said the move was prompted by Quaker Valley School District. It wants to offer students three years at Parkway and have them return to their home district for 12th grade to complete their senior projects, he said.

Such a move also would create opportunities for students to study at the center for all four years of high school.

Parkway would develop an advanced curriculum for senior year and move the current three-year curricula down a grade level for the remaining students -- ninth-graders would take the current 10th-grade courses, 10th-graders would take the current 11th-grade courses and 11th-graders would take the 12th-grade ccourses.

Mr. Highfield said grade level does not matter because the curriculum is based on mastering one skill before moving on to the next, so students can start at the beginning no matter what their grade.

He said the center also is bolstering its academic instruction, hoping to keep students in the program while meeting the language, math and science standards on statewide tests.

Parkway West has an enrollment of about 600, down from its 1980-81 enrollment high of 1,500, but Mr. Highfield hopes the current demand for welders, machinists, carpenters, computer technicians and trained hands-on workers might increase its numbers again.

He hopes the Career Exploration Day will help, too. Ninth-graders who attended the program chose two projects -- giving hand massages in cosmetology, for example, or painting a design on sheet metal in auto body -- and received information from instructors. Sixty percent of those attending gave the day an A grade, 36 percent more graded it a B.

Mr. Highfield noted that West Allegheny School District sent all 253 freshmen to the event.

"We hope this will prove to be an effective outreach program," he said.

Parkway West serves students from Carlynton, Chartiers Valley, Cornell, Keystone Oaks, Montour, Moon Area, Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, Quaker Valley, South Fayette, Sto-Rox and West Allegheny.

Students spend half a day taking classes at their high school and the other half taking career and technical courses at Parkway West.

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