Miller Career and Transition Center in Reseda isn’t a typical grade school. For one thing, the students — also called interns — are between 18 and 22 years old. They have intellectual disabilities or autism, and instead of studying math and history in textbooks, they bake, garden, fix furniture, pack boxes and wash cars.
On a recent weekday, Miller Principal Wayne Fogelsong led a tour through the school’s 18 work programs as the students and staff packed up for the end of the semester. Miller students won’t be earning diplomas. Rather, the goal is to prepare them for work. They use specific skills, like landscaping and baking, but what they’re really gaining are abilities they can take to jobs after Miller: focusing on a task, following directions and speaking up for yourself.
Since Miller became a career and transition center, its enrollment has grown every year. What started as 157 students in 1998 has become 250 now. This fall, there will be about 280 students, Fogelsong said.
“We’re trying to prepare them for the real world.”
Creating a model
Fogelsong also was wrapping up with the end of the semester. He was days away from retirement, after nearly two decades as Miller’s principal and a legacy of making the school into what it is now.
Miller was built in 1958 as a standard school for students with disabilities. Fogelsong came in as principal in 1998. Over his first few years, students with more profound disabilities came to Miller, he said. Tough challenges followed.
“We had some very interesting behavior issues back when I first got here,” he said. “We had some really rough times with the kids. It was very violent kids when I first got here.”
In 2002, he and others decided to reexamine their approach.
“I put a team of people together, and we began looking and saying, ‘What really should we be doing?’”
Fogelsong heard about the Ruggenberg Career Center in Bakersfield. There, 17- and 18-year-old students spent four hours a day on life skills and work skills, similar to what students now learn at Miller.
“I began taking people from the Division of Special Education, from my own staff, up to visit Ruggenberg to kind of sell the program,” Fogelsong remembered.
Following Ruggenberg’s example, Fogelsong started with two work programs at Miller and added two more every year. He got local businesses to hire Miller students, obtained vans to take students to work sites and promoted the concept at school board meetings.
Fogelsong said Miller’s development has been a team effort. But others in the Los Angeles Unified School District credit him with leading the way in creating a model that’s been replicated throughout LAUSD at six other locations.
With Fogelsong’s retirement, there will be some big shoes to fill, said Beth Kauffman, associate superintendent for special education.
In the past, young adult special education students would typically move on to a day facility and do simple assembly work, Kauffman said.
“Wayne envisioned more, that there was more ability there and that these students, if given the proper training, could really do more,” she said.
Some Miller students have paid internships at places like Jo-Ann Fabrics, Marshall’s, Smart & Final, Home Goods and Walgreen’s. Still, job security after leaving Miller is a challenge. Only about a quarter of Americans with cognitive disabilities were employed in 2015, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Thus far, Miller hasn’t tracked the employment rates of its graduates, though it plans to. In the meantime, there is anecdotal evidence. A handful of students have been hired from this year’s graduating class.
Building confidence
Fogelsong walked through the school, checking in with teachers and students and listing the jobs Miller students have worked on: detailing cars at the washing stations in the parking lot, cooking for the staff twice a week and catering for events and creating sets for student plays.
“How are you? Nice to see you. Why don’t you introduce yourself to these people,” Fogelsong says to Jonah Anthony, 19.
“I am an intern here. I love this place. I’ve been here for five years. I was 14 when I started here,” Anthony tells visitors.
Anthony this year is in the graphic arts program. He uses silk screening, a high-end embroidery machine and heat press to add logos to T-shirts, hats and cards for clients.
“I don’t want people to look at (the students) and say, ‘Well, we need to do this for you,’” Fogelsong said. “I want them to say, ‘These kids have a gift.’ They can turn around and give it back to people.”
