A line of Golden Valley High School teachers eagerly awaited their first sips of the newest java spot in the community during its “soft launch” on Friday.
And they didn’t have to travel far to sample the goods.
The school’s Adult Transition Program, which works with special needs students aged 18 to 22, created a teaching opportunity in the form of a weekly pop-up coffee cart on campus, the Grizzly Cafecito, in partnership with the William S. Hart Union High School District’s Career Visions Department.
With a wide smile, Wyatt Furuyama, a student “employee,” greeted the cafe’s “customers” and handed their orders to the students who were standing behind the machines.
“We’re learning some new things, we’re learning how to serve coffee,” Furuyama said. “The students make coffee and then they give it to us, and we deliver it to them.”
The program is working on a “hard launch” next week at an open house on campus. The school’s cafe program is only available to staff as the Education Code would prohibit the school district from serving students caffeine drinks.
“The whole purpose of the program is getting students ready for real-life work and experience,” said Gwen Delgado, assistant principal at Golden Valley who oversees functional academics.
Sarah Caduff of Career Visions said the idea for the program started from conversations with the department supervisor, Kevin Sarkissian, on how the district can best serve students who are “in between.”
“There were many students that were just not ready to go out into the community into subsidized work placements,” said Caduff, whose responsibilities include finding such opportunities for students who finish the program.
“They needed to work on both hard and soft skills a little more, and so I was trying to find a kind-of in-between, where we could kind of bridge that gap,” she added.
The program was modeled after one that worked well in an Irvine school district.
The district was able to fund the program with a grant from the state’s Department of Rehabilitation, but ultimately the goal is for it to generate revenue to sustain itself by serving at certain school functions.
In addition to learning soft skills like how to interact with customers, the students also get real benefits, including a food-handler certification that they can use to create employment opportunities once they’re ready for job placement.
The students prove their readiness for workforce opportunities by completing volunteer hours as well, officials said.
Alyssa Webb, an adult transition program teacher at Golden Valley, thanked the staff and students for their work in opening the cart and hoped that Grizzly Cafecito would help other businesses in the community see how capable the ATP’s students are.
“One thing that I really want to make sure people in the community understand is that we can do this, we can do our part and do our best to provide adequate training and opportunities for our students,” Webb said. “But it really is so important to have community involvement as well. It’s really important that we have community partners who are there and ready to employ our students, so that when they do finish our program, when they do have these skills, that they’re able to get and keep a job in our community, and really participate in and contribute. They have so much value. They have so much they can offer.”
