The roughly 1,800 students that attend Mission Bay High School (MBHS) may soon have the option to attend a business academy right on their own campus. With only 20 percent of 2006 MBHS seniors reportedly matriculating on to a four-year college, Jane Schmitz hopes that the Academy of Entrepreneurship will offer one more option for the graduating seniors in years to come.
Schmitz, an MBHS teacher and recent Point Loma Nazarene University MBA graduate, used her master’s thesis to outline the idea of the academy as a means of introducing the diverse MBHS student body to the idea of entrepreneurship.
Before embarking on her teaching career, Schmitz spent two decades starting and running several successful San Diego businesses that include a restaurant, a bakery and a coffee cart.
At a teachers conference in 2006, she heard some startling statistics about high school drop-out rates and began to search for ways to keep students interested in completing high school. Schmitz has already fostered some entrepreneurial spirit in the two business classes that she teaches at MBHS.
On a hot Friday morning she stood in a darkened classroom and listened as Kenyu Arnold, president of POTO T-shirt company addresses his stockholders. Arnold and his classmates formed POTO as part of Schmitz’s business 100 course. The students came up with the idea for the T-shirt company and then followed a curriculum devised by the Colorado-based Junior Achievement to elect officers, issue stock ” mostly to other students in the class ” and market the company’s two shirt designs.
The students in Schmitz’s class are a fairly good representation of the campus’ student body as a whole, although probably not in the exact proportions (58 percent Hispanic, 18 percent white, 14 percent African-American, 4 percent Asian, 2 percent other). More than a fifth of MBHS students are English language learners (ELL), with the majority of those speaking Spanish as their primary language.
The name that the business 100 class chose for the shirt company may be somewhat of a cheeky joke on the English-only speakers, but none of the students would confirm that.
Eleven other area high schools have also formed companies following the Junior Achievement curriculum and will compete against one another to see who is the most profitable. Monday, May 5, was the last day for sales, so Arnold and two of the company’s other officers, Beatrice Cortez (VP of finance) and Sokunthea Prang (VP of public relations) counted POTO’s earnings on a table in the middle of the classroom. Sales have netted the company about $400 so far.
Next door to Schmitz’s class, the back wall of the recently redecorated student store is lined with large coolers filled with sodas and food. A machine on the counter whirrs as it steadily churns Day-glo-colored liquid in sloshing spirals inside three transparent vats. The heat generated by the machines is stifling in the small windowless room. The power that they consume may be the reason that the breaker circuit for the lights in Schmitz’s classroom keeps tripping. If the plans for the academy go ahead, the store will be renovated.
Sophomore Israel Aguirre and junior, Eric Chen are part of Schmitz’s Business Management & Ownership class, which run the store. Like most MBHS students, Aguirre and Chen are from other parts of the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), many of whom arrive on the 40 or so buses that fill the parking lots each morning. Aguirre and Chen both say that this is their first exposure to entrepreneurship.
Despite the fact that the store is open only briefly, once a day during the 30-minute lunch break, they managed to gross between $160 and $200 per day, an increase of nearly $50 per day over the class that ran the store last semester. In addition to the time that the store is open, Aguirre and Chen spend most of the 90-minute period taking care of restocking, paying bills, cleaning and taking care of the finances.
Aguirre is enthusiastic and says that he works everyday at the store. After the first few weeks of Schmitz’s class, he was inspired to start his own small business selling tamales. He makes the tamales himself from his own recipe and has been turning a good profit so far.
About a third of the MBHS class of 2005 met the entry requirements for admission to either University of California (UC) or California State University (CSU), so for some of the roughly four-fifths of MBHS that don’t matriculate directly into a four-year college, there may be the option of attending local community colleges to complete requirements.
One of the main goals of The Academy of Entrepreneurship will be to provide classes that both appeal to students that don’t excel in the current programs and at the same time qualify for the UC and CSU entry requirements. A week after my visit, I receive an email from Schmitz telling me that POTO, the business 100 class T-shirt company, has beaten out the other 11 high schools to take top honors as the most profitable business. Beatrice Cortez, the vice-president of finance, was singled out for an outstanding leadership award, too.
With the current budget cuts Schmitz is not going to be getting additional funding from SDUSD to get the academy started. She is looking for help in the form of philanthropic donations as well as mentoring and internship opportunities from businesses in Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and the other communities near the school. Schmitz can be contacted at (619) 251-3898 or [email protected].