By the time Neil Struthers graduated from Prospect High School in Saratoga in 1979, he was already headed into a career working with his hands. Six years of wood, metal and auto shop classes had prepared him to skip college and go directly into the construction industry.

``I didn't even take the SAT,'' said Struthers, who entered an apprenticeship program for glass workers a year after graduating with a 3.8 grade-point average. ``I had good grades, but I was never very motivated until I took shop. Then I got the exposure to vocational education, and I knew what I wanted to do with my life.''

During the past two decades, Struthers has watched the types of vocational programs that helped steer him toward a career as a glazier largely disappear from California's public schools. Now, as the chief executive of the Santa Clara & San Benito Counties Building & Construction Trades Council, he is leading the push to restore these programs in East San Jose.

This fall, the first crop of ninth-graders will enter a new construction technology academy at Yerba Buena High School. The intensive, hands-on program is the product of a partnership between the East Side Union High School District and the Building & Construction Trades Council, a coalition of 23 unions representing painters, plumbers, carpenters and workers in just about every other corner of the construction business.

Through four years of elective classes and summer internships, the academy will give students a taste of the different building trades and an introduction to the many facets of the industry, from architecture to engineering. At a time when fewer than half of high school graduates go on to finish college, the program also will give kids critical skills and options in the work world.

Linked to standards

Yet unlike the vocational programs of a generation ago, the new construction academy will require students to take the standard sequence of college-prep courses in math, English and other core subjects. And it will make a point of linking the technical skills required for the construction industry back to the state's academic standards, particularly in algebra and geometry.

``This is not the tracking system of old days, where these kids are taking dumbed-down math and English,'' said Craig Mann, a trustee in the East Side Union High School District. ``We should set the academic bar high for all students.''

The construction academy at Yerba Buena grew out of a labor agreement reached this summer between the school district and the trade union. Most of the agreement is fairly standard: It requires all contractors who work on projects funded by the district's $300 million bond measure to adhere to the terms of a collective bargaining agreement. But it is one of the first labor agreements in the state that also asks contractors to support a high school construction academy.

The new program is expected to draw kids from across East San Jose. They will start out with students from Yerba Buena's pre-engineering and technology magnet programs in a ninth-grade elective that will introduce them to raw materials, safety hazards, tools of the trade and other industry basics.

Dan Moser, Yerba Buena's principal, expects 90 to 120 freshmen to enroll in the ninth-grade class, called ``processes of technology,'' in the fall. Those who continue through the construction academy will go on to study everything from electrical wiring to pipe fitting during the next three years.

Brenda Childress, the district's career services director, hopes the construction classes will help students master difficult academic standards by showing them how those standards apply in the trades. They need to understand fractions and decimals just to read a tape measure, for instance.

``This gives kids another way of learning the standards,'' Childress said. ``Some kids learn theoretically, and others need a more applied, hands-on approach.''

The construction academy will also give students valuable work experience. The union will place up to 30 students in $10-an-hour summer internships with local contractors between their junior and senior years. The city of San Jose, too, will place students in internships that will provide an overview of the city's building services, including inspections, permits and residential rehabilitation programs.

By the time these kids graduate, they will know how to read blueprints, measure concrete slabs and sheets of aluminum, and operate saws and power drills. They also will know how to use the Pythagorean theorum, estimate material costs and calculate circumference, diameter, area and volume. In short, they will be prepared to enter a construction apprenticeship or go to college.

``This program gives kids choices,'' Moser said. ``The notion here is that they have opportunities rather than a closed path.''

More than anything, Struthers hopes the new academy will help dispel stereotypes that the construction industry offers only menial, unskilled labor opportunities and low wages. Indeed, he said, tradesmen such as electricians and plumbers can make up to $100,000 a year.

Long-term careers

``Educators see this path as a safety valve for kids who don't succeed in school,'' Struthers said. ``The public perception is that you do construction if you can't do anything else. But that's not true. Construction is actually very competitive. Our goal is to open up kids' eyes to an industry in which long-term careers are viable.''

For George Phan, the new academy is simply a fun way to learn. George, who will be a senior at Piedmont Hills High School, is one of about a dozen East Side students taking part in a trial run of the internship program this summer. He is working at the Pipe Trades Training Center of Santa Clara & San Benito Counties, which runs apprenticeships for plumbers, steamfitters and refrigeration mechanics.

George has spent the past several weeks helping the center prepare for classes in the fall -- sealing wooden work tables, stripping wires and remodeling classrooms. He has learned how to cut pieces of pipe using a rotating torch, how to use a power drill and a pallet jack, and even how to drive a forklift (quite a feat for someone who doesn't yet have a driver's license).

The 16-year-old wants to go to college, perhaps to study architecture. He believes his experience at the pipe trades center has prepared him well.

``I am really interested in architecture because you can design anything you want,'' George said. ``But architecture requires a lot of planning, so it's good to understand this stuff.'' It's a lot of fun, too, he said. ``It's better than reading a book because you use your hands a lot, and you use your senses. It helps you learn quickly.''