text: New Vocational School Offers Career Options - tribunedigital-sunsentinel
  New Vocational School Offers Career Options
  September 2, 1985|By Lori Crouch, Staff Writer
  DAVIE — William Carroll, 18, couldn`t find a school that offered computer electronics. He had decided on this training because he knew friends who opted for computer programming and couldn`t find jobs, and he knew other friends who became computer repairmen and were financially successful.
  But if Carroll had made his decision last year he would have been out of luck.
  Carroll, a Fort Lauderdale High School graduate who lives in Wilton Manors, will attend the new William T. McFatter Vocational Technical School when it opens Tuesday.
  In nine months, Carroll plans to have a job as a computer repairman.
  ``You make good money in this field, and everything`s going into computers right now,`` he said. ``After I get out of here, I hope to go to IBM. Everybody`s going into the programming field. They just don`t have enough people to repair them.``
  The new technical school at 6500 Nova Drive has a twofold purpose: providing courses other schools don`t offer, and a convenient location closer to the central and western parts of Broward County.
  The school offers courses -- such as boat building and television production -- that are not offered at any other vocational school in Broward.
  ``We`re getting a greater share of students out of the central and west area,`` said counselor Ralph Miller. ``We`re getting brand new students, whether high school or young adults, but we`re also getting people who want to make a career change.``
  Principal Horace McLeod estimated that 275 to 300 students had registered for classes, and he anticipated more people would register by the first day of classes Tuesday.
  ``We`ve had a fairly decent surge,`` he said. ``Our rate of people inquiring has almost doubled and they have begun to come in. The phone is constantly busy, so it`s looking up.``
  Many students are high school students taking the courses for high school credit and working to start a career as soon as they get out of school.
  One such student is J.W. Goolsby, 16, of Davie, who will attend McFatter for welding courses in the morning and Stranahan High School in Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon.
  Stranahan does not offer welding classes, but Goolsby discovered the class was offered at the McFatter school, which is across Davie Road from his home in the Silver Oaks Mobile Home Park.