April 3, 2007

School Scene

FFA Boosters to hold open house of Westmont’s new $1.8 million AG building

Community invited to Farm Fun Fest April 28

By Janet Ghanem
Special to the Times

The new Agricultural Sciences Department classroom building at Westmont High School is complete. To celebrate the community is invited to attend an open house and Farm Fun Fest for the whole family on Saturday, April 28 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Campbell FFA Chapter #126 officers for 2006-2007 pose in the new lab classroom for the Campbell FFA at Westmont during the March 27 ribbon cutting ceremony. Left to right: Morgan Chappell, vice president; Danielle Perrine, president; Ashley Sykes, reporter; Chelsey Mowery, secretary; Ryan DeSorbo, treasurer and Daniel England, sentinel.

The Campbell FFA Chapter students will have fun contests for children and adults alike and Boosters will be serving barbeque lunches. Tours of the new building and the farm will go throughout the day.

On March 27, CUHSD agriculture science students crossed the threshold of their new $1.8 million laboratory classroom and mechanics shop to begin learning in a thoroughly modern way at a ribbon cutting ceremony. Last year students were moved into a portable classroom while the 40-plus year-old relic was demolished to make way for a new, state-of-the-art building utilizing green, environmentally friendly principles paid for by bond money passed in 1999.

With its separate laboratory and lecture rooms plus a shop with three welding stations, movable workstations and office space, versatility is number one.

“The available space will allow students in agriculture science the use of a high quality facility and give them the ability to create with a much more hands-on approach to learning,” said Dave Duarte, head of the department.

“It is wonderful to have a program that provides actual experience where students learn career-based skills while preparing for college,” says Deborah Zehnder, vice principal at Westmont.

The four-acre facility includes a swine unit for 30 hogs, a sheep/goat unit for 18 animals and a beef unit for eight steers. There are also poultry pens for turkeys and chickens. The farm has a fully automated production greenhouse, practice arenas and grooming areas. There are lockers in barns, tack bins and full feed barns. Student projects include agriculture mechanics fabrication and animal husbandry for commercial and fair-show animals. Students produce horticulture projects and agriculture business placement is a focus of the program.

The new lab classroom for the Campbell FFA at Westmont High School.

The Campbell FFA Chapter turns 74 this year. It focuses on developing students’ potential for premier leadership, personal growth and career success though agricultural education. FFA is not extracurricular. The program completes a three-part model of education. Classroom instruction is applied to hands-on supervised agricultural experience programs, which are further strengthened though curriculum-enhancing activities and programs. Students learn by doing, polishing the characteristics and skills they will need for future success.

The Campbell FFA Chapter #126, chartered in 1933, is the last active chapter in the San Jose metropolitan area from among 16 that were active in the intervening years. The real-world skills that members learn through FFA prepares them for the future in such fields as marketing, law, science, international business and veterinary medicine.

The new classroom building is located at Westmont High School’s agricultural farm campus, 4805 Westmont Ave., Campbell. The four-acre farm is located north of the main campus across from the baseball/softball field on Westmont Avenue.