Yucca Valley High School Career Pathways Foundation

Career Pathways offers students job shadowing, internships, scholarship and career exploration activities for students of Yucca Valley High School. Our mission is to maintain liaison between educators, local government, and the business community to offer job shadowing, internships and job opportunities for students.

Foundation Officers 2013/2014:

Jim Schooler - President

Barbara Staresinic - Vice President

Diane Presley - Treasurer

Linda Poindexter - Secretary

Christy Bong - Member at Large

Ben Costello - Member at Large

Carl Phillips - YVHS Principal

Approved by the YVHS Academic Council on October 3, 1996. Student internships will give the Career Pathways students the opportunity for supervised, practical training in the workplace.

Yucca Valley is a small desert community 125 miles east of Los Angeles, sitting on the slopes of the Little San Bernardino Mountains in California's Mojave Desert. The entire Hi-Desert area is referred to as the Morongo Basin. The Basin has a population of over 80,000 residents, with Yucca Valley area weighing in at over 30,000. On the east end of the Basin sits the 29 Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, which is the largest of its kind in the world. On the south end is the Joshua Tree National Park, which attracts over 1 million visitors each year and draws rock climbers from all over the globe. Twenty-five miles to the south is Palm Springs, destination for countless vacationers each year. The whole area is serviced by the Morongo Unified School District with a student population of about 10,000. Yucca Valley High School has a student population of about 1,400. The Yucca Valley Chamber of Commerce has a membership of over 400 businesses.

Many of the students in our Career Pathways Program have had little experience with jobs of their choice, job shadowing and internships provide this opportunity for them. The students shadow a business in the community for three hours a day or even longer at times several times a school year. By the end of each year, approximately 100 Career Pathways students will participate in job shadow events. In their junior and senior years, the students who wish to participate will choose an internship lasting 50, 100, 150 or 200 hours.  Students who successfully complete a non-paid internship will be eligible for the intern-scholarship. The Foundation raises the funds for student scholarships and The Town of Yucca Valley matches these funds up to the amount of $7,500.00 and it is these funds that are distributed in the form of the scholarships in the amounts of $250.00, $500.00, $750.00 and $1,000.00 respectively. All students who successfully complete an internship will receive a scholarship.

Teachers, students and community members meet at the high school for the monthly Yucca Valley High School Career Pathways Foundation Meeting. This meeting gives all of the participants a chance to input their ideas and concerns, and to talk about the successes and failures the program. Student representatives bring any new information back to their classroom for the benefit of the students.

The Pathway Program is overseen by a Foundation as the Foundation has established a non-profit 501-3C Foundation, identification no. 33-0785936. To date the Foundation has awarded over $110,000.00 in scholarships to deserving students.

Clearly, with the addition of our Career Pathways Program, our school and our community are making the best attempt to address the needs of all our students, including those who want to go directly into the work force, those who want to go to trade schools, and those who want to go to a college or university. Students in the Program learn how to present themselves, market themselves, but most important, they explore careers that interest them and experience curriculum in the classroom connected to those experiences. It is this community connection that make the Program so valuable.