T-shirt Business a New Venture for PACE Students
Pflugerville’s Academic Center of Excellence, or PACE campus, isn’t a traditional campus. Located in portable classrooms behind the administration building, PACE is made up of 80-100 students who need something that traditional school isn’t designed to offer.
“We are a choice-based drop out recovery program,” PACE principal Mike Harvey explains. “For a lot of our students regular school just isn’t a good fit.”
Harvey said a large number of kids in their student body face life situations that require a specialized schedule, and that’s where PACE comes in. With only 10 staff members at his disposal Harvey has crafted a program that allows students to control a culture designed for success with managed schedules.
The newest project on the board for the students of PACE is to run a small business out of the school. Most of the equipment for a t-shirt and hat printing business is already on site and the remaining gear is on its way.
“Our kids are going to have to fit in to the formal world, so that’s where we are trying to move them,” Harvey said. “They are going to have to be more formal and organized. There will be problems that they will have to fix with customers and there will be deadlines. I think it will be a great preparation for their futures.”
The plan for the business, which has yet to be named, is to have the students run every task, from the soliciting of orders through the delivery of the product. Beginning with a handful of the most responsible students, orders will be placed, shirts or hats will be designed by hand and transferred into the computer, and a product will result.
“We’d like to get to the point where kids are training the new kids coming in. That’s a real important step for our kids. It gives them the ownership, they step up in the leadership role, and they have to train their employees and hold them accountable. Those are important steps. Then we would like the kids to do some job shadowing with other businesses to get them into the business world and prepare them.”
For some, students in the PACE program have been labeled as troubled, or difficult. Harvey sees this as a jumping off point for growth, and he sees the new business as a great tool for this.
“Typically a PACE kid is kind of stubborn, and I think of that as a good thing. If you take a stubborn kid and turn it just a little, now they are strong willed. Most of them are also hands on. If you sit and talk to them they are going to start drifting, so we try to be more hands on and interactive. We try to get the students driving what’s going on,” Harvey said.
Harvey is hoping the new program will breed new levels of success and responsibility in his students while also introducing them to new situations that demand relational success. All proceeds from the business will go back into the school’s activity fund that allows the students to do even more things that help them grow.
One of the main projects they hope to resurrect after a one-year lapse is “Gone Fishing.” This program allows PACE to bus in special needs students to the PACE campus for an afternoon of fishing for stocked catfish in a large above ground pool. Harvey points to this event as one of the most important for his students, and he is very hopeful the new business will create enough profit to bring it back.
For more information about the PACE t-shirt shop, or to have PACE print your organization’s shirts for the 2011-2012 school year, contact Mike Harvey.