A Moment of Change

By Fred Haubensak, a candidate for Bret Harte High School Board.

We are living through an era of rapid fire changes for our schools. We're still finding our footing after Covid and its long aftermath. We're grappling with what social media and constant phone access have done to a generation of kids — enough that our schools are now, rightly, restricting phone and social media use during the school day. And just as we catch our breath, artificial intelligence is arriving fast enough to reshape what "being prepared for a career" even means. Three tidal waves, one after another, are hitting a school system that to some observers was designed for a different era.

The Big Challenge. 

To make matters even more challenging, we are starting off behind the curve. Here's a number worth sitting with -  only 52% of California High School seniors are currently considered career-prepared, based on the data from the California state high school dashboard. 

And, if you want to understand how urgent this is, talk to the kids themselves. In 2025, a group of Bret Harte students in English wrote a report, “Assessing The State of High School Education in 2025”, and presented it at the Small School District conference. Their two main conclusions matched what many of us have seen firsthand. They are interested in real life skills like personal finance: opening a checking account, building credit, understanding a car loan, and budgeting for an apartment. And they call out the need for professional skills like teamwork and public speaking so they will be able to hit the ground running after graduation. 

The Good News. 

Indeed, the challenges are pervasive and systemic. But Bret Harte deserves a lot of credit for improving academic scores and bringing us back from the Covid overhang, and limiting phone usage in classrooms. 

And because of good strategic planning in the past, Bret Harte has a number of pathways for careers -- in addition to the traditional college path  -- especially through the increasingly popular trade school pathways, such as Ag / FFA and Fire Tech, among others. The college path is strong at Bret Harte with AP classes and increasing dual enrollment opportunities where kids can get college credits, which can save them thousands of dollars later in college. And the trade school pathways are where kids who aren’t going the college route can explore and find a strong interest in a career path. So, we need to preserve and protect these programs and even expand them where we can. 

In addition to these career pathways, Bret Harte does another important thing - the school provides teamwork and leadership experience with clubs and team sports that build the soft skills that cannot be replaced by technology. Kids need to improve their ability to interact with each other, as the interpersonal skills that have waned in recent years due to social media and phone distractions are becoming a barrier to their success. 

So here again, Bret Harte has made good choices, and if I am elected these are the elements for success that I will preserve and expand on where we can. Its important not only to the young adults going out into the world, but also for our local economy. Lets make sure our young adults graduating out into the world are well prepared for their careers.