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Gustine High sees improvement in college readiness and CTE enrollment
gusd meeting 1-21
Daisy Zagazeta, a counselor at Gustine High, introduced herself ahead of a powerpoint presentation during a Gustine Unified School District meeting on Jan. 14. - photo by Navtej Hundal

To begin the new year, progress towards college and career access pathways (CCAP) and career technical pathways (CTE) were discussed at Gustine Unified School District’s Board of Trustees meeting on Jan. 14.

 

The topics were compiled and presented in a powerpoint presentation by Gustine High staff members: Daisy Zagazeta, Ashley Ramirez, Eileen Martinez and Alondra Roman Silva.

 

Eighty-seven students are currently participating in the CCAP course at Modesto Junior College, with some of those courses being English 101, History 101 and 102, Martinez said. She added that 27 students are participating in MathBridge, a three-unit statistics class at Merced Community College. Gustine will partner with UC Merced and hopes to potentially offer six classes.

 

With the students taking CCAP courses, they could graduate with six to 27 units, which could be the equivalent of one year of college courses. This led to an improvement in college readiness in the school’s 2025 California Dashboard, going from low to high performance in one year.

 

“Moving forward, we are looking into more things that we want to offer because we look at [the College Guidance Initiative] to see where the students are and which universities they want to apply to,” Martinez said.

 

Gustine offers 12 CTE courses offered through three industry sectors: Agriculture and Natural Resources, Business and Finance and Health Science and Medical Technology. There are currently 533 students enrolled in a CTE course, with the most coming from the agricultural mechanic pathway at 84 students. The school is projected to have 109 completers, nearly triple the amount from last year’s count of 39. The agricultural mechanic pathway is also projected to have the most completers with 30 students.

 

“Look at our projected numbers, we have over 100 which again, is a huge jump from what we started with as students are starting to really foster the importance of what it is to connect with the teachers and the community and the skills and their career of interest,” Roman Silva said.

 

Martinez said the staff goal is to “build that networking connection as students going to seniors, connection of having our students eventually train and do all these real work knowledge applications.”