Among the local schools that have been honored with the California School Boards Association Golden Bell Award (Elsie Allen High, Penngrove School) is Petaluma High School which was honored for its Engineering, Design and Apprenticeship Trades program led by award-winning teacher Dan Sunia.

We profiled the program back in September but I’m struggling to get a good link so it is pasted below (clunky, I know).

The Golden Bell honors programs that demonstrate outstanding performance in one of 19 categories. Petaluma High won for its work in the Partnerships and Collaborative category.

Here is the story that ran in September:

2 SONOMA COUNTY SCHOOLS GO FAR ON MATH, SCIENCE: INSTRUCTORS AT PETALUMA, EL MOLINO DRAWING RAVE REVIEWS, $100,000 GRANTS

   Affixed to the outside of the classroom door is a paper sign that says simply “METAL.”
    But inside the large warehouse-like shop, Colton Stoppel stands in front of a panel of buttons and computer screens, making it beep and pump out codes and graphs.
    And up from what to an untrained observer is a hodgepodge of letters and numbers on a computer screen comes the image of a star, growing from a tiny outline to what will be a three-dimensional, twirling shape. It is a metal shape Stoppel will make with a computer numerical control milling machine — something that looks like a small subway car but is precise enough to cut slabs of metal into intricate shapes.
    “I needed a little (trigonometry) to find out how it would taper down to zero with a flush end,” Stoppel said. “You need math, obviously. And for science, you need to know how fast this spindle is going because if you go too fast, your tool bit will break or you’ll burn your metal.”
    This isn’t your father’s metal shop.
    That’s just the way longtime Petaluma High School manufacturing technology teacher Dan Sunia wants it. Sunia leads one of two career technical programs in Sonoma County to nab a $100,000 California Department of Education Tech Prep Demonstration Grant, meant to showcase successful occupational programs for other schools to emulate. Eighteen programs were selected statewide in the first round of grants, according to the state Department of Education.
    The award-winning biotechnology program at El Molino High School will be featured in the other $100,000 grant won by the Sonoma County Office of Education to advance a similar biotech program at Windsor High School.
    “We have a pretty impressive program there already with Joan Vreeburg,” said Dan Blake, career development specialist with the county Office of Education. “We targeted that particular program as a demonstration site.”
    Vreeburg, who this summer was named the 2010 Outstanding Biology Teacher by the California Chapter of the National Association of Biology Teachers, will work with Windsor’s Sarah Hart to expand Windsor’s connections to Bay Area scientists and leaders in the biotech industry.
    “I am really proactive about trying to help science and improve science and inspire students to become scientists,” Vreeburg said. To that end, Vreeburg has established the Sonoma County Biotechnology Advisory Committee, in which leaders from the UC Davis, Solano Community College and several Bay Area biotech companies will meet regularly to discuss curriculum, field trips and partnerships.
    Connecting students with working science adds a needed layer to daily curriculum, Hart said.
    “I want to introduce them to the fact that there is a huge industry with very interesting jobs,” Hart said. “It is kind of opening their eyes to the fact that a lot of interesting science is happening.”
    At Petaluma High, Sunia is connecting with math, science, English and history teachers to deliver core curriculum concepts within the manufacturing technology class, erstwhile known as metal shop.
    With the grant, he also hopes to expand his connections with industry and post-secondary machinery instructors to expand Petaluma High’s professional certification program.
    Sunia expects about 100 such experts to attend a machine technology summit on the Fair Street campus on Sept. 25.
    “Our agenda is to really improve precision machine education around the San Francisco Bay Area,” he said. “I’m going to benefit by listening to all of the good ideas and learn from other teachers. The whole community benefits … it’s a win-win if we have kids ready to work.”
    He’s already tapped math teacher Deb Fitch to integrate algebraic and geometric concepts into his shop lessons and is working with her to give her math students a hands-on way to see lessons that can seem one-dimensional in a textbook.
    “I don’t know if it’s human nature, but we try to compartmentalize: ‘Whatever I learned in that area, I don’t take it with me,’ ” Fitch said. “I don’t know if it is our education system or just human nature, but one of the things they find out on a casual basis, let alone with something more formal, is that whenever we can make those connections and help them see, it’s enormous for them. It really makes a difference.”
    Petaluma sophomore Tiernan O’Rourke is taking Sunia’s press for an expanded curriculum in machinery class one step further — he’s incorporating music.
    A musician, O’Rourke is building a six-string electric bass as his class project.
    On Wednesday, the second-year machinery student was forming the shape in Styrofoam and planning how he’d connect a wooden body to an aluminum neck and wire it electronically.
    “You get to make something you designed from ‘go,’ ” he said.
    When he’s asked if the finished product will really play, he laughs confidently.
    “That’s what everyone asks? Is it really going to work?”