Each year for the past decade, a group of students at East Syracuse Minoa High School have gotten the unique opportunity to refurbish and restore a classic car and then raffle it off at the end of the year. This year, the Spartan Garage club is raffling a refurbished 1965 Ford Mustang and interested people can now buy tickets.
“Some of my students tell me it’s [Spartan Garage] the only reason they graduated,” said Ryan Beckley, supervisor of the Spartan Garage and instructor of the automotive technology program.
The Spartan Garage was created as a school club for students in the automotive technology program to get a real-life, hands-on model of working in an automotive garage. Students are given various jobs, such as looking for and buying parts, accounting for the project or physically working on the car itself, to make the project happen.
“We learn problem solving,” said Nicholas Lowe, class of 2015. “As we learn more about how cars work, we learn more about how to solve problems … Sometimes we go to our teacher for help but most of the time we realize we can just do it on our own.”
“It’s always interested me how a car ticks,” said Jordan McCafferty, class of 2015 and student involved in the restoration project. “How each part communicates with another one and how everything blends together to make one car. It’s interesting how you can make it faster or slower, or just fix something that is majorly broken that most people have no idea about.”
Each year’s raffle proceeds go toward purchasing the car that will be refurbished in the following year’s program, and the program has sustained itself so Beckley said the club does not need district funds for the yearly project.
In a typical year, Beckley said the club sells about 6,000 tickets and he hopes to increase this number so the program can start offering scholarships for students who are interested in pursuing automotive technology as a career.
ESM is one of only 11 schools in New York state that has a comprehensive program within the school district, which includes cosmetology and carpentry in addition to automotive technology for upper level students in the high school. Students in the automotive technology courses work on hundreds of cars each year doing work ranging from tire replacements to water pump work.
One important component to the automotive technology program at ESM are the college credits students who are in the courses get that are transferrable to SUNY schools. Seniors involved in the program also have the chance to do a 12-week internship at a local car dealership or independent automotive garage.
“I quickly realized that I can’t duplicate the real world here,” Beckley said “Right now many of them think they definitely want to do this as a career and some are unsure but when they go out and see what the real world is like, it solidifies their decision.”
Beckley said having this program is important to the lives of many students and the club attends several car shows throughout the year, where students get a chance to speak with automotive experts about the trade.
Tickets for this year’s raffle of a 1965 Ford Mustang are on sale now at a cost of $10 per ticket or three for $25. You can purchase tickets by contacting Ryan Beckley at [email protected] or 434-3300 ext. 6311.
Hayleigh Gowans is a reporter for the Eagle Bulletin. She can be reached at [email protected].
