Feb. 13, 2020—A Fresno, Calif., shop owner has teamed up with other auto repair shops to create a Career & Technical Education (CTE) and automotive training progra, teaching PicoScope diagnostic technology to nine participating school districts instructors in Fresno County. This Saturday, Feb. 15, will mark the first of the bimonthly workshops.
Warren Parr, owner of Complete Car Care, and five other shops in the area, established a “Pico Club” back in January 2019 that was focused on training auto repair shop operators in the area on how to use PicoScope technology. After working with Central Unified School District superintendent, Andrew Alvarado, the club has established a long-term relationship with the school district's automotive programs.
"We are going to train public school instructors on how to teach modern advanced diagnostics technology to high school automotive students," Parr said. "Now, students will be learning technology that is the future of our aftermarket automotive repair shops. This is a very big deal."
In the workshops, high school instructors will have their own private, hands-on session with the club's nine automotive professionals.
Originally, Fresno County's high school automotive instructors organized and asked Parr's Pico Club to become their industry advisor.
With this new program, small local automotive repair businesses are partnering with local school districts, not just as an advisory role, but on the school district's instruction and curriculum. Warren says this is an all-new industry and public school model.
The Pico Club plans to teach 20-30 PicoScope technology tests and skill sets to apprentice techs, and are looking to establish a common, unified Pico instructional curriculum for all the high schools and the junior colleges in the nation.
Currently, the Pico Club has a high school junior and senior student working in the shop for two hours per day, two days per week.
"What we are doing is an addendum to the current curriculum; we are not building a completely new curriculum, we are adding advanced diagnostics," said Parr. "This is really hard. I don’t know if it’s been done before, but we have a lot of committed people."
