Thousands of high-school dropouts and truants will have a new option starting this coming fall: vocational education.

New York City has had so-called vocational high schools that require students to pass five Regents Exams and offer some career training for decades. But the Learning to Work program that Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday in his State of the City address is something different: an array of career and technical training programs that could accommodate students between 17 and 21 who want vocational training, whether they are working toward a high-school diploma or a GED.

Starting in September, the city plans to open 16 sites for the new programs. In its first year, the program will enroll 2,600 students, who generally are old enough to graduate from high school but have only enough credits to be in ninth grade.

“We hope it will attract back into the schools those who have left because school lacked relevance to their lives, and they didn’t stay engaged,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We failed too many of our children in the past – something we are committed not to do again.”

More specifically, Michele Cahill, senior counselor on education policy to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, said the policy would take “young people who are going nowhere” and show them a pathway to career and educational opportunities.

“Right now, if you take one of our large, comprehensive high schools that’s graduating fewer than half of its students, you will find a large number of 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds who are enrolled in the school, who maybe are in the ninth grade for the second or third time because they aren’t progressing,” she said. “We’re trying to reach out and bring them back.”

Ms. Cahill said the first-year program budget would be $14 million, or $5,400 per student. That money comes on top of per-pupil funds already in the budget and will pay for a staff program coordinator at each site, work counselors, job counselors, and stipends for participants.

She said the programs would teach students skills in everything from health care to information technology to construction, helping them develop useful career skills and experience, as well as introducing them to industries and sectors and letting them know about the availability of opportunities for continuing education.

Ms. Cahill said the new program doesn’t amount to phasing high-risk students into GED programs to reduce dropout rates. “This is totally consistent with state policy,” said.

The principal of the School of Cooperative Technical Education, which currently is the only program in the city that offers that sort of career and technical training to students working toward diplomas and GEDs, said the creation of new schools like his “couldn’t happen soon enough.”

The principal, Glenn Goldberg, said the 21 training programs offered at Coop Tech enable students to earn a living wage instead of minimum wage. He said the programs also help students become more responsible and mature.

“Anything that is going to provide society with useful, self-sufficient individuals is a good thing for that individual as well as society as a whole,” he said. “Someone is much better off when they can earn $14 an hour rather than $6 an hour – to me it’s a no-brainer.”

The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said the city’s vocational programs have been suffering erosion for years. Indeed, she said, last year at this time she was fighting against the Bloomberg administration’s threats to cut hundreds of jobs for teachers working with the same group of students being targeted by the new vocational initiative.

“Maybe this is a change of view,” she said. “We have to help kids who have either dropped out or for whom vocational, career, and technical training would be a fantastic way to earn a living wage. But I want it to be more than a press release or a speech. I want it to be something real for these kids, and real for the trades, and I hope this is a difference of approach for these programs on the part of the mayor and the administration.”

The assistant director for work and education reform research at the Community College Research Center at Columbia’s Teachers College, Katherine Hughes, said the city’s efforts to expand vocational education in the past few years have been “very positive.”

“Career technical education is very important,” she said. “For some students, including it in their high-school career is a motivating factor, and there is research supporting that. It often helps keep kids in school and helps them to finish if they feel that they’re preparing toward a career.”

Ms. Hughes said it’s too soon to predict the impact of the new Learning to Work program, but she said that to be successful the program should help students earn credentials, help them find jobs, and connect them with community colleges that would allow them to learn more about their fields.

She said program participants should “perceive that there’s somewhere to aspire to, and somewhere to go next.”

Bloomberg by the Numbers

The following are excerpts containing some examples of key numbers in Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City speech.

And I am proud to report that today we’ve driven crime 14% lower than it was when I stood before you three years ago.

Rape, a particularly vicious crime, is down 9%. During 2004, we had the fewest murders since 1963. And here in the Bronx, the NYPD has reduced murder by an astonishing 34% since 2001.

Last year, officers made more than 33,000 arrests in Impact Zones, reducing crime by 26%, and murders by 40%. Year Three of Operation Impact will team experienced officers with 1,000 of last Friday’s graduates from the Police Academy – the newest of the 8,000 officers we’ve hired since 2002.

The Fire Department is also leading the way. Last year, we had the fewest fire fatalities in 85 years! In fact, there have been fewer fire deaths over the last three years than in any three-year period since the FDNY started keeping records back in 1916. And that’s a record of accomplishment we’re going to build on.

During the last fiscal year, we placed a record – more than 28,000 homeless men, women, and children in permanent homes. But, we also recognized that, for too long, we’ve focused on crisis management, instead of on long-term solutions.

This year, we will persuade State leaders to join New York City in our campaign to develop 12,000 units of supportive housing in our city. And we’ll ensure that all those in need of emergency shelter are treated with respect.

Over the last three years, we have reduced domestic violence crimes by 27% – and we’re going to build on that success.

And for you homeowners who bailed the city out of the fiscal crisis, we will offer another $400 property tax rebate as our thank you for being there when the city needed you!

Here in the South Bronx, we’ll move ahead on preserving and building more than 1,500 houses and apartments.

In Williamsburg, we’ll open the first of 350 housing units in Schaefer Landing, where rents in 40% of the units will be pegged to low-income families.

And in East New York, this spring we’ll join East Brooklyn Congregations to break ground on more than 800 affordable homes.

Every New Yorker deserves a good home – and that includes the one out of every 20 New Yorkers who live in public housing.

So this year, the Housing Authority, helped by the Housing Development Corporation, will launch an unprecedented four-year investment of nearly $2 billion to modernize and preserve public housing.

Communities across the city, however, also need more parks and open spaces. And that’s why last year we added 150 acres to the biggest and best City parks system in the nation – much of it along our 578 miles of waterfront.

Here in the Bronx, we’ll begin an historic five-year, $220 million campaign to improve 38 of this borough’s parks and playgrounds. It’s the biggest investment in the City parks in nearly 70 years – and it will produce an incredible green legacy throughout the Bronx.

Unemployment eventually rose in this city as high as 8.6%. But we’ve come back strong – and we’re creating jobs and opportunity in all five boroughs.

Today the unemployment rate is down to 5.4%. For the first time in 16 years, New York City’s unemployment rate is as low as the entire nation’s.

Over the last year, some of the nation’s biggest corporations gave New York their vote of confidence.

Bank of America and Citigroup are building new office towers, and Virgin America Airlines has found new headquarters space in Lower Manhattan. Pfizer brought 1,000 new jobs to our city, with plans to create 3,000 more in the years ahead.

We hosted nearly 40 million tourists during 2004 – a new record. Many continue to come to enjoy our unparalleled cultural institutions.

Some of the dilapidated structures there have already come down. The stores and riverfront park that will eventually replace them will bring 2,000 permanent new jobs to the community, and be the shining gateway that the Bronx needs and deserves.

And in a few weeks – less than 10 minutes from here – the biggest wholesale seafood market in the nation will open at Hunts Point, and bring with it 500 new jobs and $1 billion in economic activity.

Marty Markowitz I know you will be with us at Red Hook when a new cruise terminal that will create 600 Brooklyn based jobs opens for business by the end of the year.

That puts us on course to turn this area into the city’s next great, commercial, residential, and recreational destination. It will be the future site of almost 40 million square feet of development space. It will include almost 14,000 apartments, of which 25% will be affordable.

The Hudson Yards Plan will create more than 280,000 new permanent jobs – many of them in our crucial tourism and hospitality industries.

The re-development of the Far West Side will create 230,000 new construction jobs alone. And I think all New Yorkers should have a fair chance at these jobs.

Don’t forget: we’ve got more than 1,300 schools, 85,000 teachers, and 1.1 million kids. More kids than there are people in Detroit, and almost as many as the populations of San Francisco and Miami combined!