500 Students Attend Rally : Speakers Exhort Tough Audience of Valley Students Not to Drop Out

Alternately bullying and begging, San Fernando City Councilman Jess Margarito had something to say to the 500 junior high and high school students gathered at Los Angeles Valley College on Thursday:

“Some of us have missed the boat, and we don’t want you to miss it,” Margarito told the students during the second annual La Raza Youth Conference rally.

“The choices you make today will affect you two years from now,” Margarito told the sometimes inattentive audience of students from throughout the San Fernando Valley. “In five years, the party’s over, people.”

Margarito was one of several speakers at the conference aimed at keeping youngsters, especially Latinos, in school.

Tough Crowd

Often emotional, sometimes angry and at times even funny, the speakers discovered that the teen-age audience was a tough crowd to win over.

At times, it was like pulling teeth. “They’re squirrelly at first,” said Angela Kalb, who conducted a seminar on teen-age pregnancy and is a social worker with El Nido Services, a youth counseling organization. “They’re just here to take the day off from school.”

The conference was sponsored by the La Raza Youth Conference Committee of the San Fernando Valley, which is mainly composed of high school students, community residents and social service organizations.

To improve attendance from last year’s 125, those who had attended last year were asked to spread the word throughout Valley schools, said Corinne Sanchez, executive director of El Proyecto del Barrio, a valley community service organization.

Many Dropouts

Sanchez said northeastern Valley schools, which have the highest dropout rates in the Valley, were especially targeted.

A 1984 Los Angeles Unified School district study showed that 44% of students who enrolled as sophomores in 1981 had left by June, 1984. Although some of the attrition can be attributed to students who move away or attend school in another district, officials believe the attrition rate is a fairly accurate gauge of how many do not complete school.

Among Valley high schools, the average attrition rate was 37.6%. San Fernando High School, in the heavily Latino northeastern area, had an attrition rate of 56.4%.

Most of the students attending this year’s conference were in junior high, Sanchez said, because conference leaders wanted to reach the students as early as possible.

Pregnancy Seminar

After a morning devoted to motivational talks by local businessmen and community leaders, the students attended a series of workshops where they could discuss school and social problems with experts, who volunteered their time. Teen-age pregnancy seminars drew large crowds, although many students seemed shy about asking questions.

When asked how teen-age pregnancy related to education, many of the students simply shuffled their feet and looked down at their desks. The silence stretched to a full minute before a girl timidly raised her hand.

“Because if you get pregnant, you drop out of school and don’t get a job,” she said in a rush.

Other workshops dealt with drugs and alcohol, self-help with emotional and motivational problems, and career options.