Look for Better School Performance Too : Westside Latino Parents Struggle to Stem the High Dropout Rate

As his mother commiserated with other Latino parents over how difficult it is to get children to do their homework, 7-year-old Victor sat sketching in the back of the classroom.

On a white napkin, served with the morning’s cookies during the parents’ meeting, he drew a picture of one Latino boy shooting a gun at another. He decorated the drawing with gang graffiti.

Pressure from gangs is only one factor contributing to a staggering dropout rate among Latino students in the Los Angeles area and throughout the nation. Statewide, education officials estimate 37% of Latinos in high school will drop out over the next three years.

Number of Causes

Experts cite a gamut of causes: difficulty with the English language, inadequate bilingual education programs, cultural conflicts, anti-Latino bias, a lack of guidance from overworked or uninterested counselors and a lack of support from parents who often don’t understand or are intimidated by the system.

In an effort to both reduce the dropout rate and generally improve their children’s performance in school, a group of Latino parents in Santa Monica has taken action.

Through a yearlong series of workshops held in Spanish, the parents are studying how to get their children into college-preparation courses, how to deal with PTAs, how to encourage their kids to do their homework and how to discipline children in an American society where rules can seem lax.

Similar programs for Latino parents have existed on the Eastside for years.

But they are fairly new on the Westside, where Latino activists and some educators say the school system is largely ill-equipped to counsel minority children.

“The root of all the problems (plaguing Latino youth) is that our children are not graduating from high school, and when they do, they don’t have the skills,” said Yolanda Becerra Jones, former director of the Latino Resource Organization, which sponsors the parent workshops.

“Until they get the support to stay in school from their parents and from Latino professionals, all the other issues (are secondary),” Jones said. “It’s where we must put all our efforts.”

Program Expanded

The Latino Resource Organization, a nonprofit, Santa Monica-based community service group funded largely by the city, started the Parent Leadership Program workshops last school year with one session a month. It expanded this year to twice-a-week workshops. Fifty parents participated the first year and about 70 this year.

The goal is to help parents overcome language and cultural barriers so they can become active in their children’s educations and see them through to graduation day and then college. The Latino Resource Organization specifically targeted first-generation immigrant families for the workshops.

The organization also is co-sponsoring bilingual tutoring sessions for students in the second through 12th grades.

Activists say these kinds of programs are necessary because the public school system has failed to tackle the problem.

Problems in school are by no means limited to Westside Latinos. But activists charge that because Latinos are a minority on the Westside, unlike on the predominantly Latino Eastside, the school system has been slow to accommodate students and/or parents whose native language is Spanish.

“We do as much as we can, but I would be the first to say that it probably is not enough,” said Peggy Lyons, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Board of Education.

She pointed to cutbacks in funding for bilingual education and a severe shortage of bilingual teachers, counselors and administrators in her district.

A survey of the district, which has a total enrollment of 9,555, shows that the percentage of Latino students rose from 15% in 1973 to 26% last year. The percentage of blacks increased only 1%, to 9%, while whites fell from 74% to 57%.

Lyons said the schools offer English as a second language courses and last year began a pilot program at Edison Elementary School that eases Spanish-speaking children into bilingual instruction, beginning in kindergarten.

But she said private programs such as the Parent Leadership workshops are vital.

“They are filling a void,” she said.

Activists charge that Latino students are often steered away from college-track curriculum. Once in ESL classes, they are often trapped in courses that do not prepare them for college.

Part of the solution to the problem rests with the parents, activists say. Ed Farias, the instructor who runs the Parent Leadership workshops, said his goal is to encourage parents to take “leadership roles” at home and in the school and become active in all phases of their children’s education.