Last Chance : Continuation School Students Dig In to Salvage Their Diploma, Self-Respect

Their education has been bereft of pep squads, football teams and just about anything else smacking of the old boola-boola. Graduation brings no proms, no valedictorians and often no caps and gowns.

Such amenities are not for the students of Orange County’s continuation schools, youths who have dropped out or been bounced from traditional high schools because of pregnancy, troubles with the law, financial problems or plain old teen-age doldrums.

Yet despite the odds, thousands of them clutch at academe’s shirttails each year, refusing to drop out of school completely or settle for an equivalency degree. Instead, they juggle job and classes, work extra hard to earn the “privilege” of doing homework and at the end succeed in getting a diploma, that open sesame to jobs, college and, often, self-respect.

County Education Department officials say they have no figures on the number of students who will graduate from continuation schools in June. Unlike regular schools, which have graduations only in June, continuation schools hand out diplomas in whatever month a student earns the necessary credits. The June continuation school graduation ceremonies are often attended by only a fraction of the students who have earned a diploma during the past year.

Emil Nolte, assistant principal at Gilbert High School in Anaheim, said most students are older “and most have to work; they have no choice.” In addition, the “vast majority have little or nothing going for them in terms of a home environment,” he said.

Rex Boyer, a counselor at Gilbert, said most students are referred to the school from regular high schools because of attendance problems. “Very, very few ever get referred for drugs or disciplinary reasons,” he said, though he conceded that “we have to read between the lines” to figure out some of the real reasons for a student’s repeated absences. Sometimes it is because he or she was in jail.

The county opened its first continuation schools in 1965 when a new state law took effect that required special schools for students who might otherwise drop out of high school completely. Today the county has 14 continuation schools. Enrollment has grown from 1,600 in 1969 to 3,411 last September, an increase comparable to the rise in population in the county in the past 20 years.

Students and teachers say a key feature of continuation schools is extra attention for each student. The schools also offer vocational courses and require most pupils to spend fewer hours in class than do regular schools. Students work at their own speed and progress from class to class as they finish their work rather than by semester.

“The only thing I really miss is, I’m not going to have a senior prom,” said Sheila Akins, 17, who Wednesday completed the 230 credits needed for a diploma and will pick up the sheepskin Tuesday at a special dinner for those who have graduated this year from Gilbert High.

Akins ran into trouble early in her high school career, when she transferred to Katella High School in Anaheim and was told she would have to repeat freshman year “because Katella didn’t think I was ready for sophomore year.” After she repeated as a freshman, her family moved to Texas for several months, then moved back to Orange County. By the time that move was complete, Akins had been out of school for nearly a year. As a result, she came to Gilbert.

“They actually treat you here like they care about you,” Akins said. “They treat you like a real human being. They work with you, not against you.”

Akins thought so much of Gilbert she even shelled out the extra $50, on top of the basic $208 cost, to get the name Gilbert High put on a school ring.

“I was willing to pay that extra 50 bucks because this is my home. I worked long and hard for this” ring. Akins said she is happy to be graduating and plans to go first to a two-year community college and then to a four-year college. She hopes to eventually have a career in business.

Tammy Austin, a 17-year-old who expects to graduate from Gilbert later this summer, missed a lot of classes at Moreno Valley High School because of family problems.

She said she was in the honor society in the ninth and 10th grades, but then her parents separated and she “just slipped.” To top things off, the family’s home burned down, and by the time she and her mother moved to Anaheim a year and a half ago, she was behind in her work.

She entered Gilbert about a year ago with 80 credits and has since earned nearly 150 more. (In a typical high school year, a student earns 60 credits.) Like many of her fellow students, Austin also holds down a job, working a 40-hour week as a nursing assistant.

Teachers at Gilbert said students are limited to three classes a day unless they persuade instructors that they can handle more. They are not allowed to do work at home, either, unless they get permission from the school. “Homework is a privilege,” said Bob Huey, chief counselor at the school. Most students didn’t do it at their previous school anyway, he said, and on campus they can be closely supervised.

Austin said she likes Gilbert High because the teachers give her more individualized attention and because “it’s up to you when you’re going to get out.” Reflecting the sense of accomplishment that teachers say many of their successful students feel, Austin said that “if you do your work and you want to try and you get your credits, then that’s something you’re doing for yourself.”

Austin said she hopes to complete a two-year college program that will let her be a licensed psychiatric technician and work with developmentally disabled people.

Another college hopeful is Letitia Reyes, 19. She went to Santa Ana High School for two years but dropped out “because I didn’t have credits . . . because I didn’t go to school.” No special reason, she said. “I just didn’t go to school.”

The law required that she be in school until age 18 unless she got her diploma earlier, and she decided to attend Mountain View High School in Santa Ana “because they told me that here they would help me graduate.” She said she had to overcome the skepticism of her parents, who heard that continuation school was “only for lowlifes.”

Reyes hopes to go to Rancho Santiago College, the two-year community college in Santa Ana that Mountain View Principal Merrill Jacobs says is the next destination for the majority of graduates from his school.

“Our kids may have a lot of social problems,” Jacobs said, “but there’s nothing wrong with their brains. They just need a chance to mature in an atmosphere that’s student-oriented.”

In a regular high school, a teacher may have 30 or 40 pupils in a room and will teach “to the middle of that class and . . . dominate it,” but in continuation school, “the student dominates” and receives “one-to-one” instruction, he said.

“They used to all go to work when they graduated,” Jacobs said. “Now they go to college.” He said the shift reflects the recognition by students of the importance of college to their later careers.

Jacobs said continuation school students who get their diploma are especially proud.

“You go to other high school graduations and sometimes you’ll see the kids throwing around a beach ball,” said Jacobs, whose institution is one of the few continuation schools where students do wear caps and gowns at graduation. “Well, there are no beach balls here. It’s very serious. They’re very proud of their accomplishment.”