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‘Let’s Get Lost’ : Seniors Are Ditching School and No One, It Seems, Can Stop Them

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Surrounded by classmates, the three honor students from San Fernando High School are baking on the sands of Zuma Beach. Clad in neon trunks, their toes dug into the sand, they are immersed in the three R’s: rays, rap and relaxation.

And it’s just the beginning of what should be fourth-period class.

“You only live once--that’s our motto,” says Alex Padilla, 17, the student body president. “ This is living.”

Senior ditch day has arrived for the San Fernando students, and they have lots of company. Echoing the general sentiment, “Let’s get lost,” graduating seniors from at least four other Southern California high schools also are playing hooky at Zuma Beach this day. It’s a tradition that other schools have already honored in recent weeks and one that will be observed this week as well, just days before public schools close on June 22.

Ditch day, in which students take the day off “unofficially” and flee from teachers, classrooms and tardy bells, has become a ritual that ranks right up there with prom night. Many students will get their parents to excuse them from classes. Others confess they will forge their own excuse notes so they can worship the sun in Malibu, ride Magic Mountain’s Viper roller coaster or hang out at the mall. Indeed, before L.A. city schools sound the final bell of the semester, hundreds, if not thousands, of the 25,581 graduating seniors will have ditched for a day.

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And no one, it seems--not even the feared assistant principal--can stop them.

Mike Mishef, San Fernando’s assistant principal, throws his arms up in disbelief when he hears that an extra 200 to 250 students, most of them seniors, are reported absent, a direct result of ditch day. “You generally know it’s coming,” Mishef says about the unsanctioned holiday last Friday. “You know because it’s usually the day before the prom.

“You try your best to tell kids to stay in school. You tell them you’re going to call their parents when they are absent. You tell them it’s not a free day and that we frown on it,” he says.

“But the students--even though they are good students and we do have great kids here--think it’s a tradition.”

Although Mishef says all absent students “have to return to school with an excuse,” he concedes he does not have the manpower to check the validity of each one. So as long as the note appears plausible, students are off the hook. But five or more consecutive absences and a student has to “see me personally,” Mishef says.

Administrators across the Los Angeles Unified School District report similar senior ditch days, even though warnings against the practice were announced to students over the school’s public address system.

Gloria Morrison, El Camino Real High School senior class sponsor, director of student activities and math teacher, says the tradition “has gone on for many, many years” at her Woodland Hills school. El Camino Real seniors had their ditch day June 1, the day before their prom. On Monday, when school resumed, an unusually long line wound its way into the attendance office with students holding handwritten excuses, some proclaiming near-death illnesses for their time off.

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It seems that no Southern California school district is immune to this senior-class custom. Ardis Bonozo, assistant principal at Santa Monica High School in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, says: “We experienced more absenteeism than usual” on the Friday before the senior prom, May 12.

“We had heard people talking about (ditching), talking about not showing up,” Bonozo says. “We would like to see it not happen. The easy excuse is that, ‘Everyone is doing it’ and so (seniors) join in and some parents say it’s OK. You hear comments from teachers who planned important lessons for the day and no one was there, other teachers who planned exams and were disappointed” because the students didn’t show.

What’s more important for parents and students to realize, she and other administrators contend, is that students 17 and younger who ditch are breaking the law. (Students 18 and older are not subject to compulsory attendance laws.)

And, generally speaking, from the habitual truant to the occasional ditcher, students with unexcused absences are costing school districts money.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, unexcused absences cost the district $110 to $120 million dollars this school year, says Joe Fandey, administrative consultant for the district’s student attendance and adjustment services office. Fandey says the district receives $16.39 a day in tax dollars for every student who comes to school. The money is used for a variety of things, from paying teacher’s salaries to building new schools and buying books, equipment and supplies.

Fandey says his biggest worry is for students’ safety. “When it becomes clear that there is a ditch day going on, that is cause for concern because the students’ well-being becomes the overriding interest,” he says. “But we never know until the roll is called and it becomes obvious that a ditch day is occurring.”

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Ditch day at San Fernando High doesn’t become officially unofficial until after the second period roll call when attendance records are filled in.

But the word is out among students days before, according to senior Amy Sandoval, 17, who is in charge of decorating the school courtyard to kick off ditch day and prom night.

At 6:30 a.m., about 50 San Fernando seniors start to transform trees and pillars into a forest of emerald green and black, the senior colors.

Varsity cheerleader Ana Del Toro and Alma Avitia, a student government representative, both 18, hurriedly put the finishing touches on the last tree trunk, wrapping it in a green and black crepe paper braid. Liliana Curioca and Fernando Ortega, also 18, haphazardly toss leftover streamers into treetops, creating a ribbon effect that elicits oohs and aahs from passers-by.

Nearby, student body president Padilla and his best friend, Xavier Velazquez, 17, join in the rush to string a senior-autographed banner between two trees.

At 7:53 a.m. the school bell sounds.

Melissa Maldonado, 18, senior class historian and yearbook photo editor, frantically works to capture the frenzied work of her classmates on film.

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“Now we have 10 minutes to clear out, vanish and otherwise get lost,” says Maldonado, who opts to join friends at a San Fernando hamburger joint. Then she leaves to get a haircut, pick up her prom dress, buy some makeup and rendezvous with her boyfriend, who attends Sylmar High and is also ditching school.

“Most teachers anticipate this day,” Maldonado says. “A lot of us discuss it with parents. In a sense we’re not really playing hooky. It’s like we deserve the day off. I mean I was going to stay at school, but then I thought, ‘Why?’ when I could really use the day for my prom errands.”

Avitia, who plans to become an elementary teacher, has similar plans: a manicure, shopping, getting together with girlfriends.

“My mom knows,” Avitia says. “She said ‘Fine,’ when I told her I wasn’t going to school except to decorate it. She knows I have a lot to do before the prom, and I won’t really have time to do it all on Saturday.”

For Padilla; Ruben Moncada, 17; Velazquez and Greg Tan, 18, co-valedictorians with a grade point average of 4.0, the day’s itinerary is packed with trips to familiar haunts and a new adventure at a funky Santa Monica shoe store.

After breakfast at the hamburger joint, the students fan out to various locales. Those bound for Zuma Beach agree to meet at about 10:30.

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While they wait on friends who are running errands, Padilla and Velazquez, who have known each other since the fifth grade, talk about their futures, which are filled with promise. The two will travel to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to begin four-year study programs--funded with scholarships, grants and student loans--June 24.

The drive to Zuma Beach is filled with pulsating, heart-pounding rap music: the cassette rhapsodies of BBD--Bell, Biv, DeVoe--Digital Underground, Public Enemy, Ice T, A Tribe Called Quest and Maestro Fresh Wes alternate with an AM radio station billed as the country’s only 24-hour rap station.

“The rap music we listen to promotes intelligence,” Velazquez says as he and his pals engage in a rap session about rap music. “And intelligence is in. These rap groups aren’t about money. They want to get their messages across, messages about your heritage, about being anti-gang, about thinking positively and promoting intelligence as the wave of the future.”

Says Padilla: “Ignorance is out. To be intelligent is to be cool.”

Even if it means missing Mrs. Mildred Rubinstein’s (secretly referred to as “Milli Vanilla” by students) fourth-period senior English class, which is what the the Zuma-bound seniors are doing.

Before heading to lifeguard tower No. 6--where San Fernando High seniors have been gathering all day--the four break into precision dancing, hours of practice and camaraderie evident.

“This is the Electric Slide,” announces Tan, senior class sergeant-at-arms and varsity wrestling champ, while the quartet, who have removed trousers to reveal boxer trunks, line up, take three steps back, three steps forward, tilt, and repeat the routine to M.C. Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This.”

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“Now this is the Humpty,” Velazquez says. He and his buddies bounce as their arms slowly reach toward the sky and then slowly drop to their sides. “The trick to this dance is to grab your shirt like this with one hand as your arm goes up,” Velazquez says, while slowly pulling the front of his T-shirt up to his chest.

The impromptu dance demonstration concludes with a “Shouster thumb shake”--the quick pressing together of two thumbs. Then it’s straight to the sand.

With beach towels, sun block lotion, boogie boards and tons of attitude, they join the dozens of seniors at Zuma 6 who have come to the beach on a day filled with talk about plans after graduation, philosophy about life, but, mostly, about cruising for chicks.

Nearby, at Zuma 7, is a pack of students from Sylmar High in wet suits gabbing about the big one (“a monster wave, dude,” explains a student with curly golden locks) that got away. Over by Zuma 4, sprawled on a Bartman towel--named for TV’s underachiever Bart Simpson--are seniors from Polytechnic High in Sun Valley. And in the vicinity of Zuma 5, reports are wafting in that bikini-clad girls from Hollywood High are also playing hooky.

Robert Hernandez, his ankles deep into sand, is a 17-year-old peer counselor at San Fernando. The peer counseling experience has been an eye-opener, he says, and because of it, he’ll attend Valley Community College and then, he hopes, UCLA to study psychology.

“Kids are having all kinds of problems--drugs, alcohol, relationships, families, school, money. Most of them are scared to move on. I’m scared to move on. There’s so much sadness and fear, especially fear of graduating,” Hernandez says, while the circle of guys around him listen with interest.

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“It’s true,” Padilla says later. “A lot of bad stuff is going on out there with people. But I have to believe that these are the best of times. Sometimes we’ve got to kick back and relax and not worry about stuff. That’s what we did today and it was a blast. It ranks right up there. So we broke a rule, but the world went on whether we went to school or not.”

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