The School of Last Resort : Program: Parents are in class largely because they must learn something, or lose part of their welfare payments.

The subject was simple math. Frances Giffin glanced up at the clock, then out at her students in their Oxnard Adult School classroom, and gave the word to begin.

With that, two dozen Oxnard welfare mothers and two welfare fathers turned over their work sheets and began a 60-second math drill.

9+6=

6+0=

8+3=

And so on. It was easy work for most. But next Monday there would be a subtraction test, and beyond awaited English grammar and long division and more. No one was too happy about that.

“You know more than you think you know,” Giffin had insisted a moment before, urging on a hesitant mother of four.

But the uncomfortable reality is that this class has much to learn. These students, who gather twice weekly for four hours each day, have mostly grade-school skills in English and mathematics. They range in age from their 20s to their 50s, but many don’t know their multiplication tables up to 10. They are among more than 400 Ventura County welfare parents who gather in classrooms largely because the government has given them an ultimatum: Sit here and learn something or lose part of your welfare payments.

This is, for many students, the school of last resort. And now the program is caught in a squeeze between new legislation from Washington, which will swell the number of mandatory students, and a tight governor’s budget in Sacramento, which is likely to shrink the program’s funding.

“The demands have increased, no question,” said Kathy Lewis, a branch chief for the state Department of Social Services. Lewis runs the program in Sacramento under the name Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN). “We’re expected to do more with less,” said Ruth Ann McAllister, Oxnard GAIN counselor.

Teachers in the GAIN program are quick to speak up for their students’ favorable prospects, and can cite evidence: On June 19, the Oxnard office gave a reception for 80 GAIN students who passed the state’s high school equivalency test over the past year. Even on a Monday morning in a remedial class, the prevailing attitude is earnest and agreeable.

But the atmosphere is delicate. After 3 1/2 years as a teacher in these rooms, Giffin guesses that 80% of her job is psychology.

Teachers see effects of alcoholism, grogginess from methadone treatments and occasional hints of domestic violence. McAllister recalled that one young student was excused from class a few weeks ago because of a stab wound. Some have been in jail recently, and others might be there soon. And the lightest banter can suddenly disturb a deep well of resentment.

“We should get the summer off like everybody else,” said one mother near the end of a recent school day, declining to give her name. Her teacher replied that she was free to take the summer off, if she didn’t mind taking home a smaller welfare check.

“That’s the first thing we get threatened with,” the mother hissed, shooting a look of menace to the front of the room. Some of her classmates laughed it off, some sat silent.

“The students come in . . . with an attitude problem and they take it out on the teachers. So it’s very important to have teachers with a good attitude,” said Mike Hernandez, director of Oxnard Adult School. “But within about two weeks the feeling is comfortable. They take a look around and say, ‘This isn’t so bad.’ ”

But officials acknowledge that for every student who completes a component of the education program in Ventura County, two or more drop out. And among those who last for several months, few advance from remedial study to preparation for the high school equivalency exam.

Instead, they drop out to either enter job preparation, take a job, have another child, or for more obscure reasons. The students leave almost as fast as new ones arrive, a decided disadvantage for GAIN teachers--such as Frances Giffin and Carole Ramirez, who handle Oxnard’s morning remedial students--with revolving-door classrooms.

“Some of the people we get are 45 years old and they haven’t been in school since they were 10 years old,” Giffin said. “That’s difficult.”

Still, Giffin said, “I love this. This is the best teaching I’ve ever done--because of the personal growth I see in just six months.”

Giffin, 45, had been teaching developmentally disabled youths for seven years before she joined the GAIN program. Ramirez, 41, had a specialty in secondary school teaching. But both say they now prefer teaching these adults.

“If they come, and they come for a week straight, you’ve probably got them,” Ramirez said. “Because then they get in a pattern, and they make friends, and it becomes a social outlet, if nothing else. And most of them need that in their lives.”

Mandatory classes for welfare mothers and fathers have been standard practice in California since 1986, when the state Legislature enacted its landmark “workfare” program.

The idea was to break the cycle of dependence among the more than 640,000 poor families receiving federal Aid for Families with Dependent Children, the most common form of welfare.

The law has led welfare officials to refer 178,900 welfare parents to GAIN. Most of them land in job training programs, leave to take jobs, get deferrals for various reasons or fall off the welfare roles.

But by February, the basic education program had grown to include 25,200 welfare parents across the state: 10,600 studying English as a second language, 5,400 preparing for the state high school equivalency exam and 9,200 in remedial classes. As of April 30, 431 welfare parents were enrolled in Ventura County basic education programs.

Since welfare families are often difficult to track, the program’s rate of success is hard to calculate. In Ventura County, welfare officials offered the GAIN program to 18,678 welfare recipients between September, 1986, and February, 1990--the vast majority of them mothers in single-parent households. At least 3,874 of those enrolled in the Ventura County program, officials report, have gone on to jobs and off welfare.

“For once, I see an out for people who have gotten themselves into a crisis situation and need AFDC,” social worker Amy Luther said recently, explaining the program to a group of new students into the program’s Oxnard office.

The federal government has been enthusiastic, too--enough to get into the workfare business itself. Last July, Congress passed its own workfare bill, imposing stricter rules that supersede California’s and that require classroom time from thousands more welfare parents here.

The state’s program had excused welfare-seeking parents from school or training programs if their children were less than 6 years old. Now, under the tougher federal law, the cutoff age for children is 3 years old (with provisions that allow welfare officials to cover child-care costs).

The state required participation from one parent; the federal program requires participation of both, if both are at home. And the federal program puts a special emphasis on parents under 24 years old who lack high school diplomas.

The result, when local officials began phasing in the new guidelines in January, was a big new crop of welfare parents, tens of thousands of them.

“Our monthly registration has almost doubled,” said Ruth Eloi Irussi, GAIN program manager for Ventura County, where new enrollments now approach 500 per month.

At the Oxnard Adult School, the busiest GAIN basic education site in the county, the number of new enrollees reporting to class has swollen from an average of 38 monthly in the second half of 1989 to 62 in April and 57 in May.

“I didn’t think I would ever have went back to school, but this was mandatory. So I came, and now I like it,” said Donna Arreola, 30, a June enrollee. Arreola, an 11th-grade dropout from Camarillo High School, is the mother of children ages 6, 7, 8 and 11.

“At first, I didn’t really care for this, but I do now,” said Margie Madueno, a 38-year-old mother of three who keeps her papers in the same Pee-Chee folder carried by high school students across the country for at least two generations.

By all accounts, the program is bound to grow further over the next year. But the money for it probably will not.

Combined state and federal allocations to GAIN programs around the state rose from $201 million in 1988-89 to $225 million in 1989-90. But Gov. Deukmejian, facing severe funding shortages, has announced plans that would shave that figure back to $206 million in 1990-91.

“It did not have anything to do with the performance of the program. It was a numbers decision,” said Greg Hudson, an associate budget analyst with the state Finance Department. “There weren’t sufficient funds and there were a whole lot of very tough decisions that had to be made.”

Ventura County’s share of the state and federal funds was $4.06 million in 1988-89 and $4.09 million in 1989-90. It is expected to fall to $3.75 million in 1990-91.

Welfare officials have a priority list that they say will target young welfare parents and those who have depended on aid for more than 36 of the past 60 months.

But in overall numbers, officials acknowledge, the state government’s cutbacks will essentially neutralize the federal government’s reforms. There won’t be room, officials say, for as many as one-third of those now required to enroll in GAIN. State and county officials say they expect to waive GAIN requirements for thousands of welfare recipients.

“If you can’t get enough money,” said Kathy Lewis in Sacramento, “you serve fewer people.”

One of the few certainties about the GAIN program is that plenty of people could use the service.

State officials estimate that six of 10 welfare parents lack basic education--that is, their skills amount to less than those of a typical, employable high school graduate.

Of the 119 people who took GAIN placement tests in Oxnard in April and May, records show, 28 were directed to courses in English as a second language. Sixty needed remedial education, and half of those couldn’t read as well as the average fifth grader.

On one Monday, three mothers stood outside the county Public Social Services Agency office on 3rd Street in Oxnard, about to begin school again.

“I want to give my kid an example, really,” said 21-year-old Frances Ortega, who volunteered for GAIN classes in early June. She dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and is the mother of 2-year-old Bruce.

“When you think about it, it’s in the genes,” Ortega said. “Once you’re on welfare, your kid’s on welfare, and it goes on and on.”

Renita Jefferson, 28, mother of 5-year-old Shatoya, agreed immediately. She has a high school diploma, she said, but gave up trying to balance the demands of work and child care in about 1986.

“My daughter’s only 5 years old, and she knows the first and the fifteenth already,” said Jefferson, referring to the days when welfare checks become available. “I was looking forward to coming. It was about time for me to get off my butt and do something. I was sitting around and watching soap operas for four years. . . .”

There is also the simple financial incentive, the difference between $560 a month if she meets her requirements and $341 if she doesn’t.

“My program is mandatory, but I went to my social worker and said I wanted to do it,” said Gracie Arce, 21, mother of 3-year-old Jesus Espinosa III. Arce said she, too, will aim for a high school equivalency certificate.

“I want to,” she said. “I need to.”

The next step for them that morning was testing--the math and reading exams that would tell how much education they had to make up. If the welfare office’s statistics are any indication, it’s likely that they needed a lot. And if the governor’s budget plans hold firm, those three may or may not turn out to be high priority cases.

But for those welfare parents who find themselves facing the enforced opportunity to sit in school, subtle rewards await. Margie Madueno recently carried one from class in her Pee-Chee folder. It was her most recent math assignment:

20 is -- % of 80.

35 is -- % of 70.

150% of -- is 25.

The last one had given Madueno pause, but all her answers were correct.

“Really,” she said, “I’d rather have a job than be on welfare the rest of my life.”