Budget Cuts End Camp for Students

Joseph Killingham had just graduated from Morse High School in the Skyline district earlier this month, but he looked forward more to the following week of brain teasers and sports competition at a unique camp in the rustic beauty near Julian.

It was his fifth year with about 100 seventh- through 12th-graders at the camp, where they would be both rewarded for high grades and good citizenship, and further pushed to strive for college, for strong personal behavior and for interracial teamwork.

For the college-bound Killingham, the week of camaraderie turned out to be a fitting finale at a camp that over the years influenced him greatly to improve his academics and work better with others.

“I don’t have an ‘attitude’ anymore,” the gregarious young adult bragged. “I couldn’t stand working with other people. But here I learned to sleep and to eat with others and I found out about teamwork. I owe a lot to these people” running the camp.

But for those who have overseen the camp, held at Cedar Glen near Julian for almost two decades, the 1992 season that ended Friday was bittersweet.

The 19th annual Academy Awareness Camp was the last, due to budget problems among the three organizations that joined in 1973 to create an educational camp unique in the United States.

No longer can the United States Air Force, the San Diego Unified School District, nor the San Diego Urban League afford the $16,000 annual cost, even if the figure seems a pittance when lined up alongside military or school budgets totaling in the billions of dollars.

So this month was the last time that 12 U.S. Air Force Academy cadets, most of them minority and all of them successful young adult role models, would come out to Keiller Middle School in Skyline and to Morse--schools with large numbers of minority and economically less-well-off students.

The cadets, who competed with hundreds of academy peers to participate in monthlong experience, informally talked to students every day for two weeks about education, discipline and motivation before settling into counselor roles at the camp for a lucky 100 students.

Those students maintained high grade point averages throughout the year--the minimum is 2.6 in the sixth grade up to more than 3.0 by the 11th--as well as good citizenship marks.

While initially begun as a way to tempt more nonwhite students to consider applying to the Air Force Academy, in recent years the annual camp broadened to become an educational reward for students of any race who had studied hard and additional reinforcement for goals of self-discipline, self-motivation and high achievement.

“This camp has been a gem of public education,” Jon Curry, a retired principal of Keiller, said during a visit to Cedar Glen one day last week. “It’s so much more encouragement for kids than just a dean’s list. These students see these cadets, who aren’t that much older than they are, being successful and say, ‘Hey, I can do it too.’

“And you can’t underestimate the power of natural integration,” Curry added, pointing to a group of Latino, African American and white teen-agers--arm-in-arm, trudging up a hill for a “Knowledge Bowl” competition following an intense game of “Ultimate Frisbee.”

Keiller teacher Carol Rothenberg said the students and the cadets “connect so quickly because there isn’t such an age difference. They help our kids see the future, beyond high school. They’re eager to hear what the cadets have to say and they listen to what they say, and they watch how they treat everyone on campus with complete respect.

“I do think that many of our kids work harder in class because they know that’s how they can get eligible for the camp, which each fall they hear about from friends who have gone the previous summer.”

Ambrose Brodus, former director of the Urban League here, was among the group of San Diego educators who visited the Air Force Academy in 1973 to brainstorm the camp idea.

“It’s been a marvelous motivator for kids,” Brodus said. “So many students looked forward to the interaction with cadets each year, and we’ve seen year-after-year the improvements in the attitude of kids returning to school.”

Al Cook, retired district superintendent who also was among the original participants, said: “We always preach about money for drop-out and other prevention-type programs, and then when times get tough, we can’t get people to understand that it’s important to keep funding something even if it is not directly tied to the regular September-to-June program.”

The students may not understand the finances, but they know the value of the camp.

Incoming 10th-grade buddies Hector Perez and Oscar Quesada were back at camp for the second time last week. Perez this year boosted his grade point average to 3.5, a B+, while Quesada was at a 3.8, or A-.

“We both wanted to come back,” Perez said during a break in arts and crafts, where Bill and Marge Ratliff have shepherded tens of thousands of students through T-shirt and jewelry design since the camp first began.

“I always keep my grades up. But I think knowing about the camp every year helps you do that.”

Amber White will be yearbook editor at Morse High next fall, and despite a heavy course load of chemistry, trigonometry, advanced placement Spanish and U.S. History, was able to carry a B grade average and come to camp for the fourth year.

“I really feel like crying this time because there won’t be a camp anymore,” she said. “Especially two years ago, this camp was my motivation to work hard. I just told myself I had to work hard, not to let down my (cadet) friends. A lot of us still keep in touch” with previous cadets.

White corresponds with former cadet counselor Ray Robinson, now an Air Force Academy graduate in pilot training.

The latest group of cadets found themselves surprised at how easily they interacted with the students.

“I’m surprised at how much the students put into all the activities,” said Patrice Jackson, a senior-to-be at the Air Force Academy from Clinton, Md. She supervised the arts-and-crafts area. “We’re trying to get them to be creative and express themselves. Some are a little bit hesitant at first--they keep asking what I think about a design.”

Senior Yong Kuk from Chicago found the students eager to talk in the cabins after an Urban League presentation one night about resisting peer pressure, especially when it comes to sex and drugs.

“They related to it a lot more than I would have thought,” Kuk said. Added Kuk’s colleague William Kelley, a San Diego native: “We had some good discussions (in the cabins) about how realistic the suggestions were on how to resist” negative peer pressures.

Yvan Rogers, a Morse graduate attending camp for the fourth time, pinched his fingers close together in saying that the presentation “was about 80% to 90% right.” Rogers, who will attend Mesa College in the fall, also works with the Boys Club and the Urban League in helping out younger children.

In fact, Kuk found Rogers and other students to be positive peer influences for some of the younger students attending for the first or second time.

“He wants to lead like a cadet, so as much as possible I let him take on some responsibilities for organizing and leading by example,” Kuk said. “It might be the first time that anyone has delegated responsibility to them.”

For school district trustee Shirley Weber, the lack of districtwide visibility of the program probably hurt its chances for funding next year at a time of budget problems.

“It’s not an extremely expensive program, that’s for sure, and there obviously have been kids who have been ‘saved’ by participation,” she said. “I can say it won’t be helpful to lose it because it’s surely positive to have kids working toward earning a goal like this, and giving them the chance to bond with folks in a neutral environment, taking urban kids into a non-urban environment.”

Said Maj. Ray Barrows, national director of minority recruiting for the Academy: “For the admissions office, the key statistic would be how many students were later admitted to the Academy.

“We had about 13 or 14 over the 19-year period, but really, our form of measurement should be broader, in that we should look at how we’ve expanded the pool of candidates graduating from high school and going on to college and making a significant contribution.

“But all of the military is now undergoing tremendous cuts as well. . . . It’s just a shame we’re looking at ending something that builds futures beyond high school.”