A Room of Their Own : Program Offers Last Chance to Learn for School ‘Throwaways’

It is 8:15 a.m., the beginning of another day in the one-room school in the Highland Park church. In the unusually humid July weather, students straggle in slowly, sleepily.

Many of the teen-age boys have a similar look: closely shaved hair, dark T-shirts, baggy pants. It is the distinctive look of the cholo , the troublemakers of the streets.

The youths walk over to a clothes rack holding several long-sleeve dress shirts and ties. With a little prompting, they don the attire over their street clothes.

A girl with dark lipstick and heavy eyeliner and wearing shorts and a revealing halter top walks in. She is asked to put on a blouse from the rack to cover herself. Then, looking a bit awkward, the pupils take their seats.

Class begins at Soledad Enrichment Action, a program for public school “throwaways,” including a mix of gang members, graffiti writers and teen-age mothers, among others.

Soledad Enrichment Action is named for an East Los Angeles church, the Church of Our Lady of La Soledad. That was where Claretian Brother Modesto Leon was working back in 1972 when he realized that gang members could not get an education if their school was in “enemy turf.”

Leon said he was particularly concerned about a tiny gang whose members, having been trounced by rivals, were afraid to go to school.

So, with support from the Roman Catholic Church, volunteers and the county’s continuation school system, Leon began offering classes for gang members at Riggin Elementary School, and the Soledad program was born.

A second school was started in 1983 in South-Central Los Angeles. Now, there are 13 Soledad programs in the county funded by the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

The goals are simple. Teachers do not preach--or lecture--to students about the evils of gangs. They try to provide a basic education so that, if students want to get off the streets, they have the needed skills to find work.

“You don’t say, ‘Get out of the gang,’ ” Leon said. “You say, ‘Here’s what we have for you.’ ”

Anastasia Ferrarer is a recent graduate of UC Santa Barbara who has headed the school at Faith United Presbyterian Church since November. She sees achieving the goal as an uphill battle. Students come and go, she said. Most are on probation and, if they are picked up by police, they usually end up in custody again for quite a while.

“Keeping students is really difficult because of the kind of kids that we are dealing with,” Ferrarer, 24, said. “When I came here, my idea was to get them to give up the gangs. Now I say, ‘If you’re going to do that, fine. But let’s also get you an education so you have something to fall back on if you ever change your mind.’ ”

As class begins on this particular morning, only about half of the 28 enrollees are present. The room is spartan--rows of desks on hardwood floors, plain white walls with just two National Geographic maps illustrating the world of the ancient Maya as decoration.

Ferrarer and fellow teacher Jim Edwards hand out assignments. After that, students work independently throughout the three-hour day. Teachers offer help as needed.

Skill levels vary. Some students read Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” Others can barely read or write. A few learn division. One student does geometry. Some also participate in a computer class, an extra hour in which they can practice basic word processing skills on donated computers.

On this day, Sergio Vera arrives late. A 13-year-old with a shy smile, Vera has been a student for only a week. The Boyle Heights gang member said he quit regular school a while ago.

“They just say to you, ‘Do this, do that’ and they think you know how to do it, and they don’t have time to tell you,” he said of the system that overwhelmed him. Then he was arrested for possessing the drug PCP. As a condition of probation, he has to go to school.

In the back office, Edwards, who is also a minister at the church, helps Vera with his tie. He had never worn one before last week.

Shirts and ties for boys, and modest attire for girls, have been part of the program since its inception. Leon said the original purposes were to disguise gang affiliations and to create a more professional atmosphere in the classroom. But the program founder said he also believes it is important for students to be comfortable in more formal attire, in the event of a job interview.

Teachers have no qualms about ejecting unruly students. But Leon said there are few discipline problems. Most students have been kicked out of public schools and, Leon said, “They know it’s their last chance.”

Still, the early months of the Highland Park program were marred by violence. First, there was fighting among students from rival gangs, Ferrarer said. Then, last November, a Highland Park gang member was killed outside the church by police after he confronted a group of Soledad students while holding a gun.

Officers happened to be passing by and saw the incident unfold, Los Angeles Police Detective Jose Carillo said. The gunman was shot after he ignored officers’ instructions to drop the weapon.

Afterward, Leon feared the church would evict the school, but the congregation felt Soledad should remain. Then Ferrarer arrived and several student troublemakers were asked to leave. The most serious discipline problems ended, Ferrarer said.

Carillo, who heads the gang detail at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division, knows many of the Soledad students.

“I have noticed that there is a change,” he said of some. “They see the light and they start straightening up before it is too late. They’re tired of living with the fear of being shot at and not knowing who or why.”

Not every Soledad student is a gang member, or has a criminal record. Sandy Gonzalez, 15, said she enrolled because she needed time to be with her 10-month-old daughter. When her parents learned of her pregnancy, Gonzalez said, they kicked her out of their Highland Park home. She now lives with her boyfriend and his parents. With a baby, a full day of school is out of the question. Gonzalez wants to attend Pasadena City College.

For Ferrarer, who also serves as a counselor, the one-on-one contact is one of the most rewarding and important aspects of her job.

“Most of them don’t believe they can do anything,” she said of her students. “Their teachers in the past have just taken the attitude: ‘It’s a lost cause.’

“You may give them nothing but a little bit more attention,” she said. “But if they walk out the doorway and feel that somebody cared about them sometime in their life, then I’ve done something.”