Test of Courage : Former Gang Members, Dropouts Team Up for Academic Decathlon

Los Angeles’ brainiest teen-agers will match wits today when a grueling high school test of knowledge called the Academic Decathlon is staged. So will some of the city’s bravest.

A group of former gang members and school dropouts who have struggled to turn their lives around will be among the 495 youngsters taking the daylong exam at sites in Gardena and Dominguez Hills.

The 10 students will represent the Los Angeles Unified School District’s network of continuation high schools in matchups against the school system’s 49 regular high schools and five magnet schools.

“The other schools are gonna think we’re just a bunch of gangbangers,” laughed Jay Foster, the 17-year-old coach of the Options continuation school team. “They’re gonna be surprised.”

Foster can laugh. He was a member of the East Coast Crips gang when he was wounded five years ago in a drive-by shooting. Later, he served an 18-month term with the California Youth Authority for attempted murder in another case.

“I was 12. I was shot in the leg,” Foster said Friday. “Somebody from my gang killed somebody from another gang the week before. The other gang drove past in a car with guns out the windows. One of my friends standing with me was killed.”

Foster said he changed his ways after deciding that education was the only thing that would open doors to him. He hopes to attend college next year to study business so he can help run his uncle’s security agency.

These days, life is hectic for Foster. His mother starts work as a bus driver at 3 a.m., so it is up to him each morning to bathe, dress and feed four brothers and sisters, ages 2 to 8. Then he drives them to school and to baby-sitters before attending classes for his team in borrowed rooms at the California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park.

There, Foster helps write and grade practice tests for teammates. He also helps crack the whip to keep them studying at the museum and during daily excursions to the nearby USC library.

The regimen is grueling. And that is fine with his decathlon team members.

Ineka Smith, 17, said she dropped out of school for a year because of unchallenging classes at El Camino Real High in West Hills, where she was bused from her South-Central Los Angeles home.

“School was boring. My algebra class was so easy I started ditching it. Then I’d skip other classes too. They didn’t bother to test us. They just put us in easy classes. There was no challenge.”

Boredom also helped turn teammate Naly Sithouong, 17, of Hollywood into a dropout. After spending months roaming the country with friends and abusing alcohol and drugs, she decided to return to school.

“I didn’t want to be a lowlife for the rest of my life,” said Sithouong, a budding designer who has become the team’s fine arts category specialist.

Ruby Ramirez was bounced out of Bravo Medical Magnet School and into continuation classes when a staff member noticed a penknife in her purse and falsely concluded that she was a gang member.

“It was unfair. I never got to experience regular high school, to do things like to go to high school dances,” said Ramirez, 17. She is the team’s social science expert and hopes to major in sociology in college.

Other team members are Glorya Mack, 17, of Paramount; Yasmine Rashid, 17, Kenderick Scutter, 16, and Tiosha Starks, 18, all of South-Central Los Angeles; Carl Tharps, 17, of North Hollywood, and Lawrence Williams, 17, of Watts.

Today’s competition begins at 7 a.m. with written tests in six academic subjects. Competitors will also write essays and give two speeches. At 4 p.m., a public Super Quiz at Cal State Dominguez Hills will round out the contest.

The Options team spent Friday night at the Inglewood home of their tutor, continuation high school teacher Betty Powell.

“I want to make sure everybody gets to the decathlon on time,” Powell said.

“Some of them don’t have the basics in math and science because they’ve missed a lot of school. And when kids get transferred from school to school their records get lost and delayed and they’re put in the same classes all over again,” Powell said.

“My kids have focused for an extended length of time on this to get there Saturday. No matter how they do, that’s their prize.”