Learning the Language of Financial Aid : College: A workshop conducted in Spanish shows parents what they can do to finance the high cost of higher education.

Lennox resident Jose Fernandez, a waiter, emigrated from Mexico more than two decades ago, in part to provide better schooling for his children. Now Fernandez fears he can’t afford to send his eldest daughter to college.

The daughter, Martha, has applied for admission at several public and private universities, including the University of La Verne--her first choice. But tuition, room and board and other expenses at the private school amount to $16,000--more than half of the $30,000 that Fernandez and his wife, Maria, hope to earn this year.

Even sending Martha to a public university would stretch the family’s finances. The annual cost of attending Cal State Northridge, where she has also applied, amounts to $7,000 a year.

“We’ll try to do what we can,” said Fernandez, the father of four.

The high cost of college is an irony that confronts many immigrants who leave poorer countries believing that America will offer greater educational opportunity for their children. To seek a solution, Fernandez last week spent an evening at a financial aid workshop in Lennox aimed primarily at immigrant families.

The leader of the Spanish-language workshop, Pepperdine University financial aid director Israel Rodriguez, spelled out the various types of federal and state grants and loan programs available to college students from low- and middle-income families.

The workshop is said to be the first of its kind in Lennox, a starter area for Mexican and Central American immigrants that is 86% Latino. Because there is no high school in the unincorporated community, Lennox Middle School counselor Pam Rector organized the presentation as a means of reaching out to parents.

“I think it’s important that the parents have the information in their own language,” Rector said. “By understanding it better themselves, they’ll be able to understand how expensive college is and how important it is to get their information together. The kids know a lot about the process, but the parents don’t.”

Most of Rector’s former pupils attend either Leuzinger High School in Lawndale or Hawthorne High School in Hawthorne. It is often difficult for their parents to attend college preparation nights at those schools because of transportation problems or conflicting work schedules, Rector said.

“This is in the neighborhood. Here, they just have to walk around the block,” Rector said.

About two dozen parents assembled for Rodriguez’s presentation. He tried to assure them that there are numerous ways to finance a university education.

“Don’t let the cost scare you,” Rodriguez said, noting the dismayed looks from the audience as he jotted down some college expenses on a blackboard.

Fernandez and his wife, Maria, listened with a mixture of bewilderment and resignation. The couple already struggles to make ends meet after paying the $600 monthly rent on their two-bedroom apartment.

Last year, their financial situation was better; Fernandez alone was earning $30,000 as a waiter aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach. But he was laid off last September, and has had to settle for considerably lower pay in his current job--part-time waiter in a hotel restaurant near Los Angeles International Airport.

“When we see the examples they show us, they do scare us,” said Maria Fernandez, a part-time computer lab technician in the Lennox School District. “We had no idea how expensive it is until we came (to the workshop). We’ve been to other presentations where they explain everything in English and we understand, but not as much as when it is in one’s own language.”

Jose and Maria Fernandez hoped for a better life when they left their rural, central Mexican pueblo and settled in Lennox in the late 1960s. Several other immigrant couples from their town, La Capilla de Guadalupe, also moved to Lennox, largely attracted by the prospects of jobs at the hotels and businesses that ring LAX.

Maria Fernandez said the family has not moved back to Mexico, which she misses greatly, because of the better educational opportunities here for her U.S.-born children.

“We come from a pueblo, a rancho really, and it’s been hard to get used to a big city like this,” she said. “We’ve had to learn a new language, we’re far from our families, a number of things have made it difficult. . . . But if they (her children) can succeed, than that makes it all worth it.”

Besides applying to La Verne and Cal State Northridge, daughter Martha, editor of Leuzinger High School’s student newspaper, has also submitted applications to Loyola Marymount and San Diego State universities.

Her academic achievements, including a 3.6 grade-point average, are a source of pride in the Fernandez household. Maria Fernandez points out that Martha has avoided gang and drug problems--no small task in Lennox, a community plagued by such ills.

She said her daughter would benefit most by attending La Verne, her top choice. “She can take advantage of an education more at someplace where she is happy and comfortable,” she said.

Indeed, her daughter says a private school offers more personal attention from professors and greater availability of classes than can be found at a public university.

“The state (schools) are pretty crowded and, from people I’ve talked to, it takes a long time to get your classes and to graduate,” said Martha Fernandez, who works part time at a department store after school. “It’s easier to graduate within four years at the privates. They try to get you out faster.”

But regardless of whether Martha attends a private or public university, her parents say, finding financial assistance will be crucial. Said Maria Fernandez: “More than likely, we’re not going to be able to do it ourselves.”