Program Offers ‘Disadvantaged’ Women a Chance at Better Life : Education: A new Moorpark College project trains participants for higher-paying jobs. But the strict standards disqualified many applicants.

Nora Clements, 44, figured that she had nothing to lose when she interviewed for a grant program at Moorpark College this summer.

“I looked the gal straight in the face and said, ‘I’m stuck. I can’t make enough to live on my own,’ ” she said.

Clements, a Moorpark resident, was one of more than 200 women who applied for a new Moorpark College program that trains “disadvantaged” women in non-traditional occupations, paying for the students’ tuition, books, transportation and child-care expenses along the way.

But the state-funded program’s definition of disadvantaged is strict--in the end, only 13 women met the narrow standards, which include having an income of less than $6,000 annually.

Clements, it turned out, was poor enough to qualify.

Now Clements races to the community college campus four mornings a week, lugging a pile of books that she hopes will be her ticket to the middle class.

“I put my daughter through school,” she explained, carrying a stack of graphic design textbooks through the halls of the college. “She’s got her degree. Now it’s my turn.”

The program is the baby of Vicki Bortolussi, the college’s dean of career education and a woman who keeps a sketch of feminist godmother Betty Friedan framed on her wall. The state only decided to fund six such programs in California this year--Bortolussi’s proposal snatched for Moorpark College a designation as one of the half-dozen sites.

The state community college system threw in $50,000; a federally funded, local job training council added another $50,000, and Bortolussi--in the middle of July, with school starting in seven weeks--went in search of some low-income women.

It is only a demonstration program, meant to prove to state bureaucrats that community colleges may be one of the best places to train women for the higher-paying jobs usually dominated by men. Bortolussi had just enough money to pay the expenses of 20 students; the rest of the funds will go toward running the program itself and setting up more bridges between low-skilled people in the working world and local community colleges, she said.

However, just 13 women qualified. In addition to having a poverty-level income, the would-be students had to face one other employment barrier--such as having math or reading skills below eighth-grade level, a lack of proficiency in English, no high school diploma or general equivalency degree, or a visible handicap or deficiency, said Jacquie Richardson, chairwoman of the board of directors of Ventura County’s Job Training Policy Council.

The policy council--one of 52 around the state--gets about $7 million each year from the federal government to train economically disadvantaged and dislocated workers in new fields of employment, Richardson said. Starting Jan. 1, local councils are also under federal mandate to train women in fields where 75% or more of the jobs are filled by men.

“Women are more likely (than men) to be dependent on social services,” Richardson said. “There is no sense in training them for traditional clerical jobs which will pay them $4.45 an hour. You can’t get off social services with that.”

The local council gave two grants this year--one for $75,000, matched by the state jobs training council, to Simi Valley Adult School to train women as welders and auto mechanics. The other $50,000 grant went to the Moorpark College program, where the matching state community college grant is funding training for women in graphic communications, graphic design, administrative justice and computer-aided drafting.

Although school began Aug. 23, the women have yet to receive any of the reimbursement promised them. The money, it seems, is tied up in government bureaucracy. Administrators now say the funds will be in this week.

Meanwhile, college officials have done what they could. Tuition has been deferred, and each student was awarded a $300 credit at the bookstore. The program’s counselors have spoken with the women’s child-care providers and asked them to hold off on bills until the money to pay them arrives.

But many of the graphics-design students have found that the bookstore does not carry many of the art materials they need for their classes. On their tight budgets, such expenditures can loom large.

“It is mucho, mucho dinero ,” said Kathryn Kline, 36. “I told Lori (Nelson, one of the program counselors) if something doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to rattle some cages.”

Nelson understands their problems only too well. Five years ago, divorced and in a “dead-end clerical job,” Nelson gave birth to her youngest child and two weeks later started classes at Antelope Valley Community College. “I was determined ,” she said.

Today, after graduating with honors from USC, Nelson raises three children while commuting from her home in Lancaster to her job in Moorpark and Cal State Dominguez Hills, where she is working toward a master’s degree in educational counseling.

“The first thing (women on the program) will say is ‘You don’t understand,’ ” she said. “But yes, I do.”

All the women in the program must take a full load of classes. Many squeeze in their homework between tending to children, household chores and the demands of spouses who are often suspicious of the college-level education the students are so determined to receive.

“It’s not easy, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” said Susan Warner, 36, a Simi Valley homemaker who has taken classes at community colleges off and on for the past few years but who nearly stopped this fall for lack of funds. Like most of the other women in the program, Warner is studying graphic design.

“I have a broad array of interests, and where this is going to take me, I have no idea,” she said. “But I guess when I’m through, I could get a job in an art department or a print shop, an advertising agency or a newspaper.”

The women will attend school for two semesters, this fall and spring, after which the program administrators’ goal is to place them in jobs. For many, if the program works for them, it will be the first full-time, permanent job they have held in a long time.

Clements, for example, lost her last good job several years ago when Gibraltar Savings & Loan went under and she was laid off as a loan processor. Since then, she’s had only temporary and part-time work.

Kline, of Simi Valley, has also been out of work for a couple of years, since she lost what she called a “glorified clerical” job at an advertising agency. And Karen D’Amato, 44, a homemaker with a 10-year-old son, has not held any jobs for 20 years. She’s hoping that a graphic-design job would allow her family to move out of the Newbury Park motels they have been living in since last year, two years after her husband began collecting unemployment benefits.

She has a high school diploma, but “a minimal high school education doesn’t mean anything, because you can’t afford to live on a McDonald’s salary,” she said.

Besides, she said, a fast-food job “leaves (your mind) in the numb zone.”

Partly because of their spotty employment histories, most of the program’s students have low self-esteem as well, Nelson said.

“You would think that if you tell someone, ‘You are a good student,’ it would make a difference,” she said, adding quickly, “and it does, for a moment, but then something will happen to knock them down again, and you have to start all over again.”

Clements would agree. School this fall has been exhilarating yet frustrating, she said. Homework, for example, must get done in the wee hours of the morning, unless she chooses to battle for space at the living room coffee table while her boyfriend and his friends watch television.

“I’m trying to shift gears,” she said. “I want to put me first for a change, instead of everyone else--which is hard to do.”