COVER STORY : A Workable Solution : Education-Jobs Program Steers ‘At-Risk’ Youth Away From Crime

The odds were stacked sky-high against Melvin Holmes.

At 12 he began stealing cars, cutting classes and hanging out with a North Long Beach gang. By 14 he was convicted of receiving stolen property and placed on probation after police found him riding a missing bicycle. At 16 he wound up in youth camp after ditching school and getting involved in a shoplifting incident, a violation of probation.

Like many “at-risk” youths, Holmes seemed caught in an endless downward spiral with escalating consequences. But earlier this year, Holmes was given a chance to break the cycle.

He joined a new program started by the Long Beach Unified

School District for youths expelled from school or recently released from youth camp. Participants are offered a job and a chance to continue school.

For eight months, Holmes attended classes in the morning to earn credits toward graduation. In the afternoon, he worked as ajanitor in an elementary school, his first job. He had to dress appropriately, arrive promptly and follow instructions.

The discipline that he learned on the job carried over to the classroom. He began attending classes regularly and doing his homework. Gradually, his grades began to improve.

Holmes, a tall, soft-spoken youth who is now 17, said his life has been turned around. “If it wasn’t for the program, I would have ended up in camp again or somewhere worse,” he said.

Officials started the program early this year in response to a surge in the number of student expulsions. The number of students being expelled in Long Beach tripled in the past year from 58 to 173, partly the result of new laws requiring districts to expel students who are caught carrying weapons.

Some officials were concerned that the tougher policies were shortsighted--that kicking problem youths off campus and onto the streets simply encouraged them to commit more crimes and become more involved in gangs.

Once students are expelled or drop out of school, chances are good they will be deprived of more than just an education. Dropouts are three times as likely as high school graduates to be arrested, and six times as likely to become single parents, according to a recent study by the California Youth Authority.

Officials also wanted to set up a system to encourage youths who have recently been released from youth camp to resume their education. More than half of the minors sentenced to such camps are rearrested within two years of their release, according to a youth authority study.

The new Long Beach program gives at-risk youngsters incentives to stay in school. For instance, students on probation must report regularly to school and their assigned jobs or risk being sent back to camp.

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But the program also provides counseling sessions to help students deal with personal and family problems, and insists on heavy parental involvement. Parents are required to attend meetings and therapy sessions, and are asked to make sure their child attends classes regularly and does assigned homework. An on-site probation officer also keeps a close eye on participants who have been released from jail.

Youths participate in the program for a semester or up to a full school year, depending on the length of their expulsion.

Initial results have been encouraging. Since the program began in February, about 80% of the participants have completed their courses. Many have returned to regular classes.

“I don’t want to say at this point it’s a cure-all and it’s going to solve everything, but it’s a step in the right direction,” said school board member Ed Eveland, who proposed the comprehensive effort.

Holmes was one of the first students to sign up. He joined shortly after his release from youth camp in Malibu earlier this year.

Like many of his classmates, Holmes says he got into trouble because of low self-esteem. “I didn’t have faith in myself that I could do certain things,” he said. “I felt I wasn’t as smart as everyone else.”

So he cut classes, got into fights, started hanging out with the wrong crowd. He said he also felt distant from his strict mother and his father, a truck driver who often was on the road.

His parents, Floyd and Shenovea Holmes, said school officials did not tell them that their son was having trouble until it was too late. When officials finally called, they said, Melvin was already facing expulsion for getting into frequent fights.

In the new program, the parents said, they noticed teachers, counselors and probation staff “really take the time to sit down and talk to the kids about their problems.” Shenovea Holmes said she occasionally received calls from Melvin’s teacher to let her know how her son was doing in class. “They really show concern,” she said.

In September, 20 students filed into Room 4 at Benjamin F. Tucker School to begin a new semester. The class members had been expelled or sent to camp for various offenses from truancy to assault and robbery.

This is the kind of class where students, during a recent discussion, identified the number 187 with the penal code section for murder, rather than with the ballot proposition to cut off social services to illegal immigrants.

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During the first few weeks, students tested the teacher’s patience with unexcused absences. Some wore baggy pants, earrings and bandannas--items forbidden by the classroom dress code--because they can signify gang affiliation. Daniel, a smooth-talking 17-year-old with a B average, wore gang colors to class. A new student was reduced to tears by her classmates’ teasing and taunting. By month’s end, one student had dropped out.

“These are children that people have given up on,” a school employee said.

But teacher Lynn Wilson doesn’t believe in giving up. She has been teaching at-risk children in Los Angeles County for 20 years.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating,” Wilson said. “One day you think you’re getting through to a student and the next you discover he has been pulled out of your grasp again.”

Born and raised in Compton, Wilson claims a special connection with the children she teaches. She describes how some of her relatives still live in housing projects in Los Angeles, and that she has helped children there.

Like a seasoned maestro, Wilson carefully orchestrates her approach, alternating between gentle nudges and swift reprimands. But throughout she focuses on the positive and spends much of her time encouraging the students, trying to build their confidence.

“You will never hear me put you down,” she told her students during a recent session. “I want to encourage you to be whatever you want to be.”

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After a couple of months, the message seems to sink in for many in the class. Students slowly begin to warm up to the idea of attending classes, doing homework and having goals.

“They want that structure in their lives,” says Bill Jordan, a Los Angeles County probation officer. “Even the hardest-core kid still wants that, still needs that. And they need that personal touch, to feel that someone really cares about them.”

For the most part, students work on individual assignments. They focus on subjects they need to graduate. Then they head out to various jobs ranging from picking up trash to planting trees for the city of Long Beach, the school district and nonprofit organizations. The district received a $150,000 federal grant to fund the job-training part of the program.

At the end of each semester, students receive a stipend of $75 for their work. In addition, they are taught how to prepare for job interviews, fill out applications and write resumes.

“The whole idea is to make a complete turnaround,” said Paul E. Scranton Jr. project coordinator with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which has jurisdiction over expelled students. “Supply an academic setting that’s safe and productive, a job that gives them responsibility and makes them accountable. You put all those things in place so hopefully that youngster can transition back in the system and do well.”

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George Lopez, 17, who was expelled for punching another student, says the program has helped him realize he needed an education to avoid doing menial jobs for the rest of his life.

He had cut classes, losing credits needed for graduation. Now he’s trying to catch up. He spends his afternoons in class hunched over a wooden table working out algebraic equations, simplifying fractions and writing essays.

Lately, all he can think of is finishing the program so he can go back to regular classes. “You’re kind of isolated here,” he says. “You’re away from all your friends.”

He also says his job--sorting paper in the mornings for a recycling program--is boring. He hopes to become a diesel-truck mechanic.

Many students in the program decide they want to do more with their lives, said Glen Goddard, director of operations at the Conservation Corps of Long Beach, a local nonprofit organization that provides jobs for some of the students. “Some come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life. I want to do something better.’ ”

Wilson, the teacher, says the program offers students a chance to turn things around. But it can’t change the dismal reality of the streets--the guns, the gangs, the violence--that affect so many young lives. Some youths still have a hard time making it, even after completing the program.

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She spoke of a former student who completed the program and moved to San Diego after receiving a scholarship from a Christian school. A probation officer offered him a place to stay in the area.

The youngster seemed to do well at first but quit school after a few months.

“He tried to fit in,” said the probation officer, who asked that his name not be used. “But he couldn’t leave L.A. behind. He was in a totally alien world. He wasn’t used to seeing foxes and birds in the back yard. He was afraid of this house because of all the windows. Every time he heard some noise, he thought it was gunfire. He would keep his lights on at night.”

For Melvin Holmes, however, the future already seems brighter. He was recently taken off probation and is currently attending adult school to earn his high school diploma. He plans to go on to vocational school to study computer repair.

“I know now I have what it takes to succeed,” he said. “I’m back on track.”