SOUTH-CENTRAL : Free After-School Program Aids Pupils

When class lets out at Menlo Avenue School, it seems all 8-year-old Aron Castillo wants to do is watch TV or play with his friends.

Although his mother, Josefina, doesn’t mind Aron’s fondness for basketball, she does wish her son would cut down on the cartoons. Last Monday, the 26-year-old housewife turned her desire into reality when she signed Aron up as one of 225 youngsters to participate in a free after-school program that offers academic tutoring, sports and art lessons.

“I enrolled him because he’s going to learn more and I like that,” Castillo said about the Better Educated Students for Tomorrow program, which begins Tuesday at her son’s school.

Menlo, with a student body of 1,200, was chosen in January from more than 400 elementary schools in the city’s school district to participate in the private, nonprofit program.

About $300,000 will be spent over three years to provide Menlo participants with homework tutoring, math and science courses, sports activities and visual and performing arts instruction. Computer classes will also be offered.

Program officials selected Menlo, just south of the Los Angeles Sports Arena, because it placed among the district’s worst schools in reading and math scores and its students were among the city’s poorest. Menlo ranked in the top eighth of all primary and secondary schools for the total number of students with families on welfare.

Organizers hope the program will help youngsters become better students and open their eyes to experiences and knowledge they might not otherwise encounter.

Menlo program coordinator Charles Ferreira said the program will also provide focus and structure for the school’s many latch-key children. “It will give them a place to go,” the fifth-grade teacher said.

Launched six years ago in 10 elementary schools, the program covers 22 schools and more than 4,400 students. A recent UCLA study reported that the program’s students showed significant gains in their grade-point averages.

Students are selected for the program on a first come, first-served basis, and their only obligation is to have adults pick them up at the end of the day. The program runs from 2:30 to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

Program Director Debe Loxton said its reach is limited only by money. The program, which operates in cooperation with the mayor’s office, the city Community Redevelopment Agency and the Los Angeles Unified School District, has increasingly come to rely on private sector funding.

The Menlo program, in fact, is the third in the last year to be funded entirely through private money. Donations came from Sav-on drugstores and Sony Pictures Entertainment, among other sources.

Many principals have requested that the program be expanded to their schools, and Loxton said others are encouraged to apply.

“If there was more funding available, we’d go into another school immediately,” Loxton said.

The Menlo program will begin every day with a snack in the cafeteria. Students will be divided into groups and assigned different activities such as academic enrichment classes, sporting activities or arts courses.

Registration will be reopened every year to give other students a chance to participate.