Fewer Santa Clarita Valley Graduates Enrolling at Cal State : Education: More students are going to community colleges. Officials say it’s a trend, not a quirk.

Fewer students graduating from Santa Clarita Valley schools are enrolling at Cal State University schools, while significantly more are opting for community colleges.

Recent statistics show that enrollment at two-year colleges by graduates from the William S. Hart Union High School District has gone from 34% to more than 50% since 1986, according to Gary Wexler, the district’s director of curriculum.

On the other hand, the percentage of district grads entering Cal State schools has dropped from 13% in 1986 to as low as 6% in the last two years, Wexler said.

“There’s a definite downward trend,” Wexler said. “It’s not just a quirk.”

That trend has not reached the Los Angeles Unified School District, although that district began sending fewer students to the Cal State system after 1991, when the system restricted enrollment, said Roger Rasmussen, director of the district’s Independent Analysis Unit.

Although in 1991, 13.1% of LAUSD graduating seniors went on to Cal State schools compared to 10.7% in 1992, Rasmussen said, the percentage of LAUSD students enrolling in state universities has leveled off. In 1993 and 1994, 10% and 10.8% of LAUSD graduates enrolled in Cal State schools.

Santa Clarita’s trend toward community colleges can be attributed to the state university system’s increase in the number of entrance requirements, Wexler said.

“Several years ago, state schools became more in line with UC standards,” Wexler said, an action he believes excludes many students from the state system. “It’s very difficult to get into a Cal State now.”

Also of concern to Santa Clarita school officials was the reputation that Cal State schools had earned for being impossible to graduate from in four years, Wexler said. But that reputation is, for the most part, unfounded, he said.

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Statistics on the 1995 graduating class are being collected now, said Wexler, and will be presented in September along with state test (SAT) scores for the district.

Officials at William S. Hart High School, one of four in the Santa Clarita district, said the most significant trend at their school is the interest in out-of-state schools.

“I think part of that is related to the fact that kids can go out of state and get the courses they need,” Principal Laurence Strauss said. “They pay out-of-state tuition, but living costs for housing and other things are not as high as they are here.”

If the students don’t go out of state, many enroll at local community colleges, Strauss said. Hart High sends about half of it students to community colleges after graduation, according to school statistics.

“I think the College of the Canyons has an excellent reputation for the percentage of students that leave there and transfer to a four-year school,” Strauss said.

That’s exactly what Mike Williamson, 18, a senior at William S. Hart High, plans to do.

Williamson said he is headed to College of the Canyons in the fall but wants to attend a four-year college later.

“I can’t go to a four-year school now. I won’t get accepted,” he said while sitting outside a local hamburger joint with some of his friends.

Williamson said he isn’t sure what he wants to study yet, perhaps creative writing. But he said he is definitely intent on getting a college education.

“A lot of my friends aren’t gonna go [to college],” he said.

Williamson said he and his friends don’t discuss their future prospects. “We just go out and hang out pretty much.”

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In the parking lot of Taco Bell on Lyons Avenue, three senior boys discussed their future. Like Williamson, A.J. Castillo, 18, said that he will be going to College of the Canyons.

“I’m about a C average,” Castillo said, adding that he had hoped to go to CalArts in Valencia to study art but was discouraged by the tuition cost and so never applied to the school.

His friend, Noe Brambila, 17, said he isn’t thinking about college at all. “I’m going to the Marines after my birthday in November.”

He said he would later pursue a career as a police officer.

Joey Lopez, 17, a self-proclaimed former gang-banger turned honors student, said that even though he has been accepted to both Cal State Northridge and USC, he is going to join the Navy and then go to a four-year college, where he will study medicine.

Lopez said that after spending two years in Sylmar Juvenile Hall, he turned his life around to become an honors student. He added that he is intent on educating himself to the fullest to pursue a respectable life.

“I want my kids to look at me and want to give me a hug,” he said.

Staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this story.