Second-Chance Scholars Get a Rung Up on College Education : Learning: Ladders of Hope gives needy black teen-agers four-year scholarships. Despite weak high school grades, they show something extra.

Their grades were only fair. Their SAT scores? Middling at best. And not one of them could afford the price of a college education.

But the eight South Los Angeles high schoolers had something, their principals agreed: a glint of untapped potential, a determination to try.

At a Wednesday news conference sponsored by the United Negro College Fund, those eight youngsters were transformed from “at-risk” teen-agers into bona fide college material. Through the fund’s Ladders of Hope program, each student will enroll this fall, all expenses paid, at one of the nation’s 117 historically black colleges.

The program, created in 1992 in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, assists low-income minority students who have neither the means to pay for college nor the academic accomplishments to win traditional scholarships. As its name implies, it seeks to help youths who have more ability than their grade-point averages reflect.

“Historically black colleges take diamonds and make them more brilliant. We’ve been doing that for years,” said College Fund President William H. Gray III, noting that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and opera diva Leontyne Price attended black colleges. “But the real challenge is how to take lumps of coal and turn them into diamonds. And we know how.”

Marlon Broaster, a recent graduate of Manual Arts High School, said he will prove Gray right when he enrolls in Voorhees College in South Carolina this fall. One of six children, Broaster has been in foster care since he was 5 years old. He has lost friends to gangs and drugs, he said.

“I’m the only one of my whole family who ever got a chance to go to college,” he said quietly, fingering a pendant around his neck--a good luck gift from his grandmother. “Good can come out of bad, you know? That’s the way I look at it.”

Founded with an initial $1-million gift from Times Mirror Co., Nestle USA Inc. and MCA Corp., Ladders of Hope pays four years’ tuition in addition to the cost of room and board, books and transportation. Donors have also provided clothing, luggage, telephone calling cards and dictionaries.

Arriving on campus, each student is teamed with a mentor professor who provides academic advice and guidance. They also meet an older student from California--a “buddy”--who helps ease the adjustment to life away from home.

In the fall of 1993, Ladders of Hope selected its first 39 Los Angeles teen-agers for placement at schools in 10 Southern states, Ohio and Texas. Although their grade-point averages had ranged from just 1.6 to 2.3 in high school, several students saw their names added to the honor rolls.

The program didn’t work for everyone. One young man quit to go into the Army. A young woman left to have a baby. But this fall, 37 of the original 39 will begin their junior years, having made it halfway to a college diploma.

Kesha DeHughes, 19, is one of them. When she was a junior at Jordan High School, she was placed in foster care. If not for Ladders of Hope, she says, she would probably not have finished high school, let alone college.

Majoring in business administration and computer science at Rust College in Mississippi, DeHughes is already talking about what she plans to do after graduation: design video games.

“I’m just trying to make it,” she said, smiling a proud smile. “A closed mouth don’t get fed--that’s what I’ve always been told.”

Dieema Foley, a chemistry major and honors student at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, said the program has given her confidence.

“I don’t feel I’m disadvantaged anymore,” said the 20-year-old Crenshaw High School graduate, who is deciding whether to be a pediatrician or a researcher. “All these people believe in me--I feel like I’m just as capable as everybody else.”

Gray, the highest-ranking African American to serve in Congress and former chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said that historically black colleges--with their largely black faculty and administrations--are particularly good at building that kind of self-reliance.

“Kids get used to seeing Ph.D.s in physics who are black. It gives them a totally different message about who they are,” Gray said. And when they return home to Los Angeles, he said, they pass that message on.

“They make others begin to think: ‘If they can do it, so can I,’ ” Gray said.

To date, Ladders of Hope has raised $3.5 million toward a goal of $5 million. With more funding, Gray said, the program would be able to enroll new students every year instead of sporadically. In 1997, when the first students graduate, the college fund will consider expanding the program outside of Los Angeles.

Today, the newest members of what Gray calls “the Ladders of Hope family” are nervously preparing for college life. Broaster admits he’s a little queasy about the long airplane ride (“I’m going to be in the air for a couple of hours,” he grimaces). Tamiko Foster, who is headed to Wilberforce University in Ohio, knows her academic record won’t be as impressive as those of some of her classmates.

“It might take me longer than a student with a 4.0 grade average,” the Fremont High School graduate said.

But as frightening as going away to school may be, Vernell Skaggs said it is better than the alternative. A recent graduate of Washington Preparatory High School, Skaggs knows how close he came to doing nothing at all.

Entering high school, he said, he had a solid 3.2 grade-point average. But he started hanging with the wrong crowd, skipping school, and his grades dropped to barely passing. Ladders of Hope made him think about his options, he said.

“I just started seeing everybody being locked up, dying--everything. I felt like I wanted to do something or I was going to get caught up,” he said. “Life ain’t nothing but decisions. You got to make a decision.”

He decided to go to St. Paul’s College in Virginia. He decided a mind is a terrible thing to waste.