AmeriCorps Is Down to One Local Effort

After a lackluster first year, Orange County’s only AmeriCorps program has been curtailed at the behest of state officials, prompting the end of work in Fullerton and Costa Mesa, as well as out-of-county efforts in Santa Maria, Chula Vista and Palmdale.

Local members of the AmeriCorps, the national service program President Clinton modeled after the Peace Corps and launched in September 1994, will work only in their home base of Santa Ana. They will focus on tutoring children at existing homework centers in branch libraries and schools.

Last year, AmeriCorps members attempted to establish programs ranging from English as a Second Language to neighborhood watches in low-income apartment buildings.

The results were mixed. Local program administrator Helen Brown credits classes with helping 50 people gain citizenship, but two of four English classes were canceled, mostly for lack of interest.

Overall, AmeriCorps hoped to work with about 500 people in Orange County on a regular basis, but workers and residents acknowledge that far fewer were served.

The state office that directs federal AmeriCorps money to Orange County agreed to fund the program for a second consecutive year only if it altered its mission, said Suzanne Fisher, a spokeswoman with the California Commission on Improving Life through Service.

“We were not entirely happy with the results, and I don’t think [local AmeriCorps administrator] Helen Brown was either,” Fisher said. “There wasn’t overwhelming support for the programs.”

Forty new AmeriCorps workers--plus one holdover from last year--are scheduled to be sworn in today as staff members for the program’s second year, which begins this month after a hiatus of a few months. The ceremonies will be held at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana.

Of the 350 AmeriCorps programs in the U.S., 63 went through fundamental restructuring after the 1994-95 year because they failed to meet their goals, which ranged from recruiting volunteers to cutting school truancy rates, according to an AmeriCorps spokesman in Washington.

Another 48 programs were dropped or did not reapply for federal funding. Virtually every program experienced some minor changes, such as devising reports to illustrate the impact they had on their communities.

But the changes are not an indication of failure, according to AmeriCorps officials.

“The fact that some programs didn’t measure up points to the success of the model,” said Joseph Toscano, a spokesman with AmeriCorps in Washington. “It’s far better to have an annual review or competition rather than the normal [bureaucratic] way of waiting till there’s a crisis or scandal, or until a problem has grown out of control.”

But Congressional Republicans who have been among AmeriCorps’ most vocal critics continue to voice doubts about the program.

United States Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that without more fundamental reform, such as decreased spending on overhead, “the money could still be wasted.”

Added Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands): “AmeriCorps is a very high priority for the President, but you have to balance that against programs that do work.”

Brown said the changes in the program’s second year do not mean the Santa Ana chapter’s first year efforts were ineffective. Rather, she said, the local AmeriCorps has now learned where to focus its energies.

“You want to make sure you’re addressing the most important needs,” she said.

Officials at the schools and libraries where the homework centers will be located welcomed the AmeriCorps tutors.

“When you have 800 students, it’s never enough,” said Helen Romeo, the principal at Carver Elementary School. “You can use all you get.” Brown said she hopes workers reach more than 500 children at the six sites.

Clinton launched AmeriCorps as a domestic version of the Peace Corps, the overseas program created by his boyhood idol, President John F. Kennedy. While the program’s fate will ultimately be decided with the outcome of the federal budget debate in Washington, the program has so far been allocated a budget that is 75% of last year’s $470 million, Toscano said.

Orange County’s AmeriCorps chapter will have a budget of approximately $570,000. It will receive about $349,000 from the California Commission--about the same as last year. It will receive another $113,000 directly from the federal government for the workers’ educational grants, Fisher said. And like other AmeriCorps branches, the program must raise the remainder, almost $110,000, from private sources.

Approximately $300,000 of the local program’s budget will go to the workers. The seven full-time staffers will receive $7,945 stipends for performing 1,700 hours of service. The remaining 34 part-time workers will receive $4,206 each for performing 900 hours of work, Brown said.

In addition to the stipends, full-time workers will receive $4,725 grants to spend on their educations, and part-time members will receive about half that amount. Most of the remaining money will be spent on administration.

The school district and the city of Santa Ana will continue to operate the homework centers, but their existing staff will be augmented by AmeriCorps workers by next month.

Students--from kindergartners to high schoolers--will continue to be tutored in everything from computer skills to English. The sites are Santa Ana High School, Carver and Monroe elementary schools and the Main, McFadden and Newhope branch libraries.

AmeriCorps members are also expected to conduct a total of three adult English and citizenship classes at Carver Elementary and the Newhope branch library this year, Brown said.

It was hoped that AmeriCorps programs in the apartment buildings would eventually be taken over by community volunteers, allowing AmeriCorps to establish programs in other locations. But Brown said that in only a couple of cases have volunteers maintained any vestiges of those programs.