Recruiting 101

Rushing into their dorm room at UC Irvine on Friday afternoon, the new students were thrilled by everything--the pine twin beds, matching desks and industrial blue rug on the floor.

Pulling a sheet from a bed, Darlene Sanchez and Kim Caerbert immediately fashioned a toga--the universal symbol of college fun.

“Toga! Toga!” Caerbert chanted, looping the sheet around her friend.

“See, I do know how to go to college,” Sanchez said.

Caerbert and Sanchez, however, are both parents, and their stay at UCI will last just one night.

The two were in a group of 40 adults, primarily from Santa Ana and Pomona, who attended the first Parents Academy, an event sponsored by the Santa

Ana Unified School District and UCI.

The overnight stay in the dorms was part of a two-day program meant to acclimate parents to college life, instilling in them a desire to see their children pursue higher education.

“This is an attempt to give the parents all the information they will need for their children to be eligible for college,” said Patricia Gomez, parent, family and community coordinator for the school district.

“We want them to form a bond with the group, so when they go back they can be supportive of each other,” Gomez said.

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From Friday afternoon to Saturday evening, the parents worked in groups, identifying obstacles to a college education, learning about the classes their kids need to gain admittance to both private universities and the UC system, and how to obtain financial aid.

Program facilitator Judy Hutchinson asked the group to draw pictures of what would help their children get into college and what might hinder them.

The result were crayon murals of drugs and beer bottles, gangs and police cars on one side, churches, schools, parents and scholarships on the other.

Throughout the event, several parents said they wished they had known how to navigate their way through higher education when raising their older children. Their younger ones, however, will benefit from the session, they said.

“I wish that I had this information years ago when my two daughters were attending high school,” said Maria De Leon, 41, of Santa Ana. “But my son is 9 years old, and it’s my goal for him and for myself.

“When he graduates from a university, I will graduate as a good mother,” De Leon said.

Before attending the UCI event, De Leon said she did not know the difference between community college, technical schools or universities in the UC system.

In particular, parents said that now they see how a college education is critical to their children’s futures.

“I feel like I really messed up with our 20-year-old and our 23-year-old,” by not sending them to college, Sanchez said. Her two oldest children work at local retail stores, although both are bright and capable, she said. “But with my last two, I’ll do better.”

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Nikki and Frank Bustamante of Pomona, both 41, also said they wanted a better future for their children.

“I don’t want them to work in factories doing horrible work for horrible pay,” said Nikki Bustamante.

Both Bustamantes worked in a factory making trophy parts--Nikki for four years and Frank for 10. “I know what I’m talking about here,” she said.

Her husband agreed: “If I had two more years of college I’d be making $20,000 to $30,000 a year more than I do,” said Frank, who now works for a San Gabriel Valley school district as a child welfare and attendance specialist.

“I just got an application for a job I can’t even apply for becauseit requires a bachelor’s degree,” he said. “I can do the work, but I don’t have the degree.”

Already the Bustamantes have taken their daughter to UCLA for a visit and she spent a week at UCI during a recent summer program.

Most of the parents in the group were Latino, although the program did not specifically target them, Gomez said. Parents already active in school committees and teacher-parent groups were invited to attend at no cost.

The school district funded the $3,500 cost of the event.

“The overall goal is to have kids go to college,” she said. “It just so happens that 97% of the students in Santa Ana are Latino.”

UCI, however, has made intense efforts to recruit minorities since the elimination of affirmative action.

Seeing Latino students and administrators on campus, however, was an inspiration to many of the parents.

“We need more Hispanic people to show us there’s no obstacles to an education,” De Leon said. “It’s such an inspiration and it motivates me to think that my son can do it too.”

In nuts and bolts classes Saturday, UCI program coordinator Adriana Huezo ran down the list of college requirements, answering questions in both English and Spanish.

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Students need three years of math--algebra, geometry and algebra II, four of English and at least two years of a language other than English, Huezo said.

Several parents groaned.

“My daughter is in the fourth grade, and they’re still doing [subtraction],” one mother said. “How do we get them ready for algebra if they’re still doing [subtraction]?”

But most of all they asked for--and received--motivation.

“Last February I went to Mexico City and saw friends, and they surprised me--all their kids were attending university,” said one mother. “They say we are richer here, but our kids, they don’t finish. Why is that?”

The main reason high school students do not go on to college, Huezo said, is a lack of information about how to do so.

“That’s why you have to teach them about this from the time that they’re very little,” Huezo said. “They have to have it put into their heads that they’re going to go to college.”