Project GRAD Works to Turn Dreams Into Reality

Victoriano Lopez Jr. stood in the doorway of his family’s modest stucco home, smiling shyly at the people who had crowded into his front yard Saturday bearing hopes for his uncertain future.

His little sisters squeezed past him onto the sagging porch to see what all the commotion was about. The children’s father, a Mexican-born construction worker, listened as a woman explained, in Spanish, the college scholarship earmarked for his 11-year-old son.

If Victoriano, a wide-eyed sixth-grader at San Fernando Middle School, keeps up his grades, prepares for college and one day graduates from San Fernando High School, he will earn a $6,000 scholarship.

“My man, we’re expecting you when you’re a ninth-grader,” said Philip Saldivar, the high school’s principal, who had trooped into the yard with an entourage of educators and corporate sponsors. “Be a tiger, huh?”

Standing beside Saldivar on a small patch of grass flanked by a rusty blue car and a few chickens was Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and his wife, Jane. The Eisner Foundation has pledged $1 million to help launch the Los Angeles branch of Project GRAD, a public-private education partnership started six years ago in Houston.

In Los Angeles, the program is based in the struggling San Fernando cluster of the Los Angeles Unified School District. If successful, it could be expanded throughout the district.

Hampered by lagging English and math skills, only about 14% of students at San Fernando High School go on to four-year colleges, educators said. Many are the children of poor, Spanish-speaking immigrants, and hundreds of the teenagers drop out.

Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams offers scholarships to students who meet academic requirements. It also gives teachers extensive training and curriculum aids such as books and computers.

The highly touted program includes math lessons that introduce algebra to elementary school students, one-on-one tutoring in reading and counseling to prevent dropouts. Project GRAD has helped boost test scores and graduation rates in Houston and in Newark, N.J.

Here, the $40-million initiative, funded by a mix of federal grants, school district contributions and private donations like the Eisners’, includes 15 schools serving 25,000 children. The San Fernando cluster draws students from Arleta, Pacoima, San Fernando and Sylmar. Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, who graduated from San Fernando High, told students at a kickoff rally Saturday morning that the only excuse for skipping college was a life cut short--as his 16-year-old brother’s was years ago. Otherwise, he said passionately, dreams of becoming an engineer or doctor are within reach.

“No matter where you come from, no matter what language you speak, in this country, opportunities belong to all of us,” said Cardenas, the son of a Mexican farm worker who raised 11 children despite having only a first-grade education.

“In this country, you will live your dreams,” he said. “And at San Fernando High School, you will go on to be whatever you want to be.”

Two other local sons who went on to become prominent politicians--state Sen. Richard Alarcon, who graduated from Francis Polytechnic High in Sun Valley, and L.A. Councilman Alex Padilla, a 1990 graduate of San Fernando High--also exhorted the students to reach for the stars.

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Eisner, chief of the cartoon empire that brought the world Mickey Mouse and “The Lion King,” took the podium as well, noting, “You know, I do deal in dreams every day.”

But while Disney spins tales of fantasy, he added, “The dreams that Project GRAD creates are grounded in reality.”

After the kickoff ceremony, about 200 students and volunteers fanned out into nearby neighborhoods to knock on doors of sixth- and ninth-graders.

There, in the yards of dozens of bungalows, they spread the word that one day, with hard work and community support, Victoriano Lopez and hundreds like him can go to college.