Program Aims to Recruit More Latinos for College

Latino students from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are the target of a new outreach and research project described as one of the most ambitious efforts yet to boost their enrollment in four-year colleges.

The $1.5-million plan, developed by professors at UC Santa Barbara, includes educating families about college options, broadcasting bilingual public-service commercials and video histories of Latino leaders on cable access stations, and assigning Latino college students as mentors to grade-schoolers.

“We feel there is a really urgent situation out there, and we want to do something about it,” said UC Santa Barbara sociology professor Denise Segura, co-director of the project. “Latinos represent a majority of schoolchildren in California, yet only 4% are eligible to attend UC campuses. That is just not acceptable.”

Ventura County Latino leaders applauded the endeavor, calling it long overdue. Some Latino youth are discouraged by parents, schools and society from preparing for college, which has fueled a cycle of poverty, said Santa Paula Councilwoman Laura Flores Espinosa.

“That has to be turned around,” she said. “Education plays such a vital role in the economic stability of the community.”

Marcos Vargas, a longtime Latino education leader and advocate for the working poor, said every effort to recruit--and particularly to retain--Latino students in college is crucial for the region.

“Given the dismantling of affirmative action at the state level, this is a very important effort to address a tremendous problem,” he said.

The project has begun in one sociology class at UC Santa Barbara, in which students--including a few from Ventura County--are trained as mentors for Isla Vista Elementary School students. This fall they will begin, along with students from Santa Barbara City College, working one-on-one with the youngsters and their families.

The push by UC Santa Barbara is partly in response to anti-affirmative action policies adopted by UC in 1995 that caused enrollment among minorities to drop significantly.

On Wednesday, UC regents unanimously voted to overturn that policy.

In the last six years, the UC system “has really disenfranchised the poor,” she said, adding that 75% of Latinos in the United States are considered poor or marginally poor. In Ventura County, about 15% of Latinos live in poverty, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.

The $1.5-million grant, one of two awarded in California, came from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as part of its $28-million effort to improve Latino education nationwide.

The effort is focused on three geographic clusters--Santa Barbara; Ventura, Santa Paula and Fillmore; and Oxnard--and involves school districts, community colleges, UC Santa Barbara faculty and students as well as dozens of community groups and organizations. It aims to “strengthen the educational pathway” by stressing literacy to students in elementary grades, college preparation to high school students and retention for college students.

They are going up against some staggering statistics. In Ventura County alone:

* Latinos drop out of high school at twice the rate of whites.

* The percentage of Latino high school students who have completed requirements for UC and Cal State admission is less than half that of whites.

* Latino students make up two-thirds of those enrolled in Ventura County’s Gateway continuation high school and youth authority school, although they make up only one-third of the total county population.

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