In a Pinch, College Has Room for High School

In the cafeteria of Los Angeles Southwest College, Sandra Narro, a 16-year-old South Gate High School student, is taking a junk-food break between classes with her friends, also high school students. A little too giggly, they don’t quite blend in with the older college students around them. But that does not seem to bother anyone.

In fact, Southwest College students appeared to welcome the presence of the high school youngsters on their campus--and for good reason. Whole classrooms have been standing empty at Southwest because of a downward spiral in enrollment that began four years ago. As a result, many courses have been eliminated, causing students to wait one or two terms for a desired class at the college, located at Imperial Highway and Western Avenue northeast of Hawthorne.

But an experimental program that began Monday involving Los Angeles Unified School District students may aid not only Southwest but the other eight campuses in the Los Angeles community college system. Since 1982, the two-year colleges have lost more than 46,000 students--a 33% decline--as well as millions of dollars in accompanying state revenue, creating a financial disaster that has necessitated severe program cuts and faculty layoffs districtwide.

Conversely, the unified school district to which Sandra Narro belongs faces an enrollment surge of 82,000 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students over the next five years. But it lacks the classrooms to accommodate the anticipated flood of new pupils.

2 Districts Seek Relief

Enter Los Angeles school board member Jackie Goldberg and community college trustee Leticia Quezada, who are leading the way for the two districts to jointly find some relief from their respective crises.

If all goes well with the experiment at Southwest, the two districts hope to draw up an agreement--perhaps later this month--that will permit the overcrowded elementary and high school district to lease space at all of the under-enrolled campuses in the college district. They also want to make it possible for some high school students to take college courses along with their regular high school classes, which would help boost the college district’s sagging enrollment and depleted coffers.

Although neither district expects to solve its problems through the cooperative venture being proposed, both sides want to make the most of what Goldberg calls “a natural liaison” between the high schools and the two-year institutions.

“I’m assuming this program will have a positive effect on their enrollment,” she said, “and it will help relieve our overcrowding. But it will have a more positive effect than merely the relief of overcrowding. Some of that fear that lots of high school students have that they can’t handle college will be gone once they see what a delight the community college system is. It’s an excellent system, and lots of students will discover programs they didn’t know were there.”

Thus, Eric Kizziee, a 19-year-old Southwest computer science major who has felt discouraged by long waits for the courses he wants to be offered, said last week that he was glad to see high school students use the campus. “I’m for anything that helps out the (college) population,” he said. “The more students who enroll here, the more classes we’ll get.”

‘It’s Not So Crowded’

Likewise, Sandra Narro, the South Gate High student, said the college environment was a pleasant change from her own year-round school. “I like it here because it’s not so crowded,” she said.

South Gate is so jammed that it has to split students into rotating groups with different vacation periods--the essence of the year-round approach--and still has to bus about 600 students to other campuses every day. It has no extra room to set aside for those students who, like Sandra, want to return to school during their vacation breaks to take enrichment classes.

In the pilot program that began Monday, Sandra and 400 other students from South Gate, Bell, Huntington Park and Belmont who currently are on vacation began attending classes taught by high school teachers in 12 bungalow rooms leased from Southwest.

According to Huntington Park High School dean Charles Fisher, who is coordinating the pilot program, Southwest will host two six-week “intersessions,” the term used to describe the year-round school’s equivalent of summer school. The first session will run through April 18, while the second session is scheduled to begin May 5 and end June 16.

The students arrive at Southwest on buses from their home schools shortly before 8 a.m. and may take two classes of two hours each in algebra, physical and earth science, government, writing, economics, art, English as a second language, physiology, psychology, geometry, American literature or speed reading. They depart at 12:40 p.m., arriving at their home campuses in time for lunch.

Expansion Considered

According to district officials, a more extensive program, possibly beginning July 1, is being planned. It would involve not only an intersession program at Southwest but regular classes at three other college campuses.

The officials want to link up South Gate and Jefferson high schools with East Los Angeles College, Belmont High School with Los Angeles City College, and Grant High School with Los Angeles Valley College. According to Kenneth Washington, the college district’s vice chancellor for educational services, four to nine classrooms are available on each college campus to house high school students.

South Gate High, for instance, is planning to send about 200 students to East Los Angeles College, primarily 9th and 10th graders who have fallen behind in credits and need to catch up. Eight South Gate teachers have volunteered to go to the Eastside college to teach the classes.

The college courses that may be made open to high school students include advanced math, history, English and foreign languages, “the type of classes required for admission to the state colleges and universities,” Washington said. The college district could collect state funds for each high school student based on the number of class hours the student accumulates.

The two districts are still haggling over a fair lease price, however. Unified district officials are hoping to pay roughly the same price they charge for renting out district facilities--$65 for one classroom for the first day and $14 a day for each additional room thereafter.

Counting Classrooms

The district also is trying to ascertain how many classrooms on each college campus could be available all day, instead of just in the morning or the afternoon. “It is not possible for us to run a program at the community colleges unless our kids can be there pretty much all day,” Goldberg said.

“If those two things can be worked out,” she added, “we might be able to start in July” with linkups between more colleges and high schools.

While the college district is “very anxious” to work out an agreement, Washington said that district officials have some concern about what kind of high school students are allowed to participate.

“For our purposes, we would like to provide for the more mature high school student a look-see at what college is really like,” he said, students “who see higher education as a goal--particularly at one of our institutions.”

Although there are no bells to remind the students when the break period is over or when classes begin and end, and no locked gates to make sure they stay on campus, the high school students at Southwest have behaved well thus far, according to Fisher.

Judging from some early reactions to the community college, the students are favorably impressed.

“Yes, I like it here,” said Edgar Perez, 16, from South Gate High. He especially enjoys being free from the tyranny of bells. “We have more freedom, and we’re treated more like adults.”

Two of his classmates, Kenneth Hernandez of Belmont and Richard Avila of South Gate, both 16, said they would enroll at Southwest when they graduate from high school. “I met some of the students,” Richard said, “and they’re nice people.”