Troubled L.A. Students Find Their Future With Options

When Jorge Gonzalez rises to lead his fellow graduates in the Pledge of Allegiance, then walks across the stage to get his diploma today, it will be a proud moment in a life that only months ago seemed woefully short of promise.

In and out of juvenile jails since he was 12 years old, Gonzalez had little hope he would ever finish a semester of school, much less graduate.

But like the other 700 students graduating today from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Options program, the 20-year-old gang member found his salvation in the support of teachers and classmates at one of the schools designed to handle the most troubled of the district’s 610,000 students.

“Of all of my friends, I’m the only one graduating,” Gonzalez said Tuesday as he prepared for his big day. “I’m three years behind, but I didn’t quit. Now I tell my homeboys, ‘If I can do it, you have it in you, too.’ ”

There will be few parents in the school district prouder than those who fill the auditorium at Pacific Palisades High School to watch sons and daughters who had been teetering on the edge of academic failure don graduation robes.

About 10,000 students pass through the Options network of alternative schools each year. Many do well enough to return to their regular schools, but many others succumb to the problems that landed them in Options and give up on school altogether.

“Realistically, a lot of our kids don’t make it,” said Harry Shabazian, a teacher for six years at Boyle Heights Continuation High School. “Some of them are just too far behind (academically) . . . others have problems that we can’t solve. That makes the successes all the more important to us.”

Options is the final stop for youngsters who cannot make it in traditional schools--the habitually truant, those with behavior problems, students who have been in jail or caught on campus with weapons or drugs.

It’s the catch basin for the kinds of students who would wind up on the street under the policy now being considered by the school board, which would expel any student caught with a gun or using a weapon to attack a schoolmate.

But it is also a place for bright but unmotivated youngsters who get lost in the district’s large, bustling traditional high schools.

“I look at (the Options schools) not as a place for bad kids, though they do come through here, but as an alternative for the square pegs,” explained Raul Aguilar, principal at Highland Park Continuation High School.

Rene Mendoza, 18, was one of those square pegs. He grew up in a Boyle Heights’ housing project where he got his kicks ditching school, drinking and chasing girls. “I just didn’t like being in school,” he recalled. “Sitting in class was like being tied up.”

He was bounced out of Lincoln High School 18 months ago for fighting and wound up in Shabazian’s class. When the teacher organized a group of students to run the L.A. Marathon, the 320-pound Rene signed up. He quit smoking, lost 40 pounds, finished the 26-mile race in seven hours and started believing in himself.

He’ll begin college this fall with a $500 scholarship.

“When I walk across that stage (at the graduation ceremony), I’m afraid I’m going to cry,” he said Tuesday. “I’ve disappointed so many people in the past. Now for the first time, I know I’ve made them all proud.”

In the small, intimate Options classes, students have a chance to get close to their teachers and classmates; to work independently, at their own pace, and to get their first taste of academic success.

For Gonzalez, it was the encouragement of teacher Frank Olivadoti--who wrote to him in jail and encouraged him to persevere--that helped him forgo drugs and buckle down to earn his degree.

For Tanisha Green, it was the feeling of pride she had when she was honored for getting straight A’s at View Park Continuation School, after years of cutting classes and failing grades at Reseda High School.

For Miguel Rocha, 20, it was the realization that, after spending three years in the 10th grade, then getting arrested for allegedly selling drugs on campus to an undercover police officer, he could rise to become student body president of his Options high school and win respect for his quick mind and his artistic talent.

“I was going to give up” after being arrested, Rocha said. “My whole life was turned upside down. Now I know you never give up; you work harder if you have to, but you don’t give up.”