Diplomas in Hand . . . College on Hold : Some High School Seniors Will Graduate Into Working World

Hard-working and driven, Pacoima resident Luis Rodriguez says he’s certain he’ll go to college someday. He just isn’t sure when.

In many respects, the 18-year-old’s graduation Thursday from Francis Polytechnic High School is a generational and educational triumph. For his parents, graduation wasn’t an option. They had to leave school early to work.

Now his parents own the month-old San Antonio’s Mexican restaurant on Van Nuys Boulevard. That’s where Luis will wait tables, prepare lettuce- and onion-smothered sopes, and bide his time until he learns if he is eligible for enough financial aid to start College of the Canyons within the year. Or perhaps he’ll continue to work and save.

Like so many of the forgotten 40% of high school graduates nationwide who either forgo or postpone college, Luis Rodriguez, Sylmar High’s Leroy Montalvo and North Hollywood High’s Wendy Rodriguez--no relation--face a graduation of uncertainty.

Although the 18-year-olds feel the exhilaration of finishing high school, the three, to varying degrees, are unsure about their futures, about their educational prospects, career options or finances.

Their predicament “is common, and it’s normal,” said Gregory Jackson, coordinator of graduate programs in career counseling for the Cal State Northridge College of Education.

While not facing the uncertainty of his Valley peers, Agoura High’s Jason Harvey is in a similar situation: He’s graduating right into a job.

A variety of factors--from religion, socioeconomic status, parents’ education level and willingness to go into debt to anticipated career and economic climate--affects the decision to enter, defer or bypass college.

“And college is not for everyone,” Jackson said. “One of the assumptions America has made is that everyone should go to college. . . . College in this society is an identifiable status role.”

But there is a difference between education--which Jackson said can seem to have a uncertain payoff--and training--which has more concrete benefits.

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Witness Leroy Montalvo, who hopes for careers of either law or owning an airport: The Lake View Terrace resident has high-flying aspirations. No matter what, he said, he’ll be working with airplanes.

“I was born with airplanes in my head,” he said over the din of a jet taking off at Van Nuys Airport, where he has studied airframe and power-plant mechanics for a year through the North Valley Occupational Center.

“I don’t know what the reason is. Since I was 5 and in a stroller at Toys R Us, I would always reach up for the airplane [models].”

By November 1997, the bespectacled young man should be ready to take the 10-hour Federal Aviation Administration exam that will certify him to fix all varieties of airplane and helicopter engines, propellers and frames, from Cessnas to commercial jets.

That certification would almost certainly land him in a middle-class job anywhere in the country, Leroy said.

Yet even though he concedes that he isn’t a big fan of high school and prefers “hands-on stuff,” he still feels a tug toward college. If he goes to college, he said, he would still work part time.

The satisfaction Leroy gets from taking engines apart and reassembling them is certainly enough to keep him happy for the next few years, he said. “When you start a [repair] project, sometimes it seems like a real challenge, because you don’t know what to do,” Leroy said. “But when you’ve fixed it . . . you’re not a failure.”

Admiring the shapes of the craft that surround him at the airport, Leroy smiles and shrugs off the future. “I’m still young,” he said.

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Wendy Rodriguez, a self-described lazy but average student, knows that society’s education expectations have changed since her parents went to high school.

In years past, she said, “As long as you graduated high school, you could get a good, well-paying job. And now, it’s not even like that. Now employers want more of a person with better skills, good education.”

Sitting in the closet-sized Hughes Market break room waiting to clock in for her evening shift, the slim, perfectly coiffed young woman briefly furrows her smooth brow.

She didn’t much like high school either, and she’ll be relieved to graduate after tying up loose ends at summer school. Wendy likes her Hughes co-workers and said she’ll keep her job here for maybe five or six years before going to Valley College.

Maybe she’ll become an elementary school teacher, she mused, because she likes little kids. Then again, maybe she should put her fashion sense to work and become an interior designer.

“I want to take a break from school,” Wendy said. “I’m just tired of school. I just want to relax for a while. After I relax, I want to go back to college, when I’m more prepared and ready.”

Until then, she’ll live with her parents in their North Hollywood home and bag groceries part time.

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Pacoima’s Luis Rodriguez, on the other hand, doesn’t know the meaning of relax. Throughout high school, he went to classes during the day and worked after school and on weekends.

Since his parents opened their restaurant in May, he has worked afternoons at Transworld Bank in Woodland Hills and nights and weekends at his parents’ restaurant.

Luis does not waiver from his dream to be a master chef. Ultimately he hopes to open a restaurant, in a city safer than Los Angeles.

It’s the intervening days, weeks and months that nag at him.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I’m uncertain of the goals I’m planning. Maybe it won’t happen. There’s a lot of violence in this world, you know. I ride the bus a lot. . . . Maybe I’ll get run over or shot. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be successful.”

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Like his comrades across the Valley, Agoura High School’s Jason Harvey graduates Friday, but he won’t be starting college either. As a child of relative affluence, the 18-year-old Jason instead will continue to train to become a camera technician at the Tarzana-based Panavision, where his father is vice president for sales.

But unlike the other three, after graduation Jason will segue almost immediately into middle-class life. This too is typical, said CSUN’s Jackson.

“Individuals with high socioeconomic status typically plan [their careers] less because they have more contacts and more role models available to them to use as touchstones for career guidance,” Jackson said. “Individuals with lower socioeconomic status . . . are not aware of opportunities because they have less access to information and to individuals who may have that information.”

And given Jason’s desire to eventually be a movie cameraman or even a director, the cocky, blond young man said this career route makes sense: he’d rather get hands-on experience with cameras than book learning in college, especially since he has worked part time at Panavision for four years, including stints in shipping, receiving and the lenses laboratory.

Already Jason said he has met the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, setting up cameras, getting the right lenses and checking for any bugs in the system.

Within the year, Jason hopes to be doing the same on set, he said, earning an anticipated $20 hourly.

“This is the best way to get out there,” Jason said. “It’s a one-time opportunity that really doesn’t come around that much. I got lucky--most people who apply to Panavision [after college] go to shipping and receiving. I went through all that, and I’m only 18. Usually you need a degree.”

He hasn’t ruled college out forever, just for the time being. “I just want to get my own apartment and start off,” Jason said.

“I’d rather work full time and get a good job than do anything else. I want to be in movies and going to college won’t get me any farther than where I am now.”

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Skipping College

The percentage of high school graduates enrolled in college the October after their graduation has climbed steadily for more than two decades, from about 49% in 1972 to roughly 62% in 1993. Nonetheless, for the last five years, about two- fifths of graduating high school seniors nationwide have skipped college altogether or have not immediately enrolled.

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Percentage of High School Graduates Who Were Enrolled in College the October Following Graduation:

1972: 49.2%

1989: 56.6%

1990: 60.1$

1991: 62.5%

1992: 61.9%

1993: 61.5%

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics