Near-dropouts rehearse for graduation
“Pomp and Circumstance” blared from a small silver boom box Tuesday in the cavernous auditorium of Hollywood High. But graduation ceremonies are long past. Instead, the music was playing for 21 students going through paces for their own little-noticed event.
Leading the line was Angel Yos, who could barely contain his enthusiasm. He performed the step-pause, step-pause procession march with the focus and aplomb of Baryshnikov. And the smile nearly exploded off his face as he practiced receiving his diploma.
Yos, like everyone else in line, had once been close to dropping out before arriving at the Alternative Education and Work Center, a program of the Hollywood Community Adult School of L.A. Unified. Today's Times profiles Yos and some of his classmates, along with information about new dropout statistics. (And see a photo gallery of the rehearsal.)
The center operates out of office space on the second floor of a Hollywood strip mall. Its clients are students who aren’t fitting in elsewhere. At the center, students do most of their work off-site, coming in as required or desired for testing and tutoring.
Yos, 18, started having trouble in school because he had to look after four younger siblings and help with the family business. His father operates a discount store and also sells at swap meets. Under the stress, Yos slacked off in his studies. He even started abusing alcohol and smoking pot.
“Teenagers, with their lack of wisdom, we tend to find relief in any sort of substances,” he said. Yos had fallen so far behind in credits at Fairfax High that graduation began to seem unlikely.
-- Howard Blume
He persisted, he said, because of Yuko Mori, the Diploma Project advisor at Fairfax, who found an alternative program for him, while also taking an ongoing interest in him and encouraging him. And this needed level of support and individual attention continued at the Hollywood center under the leadership of Kathy Petrini, the program’s coordinator, who, along with other staff, guided her charges through the rehearsal.
For most of these students, reaching this day had once seemed unlikely. One student’s living situation had been so unstable that she’d had to keep her books in a rented storage unit. And Petrini had to work with a court to arrange temporary housing for two weeks so the student could focus on passing her General Educational Development test, or GED. Passing that test allows students to complete high school though, by itself, it isn’t the equivalent of a degree. The students at the rehearsal all were degree earners. Many, if not most, had accomplished this by passing the GED as well as the state’s high school exit exam and core of required courses.
These students have needed a little mothering to get them through, but Petrini didn't forget that, in some ways, they’re tough kids as well, who’ve been willfully irresponsible or have challenged authority.
At left, Kathy Petrini works with a student.
“This is not your moment to act cool,” she told them. “This is your moment of great self-esteem ... and I’m deadly serious.” She would pull a student off stage during the graduation itself, she warned, if that student misbehaved.
The role models for these students include peers, such as Kimberly Marquez, 19. Her appearance — vermillion-dyed hair, nose piercing and Napalm-Death T-shirt — would, to some, belie her newfound sense of responsibility. Yet her progression wasn’t missed by the center’s administration, which hired Marquez as a teaching assistant after she graduated in 2007.
This year’s success stories include Leslie Lopez, 19, who had stopped going to school after becoming pregnant in the 11th grade.
“My main goal in life is to succeed not only for me, but also for my beautiful daughter,” she said from the podium, rehearsing her graduation speech. “I hope to set an example for her and also my little brothers and sisters.”
Jasmin Alas, 18, who began abusing drugs in middle school and then became so withdrawn and depressed that she stopped going to high school, read her speech with confidence: “I just want to say that anyone can succeed in life because, trust me, if I did, anyone can — and I know I sound like one of those commercials, but it’s true.”
The hall seemed too big for these 21 students; the empty seats seemed to symbolize all the students who didn’t make it to this day. New state data estimates that 41.6% of black students and 30.3% of Latino students drop out in California.
“This is a night to invite lots of people,” Petrini said. “I would make a special invitation to those friends of yours who have dropped out. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to give them some hope?”
Yos intends to fill some of these seats with family members, to show them he had re-earned their trust and pride. His nerve faltered, however, for a moment as he started to read his graduation speech. Even before an empty house, it was daunting to stand alone at the podium.
He relaxed when Petrini reassured him: “I’ll stand right next to you.”
That helped a lot.
He knew he had made it to this day because she and a few others already had.
-- Howard Blume
Graduation exercises are at 7 p.m. tonight at the Hollywood High School auditorium, which is on Highland Avenue, across from Selma Avenue in Hollywood.
At left: Angel Yos, 18, works on his graduation speech with Kathy Petrini, who coordinates the independent-student program at the Alternative Education and Work Center in Hollywood.
Photos by Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times
