Students Lily Diaz, left, Mauricio Garcia and Stephanie Cuevas at the Neighborhood Academic Initiative gala at USC in May. (Photo by Michael Owen Baker)

For the first time, there will be more students from an LA Unified high school in USC’s freshman class than from any other, the university announced Wednesday. Thanks to a long-running special program, the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI), 19 of the university’s incoming class this year are from the Foshay Learning Center, which is near USC.

The great majority of the students in NAI are minorities and from low-income households, and the program has existed as a partnership between USC and LA Unified since the 1991-92 school year. Through the program, students from the surrounding neighborhoods near USC are given enrichment opportunities, guidance, counseling and education with the goal of helping them get accepted to college. Students who are accepted to USC get a full-ride scholarship minus loans.

Students begin the program in the 6th grade and attend all through high school. During the middle school years, the students come to USC on Saturdays to hear guest speakers, take classes and receive information about college. When high school begins in the 9th grade, the students attend English and math classes every morning at USC before going to their other classes at Foshay or two high schools in East LA. They also take summer school courses and attend on Saturdays.

Since 1997, 99 percent of students who participate in NAI have been accepted to college.

“We see them come in babies — ‘This is kind of a fun thing, I’m on a college campus and I’m just in the 6th grade. I just left the bosom of my 5th-grade teacher,’ — to graduating with a list of colleges that they have been accepted to. So NAI changes the question from am I going to college, or can I go to college, to which college am I going to,” said Kim Thomas-Barrios, executive director of USC Educational Partnerships, which oversees NAI.

Foshay has a little under 2,000 students, and about 700 of them are part of NAI. Several years ago the program also started serving students from the East LA area in the schools of El Sereno Middle School, Nightingale Middle School, Lincoln High School and Wilson High School.

What is impressive about Foshay leading the USC freshman class in acceptance is that it beat out many other private schools like Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City or The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks where many of the students come from privileged, elite backgrounds.

Few students from those schools have the background of Stephanie Cuevas, a USC freshman who attended Foshay and came through the NAI program. Cuevas lived in a one-bedroom apartment with eight relatives and slept in the living room with three siblings, her mom and stepdad. Her mom wasn’t working at the time, and her stepdad worked at a KFC restaurant. When she was in the 5th grade, some representatives from the NAI program visited her elementary school and gave a presentation. She said she was immediately interested in the program.

“I knew I had to go to college. I didn’t want to end up living the way my parents lived,” Cuevas said.

Cuevas also said she realized how far ahead she was of other students at Foshay who weren’t involved in the program when it came time to apply to college.

“My cousin at Foshay, she didn’t know the deadlines or about the SATs and what to score to get to what college. She didn’t know her A-G requirements and what she had to take and what she shouldn’t have taken,” she said. “But at NAI they said, ‘Take this course,’ and they gave us everything you have to do. They handed everything to us and said, ‘Just do it.’ They handed us the plan, and all we had to do was do it.”

NAI’s budget this year is around $1.3 million, Thomas-Barrios said, and is funded directly by USC and corporate and private donors, including NAI alumni. Representatives of the program visit the area’s elementary schools and encourage students to apply for the program. She said they look for students who aren’t yet high-achieving.

“We are of the mind and always have been that those students who are doing really, really well are going to be captured into college access pathways. The students who are doing OK, with C+ average, they could go either way if they are pushed, and they can be put into that pathway, so those are the kids we are looking for,” she said. “So we capture their imagination and the imagination of their parents and say, ‘Let’s try this thing.'”

On Saturdays, the students’ parents are encouraged to attend and take part in the Family Development Institute, which gives them information on college and tips on how to help their child’s academic growth.

“Some of our Latino families will take the entire family to their country of origin for a long period to visit family who are ill or who have passed, and so everyone goes. For a child who is a senior and taking AP calculus, a month is a long time to be away,” Thomas-Barrios said. “So (the Family Development Institute) understands that and will make alternate arrangements for the child.”

USC also announced Wednesday that the freshman class is the highest-achieving it has ever enrolled, and also one of the largest and most ethnically diverse ever. The 3,068 freshmen make up the fifth-largest freshman class in USC’s 136-year history, with 9,023, or 16.6 percent, of the 54,282 applicants offered admission. Their average, unweighted GPA is 3.75, or 4.07 if weighted. Twenty percent had earned straight As in high school. Another 7 percent earned only one B in high school. 

Twenty-four percent of the freshmen come from underrepresented ethnic groups; 1 in 8 are the first in their families to attend college. Forty-one percent are white, 20 percent are Asian or Asian American, 14 percent are international students, 13 percent are Latino, and 5 percent are African American.

“We have made a strong effort to recruit students from a range of backgrounds to USC this fall,” Provost Michael Quick said in a statement. “They are the first in their families to attend college, transfer students from community colleges and high-performing graduates from a variety of public and private high schools across the nation and the world. We are pleased to have had such an impressive pool of applicants from which to select our vibrant freshman class.”

*Dark green denotes traditional public schools. Orange denotes private schools. Orange County HS of the Arts is a public charter school and Troy HS in Fullerton is a public magnet school.

Principal Rafael Gaeta (Courtesy: LAUSD)

An announcement from LA Unified. For more see lausd.net.

At Nightingale Middle School, a college degree is within grasp, thanks to a new program there requiring students and their parents to attend Saturday classes. The Neighborhood Academic Initiative has a new home at Nightingale in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles. Directed by the University of Southern California, the initiative is a rigorous seven-year enrichment program designed to help students become college graduates.

“Nightingale Middle has a special place in my heart because it is part of the Cypress Park community that I grew up in, so I am always excited to see our students participate in unique programs like this,” said Board Member Dr. Ref Rodriguez. “Because of Principal Rafael Gaeta’s leadership and USC’s investment in our young people, Nightingale continues to expand opportunities for our students by putting them on a solid and affordable path to college.”

To qualify, only 34 sixth-grade students will be selected to participate. The applicant must be a first-generation college-bound student, and will attend the Saturday Academy, held at the USC campus in East Los Angeles. The Saturday Academy is a 10-week per semester program that offers students support in math, English, science and other core subjects.

Low-income students, who complete the program (grades six-12) and choose to attend USC, will be rewarded with a full, 4.5-year financial package, minus loans.

“We are very excited to partner with USC to offer this opportunity to our Nightingale students,” said Gaeta, principal of Nightingale Middle School. “Our students are more than ready to meet the challenge to become college and career ready and attend USC in the future.”

A sixth-grade orientation was recently offered to families. Additionally a session will be held for parents and students to meet USC representatives and answer their questions about the program.

Gaeta said that once students graduate from Nightingale, they will attend either Wilson or Lincoln high schools where the initiative is also offered.

Since 1997, students participating in the program have graduated high school with a 99 percent college-going rate.

Valerie Childress with one of her four graduates at Hybrid High, Cambria Kelley.

*UPDATED

The first class to graduate from an innovative university-based charter school in Los Angeles is sending all 84 grads to four-year colleges, most with scholarships.

Valerie Childress watched her quadruplets graduate Saturday evening on the campus of the University of Southern California with tears in her eyes.

“I said I wasn’t going to cry, but I have been waiting for this moment since they were born,” Childress said outside USC’s Bovard Auditorium. “All of them are graduating and all of them are going to college. I’m so proud, and I’m so grateful to this school.”

The Childress quads are part of the first graduating class of USC Hybrid High School, an LA Unified charter school operated by Ednovate, which focuses on personalized learning. The students landed more than $5 million in scholarships and 400 acceptances from schools such as University of Pennsylvania, UC Riverside, Pepperdine, Cal State LA, California Institute of the Arts, UCLA and, yes, six to USC, which sponsors Ednovate.

The school, near downtown and on the first floor of the old Los Angeles World Trade Center, is 74 percent Latino, 22 percent black and 85 percent in lower socio-economic families. All of the graduates have completed graduate prep courses, 10 percent are “DREAMer” immigrants and 85 percent are first-generation college students in their families.

USC Hybrid High School is unique because it is a personalized college prep school where everyone has a Chromebook and teachers monitor each student’s performance every step of the way. The students learn to be self-directed and self-motivated in the schoolwork.

Ednovate has two schools in LA Unified, USC Hybrid High and USC East College Prep, which opened in Lincoln Heights this year. It will open another school in Santa Ana in Orange County in August, and two other schools have been approved to open in LA Unified in 2017.

Hybrid High seniors graduate on the USC campus.

“When I graduated here from USC there weren’t that many charter schools in the country,” said Ednovate President Oliver Sicat before the ceremonies. “The idea that I can start a charter or create a high school was not available to me at the time,” Sicat said, but he knew he wanted to intersect entrepreneurship with education, and that’s what he’s doing now with the help of his former alma mater.

“I have been thinking about this moment for quite a while, it’s the culmination of hundreds of staff members, students, parents and partners,” Sicat said. “We have created a positive multi-generational change in these families, with the first generation to attend college for most of them and trying to break the cycle of poverty.”

One of their students was homeless when she enrolled as a freshman and entered through the foster program. “She worked through some really tough conditions to transition to college prep and is now going to a four-year college on scholarship,” Sicat said.

Another student acted out by tagging bathrooms and skipping classes when they asked why he wasn’t doing his homework. He said that everyone in his family was either in auto mechanics, on drugs or in a gang. He wanted an option out of it to break the cycle.

“That student is now going to a college outside of the city,” Sicat said. “That’s one of the amazing stories that has come from here.”

Tristian and Raymundo Corona at the Hybrid High graduation ceremony.

Tristian Corona, 18, is the oldest of seven children in his family and now has a scholarship to UC Merced where he wants to major in mechanical engineering. “The teachers here really helped create a pathway for me and inspired me,” he said.

His father, Raymundo Corona, said he has home-schooled his children until he heard that the school was opening and enrolled his son in the freshman class. “My wife and I went to district schools and we were not comfortable sending our children there,” he said. “The local schools were overcrowded and he would get lost in the crowd. Here, he got personalized teaching and reached a level he never would have. They are strict and wear uniforms, and so they can focus on their work and not trying to be trendy.”

Another student, Pamela Joya, is one of the top five scoring students in the school and reminisced about some of the good and bad over the past four years. Some teachers left, some persevered. “We stayed up late at nights and cried and wanted to give up, but they set the bar high,” Joya said. “And many of us are now the first in our families to even touch a college campus.”

Class president Vanessa Ruiz translated the opening speech into Spanish for the mostly Latino audience. Another student speaker at the graduation ceremony was class valedictorian Juan Castro, who landed a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. He encouraged his fellow students to remember all the firsts in their school: first prom, first senior camp, first graduating class, and their principal, Mide “Mac” Macauley, who provided all of them motivation.

Juan Castro landed a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania.

The principal recalled the first hot summer day when school started four years ago for this class and admitted, “It was novelty and confusion for all of us.”

USC President C.L. Max Nikias told the students in his keynote address: “The decisions you make will determine your character, and good judgment is the difference between success and failure.” He called the accomplishments at the high school a “historic graduation day.”

Karen Symms Gallagher, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education and chairwoman of Ednovate’s board, said, “We have all been looking forward to this four years ago since we welcomed the freshman class and it really is the culmination of our initiative in the school of education to improve urban education globally, nationally and locally. It is nice to see them in their hats and robes today.”

She added, “I see this as a model for university school collaboration for LAUSD and other districts throughout the nation.”

For the mother of quadruplets, Childress said she is emotional and ecstatic. “They are quadruplets and did not fit in to a conventional high school and Hybrid was a good fit, it was small, very organized and the best thing for them to flourish.”

One of her daughters, Cambria Kelley, gushed, “One thousand words cannot tell how elated I am to graduate. This is a new chapter for me, I’m opening a new book in my life. As a family we have always bonded and done things together, and this is a new beginning for us all.”

Cambria has a scholarship to UC Riverside. She plans to study creative writing.

*This article has been updated to correct that Oliver Sicat graduated from USC but not from its school of education, and to correct the number of schools Ednovate now operates.

A student walks near Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA. (Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Every high school counselor has that story. The student who thought her dream school was too far from home. The senior who wasn’t going to attend the prestigious university because of the price tag. The valedictorian who didn’t think he was cut out for college.

With the right support, these stories have happy endings. But for students in underserved areas of Los Angeles, a lack of information and resources can make entering college a seemingly impossible pathway for low-income and first-generation students.

The secret weapon for high schools taking these challenges head-on? Often it’s investing in college counselors. Counselors make the vital connections with college recruiters. They coordinate college visits and are the first ones students turn to when issues arise in the application process. They ease parent concerns and guide families through financial aid talks.

Yet with tight school budgets, some guidance counselors are being asked to take on dual responsibilities: high school academics and college prep. The counselors who get to focus solely on the process of getting students into college consider themselves lucky.

“People expect guidance counselors to do everything,” said Downtown Magnets High School college counselor Lynda McGee. Her school averages around 60 visits from college recruiters per year. “Because of guidance counselors’ other duties, they can’t stay informed and have to stay at school. My principal lets me go to (college recruiting events). I can meet (recruiters) face to face.”

USC helps cultivate these college advising positions in Los Angeles high schools through its Southern California College Advising Corps. The school places recent college graduates in underserved high schools to assist students with the application process. Seventy-eight percent of the students in these partnering high schools are socioeconomically disadvantaged and the first generation in their families to apply to college. USC also matches the diversity of advising staff and school population.

First-generation students aren’t always aware of the application process, face cultural barriers that make moving away to college difficult and might not envision themselves as college material, said Ara Arzumanian, program manager for USC’s advising corps.

“The adviser is helping them see (college) as something they can aspire to,” Arzumanian said. “It is a place where they can fit.”

Value of relationships

High school counselors have to develop relationships not only with students but with college recruiters. This collaboration grows more important as new high schools pop up and budgets for college recruiters shrink. Vince Lopez, director of admissions at Cal State LA, said more Los Angeles schools mean more demands for a recruiters’ time.

Moreover, recruiters are tasked with cramming hundreds of visits into a three-month window in the fall — the height of recruitment visits. It’s difficult to estimate the total number of high school visits, but Lopez said his recruitment team will see 114 high schools within its small corner of LA and attend 250 college fairs.

Local private schools like Loyola Marymount University will travel further for high school recruitment. Matt Fissinger, LMU’s director of undergraduate admission, estimates his team visits 500 high schools nationwide.

“The high school visit is a tried and true method of the recruitment strategy,” Fissinger said.

Prioritizing which high schools they can visit in one season varies with the type of school. But recruiters generally favor schools with a large number of prior applicants, strong academics and underserved populations they’d like represented in their schools. State and community colleges also prioritize their local area high schools.

“We’re working on student equity and access in terms of outreach and recruitment,” said Julie Benavides, vice president of student services at East Los Angeles College. The school strives for a constant presence in its 42 local high schools to answer student questions about the application process. “We hope that’s one of our major outcomes: that students feel connected with the proper resources.”

Personal connection

While other recruitment efforts like mailing lists and social media outreach are certainly cheaper, high school counselors and recruiters agree that a personal connection makes a significant difference in getting students interested in college.

“It’s a big deal,” said Suzy Chavez, counselor at Oscar De La Hoya Ánimo Charter High School. Chavez said her school, with 146 seniors and a student population that is 95 percent low-income, receives between 15 and 20 visits from recruiters per year. “(Students) like having people present, seeing a different person and voice. Those individuals bring PowerPoint presentations, flyers and brochures we don’t have access to.”

To draw more recruiters, schools like Arleta High School that get 20 individual visits from college reps will partner with other area schools for college fairs, drawing 100 college representatives and 4,000 students and families.

The college recruiter’s presence is perhaps most important when it comes to representatives from Ivy League schools, who are looking to visit only a handful of students at each school.

“If they had a good interaction with an individual, that knowledge of that kid as a person rather than a name on paper can make a difference,” McGee said.

High school counselors agree that recruiter visits are one powerful piece to a large puzzle of cultivating student interest in college. But most important for low-income and first-generation students is making connections they can use during the process.

The most important thing “is the ability for two-way communication, whatever that looks like,” said Beth Winningham, college counselor at Arleta High School. She encourages students to call recruiters and admissions offices if they have concerns about test scores or financial aid.

Developing a college-focused culture beginning in ninth grade also helps first-generation and low-income students aspire to college. Many schools require all students to complete a college application as part of graduation requirements. They also partner with organizations like College Summit and the Posse Foundation, which encourage students through the application process and support them once they’re in higher education.

Overcoming the money barrier

Counselors agree that finances are usually the biggest barrier when it comes to getting students to consider college. Some don’t realize that the price tag is often much lower with financial aid and scholarships. Yet even when $40,000 tuition is reduced to $10,000 through financial aid, that gap is still too large for a family that makes $18,000 per year, McGee said.

“I always tell the kids that grades equal dollars,” McGee said, referencing scholarship money. “The higher your GPA, the less likely you’ll have that gap.”

Palisades Charter High School college counselor Ruth Grubb remembers a student who because of the price had initially decided to attend a less rigorous college even though she had gained admittance to a prestigious university. After Grubb encouraged her to call the university to check on her financial aid, the senior learned she was eligible for a full ride at her preferred school.

“The college might be two miles away, but the school could seem like a million miles away if they don’t realize this is for them,” Cal State LA’s Lopez said.

Thelma Melendez

Commencement season is upon us and with it, the rush to find moving speakers to lead graduating students through the expensive right of passage.

Sometimes schools get lucky, such as UC Irvine, which this year reeled in President Barak Obama by sending 10,000 postcards from students, staff and alumni, inviting him to be the guest of honor.

Other times, schools look to their own past grads for inspiration.

Such is the case with USC’s Rossier School of Education which recently announced Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, PhD ’95, will be the keynote speaker at its May 16 Masters Degree Commencement Ceremony.

“Meléndez de Santa Ana is one of USC Rossier’s most distinguished alumni,” says the announcement.

It goes on to list her work under U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and as Education Deputy for Mayor Eric Garcetti. Only problem is, she’s no longer there. Melendez  left her post at the Mayor’s office in mid-March to become second-in-command at LA Unified’s Beyond the Bell program.

Fuentes agrees to compromises on AB 5: Are they enough? Ed Source: At the 11th hour, the author of the bill to rewrite the teacher evaluation law has offered compromises intended to placate opponents and to qualify the state for a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law. The latter may work, but probably not the former.

In California Politics, Teachers union are to fear Channel 6 News Online: In lawsuits against the state and the Los Angeles Unified School District, they allege that a number of union-backed laws “prevent school administrators from prioritizing or even considering the interests of their students.”

Many UC, CSU students aren’t ready for college-level writing; USC program tries to help KPCC: The 94 students in this year’s program competed to get in from Los Angeles urban high schools with low college attendance rates. For half of their six-hour days, they concentrate on intensive writing courses that offer what few of them have experienced before: one-on-one instruction, peer assistance and revision, revision, revision.

La Puente High School Student Injured in Stabbing NBC: The incident — an altercation between two students — took place just before 3 p.m. at Bassett High School.

Survey show student scores at heart of new teacher ratings nationally SI&A:  Of 21 states that passed major restructuring of educator evaluation systems during the past three years – all have included analysis of student performance as part the review, according to a new study released Thursday.

Offensive High School Tradition Finally Cancelled AP:  A Southern California high school canceled an annual dress-up day for seniors, saying that students who dressed as gang members, a U.S. Border Patrol agent and a pregnant woman pushing a stroller demeaned Latinos.

• Cal State University to enroll more out-of-state and international students: The move will save money, since California students payer lower tuition rates. KPCC

• Is USC’s ‘sketchy neighborhood’ reputation fair? The school did not make a list of the 25 most “crime riddled” universities. KPCC

• Latinos now biggest minority at four-year colleges: That’s in the country as a whole, not just in California. LA Weekly

I will be at the LAUSD board meeting today, which should be a hoot and a half. Follow us on twitter for updates.