VALLEY GLEN, Calif.
While other teenagers were chilling in malls
or bronzing at the beaches this summer, 16-year-old Gloria Sanchez of
Panorama City was busy going to college.
The weekend after school let out, last June, Sanchez and forty-one
other juniors from a science and technology magnet high school in Sun
Valley headed here to Los Angeles Valley College. They’re part of an
education experiment called Early Start — a fast-track program created
with support from the Los Angeles school district and the University of
California-Los Angeles.
Administrators hope that the program, Valley College’s aggressive
response to this post-affirmative action era, will help reverse sharp
declines in minority enrollment at UCLA.
“It got personal,” says Yasmin Delahoussaye, Valley College’s
African American dean of student services. “This was going to be an
answer to Proposition 209 at UCLA. Because, let’s face it, they have a
diversity problem.”
This fall — the first year since the affirmative-action ban took
effect — the number of Hispanic, African American, and other
underrepresented minorities accepted plunged by 38 percent.
In Early Start, tenth and eleventh graders from the John H. Francis
Polytechnic Mathematics, Science, and Technology Magnet school are
expected to complete forty-three hours of college credit by their
senior year in courses such as art history, oceanography, and Chicano
studies.
