LAUSD MAY CLOSE POPULAR 'BOOT CAMP'.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

A 12-year-old ``boot camp'' credited with keeping thousands of middle- school students in class and out of gangs has run out of money and will likely have to shut down Saturday, officials say.

The program - the Los Angeles Unified School District's Angel Gate Academy - takes sixth- and seventh-graders to a California National Guard facility in San Luis Obispo, where they learn leadership, anger management and study skills in a monthlong residential camp.

But the Department of Defense has slashed its $3.6 million allocation for the program and educators haven't found replacement funding.

With dropout rates in the LAUSD as high as 60 percent for Latino students, advocates say such programs are desperately needed. Teachers said most of the 7,000 students who have attended the academy turn their lives around, with grades, behavior, attendance and self-esteem improving.

``Angel Gate has really been the savior,'' said Norman Wallace, a pupil-service attendance counselor at Sun Valley Middle School. ``This is a chance for (students) to see that there is another world outside their little community.''

With more than $1 billion in budget cuts in recent years, however, LAUSD leaders say they cannot afford to make up the funding shortfall.

``This is such a horrible year to ask them for anything,'' said Richard Bain, who directs Angel Gate for the district.

Board member Julie Korenstein said she is exhausting funding options to keep the academy open. LAUSD attorneys are reviewing a proposal to use federal Title I money the district receives to help educate economically disadvantaged students.

`It would be a tragic loss,'' Korenstein said. ``It is one of the exceptional, very unique intervention programs.''

Others argue, however, that Angel Gate's costs are too high. The program costs roughly $7,000 per month per student - just slightly less than educating a child for an entire year on a regular LAUSD campus.

``The intervention and the discipline are all great ideas that need to be redesigned at a lower cost and at a closer location,'' board member David Tokofsky said. ``Nobody can afford this kind of luxury.''

District leaders said they are considering moving the program closer to Los Angeles - possibly to a military base in San Pedro.

``We want to maintain the structure of the program and we think maybe we can do it locally to tie it more closely to our academic programs,'' said Bud Jacobs, director of the LAUSD's secondary school programs.

Program advocates say its current distance - 200 miles north of Los Angeles - is part of what makes it successful.

Youngsters have a fresh start when they leave overcrowded schools in poor communities, said Virgil Middle School teacher Theodora Beltson, who trains Angel Gate students on conflict resolution.

``The kids are sometimes numbers. There, they have so much extra support,'' she said. Soldiers, community college teachers and LAUSD counselors all provide training and counseling for students at Angel Gate.

Alumni of the program said although it was difficult - including waking up before 6 a.m., exercising frequently and completing a plethora of chores - they are disheartened that it might be shut down.

``They were tough,'' said Alcid Ruiz, 11, a sixth-grader at Sun Valley Middle School who attended Angel Gate in January. ``They made us do exercise until smoke starts to come out of your body ... ''

Ruiz and other students said the academy helped them realize they needed to take school more seriously. They said they stopped ditching classes, fighting with classmates, talking back to their teachers and disobeying their parents.

``Some kids, they're doing really bad in school and once they go to Angel Gate, they will start changing their attitudes and life and start doing better,'' said Vanessa Figueroa, 14, an eighth-grader who attended Angel Gate last year.

Figueroa ran away from home several times before attending the academy. Now she's studying hard and hopes to become a doctor.

The program also helped 13-year-old Katherine Ruiz. ``It helped me to, like, I guess, understand what I was doing wrong and why I was doing it,'' she said. ``It's weird. I don't want them to close.''

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com