VALLEY HIGH SCHOOLERS STUDY HOUSING NEEDS, SAFETY.Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer About 75 San Fernando High School San Fernando High School, located in San Fernando, California, is a secondary school that is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school colors are black and gold. All girl teams are referred to as Lady Tigers, all boy teams simply as Tigers. students who spent a month researching affordable housing and environmental hazards in Pacoima presented their findings Friday at Mission College. As part of Project GRAD Los Angeles, an outreach program aimed at getting kids to finish high school and enroll in college, the students worked during their vacation with community group Pacoima Beautiful, the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA comprises the College of Letters and Science (the primary undergraduate college), seven professional schools, and five professional Health Science schools. Since 2001, UCLA has enrolled over 33,000 total students, and that number is steadily rising. , and California State University, Northridge CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni. It's also home to a summer musical theater/theater program known as TADW (TeenAge Drama Workshop) that leads teenagers through an . They documented health hazards from lead, carbon monoxide, cockroaches cockroaches insects which may carry Salmonella spp. in their gut and play a part in the spread of the disease. , dust mites, mold and other byproducts of a densely populated urban environment. They also discovered that affordable housing, as one put it, ``doesn't have to look affordable.'' The students hope to share their information with a number of community groups. ``If I didn't know this stuff, how are other people supposed to know?'' said Claudia Martinez, 17, of Sylmar, who wants to be a nurse. ``I didn't know lead could be in paint, some Mexican candy and pottery.'' Jose Jaime, 14, of Arleta, who hopes to be a teacher, said the project changed his mind about his community. ``Before, all I wanted was to get out of Pacoima,'' he said. ``Now I want to stay and make changes in my community.'' The students looked at population, income and housing data from the 2000 U.S. Census, saw Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), independent agency of the U.S. government, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1970 to reduce and control air and water pollution, noise pollution, and radiation and to ensure the safe handling and studies on environmental hazards, and visited affordable-housing projects. The students not only learned how to do research, work together in groups and give professional oral presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint displays, they also learned about community power structures and how changes get made, said Ashley DeLucca, communications director for Project GRAD. ``They're discovering their personal voice, even at 14, and realizing they can make a difference,'' DeLucca said. Project GRAD students sign a scholarship agreement and work toward completing the requirements, including graduating from high school, for a $6,000 college scholarship. Currently, Project GRAD works with 20,000 students at 15 LAUSD LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District (Los Angeles, CA) schools. More than 90 percent are Latino and 3.8 percent are African-American, two groups with some of the highest dropout rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District The Los Angeles Unified School District (the "LAUSD") is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. . Lisa M. Sodders, (818) 713-3663 lisa.sodders(at)dailynews.com |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion