By Adrian H. Huerta
The Long Beach City College (LBCC) Phoenix Scholars Program: Supporting gang-involved youth and young adults into postsecondary education.
The LBCC Phoenix Scholars, a partnership with Long Beach City College (LBCC) created in 2022, is designed to increase college access and success for young people who are, or have been, associated with local gangs. The program’s goal is to support young people to develop a path out of gangs and instead into higher education to earn a two-year college degree, certificate, or credential.
We are now in year two of this innovative program at LBCC, a community college in Long Beach, California, and the impact is clear. Nearly 100 college students are involved in wrap-around services that aim to help keep them enrolled and persist in college by providing them with new tools and insights each semester. What’s more, the participants’ average GPA and persistence rate are above the LBCC average. The LBCC Phoenix Scholars are actively engaged in monthly programming, and the student-initiated contact with the project staff ranges in the high 100s through texts, emails and in-person inquiries about basic needs, academic advice or life questions.
Many youths don’t join gangs haphazardly but because of fractured relationships in their homes, schools and communities.1 In schools, if gang-involved youth experience “educational frustration” knowing that they cannot escape their current living situation, coupled with lowered expectations from educators and restricted access to college information (e.g., how to apply to college and pay for college), it’s hard to see college as a viable pathway without any support.2
The mistreatment that gang-involved youth experience in schools contributes to fractured trust and relationships with schools and educators, so for the LBCC Phoenix Scholars, trust-building is a crucial tenet of the program. K-12 educators and higher education professionals often need training/professional development on engaging gang-involved populations about knowing how to build trust with community members, which may be daunting. If the students or community do not trust our words or actions, why would they invest their time, energy, and limited resources on a false promise? So, again, the immediate impact of the program is evident through the current enrollment for this student population which suggests that trust has been built. A second illustration of this trust is how students are allowing themselves to integrate into the larger college community. Some students have joined various campus clubs or congregate in the student union, and others are involved in campus athletics. These activities showcase that some welcome the opportunity to have a “traditional” college experience outside the shadows of gangs.
The biggest hurdle is having too many students and insufficient staffing and resources to allow for more growth. Providing support to gang-involved and gang-impacted students, but the available resources could be more plentiful for continued and sustained growth. There is a need to actively pursue additional funding from multiple local and national foundations, and the applications that have been submitted have yet to be funded. The sustainability of our localized efforts rests on the shoulders of additional statewide or federal dollars. Thus far, we have proven that there is value in specific programs focused on gang-involved populations. A gradual cultural shift is needed across higher education and local governments to reinvest gang-suppression units for college-focused programming.
1 Vigil, 1988, 1999, 2003
2 Curry & Spergel, 1992; Huerta et al., 2021; Rios, 2011
