Weekly Update

_{Jose Ibarra, former director of the Phoenix Scholars program at Long Beach City College, talks to Oscar Jammott, 18. Credit: James Bernal for The Hechinger Report}

From gangs to college students

Lalo had almost put his pieces back together again, like a self-sufficient Humpty Dumpty. He’d gotten out of prison and moved into sober housing. He stopped responding to text messages from members of his gang. He went to a tattoo removal bar to have the ink in his face shattered into particles small enough for his immune system to break down. Lalo even got himself to Long Beach City College last year and told a woman in the registrar’s office that he hoped to become an addiction counselor. After enrolling in classes, he walked with her to the student center and was introduced to Jose Ibarra, the director of LBCC’s program for youth affected by gangs. Everything seemed to be coming together, and the sober housing his two roommates called hell — with its cheap linoleum flooring and showers separated by thin curtains — seemed to Lalo a land of promise.

Until, standing in one of the building’s colorless hallways, Lalo learned from the house manager that he was approaching the maximum number of days allowed and had just over 20 left to find somewhere else to live. He had no way to pay rent. He couldn’t move in with his parents because they lived in someone else’s garage. As Lalo focused on his classwork, the days ticked down to single digits. And that’s how, last September, Lalo found himself sitting on the edge of his metal-springed bed, or at least the bed that used to be his, head bent into hands.

Then Lalo remembered the playground in East Los Angeles with a fake castle. A slide joined with the castle’s roof to produce a concealed, dry space to sleep. He’d stayed there before.

Lalo would have again, if it weren’t for the Phoenix Scholars program LBCC created in 2022, when it received the first award under the federal government’s Transitioning Gang-Involved Youth to Higher Education Program (TGIY). During the three-year term of the grant, Phoenix Scholars served 180 students, a combination of LBCC students who had a history with gangs and gang-involved teens recruited to be students. The grant expired just after President Donald Trump took office.

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