March 21, 1999

By GINA PICCALO / OUR TIMES

ANTA MONICA -- A private race war, fired by a disagreement between two 16-year-olds, raged in the halls of Santa Monica High School earlier this year and for a few weeks kept school security braced for trouble.
Three months ago, Brent Younger, who is black, and Daniel di Cordova, who is Latino, couldn't stand in each other's presence without fighting. Tempers flared easily and often between the boys and their friends until Daniel and Brent both ended up in handcuffs after a physical confrontation.
Fortunately, the Alliance program, the high school's innovative approach to teenagers in trouble, worked to raise the consciousness of these boys. And after a series of counselor-mediated meetings, they started to trust each other enough to plan a Saturday basketball game between their friends.
"The first time [we met] it was great because we talked about trust," Brent said.
"We're just trying to make peace with the Latinos and blacks," Daniel added.
Principal Sylvia Rousseau developed the concept for Alliance about five years ago when she first arrived at the school. The goal, she said, is to steer troubled students back in the right direction by getting to the root of their problems -- anything from racial tensions to family problems to general academic apathy. Rousseau's proposal helped win a five-year city grant to fund the program. Now about 200 students participate in Alliance each year.
The idea was to integrate social services with the school so students and their families could receive counseling, job training, parenting classes, tutoring and intervention in a comprehensive way. Nine nonprofit agencies provide these services for the program.
"[Students in the program] feel cared about," Rousseau said. "It's the coordination of the services that make a difference. ... I think the program is effective." She added that the program's success is partially reflected in a decrease in the dropout rate. In the five years since the program began, that number has plummeted from 9.1% to less than 1%, Rousseau said.
"It doesn't mean we solved all the problems, but we certainly see a positive effect," she said.
The secret to the success of Alliance is the personal contact counselors maintain with students, said Alliance case manager and counselor Liam Joyce.
"That type of resolution [with Brent and Daniel] can only happen when the students have a relationship with people at the school and have a sense that the school's not just looking to suspend them but is actually interested in helping them," he said.
"Many students don't know they are in Alliance," Joyce said. "They just know there are additional people on this campus who are here to help them." It's not uncommon for Alliance counselor Oscar de la Torre or Joyce to visit students at home when they aren't showing up for school. If a student needs someone to appear with him or her in court, de la Torre will leave campus to be there. Every year, Joyce takes a group of Alliance students on a three-day trip to visit colleges.
"In this day and age, it's very difficult for families to help their children navigate through teenage life with the proliferation of gangs and drugs," de la Torre said.
Daniel's mother, Yolanda di Cordova, credits the program with helping her son and her family.
"This is what Daniel needed -- to belong," di Cordova said. "This is what I needed to put the pieces together. It's opened so many doors for us." Counselors from St. John's Child and Family Development Center refer middle school students who may need support after coming to Santa Monica High School. School officials said they hope to some day find funding and support to extend this program all the way down to elementary schools.
"The circle is never done," said Joyce. "There's continued work. It takes a lot of motivation and commitment to keep that going."

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