THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 26, 1995 TAG: 9510240534
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jon Glass
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
WHEN NINTH-GRADERS in Norfolk and Portsmouth sign up for the Tidewater Scholarship Foundation's ACCESS program, they pledge to maintain a C-plus grade average, attend school regularly and remain drug free.
If they maintain those goals through their senior year, they are eligible for up to $1,000 in ``last dollar'' aid and other benefits from ACCESS to attend college. The ACCESS program, started in 1989, helps students find financial aid to pay the escalating costs of higher education.
Sounds like a good deal.
But Sandra Dales, an ACCESS adviser at Norfolk's Norview High, was shocked when she learned last summer that half the freshmen recruited into the program drop out for failing to live up to the standards.
The discovery moved Dales to action. She approached Gerald L. Cooper, executive director of ACCESS, with an idea: To recruit 11th-graders in the ACCESS program to serve as mentors for 10th-graders who had slipped up with poor grades or attendance problems.
Cooper liked what he heard, and he applied for a grant from the National College Access Network in hopes of putting it into place.
This month, ACCESS officials learned that they had received a $24,300 grant that will be used to establish an ACCESS mentor program at four high schools: Norview, Granby and Booker T. Washington in Norfolk, and I.C. Norcom in Portsmouth.
The money will be used to purchase a computer and software system to track ACCESS students and to employ staff to coordinate the mentoring.
Dales, who was one of the first local seniors to receive financial assistance from ACCESS, will coordinate the mentoring program. She said it will create a much-needed support mechanism for underclassmen.
Typically, with only one ACCESS adviser in each school, freshmen tended to get lost in the shuffle after signing up; much of the advisers' work is focused on helping seniors to search and apply for aid and to wade through the admissions process. Dales said she believes many of the new recruits ended up dropping out later because of the lack of contact.
``It made me wonder if we were reaching our students,'' Dales said. ``We want to make it so that if they do fall through the cracks at least they fell through trying.''
Dales said the mentoring program will be limited in scope.
``We're not getting into tutoring or trying to solve the world's problems, we're just there to encourage the students,'' she said.
Cooper added: ``What we want to do is to reach more students, and once we've reached them, to help them complete the program and get the full benefit in college.''
In its seven years, ACCESS has assisted about 7,500 students in the two cities and helped them land more than $27 million in aid.
The majority of those students have been low-income and African-American. As the costs of a college education rise, more middle-class families are feeling the pinch, Cooper said.
ACCESS is interested particularly in ``average'' kids - whether they be poor or middle class - who sometimes feel that nobody cares and often get left by the wayside, Cooper said.
``Studies show that young people in high school will work harder if an opportunity to go to college is a very clear probability for them, and I think that includes the good, average students,'' Cooper said. ``You look around the community and you'll find it's the people who were good, average students who get things done.''
Each year, as word of ACCESS spreads, the number of ninth-grade recruits has increased. In the 1994-95 school year, advisers working in the cities' high schools signed up 52 percent more freshmen overall than the previous year. The increase in Norfolk went from 760 signups to 1,086 (43 percent), while in Portsmouth the rise went from 365 to 616 (63 percent).
This summer, ACCESS received some heady news: A survey of more than 500 students assisted by ACCESS showed that 92 percent had either graduated from college or are in college and making passing grades. To Cooper, that's a sweet sign of success.
``It's good to find out in specifics that it's working,'' Cooper said. ``We want it to be a prestige thing.'' by CNB