Dozens of high school seniors walked away from an awards
ceremony with envelopes that will make paying for college a little
easier.
Dozens of high school seniors walked away from an awards ceremony with envelopes that will make paying for college a little easier.
The California Student Opportunity and Access Program distributed $94,000 in scholarships to about 50 students from South Santa Clara County and San Benito County Wednesday night. With the help of these scholarships and the ongoing mentoring and guidance Cal-SOAP counselors provide, students who may not have been on the path to a four-year college are looking forward to life after high school.
Rocco Lombard, a senior at Gilroy High School, is the first in his family to attend college. With their son heading off to Gavilan College next year on several scholarships, his family couldn’t be prouder. They joined him for the dinner and ceremony.
“We’re so proud of him,” said Lombard’s mother, Rosalie. “This night is about Rocco.”
“My family is totally behind me 100 percent,” he said before receiving his award. And Lombard, 18, has big dreams for his future. After graduating from Gavilan, he hopes to apply to Stanford University and state schools before joining NASA as an astronaut.
When Lombard first came to GHS, he struggled in some of the fast paced honors classes. His Cal-SOAP counselor suggested he transfer out to a less demanding class. In a class where the teacher paced the lesson more slowly, Lombard was able to really get to know the material, he said.
“The honors classes zoom through so fast that I wasn’t able to keep up,” he said. With the help of his counselor, Diane Padilla, he has been able to register for more appropriate classes suitable to his pace and style of learning. Because of these choices and the guidance of his counselor, Lombard steadily earned good grades in high school, helping him secure several scholarships.
“Without Cal-SOAP, I’d be rushing to fill out all kinds of scholarship applications,” he said. “I’d be scrambling to get anything I can get.”
Throughout high school, Cal-SOAP students attend various field trips to colleges around the state and have access to tutoring and counseling opportunities that mainstream students do not. Lombard was turned on to Stanford after a tour of the campus.
Cal-SOAP targets students as young as fifth grade in an effort to expose them to college life. Trish Cooper, an administrative assistant for the program, has taken many young students on campus visits.
“When a fifth grader leans over and asks a college student ‘What’s your major?’ that’s the defining moment,” Cooper said.
The program’s success was celebrated but Director Erin Gemar is facing new challenges in the year ahead. With the recent cuts to the district’s budget, Gemar is losing three Cal-SOAP counselors, leaving only one counselor to tend to hundreds of students, negating the one-on-one attention Lombard so thoroughly enjoyed.
“With Cal-SOAP, counselors provide a more individualized experience,” he said. “They’re able to allot much more time to their students. It would be a shame to have a program like this fall apart. Education is getting hit over and over.”
“We’re hanging in there,” Gemar said. “But as far as district support, we can’t count on it anymore. This is the first time in five years that I have to write a plan with less staff than we’ve ever had.”
Despite setbacks, Gemar and her staff are working to offer students more money in scholarships than ever. She is working on securing a $300,000 grant for next year that will allow students to reapply for scholarships throughout their college career.
“I have seen my students achieve a lot,” said Padilla, Lombard’s counselor. “They are here because they have persevered. They are ready to take on the challenges of life because they are true Cal-SOAP students.”
