GILROY
– Tucked away on a small campus off rural San Martin Avenue sits
South County Community School.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Tucked away on a small campus off rural San Martin Avenue sits South County Community School. Run by the county education office, the alternative school is attended by about 40 students from Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill, in grades seven to 12, who are no longer allowed to attend their regular middle or high schools.
Their backgrounds are varied and troubled: Some have ties to gangs, some were expelled from their schools for fighting or bringing weapons to campus, some have spent time in Juvenile Hall or nearby boys’ ranches.
Every day for the past month, these students have been faced with a presence new to the school and new, in fact, to any county school: Cpl. Michael Olivas of the Army National Guard.
Olivas comes to South County as part of a National Guard program that teaches leadership skills, including, he says, respect, teamwork and basic “life lessons:” how to hold a conversation or shake hands.
“I’m not an in-your-face drill sergeant,” Olivas, 40, said. “I want to know each kid, I want to know their problems.”
Olivas, who spends about half an hour in class with the students and another half-hour doing physical training, approaches his new position as more of a calling than a job.
“I’m going to listen and talk to them,” he said. “I’m not here to recruit. I’m here to reach out to these kids. … It’s an adventure. Depending on the kids, some days they have good days, some days they have bad days and it’s a challenge, but I love it.”
His first day on campus left him both “heartbroken,” yet motivated to make a difference, Olivas said. A student asked him why he bothered to come to the “ghetto” school that no one cared about.
“I thought, ‘Of course people care’,” Olivas said, especially because, with work, the students can earn their return to an alternative or regular school campus.
Jim Baker, principal of South County Community School and boys’ ranches in Morgan Hill, sees this summer as a training program not only for students and the school, but for the corporal as well.
“He’s learning how you be a teacher because he’s used to a structure of discipline in the military that says you’re given a directive and you don’t even think about (it),” Baker said. “Now he’s faced with a situation where kids question that. I think it’s a mutual win, I think the kids are going to learn a lot from him.”
The balance between providing military-like discipline and keeping the students engaged is especially important, he said, because students are far from Army recruits.
“The thing with our kids is, if it gets too hard for them, they’ll bail,” Baker said.
Olivas also saw this during the first day of physical training – which included sprints, squats and sit-ups. The students complained, whined and spouted foul language. But he also saw that they would rise to the challenge.
“The second or third day you start to see them taking the initiative, you start to see them stepping up and not worrying about peer pressure, about being too cool to do it,” he said.
The Los Banos resident approaches students with a level of respect that comes from his own experiences as a troubled teen growing up in San Martin. It was through the discipline he found in the U.S. Army, after enrolling in 1985, that Olivas was able to change his ways. He served for six years, then decided in 1991 to make the National Guard his career.
“I tell them, ‘I changed my life around, you guys can change your life around’,” Olivas said.
When the National Guard approached Baker and South County about the leadership program, the school requested a Hispanic male to serve as a role model, since nearly all the students are Hispanic males.
Fifteen-year-old Katrina Soriano, who earlier this week had her first class with Olivas, said his ethnicity is part of what makes him more approachable.
“I like him a lot ’cause he keeps it real,” said the sophomore who didn’t get along with students at her old school. “He tells it like it is because he’s been out there.”
Classmate Alex Nunez, 14 and in the eighth grade, agreed. After two weeks with the corporal, Nunez said he already is learning how to better cooperate with his peers.
Olivas’ passion for reaching out to youth and the community goes beyond the classroom. He serves as a volunteer firefighter in Los Banos and pictures of a brush fire he recently fought are posted on his classroom wall. He and wife of 12 years, Estella, also care for four foster children, all siblings, in addition to their own two children. All six kids are between 4 and 9 years old.
