SF State instructors are motivating more Balboa High School students to go to college through the Learning Bridge Project, but the project may end this year if funding cannot be found.
Six SF State instructors and 16 Balboa teachers encourage students in the high school's honor classes to attend college by making English and social studies more interesting for students, said Balboa's project co-coordinator Byron Jessup.
Many of Balboa students don't go to 4-year colleges because they "have a fear of it," said Jessup. "Their friends don't go, parents don't really encourage them. I think we've interested a lot of kids."
The 3-year-old project was completely funded by a $50,000 CSU Maxi-Grant for each of its first two years, said SF State's project co-coordinator Laura Head.
Although the Maxi-Grant is usually given for two years, the grant was extended this year and the project received $35,000.
An additional $37,000 in private funds were granted by the San Francisco Foundation.
But the foundation's money could only be used by Balboa and could not be used to pay for SF State instructors' time, said Head.
Both coordinators said it is unlikely the Maxi-Grant will be extended to a fourth year.
Three hundred of Balboa's 1,900 students -- 100 each from the sophomore, junior and senior classes -- are selected to participate in the Bridge Project.
Students are picked on the basis of their California Test of Basic Skills scores.
The first group of Bridge students in the project's three years graduate in spring.
"We've got 15 kids accepted at University of California campuses," said Jessun," and that hasn't happened before.
"Five Balboa graduates went to UC campuses last year," he said.
Jessup said he won't know how many graduates will be accepted in CSU campuses until the system processes applications in the summer.
SF State and Balboa instructors meet once a week for two hours to evaluate and adjust the project's curriculum, said Head.
Bridge students in the English courses are encouraged to write "quantitatively" rather than "grammatically," she said.
Students often become discouraged from writing if they feel inhibited by grammar, Head explained.
As they write more material, they are taught more about grammar and punctuation, she said.
Because blacks, Hispanics, Filipinos and Samoans comprise 90 percent of Balboa's student population, poems and short stories by minority writers are included in the readings.
The social studies curriculum emphasizes an ethnic perspective in world history, U.S. history, economics and civics.
For example, one lecture focused on events that occurred outside Europe during the Renaissance, said Head.
Teachers will often overlap material in both subjects.
Head said the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, the pre-Civil War slavery abolitionist, was required reading in Bridge's social studies and English classes.
Each year test scores and grade point averages of Students in the project have been "uniformly positive," said Head.
Evaluations are done at the end of the school year by non-Bridge faculty.
Encouraged by the results, Jessup said the Learning Bridge will at least "operate in name next year if no funding is provided.
Both Head and Jessup said they did not know where they will receive next year's funding.
Head said grant applications were sent to several organizations such as the Hewlett and the California Academic Partnership foundations, which may not respond until the end of summer.
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