By Brooke Gemina
George Miller Schurr High School brought East Los Angeles College 239 first-year student enrollments fall 2015, making it the number-one school for new enrollment.
Schurr is known a feeder school. ELAC President Marvin Martinez explained, that a feeder school is one of the surrounding high schools that brings new students in every term.
“What that specifically means, is there are a number of high schools that surround the college. From certain high schools, we get more students than we do from others,” Martinez said.
ELAC gets the most students enrolled during the fall term, in which Schurr High School placed as number one for incoming high school graduates.
While Garfield Senior High is located down the street from ELAC, the amount of students coming from there has dropped. In spring 2015, Garfield contributed 107 students of the total 1,159 first-year students enrolled.
In more recent years, Roosevelt and Garfield’s placements have fluctuated.
“For a long time, the second biggest feeder used to be Roosevelt. What happened was at one time Roosevelt and Garfield had about 5,000 students enrolled, so the district had to break them up,” Martinez said.
Martinez attributes this to a change 25 years ago, when the Los Angeles Unified School District had to break up enrollment at the two schools.
“The district began to break them up because they thought it was unmanageable – 5,000 was too much. It’s not like those 3000 students just left and vanished. The district created magnet schools and other schools,” Martinez said.
While a large majority of the incoming students are from Schurr High School, there is diversity in the districts.
“Most of our students come from high schools on the east side, out of the Los Angeles district, like Alhambra and Montebello Unified. Our students are diversified as opposed to other colleges where a lot of their students come from LAUSD,” Martinez said.
George Miller Schurr High School, as an example, is in Montebello Unified School District.
“Our enrollment continues to be good, and that isn’t happening by accident,” Martinez said.
Several high schools within the district have their graduation ceremonies at Weingart Stadium. In addition, ELAC hosts several other events such as Senior Day and Summer Bridge Programs.
The Summer Bridge Programs are courses that students can take on campus during summer.
These programs allow incoming students the opportunity to view the campus and experience the environment.
“We’re creating a college-going culture. We’re creating a culture where students have plans to go to college. We are creating a culture where students say, ‘Hey, I want to go to college,” Martinez said.
Some of the top feeder schools include Alhambra High School, Montebello High School, Bell Senior High School and Mark Keppel High School.
The enrollment reports are compiled at the end of every year.