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Boys and Girls Club keeps sports going at Canoga Park High, page 2
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He needed to make the program attractive for students--and he soon found that a weight-training program helped draw students in.
At nearly 5-o’clock on a Tuesday, a dozen or two students mingle in the room, most of them watching “Spider Man 2.” Boys and Girls Club staff person Mario Silbol is in charge.
“From 3 to 3:45, I ask them to do their homework,” he says, almost embarrassed to have been caught letting the kids have fun. “From 3:45 on, they’re playing pool or table tennis. But many of them are failing in school, so we try to help them a lot with academics.”
At first, the BGC had worked with students on academics only in the library. But the kids like the activities room, Hernandez said.
“They needed a place to be loud.”
Kids also need variety, and so Hernandez has used his department’s $250,000 budget to pay for a lot of things. Currently, the BGC pays for one of its own staff members to run the ROTC on the Canoga High campus. In other cases, the BGC supplements already-existing after-school programs. Like a student-made production of “Westside Story.”
“For this one, they already had a drama program, but they had no dance instructor to teach choreography,” Hernandez says. “I paid for the instructor, and I feed ‘em.”
That’s part of what makes Hernandez so popular--his after-school program provides food. As the afternoon progresses, he hands out half a dozen peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to grateful students.
But there is more to the BGC than PB&J. The organization has also sponsored trips that have taken the students to baseball games at Dodger Stadium, or soccer games featuring the Mexican team CHIVAS. On May 22, there is big barbecue planned that doubles as a book distribution event. (The barbecue, Hernandez said, is “our way of getting the students to come.”)
And there are plans for much more. Because tennis is so unpopular at Canoga Park that the school doesn’t field a team, Hernandez suggests that in the future, the school might lay down turf over the courts and use them for an after-school soccer league.
That might seem like too dramatic of a change to imagine, but Hernandez has already seen a lot of change since his organization arrived on campus.
“These kids always used to be here anyway (before BGC arrived),” Hernandez said. “They were just hanging out. At one point, security would just push everybody off campus.”
Now, the hanging out is organized, supervised, and well-fed. Academics are integrated. Sports leagues are organized.
And Hernandez is walking around, saying hi to whomever he comes across. From 3-6 or so on weekday afternoons, after-school is in session, and he’s the principal.
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