A Promising Incentive

Two Los Angeles community groups have prepared a plan to help reverse the city’s relatively high dropout rate with the promise of jobs for students at six high schools. It is an incentive worth trying.

The United Neighborhoods Organization and the South-Central Organizing Committee are sponsors of the plan. They want to assure employment for graduates of six targeted high schools. To qualify, the students would be required to have at least a C+ average and a 95% attendance record. The guarantee is designed to encourage youngsters who are not going on to college to complete high school.

To make the program work, UNO and SCOC need the support of the business community and a guarantee of 1,500 jobs for the first year. Employers have a stake in the quality of the work force. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which helped to shape the program, will have an opportunity to endorse the concept today--an opportunity that it should not miss.

The ambitious partnership already includes Supt. Harry Handler and the Los Angeles Unified School District and Wayne Johnson, head of United Teachers Los Angeles--the teachers’ union. Enthusiastic support from business leaders will make their task easier.

If all goes as planned, UNO and SCOC will send parents, as many as 30 per campus, to six high schools--Garfield, Roosevelt and Lincoln in East Los Angeles, and Jefferson, Manual Arts and Locke in South-Central Los Angeles--next September. The volunteers will work with students and their parents.

Similar incentive programs already are being implemented in other cities. In Boston more than 10,000 students have been placed in summer jobs and permanent jobs, thanks to guarantees made by business leaders in 1982.

The partnership proposed by UNO and SCOC can pay off for youngsters who stay in school and for their future employers. It is a worthy investment for the community, the schools and business.