More and more high school students are signing up for classes at El Camino

Progress and challenging yourself are the reasons why the 15-year-old North High School student decided to take classes at El Camino College.

Genasyn Bantad, who took eight classes in college, said she loved taking history classes through the El Camino program.

“It’s not too hard to balance it, it’s really nice,” Bantad said.

California is offering a $250,000 Middle College and Early College Grant to high schools in the state to support dual enrollment, which is the status of high school students in a college district who can take college classes.

Dual degree programs in California generated $2.8 million in the 2022-2023 academic year, according to apportionment reports from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

In the 2022–2023 academic year, there were 275,653 students admitted to special studies who participated in the dual system.

Funding of $2.8 million was generated from 41,532 full-time equivalent (FTES) students in the special admissions population.

FTES is calculated by adding up the hours that students are enrolled.

El Camino offers two programs for college district high school students to help them expand their pathways to higher education.

Early College Program

Bantad participates in the Early College program in partnership with North High, which was approved by the Torrance Unified School District Board of Education in November 2021.

Ninth grade students can apply to the program and take college classes on the high school campus.

Since her goal is to go to law school, Bantad said the program allows her to “get a head start on everything.”

“I think it’s like a higher level of learning,” Bantad said.

Last year, TUSD applied for a $250,000 grant for North High and received it in March, said Emma Biggs, TUSD’s career technical education and dual enrollment coordinator.

Biggs said he helps TUSD fund professional development for teachers who teach in the program or work with El Camino professors to have his students take campus trips and advertise the program.

“I think it takes a lot of the pressure off,” Biggs said.

In fall 2024, North High’s first cohort of 69 students will study on campus.

El Camino Dual Registration Program

The Dual Enrollment Program is another program in which 12th grade students can take classes on the El Camino campus primarily in the afternoon after high school classes.

Datamart’s office of the chancellor says the number of dual-degree students at El Camino has increased more than sixfold over the past 10 years, with the largest increase occurring in fall 2022, when the university enrolled more than 10 times as many.

Michelle Arthur, El Camino’s dual enrollment program coordinator, said dual enrollment has increased 80% in the last three years.

El Camino partners with 24 high schools to offer classes, including Redondo Union, Shery, South, West and North High Schools.

North High has the largest number of students studying at El Camino.

“El Camino is really well known in the community, I would say statewide,” Arthur said.

Dean of Libraries and Educational Resources Crystle Martin said the dual enrollment program was once located in the student services portion of the college, but was moved to her department in November 2022.

The dual enrollment program has an outreach component, such as working with specific classes and deans to combine high school applications, Martin said.

Obtaining a program through Academic Affairs helps you make connections with other deans on campus.

The total payroll cost for those working in the dual enrollment program comes to $207,096, with $1,000 earmarked for supplies.

California dual registration

California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi said overall dual enrollment in California community colleges is growing, having seen a 56% increase from 2015 to 2016.

Muratsuchi, who represents the district from Gardena to San Pedro, said he wants to build on that success.

“We want to encourage more high school students, especially underrepresented students from underrepresented communities, to take advantage of dual enrollment opportunities,” Muratsuchi said.

Los Angeles Pierce College has the highest dual enrollment rate of 11% compared to the other four colleges reviewed by The Union.

The university also has a dual enrollment program and another program called the concurrent enrollment program, which allows not only high school students but also middle school students to take advantage of classes offered by Pierce.

LA Pierce Outreach and Implementation Coordinator Julia Mendoza said the increase in dual enrollment is visible because LA Pierce’s dual enrollment program is only one point of contact. Mendoza oversees high school and community outreach and dual enrollment enrollment.

“One of the things that has helped us a lot … our dual enrollment is that everything has been placed in our area,” Mendoza said.

The high schools Pierce works with are divided into two groups and are supervised by two representatives from the Student Services Department.

Through the dual enrollment program, Pierce has partnered with 27 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, including Taft Charter High School and Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies.

Mendoza said the program has grown significantly over the past two years by “strengthening relationships with high schools.”

“We now work much closer with our high schools than ever before,” she said.

Mendoza explained that the team’s availability helps strengthen bonds.

Cerritos College has almost the same percentage of dual-college students as El Camino.

High school students participating in Cerritos activities are covered by Educational Partnerships and Programs.

Program director Colleen McKinley and dual enrollment manager Jonae Varela said the college has 18 high schools, including two private ones.

McKinley said the department is relatively new and discussions about the possibility of providing high school students with college classes began after the passage of California legislation AB 288 in 2016.

Cerritos taught three classes from summer 2016 to 2017 and currently offers over 200 classes for dual enrollment students.

Santa Monica College declined to talk to The Union because it only has five high schools in the district while other colleges have more.

“Santa Monica is a smaller city on the coast and doesn’t have as many high schools around it as L.A. Pierce in Los Angeles County,” said Elizabeth Friedmann, a research associate at the California Education Lab and Wheelhouse.

Friedmann explained the dual enrollment program trend she saw in her research.

“We see that some campuses have strong partnerships, some high school districts work closely with their local colleges, and there are a lot of dual schools there,” Friedmann said.

He believes that those colleges that work more closely with the district’s high schools have more double-major students.

“Geography matters,” Friedmann said.