Waking before dawn to the blare of her alarm and the crow of a neighbor's rooster, Jacqueline Hernandez begins her school day and prepares for the collision of her two worlds.
Jacqueline lives in an inner-city, working-class neighborhood in South-Central Los Angeles a few miles east of USC, but her neighborhood high school doesn't have room for her.
So she travels 38 miles every weekday morning to Chatsworth High School, nestled in a suburban world of green, manicured lawns and middle-class homes.
She's one of 11,000 students, mostly kids from South-Central, who are bused by the Los Angeles Unified School District to schools out of their neighborhoods because their local campuses are overcrowded.
She and the 40 other neighborhood kids on bus No. 4068 have an hour's ride each way to Chatsworth High, perhaps the longest daily commute.
For the 16-year-old sophomore, her well-timed morning ritual begins at 5 a.m. One minute she spritzes on hair spray in front of the bathroom mirror, another she's sliding rings and bracelets on her fingers and wrists, and the next, she's sitting on the living room couch, carefully dabbing gold glitter on her straight, black ponytail.
By 5:55 a.m., Jacqueline has stuffed books and a makeup kit into her backpack and is leaving the tidy, one-bedroom apartment she shares with her mother and brother to catch the bus at 6:20 a.m.
There are 89 overcrowded elementary, middle and high schools in the district's Capacity Adjustment Program (CAP) that must find room at other campuses for their excess students. Once a school's enrollment reaches capacity, students who want to enroll are put in the program.
In Jacqueline's case, the students "capped" out of Jefferson High School, her home campus, have the choice of being bused to one of three alternatives: Chatsworth High, Lincoln High or Los Angeles Trade Tech.
A Matter of Space
Students who prefer their new school may continue there even if a space opens up at their neighborhood school, said Bruce Takeguma, LAUSD assistant director of school management services who oversees the placement of CAP students.
After students are placed in CAP, they are given priority for enrollment at their home schools for the next school year. The number of students in CAP has decreased from about 25,000 in 1979-80 to about 11,000 now after the institution of year-round schools, students on multiple tracks and additional classrooms, said Theodore Alexander, director of the district's office of school integration.
