SAN GABRIEL VALLEYWIDE NEWS
Winston Chua

ALHAMBRA - Catching Dr. Laurel Bear when she is working is not easy. Catching her when she is not “working is just as challenging. The Gateway to Success director found herself Tuesday afternoon en route to an Alhambra school site where a student was contemplating suicide. The student was safe, in large part because of the work of Bear, who has made intervention more accessible to students in her district.

“We can make a difference. We won’t see it in every day in every child, but we can make a difference,” said Dr. Bear, whose career also spans time as a principal at Century High School and Dean of Students at Alhambra High School.

In the course of seven years, there have been around 24 unexpected deaths on Alhambra school district campuses for reasons that include electrocution and driving accidents. On top of this Alhambra has had to find ways to curb violent behavior, truancy, drug and alcohol use, harassment and weapons possession. The Gateway program is a federally funded program that has allowed the district’s students to respond with resiliency in both academics and attitude from crisis situations that would otherwise cripple the student body. Thanks to Bear, a graduate of San Marino High School, test scores have not dropped in spite of budget cuts and other challenging situations.

“We can quantify the results of the program by measuring how quickly our schools can get to normality after crisis hits,” said Bear, who emphasized that such interventions are just part of a program that includes academic success and a healthy mentality.

The Gateway to Success has been federally funded by more than $10 million over a span of five and a half years as part of the Safe Schools Healthy Students initiative. Bear and Dr. Rosalie Finer wrote the grant. Bear, who has been with Alhambra for 28 years, surveyed the community years ago to find that all parents wanted something specific for their children: to be successful and safe.

The Gateway project moves toward that goal by promoting good mental health by using a variety of methods: anchoring more mentors on campus, placing police officers at specific locations, installing police chaplains or providing school counseling, for example. These measures are used to combat the pressing issues of depression, low self-esteem and emotional instability that inhabit school campuses. The results are that students are able to use their study skills, work with their parents and complete their schoolwork.

Bear herself is a psychologist who said that the kids who succeed the most have positive adult role models who aid in their development, which is why even the most impoverished students can find themselves in prestigious universities and among those with the highest-paying jobs. Role models help students when parents are too busy trying to keep roofs over children’s’ heads.