Only 33 percent of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are performing at their grade level in English.
Only 13 percent are doing so in math.
Bruin Initiative, an education awareness club at UCLA, is holding their Second Annual School Supply Drive until Feb. 26 to help students in the school district improve their performance.
The club will also present an Education Awareness Day on Feb. 11, which will feature a Sprinkles cupcake fundraiser.
“(The Education Awareness Day) is intended to make the campus more aware of the huge educational disparity within our own community. … Most of us are shocked by these facts that some high school students don’t even take their SATs,” said Emily Chen, co-director of the drive.
The donated supplies will benefit Dorsey High School, Drew Middle School and Davis Middle School ““ schools in low-income neighborhoods that get little attention and funding from the government, Chen said.
Chen, a third-year neuroscience student, emphasized that as a direct result of the lack of funding, Dorsey High had only 43 percent of its students graduate in four years, compared to the district average of 52 percent.
At Drew Middle School, only 27 percent of its students are enrolled in algebra, a class shown to have a direct correlation with success in and beyond high school. Only 64 percent of those enrolled students are passing with a grade of “C” or better.
The supplies that students donate to benefit these three local schools will motivate students to work hard towards an end goal of getting into college, said Albert Ly, the drive’s co-director.
The club, which also hosts an SAT tutoring program for low-income high school students in underfunded areas and an afterschool care program, had seen the drastic statistics online but hadn’t realized the magnitude of the correlation between having the proper school supplies and high test scores.
Upon driving out to the schools, they saw truly how much the students were affected. That sparked last year’s birth of the school supply drive, continued Ly, a third-year physiological science student.
“These are kids who don’t have the best role models. (They) don’t even know that they have the opportunity to apply to college,” said Laura Collis, external president of the club.
She added that donating supplies creates a personal connection with these students and allows them to see that they can have brighter futures even though they come from low-income areas.
There are four drop-off locations for supplies: 1009 Moore Hall, 1232 Campbell Hall, SAC B28 and a possible future drop-off location in Sproul Hall.
The most-needed supplies are pens, No. 2 pencils, three-ring binders, colored pencils, loose-leaf paper, book covers, spiral notebooks, planners, highlighters, markers, index cards and folders with pockets, although any school supply donation would be appreciated.
Bruin Initiative’s progress can be tracked at dosomething.org/actnow/club/ucla-bruin-initiative.