With more than 64 percent of Lompoc Unified School District’s population considered socioeconomically disadvantaged and students in historically marginalized communities scoring below state learning standards in test scores, Connie Alexander and Audrey Gamble saw a need for additional educational support and services.
Alexander and Gamble own and operate Gateway Educational Services, a tutoring center founded in Goleta in 2009 that offers one-on-one tutoring for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
“I think when you’re in an area where there are high resources, you can see the high resources’ impact in the community. In Santa Barbara, we are not the only ones providing tutoring, it’s all over,” Alexander said. “There are franchises and other people that provide support, but you go into another community and see there’s not many providing that.”
In order to fill a need in Lompoc, Gateway Educational Services expanded into the community and will host a ribbon cutting ceremony for its new tutoring and wellness center on Jan. 23. The tutoring and wellness center will provide one-on-one tutoring to Lompoc students in kindergarten through fourth grade for 14 to 18 months. Students will get an initial assessment so Gateway can understand their strengths and what needs improvement.
Gateway will track student success through assessments, and tutors will also look at a student’s yearly testing to see how the sessions have impacted them.
“On average, what we know is our students in that 14 to 18 months will see a 25 to 30 percent gain,” Alexander said. “That equates to over a year-and-a-half’s work, for some students, it’s even more.”
Gateway tutors undergo many hours of training and shadow Alexander or Gamble before beginning one-on-one sessions with students. They need at least an associate’s degree to get the job. Many of Gateway’s Goleta students became tutors themselves and later went on to become teachers, Alexander said.
Gamble said that they are starting with kindergarten through fourth grade at the Lompoc location because it’s a crucial age for children to gain the skills they need to succeed in the proceeding grade levels.
“For example, with COVID there was a bubble of students that just began school online, they were missing a lot of instruction because of the platform we had to use,” Gamble said. “Now that students have advanced to the next grade missing some of the skills they should have had in person, we are trying to catch them up as soon as possible so they aren’t struggling later.”
Within the Lompoc center, Gateway added a wellness component by partnering with a local pediatrician to provide health and wellness services in the same building, Alexander added.
“She has three rooms in the learning center [where] kids will be having checkups and pediatric services; we are under one roof in that way,” she said. “The other component of wellness is mental health services. We have one person so far that is providing mental health services for children, and we’re looking for more who want to come and be in the space to be able to provide their services.”
The intention behind this is to make it easier for parents to connect their children to the resources they need in order to be successful in academics, Alexander said.
“It fits the model of the whole child and the whole ecosystem of that child. You’re following what other needs exist; I believe all of the state of California, we’re figuring this out,” she said. “We need to approach communities that have been historically underserved by providing them with full services.”
She added that she hopes this facility will fill a need in the community, improve student academic achievement and outcomes, and that this will be a good example and model for serving families in Lompoc moving forward.
“The situations are so intricate, there’s so many pieces that go into what is happening for a child, what happens at school, [if] they need medical services, the family system, the social emotional wellbeing—all those components make up a child’s ecosystem,” Alexander said. “We’re excited [about] what we’re going to learn because we’re going to learn a lot by doing this.”
The Jan. 23 ribbon cutting begins at noon at 218 North I Street, next to the Anderson Recreation Center. Services are provided on a sliding scale depending on the family’s financial need. As of Dec. 21, Gateway Educational Services was looking for more tutors, pediatricians, and mental health professionals to join the team. Email info@gatewayeducationalservices.org to RSVP for the event or ask questions about Gateway.
Highlight:
• The city of Lompoc Solid Waste Division contracted with West Coast Arborists to collect and recycle Christmas trees from city residences from Jan. 8 to 12. The service is free of charge to residents. Prior to recycling the trees, all decorations and tree stands must be removed. Once they are collected, West Coast Arborists will grind the trees into mulch. The mulch will then be used as landscape material throughout the city. Solid waste collection customers should place their trees three feet away from their refuse containers by 7 a.m. on their scheduled trash collection day during the week of Jan. 8. Residents who miss the home tree collection are invited to drop their trees off free of charge at the Lompoc City Landfill, 700 Avalon St. Flocked trees cannot be recycled, and must be cut up and placed in the trash bin or brought to the landfill and disposed of, for a fee.
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 28, 2023 – Jan 7, 2024.
