While many teenagers no doubt spent Labor Day weekend hanging with friends at the mall or the beach, a group of academically fired-up South Los Angeles high schoolers headed for the Bay Area Friday on a road trip filled with future possibilities.

The Community Coalition of South Los Angeles, a grassroots empowerment movement, has for the last seven years taken 30 students once a year on a Bay Area College Tour through its youth project, South Central Youth Empowered Through Action (SCYEA).

The students got to visit major universities and met with local community leaders and social justice activists. These included a tour led by founding Black Panther member David Hilliard and a visit to the Mission District, a historical Latino community in the Bay Area.

This year the students, which included 16-year-old juniors Erik Maultsby (Manual Arts High School), Tylo White (Dorsey High School) and Juana Gonzalez (Jordan High School), had an extra twist in that they documented the trip through a blog at http://blog.cocosothla.org.

The three high schoolers were accompanied by SCYEA director Elmer Roldan, himself a former SCYEA member.

According to the coalition, every year an estimated one out two South L.A. students “disappear” or drop out of high school and only one in 10 of those end up at a four-year university.

But over the last 15 years, SCYEA officials have said that they have been beating the odds, helping hundreds of students get into college with almost 95 percent of SCYEA members graduating to four-year universities.

Thus, higher education is the dream for Maultsby, Gonzalez and White; kids who share similar backgrounds and a steely will to succeed in life.

“I was in sixth grade when I found out about this project and I started coming to meetings with my older brother,” said Erik, one of three children being raised by a single mom. “We learn[ed] that we are supposed to be learning the A through G curriculum to get into college, but we weren’t getting those classes. So we protested at the school.”

Last year, Maultsby, who wants to become a veterinarian, went on a SCYEA college tour of Columbia University in New York and is leaning to study on the East Coast.

“It was a really good experience,” he recalled. “We got to live in the dorms and I got to ask questions about student life. My favorite subjects are math and science. I have a 2.5 grade point average at the moment and I need to make up some classes to raise that to a 3.0 to get into college. But I will definitely do that.”

He added: “I’m looking forward to writing the blog because I think it will be inspirational to read about someone your age getting to higher and better places.

“We deal with crowded classrooms and sometimes teachers who just don’t care. Two libraries just near my house have closed. Now there’s nowhere you can get a book you need.”

As for White, whose grade point average is an impressive 3.7, she talks passionately about wanting to study political science and go into the political field.

“I love politics, the whole set-up of it,” she said.

“Even though it’s corrupt, I still want to change it. I’m looking to go to Spellman or Clarke, historical Black colleges where they will teach African-American culture.”

Tylo, who has been a SCYEA member for a year, said she was really looking forward to the Black Panther tour and checking out the University of California’s Santa Cruz campus.

“I love what the Panthers stood for,” she said. “I think it will be inspirational and I’m looking forward to sharing it [online]. Nothing’s impossible, you can achieve whatever you want as long as you get involved.”

Perhaps, when the three youngsters have that graduation meal in a few years time, it might be at Gonzalez’s five-star restaurant.

With her heart set on culinary school to become a pastry chef, the youngster realizes she has a challenge ahead especially with the devastating cuts to education in the budget.

“My mom is a medical assistant, but she’s currently unemployed and my dad works in a factory,” said Juana, who will no doubt have a touching reunion with her sister, who preceded her into SCYEA and just started at San Francisco State University. “But I’m looking forward to learning more about the colleges … because I also want to become a first grade teacher. It will be great to see my sister who first brought me to the project. That’s where I learned how so many students weren’t getting the necessary classes to go to college. Yet, in Beverly Hills it’s a whole different story.”

Meanwhile, Roldan, is confident that his three charges will continue the group’s success rate and revealed they will all be competing for $180,000 worth of scholarship grants.

“Ten students, including these three will be competing for it,” explained Roldan. “Between three and five will get a full-paid scholarship to their school of choice, plus a two-year salary once they graduate to come and work at a civic organization like ours. For the other five that don’t make it, we’ll continue to fight for funds so they can also pursue their dreams.”

And he recalled his own and current coalition staffers’ stories as prime examples.

“This truly is a life-altering experience for the students where maybe their parents don’t have the means to expose them to a trip like this,” said Roldan. “I went through the project in the early stages, became a SCYEA fundraiser and now I’m back directing the program. Our administrative director is a former grad who went to USC and the project’s graphic designer is a former member now at a Cal State. … We try to instill a purpose so that when they go off and get an education they will come back and serve the community of South L.A.”