Opening Doors at the Boys and Girls Club

Rethinking the Road to Success

By Devonte Barr, Columnist

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” G.K. Chesterton wrote that, and it swims laps in my head whenever I speak with educators like Pete Settlemayer, CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Los Angeles Harbor Area (BGCLAH).

Before stepping into leadership in 2024, Settlemayer had already spent decades in education across Atlanta, the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The irony he gifted me right off the bat was that he, like me, struggled in school.

As soon as he said that, I crossed out my next six questions, thinking, okay, Pete, you are a terrestrial like me.

I can always spot an act. Having had an Individualized Education Program (IEP) straight through college, I know a fake educator. But for the nearly two hours I spent with Pete and his team, there wasn’t an ego in sight. If humility came packaged as an ointment, Pete would have cases of it tucked away like a pandemic hoarder.

One of the first things I asked him was, “As someone who’s been in education for decades, when exactly did we decide that success and college were synonyms?”

It was an overture I’d bought into myself. I watched friends skip the university route altogether, learn a trade, and start making real money while I was still arguing with financial aid.

Pete didn’t hesitate. “Everybody goes to college,” he said. “Everybody goes to college. We sold this dream that was never the case.”

Not for everyone. But somewhere along the line, that assumption calcified into conventional wisdom. “We pulled the trades out of schools,” Pete said. “There’s no more shop, no more carpentry.”

The friends I knew who learned to build and fix things hadn’t rejected education; they’d simply chosen a practical route that didn’t demand four years of mounting tuition to prove its worth. The real mistake was forcing 16-year-olds into a single, predetermined identity.

“With the job market changing this quickly,” I asked, “what worries you most about preparing kids for the next generation? Is there a danger we’re training them for skills that won’t be enough in five or ten years?”

Pete reached for his phone. “Things change so quickly, right? Look at your iPhone right now. It doesn’t bend. It doesn’t fold. It’s really hard to predict the next five to ten years.”

That unpredictability is precisely why he moved from public education to BGCLAH. “We don’t have to run this up a flagpole to get policy change,” he said. “We can do this if we can find the right funders. We have to be nimble enough to make sure that we are not navel-gazing, but saying: what do these young folks need to make sure that they have everything to be successful, whatever success looks like in the next ten years?”

The real lesson isn’t guessing which technology wins next; it’s building the muscle to adapt when the ground shifts beneath you.

That agility is the bedrock of CareerBound. Launched in 2022, the program begins with light career exposure in middle school before ramping up in high school with individualized case management. Rather than herding teens through one-size-fits-all workshops, Dominique, CareerBound’s director, pairs students with case managers who help map concrete, achievable steps toward their goals.

Alongside support in financial literacy, driver’s education, soft skills and paid internships, CareerBound offers certified trade training in welding, plumbing, carpentry and electrical work. Students train with professionals, earn real credentials, receive stipends while learning and get job-placement support afterward. When they graduate high school, they can transition into BGCLAH’s Workforce Development Center for ages 18 to 24 — a continuum of career support Pete calls “aftercare.”

CareerBound’s counterpart is CollegeBound, a pillar of the club for more than 20 years. Its manager, Mark, currently guides roughly 80 seniors through applications, financial aid and dual enrollment at Los Angeles Harbor College.

Dominique describes the two programs as “sisters or like cousins,” designed to flex around the student rather than forcing the student into a box. The clearest proof is Miley, a CollegeBound alum now attending UC Riverside who also earned a welding certification through CareerBound after realizing financial aid wouldn’t cover the full cost of college. College and a trade pursued simultaneously. Apparently nobody told her she was supposed to pick a side.

Yet programs alone don’t carry kids through uncertainty; people do.

When I asked Pete what message anchors students against self-doubt when the future feels precarious, he pointed straight to his staff.

“It’s nothing that we teach or say,” Pete told me. “It’s what we do.”

He recalled watching students in a plumbing class quietly drift over to help one another troubleshoot without any prompt from the instructor. “You have to have a heart for this,” he said. “You’re definitely not in it for the money.”

The pathways matter, but they only function because mentors show up, remember names and track the quiet details. The underlying formula across every workshop and classroom is consistent: Get young people through the door, offer them something tangible and surround them with adults who give a damn whether they come back tomorrow.

Which brought me to the unavoidable question: If BGCLAH offers all this, why isn’t every kid in town here?

It isn’t cost. Membership is $25 a year and can be waived for anyone who can’t pay. “I think it largely relies on the individual,” Pete said. You can supply the tools, the counseling and the open gym, but ultimately the student still has to walk through the door.

Maintaining those open doors is an unending hustle. Roughly 54% of BGCLAH’s funding comes from federal and state grants, requiring the grants team to submit two to three proposals a week. That dynamic carries the constant risk of “mission creep” — bending programs to suit grant criteria rather than community needs.

Pete remembers walking into an under-resourced Atlanta school years ago and listening to educators list everything their students allegedly couldn’t do. He called that mindset “kind of criminal.” After decades working across Atlanta, the Bay Area and Los Angeles, his verdict was far simpler: “They’re no different.”

The circumstances are different. The resources are different. The doors available to them are certainly different. But the kids are not.

CareerBound can’t manufacture ambition, and CollegeBound can’t guarantee a smooth road. What BGCLAH can do is keep as many doors open as possible — and make damn sure someone is standing on the other side when a kid finally chooses one.