David Batista falls into a trust mat held by students attending a team-building session at Stanford. Chronicle photo by Penni Gladstone

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Janette Torres looked down from atop some bleachers at her classmates below and quietly said she would not fall backward onto the canvas they held stretched over the green grass of the Stanford University campus.

None of the high school freshmen jeered Torres or tried to persuade her to change her mind. Rather, they cheered her simply for making a choice.

Such a reaction might not occur at many high schools, but it's just the sort that is encouraged at Leadership Public Schools, a fast-growing Bay Area network of charter schools that endeavors to send inner-city children to college.

"Instead of most students putting you down, they actually give you confidence,'' said Torres, 14, one of 100 freshmen from four Leadership schools spending three days this week at Stanford working on team building and learning what it takes to get to college -- a feat few in their families have accomplished.

"Our goal is that 100 percent of our kids will go to college,'' said Mark Kushner, who founded the nonprofit charter school network in San Francisco in 2002. Kushner, a former public school principal and teacher, wanted to create high schools with no more than 500 pupils to give students more attention and guidance.

The first campus opened in Richmond with a freshman class in 2003; a second followed in East San Jose in 2004. Campuses in Oakland and Hayward opened this week, and another is slated to open in Campbell next year.

Deborah Stipek, dean of Stanford's School of Education and a member of Leadership Public Schools' board of directors, called the program extraordinary.

"One thing to realize is how hard the work is. They are going into communities where kids are very significantly behind in skill levels and have not been held to high expectations,'' she said.

While none of the Leadership campuses has yet graduated a senior class, Richmond junior Trinidad Pizano believes that when his turn comes next year, he will be more prepared for college than he might have been had he attended school elsewhere.

"They give you that attention, and they tell you what you need to do to go college,'' said the 15-year-old, who felt comparatively lost at Adams Middle School, which had more than 1,000 students.

Leadership's graduation requirements are designed to satisfy the entrance requirements for the University of California, Kushner said. They include two years of a foreign language, courses in visual and performing arts, and a laboratory science class as well math, English, history and the like.

In addition, he said, the Leadership schools emphasize nonacademic skills that promote success, particularly public speaking and conflict resolution.

"We set the tone for all of that right in the very beginning,'' Kushner said.

The biggest event of the day involved students scaling a 20-foot wood wall -- something they could do only with the help of their fellow students, who hoisted them up and caught them when they fell. As with the backward- falling exercise, students were encouraged simply to decide what to do. The only requirement was that they state their name, a specific obstacle they saw to their going to college, and their decision of whether or not to climb.

Today, the students, who have been living in Stanford dormitory rooms, will tour the university. This is the first time the students' orientation has been on a college campus -- an idea that in retrospect seemed obvious.

"Many of these kids are the first generation in their families to think about going to college,'' Kushner said.

Jeo Bautista, 14, who lives with his grandmother in East San Jose, was impressed by Stanford.

"I think it's a really nice place. It's a clean place,'' he said. "I would like to go here if I could.''

E-mail Patrick Hoge at phoge@sfchronicle.com .

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©2005 San Francisco Chronicle