Los Angeles Times

Challenging the balance of power in the city's public school system, a leading charter school organization is poised to wrest control of a failing high school from the elected Los Angeles Board of Education.

Green Dot Public Schools, which has clashed frequently with the board in its aggressive push to expand, has quietly overseen the collection of signatures of support from a majority of the tenured teachers at Locke High School — clearing the major legal hurdle toward converting the campus into a series of charter schools.

Underscoring the anxiety and anger the plan is unleashing within the district, Locke Principal Frank Wells was escorted off campus and relieved of his duties late Tuesday afternoon pending the outcome of a district investigation into allegations that Wells allowed teachers to leave their classrooms to collect and sign petitions.

Wells called the charges "a total fabrication," saying no classes were disrupted as teachers signed and collected signatures during non-class time. Teachers who helped collect signatures supported Wells' version of events.

Under Green Dot's proposal, which because of state law the Los Angeles school board would appear to have little choice but to approve, the 2,800-student Watts campus would be divided into 10 small Green Dot schools beginning in fall 2008.

"It's a leap of faith, but if you believe in this partnership between Green Dot and Locke teachers, then you believe that we are trying to change education in Los Angeles by turning more attention to students' needs and empowering teachers," said Bruce Smith, an English teacher at the school.

Amid dozens of poor-performing middle and high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Locke has long languished as one of the worst. At least one of every two students drops out, while the majority who remain score at or near the bottom on standardized tests.

More than half of the school's 73 tenured teachers signed petitions this week expressing interest in converting Locke into Green Dot charters. Once verified, the petitions — copies of which were obtained by The Times and checked against a roster of the Locke faculty — would legally allow Green Dot to petition the board for control of the school. Many un-tenured teachers also signed the petitions.

With school district and union leaders quickly catching wind of the hostile-takeover plan and scrambling to counter it with a reform plan of their own, Green Dot founder Steve Barr returned early from a conference in New Orleans to hold a news conference this morning with Locke teachers and parents outside the school.

Charter schools are publicly funded but run independently, outside many of the regulations and restrictions of school districts. In exchange for the freedom to innovate in the classroom, charters are expected to improve student performance and serve as incubators for school reform. Most charters in California are start-ups that typically must rent or buy classroom space, but state law also allows for the less common conversion process.

Unlike the handful of other schools that converted to charters in L.A. Unified, Green Dot's gambit, if successful, would mark the first time an outside charter group organized a break from the district.

And Green Dot is proposing a clean break.

The group's charter petition — a copy of which was provided to The Times and which must be voted on by the seven-member school board — calls for Green Dot to receive its funding directly from the state, instead of allowing it to first pass through district coffers. Teachers who wish to remain at the deeply troubled school would have to re-apply for their jobs to principals hired by Green Dot. The extensive labor agreement negotiated by the district's teachers union would also be thrown out, as Locke teachers would work under the shorter, simpler pact signed by Green Dot's union.

Indeed, the plan promises to escalate the long-running power struggle that has pitted the fast growing Green Dot against the school board and the union, United Teachers Los Angeles — both of which have much to lose.

In addition to losing about $19 million in state funds that the district receives each year for Locke students, the school's conversion could serve as a serious setback to the school board as it scrambles to prove that it can put forth innovative reforms and drive improvements itself at dozens of low-performing schools.

Board members are particularly sensitive to criticism in light of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ongoing efforts to gain some control of the district, during which he has publicly pounded board members — and the bureaucracy they oversee — with the criticism that they are resistant to change.

A Locke takeover would also complicate matters for Supt. David L. Brewer, who is still trying to assert his authority over the nation's second-largest district since being hired late last year. Until last month, Brewer and board President Marlene Canter were trying to strike a deal with Barr over Locke, but talks broke down over Barr's rejection of Brewer's demand that teachers be district employees, subject to the UTLA contract.

"Why would we dilute something that is working?" Barr said in an interview, referring to the promising early results his other schools have posted. "Every conversation I had with the superintendent, it was, 'Have you talked to the union?' Who runs this district: the superintendent or the union?"

Brewer expressed frustration that Barr had "moved unilaterally without finishing that discussion." He and Canter expressed hope that in coming months the district would launch an "innovation division" to help groups like Green Dot implement their reform plans in district schools, while keeping them part of the district.

For their part, union officials stand to lose more than just the dues-paying members who bolt to Green Dot. Union leaders have been some of the harshest critics of the charter movement in Los Angeles, and of Green Dot in particular. The support for Green Dot by rank-and-file Locke teachers could undermine the authority of union leaders and their position as major power brokers in the district — especially if teachers at other schools follow suit.

"I'm going to urge teachers around the city to rise up and take control of their schools," said English teacher Smith, who plans to speak at today's news conference. "You can cross out Locke and put in Roosevelt High, or Dorsey or Crenshaw."

The decision to remove Wells came days after he visited a Green Dot campus and publicly lashed out at the district, saying it would take "revolutionary" change to improve his school.

Brewer and top officials said Wells' contract as principal will not be renewed next year because of "leadership problems" during his three years on campus. The allegations surrounding the signatures forced them to remove him immediately, they said.

A.J. Duffy, president of the union, angrily denounced Green Dot's collection of signatures, saying teachers should have been given a chance to first hear other reform ideas from the union and other groups. He said the union is trying to pull together a counter plan to present to Locke teachers in coming weeks.

"When a staff gets all the information to make a decision … we would support whatever they want, even if we disagree with it," he said. "I understand the teachers' frustrations. The district is not receptive to change and as hard as we have pushed we have not been able to convince them that change is needed. But, I guess they've got the message now."

THREE CHEERS for Locke High School.

Three cheers for its courageous teachers and stalwart principal, who have chosen to break with the dithering Los Angeles Unified School District and a hidebound teachers union to become a Green Dot charter school.

Three cheers for the fed-up parents who showed up at Locke on Thursday morning to lob the first volleys in a revolution that only begins with the school's emancipation.

By signing petitions to become the first school to secede from L.A. Unified, teachers at long-suffering Locke have jeopardized their own livelihoods and careers. They have no guarantee of employment under Green Dot, but they are putting the needs of their students first.

Principal Frank Wells has already paid the price for demanding change. He was escorted off the Locke campus Tuesday as punishment for working to create a bright future for his students. His crime? Allegedly permitting teachers to use class time to sign the charter petitions. He denies this impropriety happened. Helping students sounds so simple, but look what it's taken: a rogue school, secret petitions, a career damaged.

Green Dot had been negotiating with the school district over converting Locke, but a major sticking point was the charter organization's refusal to have teachers remain district employees, covered by the teachers union contract. And so, the bleating of the teachers union trumped the needs of students. Is anyone surprised?

Supt. David L. Brewer said the district's goal was, and remains, to work with Green Dot to reform not just Locke but also its feeder middle and elementary schools. But the district wanted more time, so Green Dot is going solo.

The time to quibble and negotiate is not while the house is on fire. And no rational observer disputes the fact that the LAUSD is fully engulfed. There can't be a timetable. Teachers want action. They would rather have better, merit-based pay with Green Dot than the end-of-career benefits provided by their current contract. They want support, order, real input on how to teach and enforced standards of behavior. They want, in fact, the same things that parents and students want. But they're stymied by the same foe: a district bureaucracy that pledges allegiance to reform and then locks out a principal who pursues it.

The events at Locke give clarity to the real struggle for Los Angeles public schools. On one side are devoted teachers, brave administrators and long-suffering students and parents. On the other are narrow and defensive interests, dedicated to protecting a failed system. There should be no doubt about who deserves to win.

The state test results released Tuesday for Locke High School weren't the sort of thing its new operator, Green Dot Public Schools, is accustomed to seeing: Not a single student scored as proficient in geometry, for example, and only a few percent tested at the next level down, basic.

By and large, students scored no better than they had under the Los Angeles Unified School District. But Locke is a different kind of charter school, and in its first year it successfully changed other, previously dismal numbers. Truancy was down. Crime and class-cutting were down. The numbers of students staying in school and taking the tests were up dramatically. Those suggest a changed culture at Locke and are the most important indicators of progress.

As this page has noted, Green Dot took on a much bigger challenge with this Watts high school than it had with its other schools. Charter schools typically start small, accept only as many students as they have ample room and staff for, and draw more motivated parents and students from a broad geographical area. Most public schools operating under those conditions would get higher scores too. But by enrolling all the students within its attendance boundaries -- including the perpetual truants, gangbangers and likely dropouts along with the honors students -- Locke accepted the same challenges faced by L.A.'s more troubled public schools.

Green Dot could have made itself look good by letting the potential dropouts go. After years of cutting classes at the old Locke, they were unlikely to score well on the state's standardized tests. Instead, Locke tested 38% more students this year than last. That means a lot more students were still in school in late spring, when the state tests are administered.

Reducing the dropout rate is the single most important priority for L.A. schools -- and it's worth noting that the district has made gains in that area while modestly raising test scores. It will take a few years to see whether there is a pattern here, but there's reason to feel encouraged.

Schools tend to score low in their first year of operation, so it would be premature in any case to judge the takeover at Locke -- or at the campuses run by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which fared about as well as district-run schools. Locke is just beginning the transformation from large, comprehensive high school to small academies, and this should be accompanied by an upward trend in its scores. Ultimately, keeping kids in school isn't enough if it isn't accompanied by better learning. Conversely, we'll never see more learning if youngsters aren't in school, and on this front, Green Dot has started off well.

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To a large degree, the new leadership at Locke High School near Watts sees its current mission as triage. Returning students can't start over again, so administrators say they want to help as many of the older students as possible.

Their hope for enduring and more impressive progress lies in small academies that begin with ninth-graders only. The goal is to establish an undiluted academic culture from the beginning of high school. It's a formula that has proved successful at Green Dot start-up schools elsewhere.

As a year-end exercise, Redd's students planned a period wedding for the doomed lovers. Tyrone Jones was among the group designing the ceremony. And when Redd jumped in to quiz the group, Tyrone could rattle off Shakespeare trivia -- the Bard spoke three languages, left school at 14 and was the son of a mayor.

Tyrone's mother jumped at the chance to send her son to Animo Watts instead of the main campus because she was wary of Locke's reputation for gangs and violence, Tyrone said. He didn't mind, especially because he's still been able to play for the Locke basketball team.

But his classmate Annette Barraza was among the ninth graders involuntarily assigned to Animo Watts.

"I thought I was going to the big Locke, but they sent me here," said Annette, who had dressed up her school uniform with a black-and-white dotted scarf. "This is too small. My friends are in Locke, and the classes are so long you fall asleep."

She was not placated to learn that classes at the main campus are just as long, because Green Dot uses block scheduling in all the Locke academies.

But she grudgingly gave her school some high marks: "I learned how to write a whole essay, with the thesis sentence and topic statement. I didn't know how to do that before. And the teachers know you and your friends and how to help out.

"My parents want me to come here next year," she said, rolling her eyes.

Across the hall, in Gerard Besina's biology class, it was hard to find a student who didn't know that chromatophores allow squids' skin to change color and texture. Students, in teams of two, reinforced their cephalopod expertise by dissecting fresh squid from the seafood market and labeling the parts.

Besina capped the lesson by deep-frying the leftover mantles, arms and tentacles.

"It's hard to dissect it," said Michelle Steward, reviewing her work. "And the parts all look like sloppy mucus. And you can actually write with the ink from the squid."

She took a bite of the calamari. "They look ugly and nasty but they actually taste good, like shrimp."

Animo Watts Principal Sue Jean Foulkes said she considers teachers like Redd and Besina to be the heart of the school culture she wants to create.

The effort remains a work in progress. Though the building is nearly new, its undersized central hall becomes virtually impassible with the crowding of students between classes. Teachers say the classrooms are also too small and some classes have around 40 students, a violation of Green Dot policy and its union contract.

Staff turnover is another concern. Among the academy's original six teachers last year, only Besina and one other returned, undermining the personal ties with teachers that intended to create for these students. And Green Dot replaced the Animo Watts founding principal with Foulkes in February.

"This is Green Dot," said Animo Watts teacher Chrystie Edwards. "The teachers don't have tenure, and there's no tenure in the administration either."

More broadly, Green Dot leaders worry that ninth grade may be too late to bring most low-achieving students up to academic proficiency. Green Dot is considering opening middle schools or working closely with existing middle schools in the area.

And Green Dot hopes to open a modern vocational program next year, one that also would fulfill college-entrance requirements. The goal is a curriculum that would engage more students and also provide job training, whether students continue on to college or not.

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Locke High School English teacher Katy Bridger tried to give her fifth-period seniors a test while Byron Gordon sharpened pencils noisily, Deon Crockett wandered the room complaining at full volume and a girl cursed just as loudly at Deon for being rude. Daniel Dominguez dozed in the back.

Pressing on, Bridger, a 23-year-old recent political science graduate from Tennessee, told students to put away their cellphones and iPods. One student demanded to know why, muttering the F-word.

Despite the momentary chaos and disrespect -- and the fact that half the students were absent -- this class represents improvement at one of the most troubled campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

For years, Locke, on the edge of Watts, has had among the state's lowest test scores and highest dropout rates. In 2004, 1,451 students enrolled as freshmen; just 261 graduated four years later. Of them, only 85 had completed the courses required to apply to a University of California or California State University school.

A year ago, Green Dot Public Schools, which runs 12 charters serving the city's urban poor, took over the school. The effort to transform Locke has been a nationally watched test of whether such a large, deeply impoverished urban high school could be transformed by a charter operator. Charter schools are publicly funded but operate beyond the direct control of school districts, exempt from many regulations and union contracts.

New foundation

Locke, which holds its graduation today, remains a troubled school, and Green Dot's strategy has relied on extra funds that may not be sustainable or readily replicable.

But despite those caveats, a qualified turnaround appears to be emerging.

Students say the campus is safer and calmer. The teachers, although mostly young and inexperienced, receive praise for being devoted and effective. There are signs of academic progress. Students repeat one point over and over: Instruction is better and nearly all teachers work hard and expect them to achieve.

Byron, the student who was sharpening pencils during the test, began the year an unmotivated senior and a Green Dot skeptic. "I thought Green Dot was going to be gone after the first month," Byron said. "I didn't think they were going to change anything."

In September, Bridger had to explain the difference between a noun and a verb. She's now well past those preliminaries.

"What kind of person does Lady MacBeth want her husband to be?" she asked her class a few days after the test.

"A murderer," said Deon, appearing more focused that day.

"What does Lady Macbeth want her husband to seem to be?" Bridger continued.

"A hero, a leader," said Daniel, who was awake that day. He works 35 hours a week at Subway, for $8.25 an hour, to support his girlfriend and their two children.

The test Bridger had given was one of a series of benchmark exams that Green Dot uses to measure progress. When the results came, they showed gains: The average score for Bridger's fifth-period class, roughly converted to the state's norms, would be in the low range of "basic," one level below the state's goal of "proficiency." That's not spectacular, but as 11th graders, 63% of Locke students had tested as "below basic" or worse.

Tough conditions

Locke's student body includes many who are far behind in credits, others with severe to moderate disabilities, and a small but steady flow of teens returning to school after serving time for criminal activity.

Academic growth over the last year has been uneven, according to Green Dot data. And that has prompted concern. "My nightmare is that the state test scores come in and you're judged by that," said Green Dot founder Steve Barr.

Leaders of traditional schools frequently complain about being evaluated mainly by test results; such concerns are often dismissed by charter school operators, including Green Dot.

"We have not unlocked all the mysteries," said Marco Petruzzi, Green Dot's chief executive. "We're very humble about that."

Daniel and Deon are among about 307 seniors who completed their course work for graduation. Several dozen others will participate in today's ceremony because they are close enough to finish in summer school. More than 100 seniors didn't make it.

Byron was kicked out of a Pomona high school two years ago for fighting. He moved in with his father near Locke in part, he said, to escape bad influences, including some in his family. Last year, he got Bs and Cs and he flunked a class.

"Last year it didn't matter," said Byron, who earned A's and Bs this year. "I never had nobody on me like I do now. This year, any class I decide to mess in, I will get in trouble with the teacher. They don't expect me to mess up."

Green Dot replaced most of the old Locke faculty and split the school into eight smaller academies. Much of the staff is young, and only 15% have fully completed teacher credentialing requirements. Half have taught for three years or less. And half are 28 or younger.

But many make up in enthusiasm what they lack in years. Bridger regularly spends 12 hours a day on campus, typically arriving just after 6 a.m. When school ends, some students remain seated in her classroom and others file in for extra assistance, to make up work, to help Bridger with projects or just to hang out.

The school's youth-oriented staffing allows Green Dot to pay higher starting salaries while still maintaining a payroll that averages below traditional public high schools in the area, according to a Times analysis.

Even before Green Dot, Locke had a contingent of energetic newcomers and capable veterans. The math department rebuilt a dormant calculus program, and 44 students enrolled in the class this year.

But the motivated teachers, experienced or not, received inconsistent support, which accelerated burnout, disillusionment and departure, said calculus teacher Fernando Avila.

"This became the place where a lot of teachers not performing in other schools ended up," Avila said.

Teacher Elijah Woodson said the achievements of the prior staff are underappreciated. Against the Green Dot takeover all along, he nevertheless stayed on after Green Dot asked L.A. Unified to continue to provide teachers for students with disabilities. That will change next year, in part because Green Dot managers are dissatisfied with the way L.A. Unified handled the contracted teachers.

Woodson said he feels personally harassed, with administrators regularly observing and evaluating his teaching. During one visit they focused on a student who was asleep in class -- because of medication, Woodson said -- rather than on 20 others who were paying attention.

Being critiqued is something Green Dot employees must get used to. Bridger said she relies on observations to improve, although not all teachers report favorably on their administrators. And the Green Dot teachers union filed several grievances over pay and working conditions.

Some classes have exceeded 40 students, a dilemma for Green Dot, which prides itself on small classes. And although the staff has made a concerted effort to keep students in school, some have dropped off the radar. A few with serious discipline or attendance issues have recently been sent home.

Targeted teaching

To make classes more manageable, administrators have enrolled some especially challenging students in Locke 4, an academy whose Opportunities program consists of three classrooms set aside for students who are doing poorly or displaying serious behavior problems. The program also accepts students returning after being convicted of crimes.

On a recent Monday, 14 students sat in an Opportunities class with one teacher and an aide -- Green Dot wanted especially small adult-to-student ratios for these youths. The posted class rules were simple: Stay seated during class; complete all of your work; be polite and respectful.

These expectations failed to achieve traction with several students, including a recently arriving freshman.

"Do you need help?" the teacher asked him.

"You need help," he retorted, looking around for admiration from his peers. "You know, lady, I don't like you."

The group was assigned to organize an essay on juvenile justice after reviewing case studies of four young offenders. If students actually write the essay, they'll get extra credit.

One table over from the ninth-grader, a wiry boy with slicked-back hair said he had landed in Locke 4 after punching a school security guard. He considers gang membership necessary to survive: "That's almost part of life."

Then he paused and offered something close to an endorsement of the new Locke: "Other schools, you have your enemies all the time. In this school everybody gets along. People talk to Bloods and Crips."

He started to work on the essay: "These cases are like what happened to my friends. They got shot at and shot back."

Last year, said senior Harold Thomas, "every other week a fight or something would be going on. I used to walk from the back to the front and all of a sudden, there was smoke coming from a classroom, and you'd hear the Fire Department coming."

To secure the campus, Green Dot has spent $700,000 on security, which might prove unaffordable over time. The investment has helped to nearly eliminate fights and reduce graffiti and other forms of vandalism. The school has also fenced off areas on campus to boost security and has provided some bus service so students don't have to traverse gang territories.

But no strategy can entirely screen out the realities of a tough neighborhood.

In April, a gunman wounded a student in front of campus as students were arriving.

Last October, two gang members approached Donald Wood as he waited at a city bus stop just off campus. The gunman aimed at his head, but the weapon misfired, Donald said.

On the subsequent try, a bullet struck his upper arm and another entered his back, where it remains embedded close to his spine. He missed about three months of school and had to give up plans to return to football and track.

Donald had brushes with the law that included possession of firearms and assault and battery, but before the shooting he had seemed determined to set a new course. He stopped by Locke over the summer to help a former teacher, Maggie Bushek, set up her classroom. And at one point, he told her he did not want to turn out like the hopeless youths he saw in court.

"I catched up on a lot of my credits and I learned a lot of things," Donald said. "I feel good about my future."

Moving forward

Through April, 52 students started or transferred into the Opportunity classrooms. Of those, two had dropped out and 14 exited the Green Dot system for other programs.

Donald could be the first to move into the other side of Locke 4, where older students short on credits take self-paced computer courses.

That's where Porsha Westbrooks, 18, made up two years worth of credits in less than a year. On a Wednesday recently, Porsha, to the applause of classmates, zipped up a light blue graduation gown and rang a bell for a one-person procession that's become a tradition among the 30 potential dropouts who are now expected to graduate.

"She was rebellious, and she was ditching," said her mother, Deborah Wilson. Now, "she's my miracle child."

Most of these students attend a four-hour shift, and many like the shortened day, especially those with jobs.

But the richness of the curriculum is open to challenge. On a recent Monday, as part of a humanities unit, Harold was reviewing facts about music in the baroque period. The exercise was nothing more than rote memorization: He never actually listened to baroque music, which he pronounced "barrack."

The two sectors of Locke 4 -- Opportunities and Advanced Path -- have allowed Green Dot to hold onto students who would have been unable to remain at a typical Green Dot start-up. Many probably would have dropped out of the old Locke.

Byron's diploma was never in question, but he found himself this month in a situation he never anticipated -- among a handful of students auditioning to give the senior class speech. His didn't get the nod, but he'll celebrate being accepted by Tuskegee University in Alabama, Grambling State University in Louisiana and Jackson State University in Mississippi. He chose Cal State Northridge because, he said, it's close to his "support system." He's not referring to his family.

"My resources," he said, "the people I come to for help, the support I get -- is from Locke High."

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The students are rapt as they watch a seven-minute video about Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death reviled for his cruel pseudo-experiments on concentration camp inmates during World War II. Seeing this, they can better understand the atrocities experienced by Elie Wiesel and chronicled in "Night," his sparely phrased but haunting account of death and life under the Nazi German regime.

"Oh my God," one girl gasps at the sight of emaciated survivors. "This is horrible."

In the book, they read about newly imprisoned Jews who want to fight their captors, though it will certainly mean their own deaths. A debate ensues. What would these Watts youngsters do if they were in the "selection" lines supervised personally by Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau that night? Fight, or try to live to fight another day?

"He was throwing babies in the gas chamber," one boy says. "I would stab him in the head."

Teacher Frank Tarczynski acknowledges that this is one option. But wouldn't another Nazi be assigned to take his place? "Then I'd stab him too," the boy says. "I'd stab them all in the head, and then I'd stab Hitler in the head."

The theme most commonly inferred from Wiesel's semi-memoir is the loss of faith and even humanity in extreme circumstances. But Tarczynski is hoping to make another point today. He notes each carefully considered step the Jewish teenager in the book takes toward saving his life on that first night: He lies about his age, saying that he's an 18-year-old farmer rather than a 15-year-old student, so he will be seen as old and strong enough to work.

"Instead of using his fists or yelling or screaming," Tarczynski quietly observes, "Elie thought about it a moment and then took action." He pauses to let the words sink in.

There is a lesson more important than literature here. Tarczynski's students have a history of fighting before considering the consequences. In their neighborhood, too many have died because they acted on the emotion of the moment.

'They don't know how to smile'
The Opportunities program, part of the Green Dot charter takeover of Locke High School, provides a transition back to schoolfor freshmen and sophomores who have recently returned from what's euphemistically called "camp" -- juvenile detention. The 35-student academy also takes in teens whose behavior created problems in other Locke classrooms.

These are teenagers with tough reputations. A couple of sophomores started their first high school classes just a few weeks ago; they were incarcerated as middle-schoolers. "I don't know what they've done" to land in trouble, Principal Nerine Vernon-Burnside says. "I don't want to know." They arrive with the burdens of mental illness, poverty and other vulnerabilities. Some are quick to act belligerent; others cry easily. "When they first come, they don't know how to smile," Vernon-Burnside says. "The littlest thing sets them off."

Months in detention have left them with a fear of being seized, arrested, dragged away and locked up. Several times during this school year, the campus has been locked down because of incidents in the neighborhood. The Opportunities students were nearly hysterical, and needed constant reassurance that the lockdown was intended to keep them safe, not imprisoned.

One 15-year-old is perpetually anxious because, with both parents dead, she lives with her ailing 80-year-old grandmother, her only family bulwark. Students sometimes go hungry outside of school. Vernon-Burnside has found that something as simple and cheap as a hot cup of instant noodles is enough to draw them to school and get them ready for the day.

These are familiar situations that threaten to overwhelm many students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Generally, the most problematic teens are sent to continuation schools, some of which run excellent programs with smaller class sizes, higher security and specially designed curricula. At Locke, although the formula is similar, the timing is turned upside down. Continuation school is where troubled students tend to finish their high school years. The Opportunities program is where they start; the goal is to teach them, within one year, enough social, personal and academic skills to join the rest of the students.

To be sure, some of the behavior here is rough around the edges. There's more than a little foul language. Some students are jittery; they jiggle their legs, fidget and get up as often as possible. One girl beckons a teacher by saying, "Hey, cuz, over here." Yet these same students can be so polite, they could teach etiquette. A gentle-voiced 15-year-old girl graciously holds out a hand to welcome a reporter, then later confides that she served time for drug sales and robbery.

On a recent Friday, the students are rewarded for good behavior by being allowed to spend their lunch break at the adjacent handball court, where they play with smooth speed. Because the court is on the "regular" campus, on the other side of a fence, this is a symbol of trust -- though they are monitored every moment by Vernon-Burnside and other staff. Afterward, they file back to "their" side, each one greeting the principal with a fervent, "Thank you, Miss."

In previous months, when the students were allowed on a shared basketball court, the scene was testy. "It was right out of 'West Side Story,' " Vernon-Burnside says, with students from rival gangs cautiously circling each other. She had a basketball hoop set up in the Opportunities area so the boys could play outside their classrooms.
As math teacher David Garner gets algebra class going, one boy has to be asked several times to remove his earbuds. It's as though he has to put on a show about not doing it, because after Garner gives him some time to think about it, he grins and complies. One girl nervously circles a corner of the classroom repeating, "I need a break. I just really need a break." "And you deserve a break," Garner says encouragingly. He's not just humoring her; she's been pulling A's. Garner teaches a brief lesson on quadratic equations, and the girl slides into her seat to listen.

The unexpected aspect of the Opportunities program is the intensity many of the students bring to their classes. After the algebra lesson, they pull out textbooks to work on equations. Some start to sing together; others talk so noisily, they sound like they're shouting. But no one yawns or looks blank. You would think distributive properties were the latest craze, watching the students pencil their way through the problems and seek Garner's help.

The math teacher, wearing a business suit and sneakers, quiets the loudest students with a finger to his lips and a smile. He walks the room the entire time, checking on the students' progress and tutoring them. The words "incorrect" and "wrong" don't appear to be part of his vocabulary. Instead, he says things like, "You have it perfect right up to this point, and that's where you start to go off track."

Like most Locke teachers, the faculty here are young, energetic and impassioned. Garner came to Opportunities from the Compton schools. Committed to teaching urban students, he saw in the Green Dot takeover a chance to transform young lives in more meaningful ways than public schools had allowed him. Tarczynski is new to teaching; he was in a theater group before this academic year, experience that serves him well when he has to keep students engaged.

He bristles slightly at a question about whether he wanted particularly to teach these kids. They're simply kids, he says.

Outside the fence

Like kids anywhere, they're avidly interested in what's for lunch -- Green Dot scored instant points with them by contracting with a private caterer instead of serving the subsidized meals that the teens derisively call "county food." They throw a football during lunch break; the school's premier skateboarder shows off some moves.

Right outside Locke's fences, though, gang members and other troublemakers wait for school to let out. Some students fear leaving the campus; Vernon-Burnside wishes Opportunities were a boarding school.

In English class, these teens feel a certain kinship with Elie Wiesel. They understand what it's like to be a 15-year-old in a dangerous place, surrounded by malevolent forces beyond their control. Whether African American or Latino, they too have experienced prejudice. They wonder aloud whether Wiesel is still alive, and are amazed to learn that he's a professor at Boston University.

"He should come visit us," a girl says. "He could tell us more things." A boy snorts at the thought that such an illustrious man would fly out from Boston to visit a group of Watts teenagers, but the girl will not abandon her idea. "Why not?" she insists.

The boy asks how Wiesel got out of the concentration camp alive. "Read, man, you've got to read," Tarczynski replies. The girl urges the teacher to get on with the next part of the book.

"I want to see what happens," she says.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-locke6-2009apr06,0,1463608.story

The lesson was polling. Math teacher Fernando Avila acted as pollster, the students as respondents and the four corners of the classroom their opinions: strongly agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree, strongly disagree. The topic: How Locke High School in Watts had changed since being taken over by charter operator Green Dot Public Schools.

Were the school uniforms of chinos and polo shirts a good idea? The students shuffled into their chosen corners. Many hated the uniforms; some liked them; some were indifferent. And so it went, the students distributing themselves among the corners for each question -- until they were asked whether teachers cared more about them and their education this year, and the entire class crowded into "strongly agree."

Locke High School represents the kind of transformation that can take place practically overnight under committed, energetic new leadership. As the school struggles with crowding and early signs of student backsliding, however, it also illustrates the pervasive and persistent difficulties that challenge urban schools.


Defying logic

Math teacher Carlos Perez believes he has a special understanding of his students. He grew up in the neighborhood but made good, attending UC Santa Cruz. At that rustic campus, he remembers the wonder of waking up and seeing deer outside his window instead of graffiti. He returned to Watts determined to help its teenagers. This is his third year at Locke, and he thinks there's more "student buy-in" to what school is all about. But when he tries to tell students that they can achieve what he did or even more, most don't believe him.

To a visitor, his geometry class looks chaotic. In the front, groups of students are noisily practicing their skills with congruent figures; in the back, others are quietly but obviously engaged in social chatter. Girls are plucking boys' eyebrows; meanwhile, the first groups finish their work and borrow a deck of cards from Perez, shouting and cursing as they play. Perez ignores the bluster, moving from student to student, quietly conferring to see if anyone needs help. When he reaches the laggards, they pull out their papers and get to work, and when he wants the class' full attention, he stands in front of the room and speaks in his quiet, gentle voice. In just a few moments, the students settle down.

In Perez's eyes, it's all about appreciating what different students need, especially given their almost universal fear of math. He doesn't worry about the loud ones, because they're always on top of their work. It's the quiet ones who have trouble understanding and avoid tackling the problems, and he allows them to delay -- for a while. He won't ask for an answer from a student who's unlikely to know it; public embarrassment, he is certain, is not the way to teach them.

Though everyone completes the geometry practice, the class defies conventional logic. No student spent even half the period on task; wouldn't they learn more if they were engaged in their subject more of the time? Eventually, test scores will tell, but in the back of Perez's classroom, one sophomore thinks she has the answer. She doesn't like most of the changes at Locke, she says. The tight security means "I don't get to ditch no more," and the uniforms are ugly. But she's certain that she's learning math better and faster than she was last year.

Requiring patience

Each morning at Locke, some students show up without their uniforms; they're sent to the loaner rooms. At each bell, walkie-talkie-equipped staff members position themselves at strategic points on campus to urge students toward their next classes, order their shirts tucked in and keep watch against taggers.

The campus of more than 1,800 students is divided into smaller "academies." Two are for freshmen, who are coached intensively on algebra and other high school skills. Another offers "credit recovery" to students who are so far behind on the courses needed to graduate, they need self-paced online classes to catch up. And one is devoted solely to students who are "back from camp" -- recently released from juvenile hall and a potential disruption to regular classes.

After a tightly controlled start to the new year, some plans are unraveling slightly. An enrollment battle with L.A. Unified ended with Locke being forced to accept extra students. The two main academies on campus, for sophomores through seniors, were supposed to be capped at 650 students each and now have 800, many of whom didn't show up until October.

Less than two weeks ago, someone started a fire in a bathroom. After two months of high attendance, absenteeism rose substantially in November. About 40 students stopped coming to school altogether; many of them returned, but now more have gone missing.

At its other charter schools, Green Dot can control against such frustrations. It caps enrollment at 500 and has waiting lists of motivated parents and students who want exactly what Green Dot has to offer: safer campuses, more academic rigor. But in its boldest experiment, taking over a large urban school, it no longer has these luxuries. Locke is the neighborhood school and educates most of the neighborhood's students. Ronnie Coleman, director of the two biggest academies, hopes for rising test scores this year but predicts that Locke's scores will substantially drag down the Green Dot average.

Still, in ways, the school has come far academically. Avila remembers burned-out teachers who sat in the back of their classrooms reading or snoozing. This year, the school is staffed with idealistic young instructors. Ask to meet an older teacher and you'd probably be steered to Avila, who at age 30 and with eight years at the school is a senior figure. Some students sense the inexperience in their new teachers, but what they lack in classroom years, they make up for in zeal.

They need it. Working with students who haven't developed academic habits, or an understanding of why they should even bother with school, requires utter patience.

Coleman reinforces this dozens of times a day. Between classes, she directs one of her "trouble children" to tuck in his shirt. The student tentatively pushes one corner of the hem toward his belt, ever so slowly, clearly hoping Coleman is too busy to wait for him to obey, or possibly to provoke a reaction. "I'm a patient woman, sir," she says. Half-an-hour later, the student is walking across the quad with his shirttail out. Coleman sighs, noting that if teenagers have to rebel, it's better if it's about something as innocuous as a tucked shirt. Similarly, in a meeting with the Spanish faculty, she advises teachers not to bother lecturing students about classroom profanity; it just escalates into a confrontation with those who resent authority figures and wastes instructional time.

Yet in Lucrecia Nava's English Language Development class, expectations for behavior are high, and the students meet them. Every moment of the 90-minute class is devoted to intense instruction, reading, writing and speaking in English, each task checked off on a large list tacked to the wall. The mental effort is palpable as the students struggle to construct sentences in an unfamiliar language.

Nava speaks loudly and enunciates distinctly as she leads the class through a persuasive five-paragraph essay. Ready ready ready? she asks. Is it better when the two academies have lunch together or, as they usually do, separately? Give three reasons why. The students vote for separate lunches. There's more space; the lines are shorter; and "we avoid problems," one boy says, meaning there's less chance of a fight.

After class, Nava is asked what will happen to these students, who can barely read an English sentence aloud, when they have to take the high school exit exam. "Absolutely, they can pass," she says. And then, as though she is speaking for all the teenagers and teachers at Locke, she adds, "They just have to work harder. They'll always have to work harder at everything."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-locke1-2008dec01,0,3516061.story

One in a series of occasional articles on the reform effort at Locke High School. 

Locke High School opened last week under new management, and things look strikingly different.

About 1 in 9 Locke students scores proficient or better in English on state tests. In math, it's fewer than 1 in 25. And more students drop out than graduate.

The stakes are high for students, but also for Green Dot and the charter-school movement. Locke represents a major expansion for Green Dot and its success -- or failure -- will be watched by education reformers around the country.

"Locke is a full test of the charter model because the agreement with Green Dot is they will take all children in that attendance area," said L.A. schools Supt. David L. Brewer. "We expect they're going to have the same kids we have had there before."

In trying to boost test scores and graduation rates, Green Dot will wield flexibility uncommon in L.A. Unified. Charters are independently run, publicly financed schools. They are exempt from district union contracts and from some rules that govern traditional schools.

Green Dot can hire and fire principals at will, without finding other jobs for them, as L.A. Unified does. Teachers also work with fewer job protections. Like many charter companies, Green Dot typically employs a younger, less experienced and less expensive staff than L.A. Unified, which allows Green Dot to pay young teachers more while also helping to keep class sizes smaller.

Locke also will benefit from extra state funding for low-achieving schools as well as private philanthropy. An actor made an anonymous donation of more than $200,000 for the new, mature trees, which instantly gave the well-worn 40-year-old campus a more tended, artful feeling. Donations are paying, too, for $400,000 in other physical improvements.

Meanwhile, because Green Dot has split Locke into seven separately run academies, the school will run up a deficit of $3 million to $6 million over the first four years, an expense also covered by benefactors. (After that, Green Dot schools are expected to meet expenses without charity.)

None of which will necessarily make the job easy.

"The task Green Dot's taking on is monumental," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the district teachers union. "The school district has shown for 20 years or more they can't do this job."

Former Locke teacher and dean Frank Wiley, who now teaches at Hamilton High, said frustration with years of failure and mismanagement led him to join the narrow majority of Locke's tenured teachers who signed a charter petition. That document became the legal basis for Green Dot's takeover. But Wiley didn't remain at Locke; at 45, he worried that the intensity of the Locke project could lead to teacher burn-out.

"At Hamilton, I have regular high school kids," Wiley said. "If you come prepared, they come prepared to learn. At Locke, it's like there's a postwar syndrome. I loved who the students were and what they were about. But there's an edge. These kids have a hard life."

Green Dot typically starts a school with only a freshman class, adding one year at a time to build, gradually, a culture of academic excellence. At Locke, Green Dot inherited a ready-made student body.

Most students complied with the uniform policy, but many had to line up during opening week for loaner polo shirts and khaki pants.

"We can't show our gear anymore," complained junior Rafael Reyes as he pulled on a regulation shirt.

"You can't even tell who everybody is 'cause they all look the same," said Kevin Simpson, a sophomore.

Senior Terry Vance finally stalked out of the gear line. "I don't wear no uniform," he said quietly.

But no one got past the guard on 111th Street, who turned back students who slyly insisted they'd been told to go home for lack of a uniform.

One of the last long-timers to depart was music department fixture Reggie Andrews, 60, a respected local figure and musician who started teaching at Locke in 1969, one year after the school's celebrated opening in response to the 1965 Watts riots. He quickly became a cornerstone of stability as the school churned through teachers and administrators.

Andrews recruited teachers to support the Locke takeover effort; he said he believed Green Dot would encourage meaningful faculty and community input. But later he judged Green Dot to be inflexible, not inclusive enough.

Andrews and others pushed for vocational classes as an alternative to Green Dot's standard college-prep formula.

Chief Operating Officer Marco Petruzzi insists that his team listened. This year, there's an academy for students far behind in credits. Their school day will consist of four hours in a massive computer lab, where students work at their own pace, with teachers standing by.

Andrews counters that the program stigmatizes failing students, when it also could offer enriching, appealing courses in music and fashion design, for example.

Although Green Dot runs the show, athletic director Stephen Minix said staff involvement in the life of the school and its students has expanded enormously.

Concerns voiced by staff led to a $500,000 commitment in buses or, where possible, bus passes for students living more than five blocks from school. The goal is to spare students from having to cross rival gangs' turf.

During the registration process, some parents appeared largely uninformed about anything to do with Green Dot.

Others defended the quality of the old Locke, recalling good teachers, pointing to their child's good grades or characterizing campus safety concerns as overblown.

But returning parent Tonja Turner recounted her move to Redlands because, she said, gang members threatened her son on campus.

The new Locke, she believes, will serve her two daughters well.

"There wasn't any order here, any structure," she said. "It was chaotic."

Some students said they already see positive changes.

"Last year, some teachers didn't care," said senior Juan Gonzalez, 17. "My history teacher wouldn't do nothing. This year my teacher is ready to teach, and I'm ready to learn."

http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-locke18-2008sep18,0,6110974.story?page=1

It's almost 8 a.m. on 111th Street in Watts, and here's a scene that could make a cynic faint:

A teenage boy is hustling across the street toward Locke High School while tucking a white shirt into his khaki uniform pants. He wants to pass inspection at the gate.

I'm visiting what might as well be called Dropout High to see if things have changed in the early going since Green Dot Public Schools took it over from Los Angeles Unified. Too soon to tell, for sure. We're only into the third week of summer school, which tends to be mellower than the regular school year and serves only 700 kids instead of the usual 3,000.

The first thing I see after I park and walk onto campus are roughly three dozen tardy kids lined up against a fence just a couple of minutes after the hour, with Assistant Principal Charles Boulden giving them what for. On a megaphone, no less.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he barks, "school starts at 8 o'clock; 8:02 is like 8:14 to us."

Two kids roll their eyes when I ask what they think of their new drill sergeant.

"Nothing's going to change," one tells me while the other nods in agreement.

But they're wearing uniforms. That's a change. And they're about to be marked tardy, then led to their classrooms in small groups.

Other students say this clearly is not the Locke they knew last year.

Sure it's different, says Charles Brown, who will be a senior this fall.

"It's very radical," he says of the uniforms and the discipline.

Senior Lee Jones agrees it's a new day. "There's tighter security and it's more strict" in classrooms and on the yard, with security people everywhere. "They won't even let you in without your shirt tucked in."

There hasn't been a fight yet, says Michael McElveen, another senior. Two weeks without a fight is a good sign at Locke, his pals admit, even if it is usually quieter in summer. The students also agree that the uniform has its advantages -- you don't have to waste time and money on the fashions of the day.

Zeus Cubias, who has taught at Locke for 14 years after graduating from the school and going on to UC Santa Barbara, says the early indicators are encouraging. There were skeptics who said the uniforms alone would doom the experiment. Not only has there been compliance, but only a couple of the boys seem to feel bold enough to test the ban on sagging pants.

But will higher pockets mean higher grades?

"Part of it is setting the right tone," says Cubias. Right off the bat, you step onto campus knowing there's control, discipline and high expectations, and the reality is that's something most kids wanted.

"We had to step up our game, too," Cubias says. "I'm wearing a tie every day now."

Cubias is one of the Locke teachers who originally felt insulted by Green Dot chief Steve Barr's claim that he could do a better job than L.A. Unified. Cubias spoke up about it, telling Barr he and other teachers had made strides despite great challenges.

"Steve Barr's response was that that was exactly the kind of passion he was looking for," says Cubias, who became a convert during the long, acrimonious battle that ended with Green Dot winning support for a takeover.

When school starts in September, only 40 of last year's 120 teachers will still be there. Some left of their own accord; others weren't hired back.

Green Dot has hired 80 new teachers, created a separate and more intensive program for ninth-graders and divided Locke into several academies.

With the help of private donations, class sizes will be kept at about 28 instead of 40. Teachers will have more say on curriculum and teaching methods, and the Green Dot model is thin on administration.

In many ways, it's the antithesis of L.A. Unified, the listing Battleship Bureaucracy, with its staggering dropout rate and glacial pace when it comes to change.

Locke High represents Green Dot's biggest risk and greatest challenge yet. It didn't start a new school with students who chose to attend, as it has in the past. It adopted a massive dysfunctional mess, and if it can turn things around, maybe the lessons can be broadly applied.

Wayne Crawford, longtime Locke dean and head football coach, was another early skeptic even though he felt strongly that with fed-up teachers and inept district leadership, LAUSD was never going to save Locke. Could Green Dot do any better, he wondered, given that it had no history of taking in the most difficult children of derelict parents?

"This summer school is one of the best I've ever had at Locke," says Crawford. "The kids are in class, and it's more structured."

He excuses himself to fill in briefly for a teacher, taking charge immediately and sternly when a student gets up from his desk while others are giggling.

"Have a seat, and don't get silly," he orders the student. "Excuse me, young people. If you're taking a test in here, you should all be focused."

They clam up instantly.

While Cubias is escorting me across campus, he suddenly stops and points to something that can't be seen.

"Serenity," he says.

That's something new. Teachers are letting students out for brief breaks, but the uniformed kids are orderly and quiet. Teacher Tobin Paap says this is a dramatic difference from his Locke teaching experience from 1999 to 2001, after which he left the profession, burned out and demoralized.

"I felt like it was at the height of the craziness," says Paap, 34, who briefly went home to Boston to work for a suburban YMCA. He needed to decompress after the madness at Locke.

"There were hundreds of ditched kids who'd hang out. They'd sit right here," he says, showing me the ramp to the bungalow that was his classroom back then. "They smoked weed, played radios, spray-painted the walls and climbed on the roof."

I figure he's kidding, or at least exaggerating.

Not in the least, Paap says. He documented and reported all of it, but nothing ever happened to the young thugs.

When he returned to teaching in L.A., Paap says, it was with Green Dot. He knew every kid and every counselor -- as well as most of the parents -- so there were consequences when a student acted up. This fall, he'll be stationed in Inglewood. But he thinks Locke is going to be much better off than in the past.

Time will tell, and I'll keep an eye on the progress. But given the tagging and pot-smoking chaos Paap described -- and a dropout rate for which LAUSD should be ashamed -- how can Locke not be better off?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez23-2008jul23,0,6056813.column

Locke High School is on the verge of a transformation that didn't come quite soon enough to prevent this month's melee involving hundreds of students. Behind the brawl were decades of neglect by the Los Angeles Unified School District. But the swift response by the new school leaders in town -- charter operator Steve Barr and the district's No. 2 man, Ramon C. Cortines -- brought a seeming promise that the inertia is coming to an end.

Locke has long exemplified the underachievement and safety concerns that ail L.A.'s inner-city schools. Now, preparing for a takeover by Barr's Green Dot Public Schools, it might become a model of how dramatically a student-centered approach can buoy a foundering school. Already, Barr speaks with encouraging specificity about what it will take to make his students secure and to educate them better: buses to ensure safe passage to and from campus; breaking the school into smaller academies, each with its own cafeteria and staggered lunch hours to limit the number of students loose on campus at any time; a building-trades academy with a college-prep curriculum; engaged teachers who aren't averse to patrolling the campus if it keeps students safer and saves money for, say, reducing class sizes. Barr is even looking for oak trees to provide more hospitable spots on campus where small groups can gather, instead of the single shady zone where hundreds now crowd together and any toe-stepping can easily get out of hand.

Barr, who has specialized in small campuses that offer an alternative to public schools, has never taken on a challenge like Locke -- a full 2,600-student neighborhood school. Many eyes will be watching whether or how he pulls it off. Among those watching most closely will be Cortines, the district's senior deputy superintendent, who sees charters not as a drain on his authority but as a template for improving schools districtwide. That alone is so refreshing that it allows for rare optimism about L.A. Unified.

Unlike previous administrators, Cortines did not respond to a crisis at one of his schools with calls for yet another study, or with charts defensively showing that other district schools are improving. He walked the Locke campus and afterward spoke frankly about students wandering the halls without passes and teachers running movies for their classes rather than instructing them. (One parent calls the school the "ghetto cineplex.") At Locke and throughout the district, he said, there is an alarming inconsistency. Some teachers strive heroically to educate, while others preside over classroom card games.

Cortines was equally straightforward about how the district has failed Locke. After Barr won approval last fall to take over the school, administrators washed their hands of it, cutting security staffing by half. Classroom fights became frequent, and teachers' calls for help went unanswered.

Administrators have known for years how bad things are at Locke, where more than half the students drop out and only 13% test as proficient in math. They just haven't done much about it. Several years ago, dedicated teachers drew up a plan to transform the school. Approved by the local district, it then disappeared within the central office. Cortines already has empowered local superintendents to reform their schools without seeking downtown approval at every step. He bluntly says L.A.'s schools must view charters competitively if they want to hold on to their students.

The new senior deputy superintendent faces a daunting task. It's harder to force change when labor contracts are larded with rigid work rules and make it virtually impossible to fire apathetic employees. But as long as leaders like Barr and Cortines engage in clear, honest talk instead of excuses and obfuscation, there's hope that education will trump bureaucracy at L.A. Unified.