THE CHASERS: A Pasadena Charter School Goes the Distance

THE ACADEMIC & THE DROPOUTS

I remember several years ago when I watched Dr. Mikala Rahn give a presentation of some research or other that she and her nonprofit educational consulting firm, Public Works Inc, had put together at the behest of the LA Unified School board, at the time she struck me as unusually smart and savvy.

Former school board member David Tokofsky remembers her that way too. “Mikala would get up and talk about something the board had been discussing for weeks, and it two sentences she’d have laid it out. And I’d think, Okay, there. That’s exactly it.”

This is why, Tokofsky says, he has recently taken a consulting gig with Rahn’s newest nonprofit venture, a Pasadena-located continuation charter high school (with a middle school added this past September) designed for young men and women who want a high school diploma but who, for one reason or another have dropped out—or been tossed out—of mainstream public schools.

Rahn calls the school by the plain wrap name of Learning Works.

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THE CHASERS

But Learning Works is anything but a plain wrap endeavor. For one thing, in addition to the combination of home study and in-school teaching strategies that Rahn and company employ, the school also has what they informally call their “Chasers”—young academic coaches who do whatever is needed to remove the various barriers that stand between Learning Works’ students and their education. Sometimes this means pounding on a truant student’s door until he or she wakes up, gets dressed and sheepishly follows the Chaser into the car and to the school. Other times it means picking up homework, or helping a student deal with a court case or driving him or her home from the hospital—or from juvenile hall. Sometimes it means just listening to a litany of fear and guilt and trauma and sorrow—so that eventually the hope that lies underneath may emerge.

Rahn started the school after working for Pasadena Unified in that district’s dropout re-enrollment program. When she became frustrated by the difficulties of getting get the district to employ strategies she felt would truly work, she decided to create a non-district school that had the flexibility to meet the dropped-out students needs.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, KPCC education reporter (and pal) Adofo Guzman Lopez ran a terrific two-part story on Learning Works, Rhan, and the Chasers—which you can find here and here.

“The number one binding force though of dropouts is poverty,” Rahn told Lopez.

“We really see ourselves as a laboratory of poverty because every student that I look at is really living some condition of that. They’ve been living independently for years. Whether it’s that the parents don’t exist or in essence the parent lost control years ago.”

In the second of the two broadcasts, Lopez went along with two of Learning Works’ Chasers, Dominic Correy and Carlos Cruz.

Their first stop was to drop off homework for an 18-year-old who’d ignored her studies the last several months. Correy talks to her in a comfortable street tone. “Hi Lawanda, how are you doing today? You got a job? When do you get your first check? You taking us out to eat?”

That tone turned to one that balanced coercion and compassion. “Don’t use work as an excuse on why you not going to come in and why you going to finish your work. You know I love you and we’ve been through everything ‘Wana.”

Chasing involves picking up and dropping off homework, and taking students to court dates and mental health appointments. The idea is to help students overcome the obstacles to finishing high school.

At their next stop, the chasers found evidence that some students have given up trying to jump those hurdles. The student hadn’t shown up to school in a month. Cruz said the boy’s father is in jail and his grandfather was recently diagnosed with cancer. Correy knocks on the door with authority. “Chris, I know you’re in there, man, open up.”

When Cruz called the teenager on his cell phone, the student said he was in Altadena. Cruz didn’t spare any time holding the teen to account for not showing up to school. “I’ve been stalking you for a whole month straight, never answer your phone. You said you were going to have some work done, then when I text you, you don’t answer. What’s up with you, man?”

(By the way, Tokofsky helps by planning inventive learning labs and field trips for the students. For example, last semester he took a group to meet and hang out with a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, including the court’s Chief Judge Alex Kozinski—a field trip that my grad students would have jumped at. “And they totally loved it,” said Tokofsky.)

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GANG INTERVENTION BY ANOTHER NAME

The out-of-the-ordinary approach seems effective.

Right now, Learning Works has 291 students enrolled —nearly all students who otherwise might attend no school at all—and that number is climbing. It operates on a yearly budget of $1.8 million, or $6,200 per student per school year—far less than even the most budget-challenged LAUSD high school. (And, by contrast, an affluent district like Beverly Hills spends nearly $13,000 per student.)

This spring Learning Works staged a graduation ceremony at Pasadena City Hall where the school’s initial class of 44 students collected diplomas, many the first in their family to have graduated high school.

In March, they will partner with Homeboy Industries to open a satellite school inside Homeboy’s office and bakery building in downtown LA.

Rahn thinks the partnership will be a natural fit. “A lot of what the chasers do,’ she said when we talked on Tuesday, is gang intervention by another name. “But it’s intervention with a goal, which is a diploma. I think that’s the point. We don’t just ask them to move away from gangs, we give them something to move toward, which is an education. Homeboy does that with jobs.”

And how does Learning Works get its students?

It’s easy,” Rahn said. “They find us.” She laughed. “The poverty population networks are alive and well. And when word gets around that there’s a place where kids can get help and not be judged….believe me, they come out in droves.”

(Photo by Dominic Correy.)