PART ONE: GRADUATION
This past Saturday, June 30, twenty-two very excited capped-and-gowned high school seniors accepted their diplomas to the traditional strains of Pomp and Circumstances played through a slightly tinny-sounding boom box brought for the occasion. It was the first ever graduating class from the Animo Film and Theater Arts Charter High School—once a school within a school at low-performing Jefferson High School, now one of the ten Green Dot charter campuses.
Obviously, a 22-student senior class is minuscule by Los Angeles standards. Still, due to a little bit of string-pulling on the part of City Councilwoman, Jan Perry (who is a fan of the school) the ceremony was held at a fabulous spot—the Tom Bradley tower room on the 27th floor of City Hall, nestled in the tip-top of the building’s spire. The room is elegantly painted in art deco pastels and, from where ever one stands in it, offers a 360 view of downtown and beyond. Even getting to the place requires a special elevator from the 23rd floor to the 26th. And then there is a graceful, moderne-style staircase to climb to the 27th.
Yet, the thing that distinguished this ceremony wasn’t the size of the class, or the snazzy location, it was the fact that so many of these kids weren’t supposed to have made it to graduation.
And, even more than that, if the Los Angeles Unified School District had gotten its way, FTA—as the school that graduated these students is called for short—wouldn’t exist at all.
But before we flash back to the battle to bring Animo Film and Theater Arts into being (and the struggle to keep a controlling and short-sighted district from shutting it down), a bit about the school itself.
FTA is based on what’s called the Big Picture model, a system that’s a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation favorite, founded on the premise that students are more motivated and successful when taught through “real world” experiences. This means that, in addition to normal school work, FTA places kids into out-in-the-world internships of the kind that most students don’t encounter until college. Plus the seniors have to complete two major school projects. For instance, this year one girl started a small but growing school library, since FTA didn’t have one. Another started a student store and a program to help feed kids breakfast in the morning. Two girls wrote a full length books—one about her family’s journey when her father had a debilitating stroke, the second about her experience as a teenage single mother.
The list goes on from there and it all sounds impressively ambitious. Surely, one thinks think after hearing the recitation of the kids’ accomplishments, this is an outstanding group that would have done well anywhere.
But then the school’s principal and founder, Steve Bachrach, starts to hand out diplomas—and the picture changes completely. Since FTA has such a small a small senior class, there’s time for each graduating student to step to the microphone, post diploma, and give a mini speech. As they do so, kid after kid tells in very emotional terms how he or she would likely never have stayed in school—much less applied to college—-had it not been for FTA.
“At the beginning, I didn’t know if I was going to make it….” says one.
“The people at this school pushed me and made me believe in myself…” says another.
“If it wasn’t for this school I wouldn’t have the chance to go to Cal Poly Pomona…” says a gorgeous girl, bright-eyed who is one of the book writers.
“If it wasn’t for this school I’d be a different person…”
“If it wasn’t for this school my future wouldn’t look the same…”
“I want my little brothers to see that you can do it even though you’re not from the United States…”
says a serious looking young woman named Antonia Garcia Roman, as she gazes out at the brothers in question, who gaze back at her with shy grins, squirming a little at the attention.
“Nobody in my family has every graduated,” says Violeta Gomez, a slender, long-haired girl with a heartbreaker’s smile. “I’m the first one. And there were so many people who didn’t believe I could do it. They told me I couldn’t graduate. But that was my motivation. And here I am!”
It is a day filled with many small miracle stories.And the audience full of parents and other family members watches the whole thing, with faces made incandescent by pride as twenty-two kids spill out accounts of their fears and their victories.
So why in the world would the Los Angeles Unified School District not want to cherish and promote this school that seems to be working wonders with students, many of whom, as one boy put it, would otherwise have “dropped out or been in jail?” Why would the district instead work so hard to kill Animo Film and Theater Academy?
TO BE CONTINUED ON WEDNESDAY IN PART TWO: THE BIRTH OF A SCHOOL
So why in the world would the Los Angeles Unified School District not want to cherish and promote this school that seems to be working wonders with students….
Because it’s run by the government, which doesn’t do much of anything right?
So why in the world would the Los Angeles Unified School District not want to cherish and promote this school that seems to be working wonders with students….
Because, LAUSD is more territorial than a typical inner city gang but have less redeeming qualities — and they are toooooooooo large.
“[In a larger school] I’d have 28 kids on my roster; maybe 15 would actually show up on any given day, and maybe 10 or 5 would turn in the homework. Here, out of my roster of 28, I have 27 showing up and 26 turn in the assignment.â€Â
Study after study indicates that smaller schools and districts improves success.
LAUSD is more territorial than a typical inner city gang but has fewer redeeming qualities… ?
Sweet. Succinct. Right to the point. Catchy. Ought to be a PR slogan for Green Dot. Nice one, Pokey.
Funny, Pokey. And, as Listener says, Sweet and to the point.
Yup, there seems to be consensus on this one. If LAUSD can’t educate kids properly or run the district responsibly, NO ONE will be allowed to — can’t let anyone show them up.
Brewer, Kanter and the leadership of UTLA are power-hogging pompous egos who care more about their own control than the kids and parents they are being paid (WAY too handsomely, in Brewer’s case) to serve.
This also ties in to the other current story, on how they stiffed the Mayor again, refusing to let him try his hand at running a school before 9/08 — just to make sure that he can’t show any results before this term as Mayor is up.
Since Kanter picked Brewer solely for the explicit purpose of standing up to the Mayor, that he continues to do, while pretending with recent phony P R that he wants to cooperate.