You Say You Want A Revolution….. UPDATED X 2

The Locke High School charter conversion petition was approved by the LAUSD board of education at around 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon. The vote will allow Steve Barr’s Green Dot charter group to take over the troubled and low-performing high school, and break it up into five or six smaller schools. It is the first time a non-district group will run an LAUSD school.

The contentious discussion leading up to the vote involved a lengthy public hearing that featured upwards of thirty speakers, including eccentric LA surfer pundit, Zuma Dogg, who said he had just come from speaking at both the LA City Council and (I think) the Board of Supervisors. “Speaking here gives me a perfect trifecta!” he tells me cheerily.

The anti-charter speakers are made up of a small cadre of angry Locke teachers plus a bunch of UTLA union officials including union president, A. J. Duffy who weres his very snazzy, trademark, two-tone shoes, and insists the Green Dot petition is breaking the law.

“I’m not backing off,” Duffy stage whispers to UTLA VP, Linda Guthrie, after he leaves the mic.

Guthrie herself makes an impassioned pitch against the conversion. “If you do this,” she says, “you’re going to send a message throughout this district, that the district is unable to heal itself.”

“Well isn’t that the point?” mutters one Green Dot supporter. In truth, Guthrie has inadvertently brought up the outcome that many Locke transformation advocates are hoping for. Based on personal conversations, I know that Santee teachers are watching the Locke process closely trying to decide if they want to go charter too— as are several schools in the valley.

“If we get Locke,” says Steve Barr a few minutes later, “I think we’ll eventually get Jefferson.” In some ways, Jefferson and Santee are more pressing cases that Locke. Certainly, Locke is a perennial low scorer in the district (of the 1318 ninth-graders that enrolled at Locke in the fall of 2001, only a terrifyingly low 332 managed to actually graduate in spring, 2005. And only 143 of those getting diplomas had the right credits to apply for admission to the University of California and/or California State University systems). Sadly, however, Santee and Jefferson’s scores—and graduation rates—are worse.

Green Dot, on the other hand, graduates on average of 80 percent of its 9th graders and nearly all have the necessary A-G credits to apply to a state-run college or university. Moreover, the Green Dot schools run on a comparative shoestring and, both Jefferson and Locke have been recipients of some of the district’s biggest influxes of money.

Interspersed with the union speakers, there is a string of students and teachers from Locke—plus a couple of local church pastors. Each come up to the microphone when their names are called from the board chairwoman’s list, and then plead for three minutes for the conversion, many of them citing versions of the above list of facts.

“It’s too late for me,” said a sixteen year old Locke senior named Alnesha Jones, “but I want my younger brothers and sisters to have a good school…a good education… like Green Dot is talking about.”


“They tell us we’re taking a big risk going with Green Dot,” says one of the pastors. “But as a Bishop I know used to say, ‘ You can’t fall down if you’re already lying on the ground.'”

As the speakers continue to cycle up to the microphone, Steve Barr leans against a side wall and, although he looks decidedly exhausted, he professes not to be worried. “We went out and got more signatures,” he says, “so today we have 38 permanent teachers who have signed the petition, out of 71 teachers at Locke. That’s more than half, so they have to give it to us,” he says. “I’m betting it’s going to be five to two in our favor.” [For the back-story on the signature battle click here.]

If the UTLA group is negative about the conversion, board member Julie Korenstein is withering. The new board members don’t know what they’re stepping into with this “experiment,” she says. “This is the most serious issue of my entire time on the board of education.” Korenstein also maintains that charters are really “vouchers in disguise.” She talks about the “criminal” amount of ADA [average daily attendance] money from the State that the Locke charter will take away from the district. (Yeah, and we’ll have the nerve to want to put that money toward kids,” whispers a Locke teacher.) “If you want to make money, you become a charter school operator,” Korenstein says with a wave of her highly manicured hands. “I’m appalled at this new board that’s willing to say, “Give the children away.’ I’m ashamed to be on this board!”

At these last two statements, new board member, Richard Vladovic grows visibly red in the face. “I take it personally when an individual says I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says. “This is history being made. It’s not about who owns these kids. It’s about who’s going to help these kids. LA Unified has been too focused on adult agendas. If my child was going to Locke,” he says. “ I’d take the experiment, not the failure.”

Clearly anxious to bolster their reformist reputations, all four of the new board members are very vocally in favor of a conversion, with Marlene Cantor squeezing quickly into their camp waving lots of newly-minted “I’ve always been a reformist” statements. In the abstract, one could be cynical and dismiss their collective enthusiasm as political posturing. But Vladovic seems too passionate for a facile dismissal. And, while board chairman, Monica Garcia, has a slicker delivery style than the rest, she lays out some stark truths that the board has failed to ever before acknowledge, and her righteous, preacher-like fury appears to be genuine.

“We at LAUSD spend $7.7 billion dollars every year,” Garcia says, “And yet we still have graduation rates that hover between 40 and 50 percent,” she says.

“I’m supporting this charter today because I’ve had enough of yesterday.”

UTLA VP, Linda Guthrie, who has spoken passionately—and arguably the most effectively—against the conversion, rolls her eyes at this last. “Okay, I admit that’s a great line,” Guthrie leans over to whisper. Then her voice softens. “Look, it isn’t just the district that’s at fault,” she says. “We—the union—have failed these teachers and these kids too.”

A few beats later, Guthrie confides that she’s planning to run for president of UTLA to replace Duffie.


The vote is finally taken just around 2:30 pm, and, as Barr had predicted it is 5 to 2 in favor of the conversion (the YEAs are provided by the four reformers plus former board prez, Marlene Canter), The two against, are courtesy of the still-fuming Korenstein and and an aggressively frowning, Marguerite LaMott, who earlier harrumphed something about Green Dot’s petition signatures possibly being fraudulent. “Look, we verified them all,” sighed one of the district’s attorneys.

As the last “YEA” vote is cast—I think it was by Richard Vladovic—wild cheering erupts immediately.


When the cheering subsides, Duffy and other union officials say that they’re going to sue to stop the conversion. “This isn’t over, not by a long shot,” yells UTLA regional coordinator, Mat Taylor, as he stalks out of the auditorium.

[NOTE: The LA Times has pretty much outlined the union’s contention about the legality—or lack thereof—of the petition. Rather than give you a version from my own notes, I’ll refer you to Joel Stein and Howard Bloom’s able reporting on the subject.]

Nevertheless, as the rest file out of the place, there is the strong feeling that something of moment has happened.

“This is historic,” says board member, Richard Vladovic.

Dr. Frank Wells, the Locke principal fired over the charter issue, echoes Vladovic’s sentiment. “You saw history made here today,” he says. “The whole world is watching us.” Wells admits that getting fired for trying to do what he believed was right for the school “felt a bit bizarre. But today makes it all worth it,” he says, “seeing this come to fruition. We don’t want to just reform this school. We want to make it a model, one of the best in the state. I think that’s Green Dot’s mission. And if you’re not in it with that kind of mission,” Wells says, “you shouldn’t be working in these schools at all.”

With that, he heads off down Beaudry Street to take about 30 Locke students to a victory lunch. Each of the kids is wearing a shamrock colored Green Dot t-shirt emblazoned with the message: GOT COLLEGE….IN WATTS?

“We will now,” says a tall, pretty 17-year-old named Kacey Andrus who says she just got offered a basketball scholarship to USC. “I think we’ve done something good today.”