PART II: (See prior post for Part I)
What Happened When Well-to-Do Parents
Tried to Prep a Public School for Their Kids
By LISA BANNON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"I think we would welcome them if they came in like regular parents and participated," said Debbi Aldahl, a fourth-grade teacher at Cheremoya for 16 years who was at the meeting. "But they're very assertive, and that's intimidating to people."
Focas was now under the gun both inside and outside the school. Without any concrete projects under way, the group was having a hard time convincing hillside parents to enroll their children for the fall class of 2001 -- and the deadline was fast approaching.
As a result, the group decided to throw all of its attention on one project visible to the community: renovating the playground. Fed up with the slow-moving school bureaucracy, Focas members independently approached district officials about funding the project before formally presenting the plan to teachers. Now, Ms. Bridges had to face the faculty.
Carrying a stack of photocopies on purple, green and yellow paper, Ms. Carter strode into the lounge and sat down across the table. "It's not fair," she began, glancing up at Ms. Bridges, then looking down. "I feel like I'm being left out of the loop as the principal here ... ."
Ms. Carter, an African-American former teacher who has worked for the district for 27 years, was also under pressure. The California Department of Education had recently targeted Cheremoya for "immediate intervention" as one of 430 underperforming schools statewide. It was given a $250,000 reform grant and 2 1/2 years to raise its test scores. If it didn't improve, the school could be hit with a state takeover or forced to make management changes, Ms. Carter's job included.
"I want your input and value it," the principal continued. "But I'm getting calls from downtown. Architects are coming" at the request of Focas. "I don't want that. ... I've got a full plate."
Ms. Bridges took a deep breath.
There was a school-district deadline for playground funding, she explained, so Focas felt that it had to press ahead with its request even before it informed the teachers. And besides, she reminded Ms. Carter, the group did make sure to inform the principal's office. "Obviously we're off on the wrong foot," Ms. Bridges said. "But it's a two-way street."
Ms. Aldahl, who stressed that she is in favor of much of what Focas wants to achieve, warned Ms. Bridges that "trust is low" and advised the group to continue studying the playground project but to refrain from making any decisions without the teachers. "It's great to get a gift," she said. "But you might not want a big giant gift on your doorstep with no warning."
At 8:15 one morning in March 2001, Mr. Escobar dropped Daniel off at school before walking over to meet another parent at a nearby doughnut shop.
He had heard rumors that Focas was renovating the playground. But no one had solicited his opinion or those of the other Latino parents. Although Latino parents were officially invited to the monthly Focas meetings, few attended, in many cases because the gatherings were conducted in English and often ended after the nearest city bus stops running.
Mr. Escobar, who played soccer professionally before leaving Guatemala, questioned Focas's strategy. "It's like in soccer, if one person takes the ball all the time, fine," he said. "But then why bother playing with the other people on the team?"
Mercedes Gutierrez, the mother of a Cheremoya first-grader, said she applauds the group's efforts to help the school. But she became upset during a meeting a few weeks earlier where one Focas member publicly questioned the educational level of Latino parents in the room. "What makes them think we don't understand?" Ms. Gutierrez asked, looking over at Mr. Escobar. "What makes them feel like we're not good enough?"
Ms. Gutierrez said that just because many Latino parents aren't active in the school doesn't mean they don't care about their children. Besides running into the language barrier, many are working two jobs. Some simply aren't comfortable attending parent meetings and making suggestions on improving the school.
In fact, Mr. Escobar, Ms. Gutierrez and many other Latino parents didn't see Cheremoya as the hillsiders do. Although Mr. Escobar had a couple of complaints about Cheremoya -- Daniel had a substitute teacher all last year -- he was generally pleased with the resources the school offered. Both parents were surprised to hear that Cheremoya is ranked so low on the state academic performance index. They also hadn't heard that it has been targeted by the state as an underperforming school.
"This is a good school. I like the school," Mr. Escobar said. "In Guatemala, we didn't have nothing."
A month later, in the rambling Mediterranean mansion of a fellow Focas member, the Hennings strolled around the floodlit swimming pool, eating hors d'oeuvres and chatting with their neighbors.
As guests gathered around the grand piano and flopped into overstuffed chairs, Hall Davidson, who with his wife Gina had become increasingly active in Focas, tapped his glass and made an announcement.
"I've been in expensive private schools in the city," the public-television executive and former teacher said. "And my daughter Emmalee is going to Cheremoya."
The room fell silent as Mr. Davidson explained that he and his wife made the decision not "because it's the right thing to do." He listed all the practical advantages Cheremoya offers: a 20-to-1 ratio of kids to teachers, $6,000 a year spent per pupil, reading coaches, a staff of teachers with significant experience and little turnover.
Above all, the state's decision to intervene at Cheremoya effectively legitimized Focas's role at the school, he told the gathering. The group had been able to secure two positions reserved for community members on a newly constituted board deciding a course of reform for the school. "They absolutely have to listen -- we are part of the governance structure," he said.
"If you want your kid to go to the school of the future, where the demographics are going to be," Mr. Davidson concluded, send them to Cheremoya. "One of the things they have to have as kids is exposure to everyone." The crowd erupted in applause.
Later in the evening, Mr. Henning bumped into Lisa Clements, who was still wavering over where to send her son, Willy, in the fall. Milling around the bar, Ms. Clements questioned whether Focas was just paying lip service to diversity -- particularly when they insisted on keeping all their children together in one class.
"Is it a better school if all the white kids are set apart -- the ones with parent involvement who own houses vs. the other kids?" she asked Mr. Henning. "Is that a good lesson in diversity?"
"Well you've got to start some place," Mr. Henning said. "Once you get in there, you have more control. Part of your responsibility is to break up that group into diverse groups eventually."
"The bottom line is we have upper-middle-class kids," said Ms. Clements, fingering her glass of merlot. "They're going to know the white kids live in houses and Hispanics live in apartments. The racial, socioeconomic lines are drawn already. There is no school we can put our kids into that's going to convince them they're the same as those other kids."
At a Cheremoya parent meeting in the school library a week later, Focas President Kenneth Robins asked to discuss some changes for the spring planting party.
"What's happened is we've gotten very separate," Mr. Robins told the eight or so parents in the room.
Word had gotten back to Mr. Robins that several Latino parents, including Mr. Escobar, who was seated at the meeting, felt they were treated like subordinates of the hillside parents at the last planting party and subsequent events.
"We need to have this booster club represent the whole school," Mr. Robins said. "I don't want to have three groups -- a Hispanic group, an Armenian group and a group from the hills. That would defeat the purpose. Let's make a commitment to do activities together.
"Is anybody here today willing to help organize the planting party in May?"
No one volunteered.
"Anybody?" Mr. Robins asked.
After the meeting, Mr. Robins approached Mr. Escobar and asked him to help organize the party. Mr. Escobar agreed, along with two Latino mothers.
A week later, Mr. Escobar didn't show up for the group's planning meeting.
He had grown wary of Focas. Neither he nor any of the other Latino parents attended the group's party at the mansion. Mr. Escobar's sister cleans houses up in the hills. He has little to do with the people who live up there.
"The Latinos and the Americans, it's different," Mr. Escobar says. "Life up there and down here is different. People living in apartments go next door for sugar. You don't go up there for sugar."
As spring arrived, Ms. Bridges was surprised by the large number of hillside parents ready to send their children to Cheremoya. Ten of the families planned to enroll in May for the first Focas kindergarten class, starting in August 2001.
State intervention convinced some families that reform at Cheremoya was imminent. Others were persuaded by Mr. Davidson's speech. Still others were won over by critical mass. "There's power in numbers. I think that's what this is," said Lisa Katz, a freelance ad-copy writer who intended to send her daughter Rowan. "They're all going to know each other going in."
What the families didn't know was that after 18 months of meetings, volunteering in classrooms, fund-raisers and activities, the group might not get its most important wish after all: keeping all 10 children together in an English-only class. Ms. Carter, the principal, had hinted to Ms. Bridges that she was against the idea.
"I don't know if those 10 are going to stay once they find out they'll be split up," Ms. Bridges said.
Ms. Bridges was torn over the issue. She believed that it would be better academically for the hillside students to be with other children who speak English well. But she also recognized that some hillside parents wanted their children kept together for reasons that aren't purely academic. "Parents are checking out the school and would like to see some familiar faces in the room," she said. "That's more about xenophobia."
Sitting in her office one morning in late April, Ms. Carter had made up her mind: "We need to mix the English-only kids throughout the school," the principal proclaimed, shaking her head. "If there are 10 kids, we can't keep them together. ... That's not an option."
As it stood, the hillside children would be spread across all four tracks, she said -- some with those receiving Spanish-language support, some in the class with Armenian-language support, some in English-dominant classes.
And if Focas families didn't like the decision and abandoned Cheremoya as a result?
"That would be their choice," the principal said.
To Focas, however, Ms. Carter was imposing a double standard. Currently, the school places Armenian-language students together in separate classes and Spanish-language students in separate classes. In that way, the school was already segregated by ethnicity. "If 10 Mexican families came in and said they wanted to be together, nobody would say anything," Ms. Bridges asserted.
From her office near downtown Los Angeles, Liliam Leis-Castillo was keeping an eye on the activities at Cheremoya. In her job as superintendent of Cheremoya's local district, she was pushing a blueprint for reform as part of a wider effort by the Los Angeles Unified School District to improve its historically poor performance.
Ms. Castillo became particularly interested in Cheremoya after meeting some Focas parents. "Unless parents are satisfied, we're going to lose public education," Ms. Castillo said in her office one May afternoon. "I'm on the side of advancing their agenda because I believe in it. Public education is best served when it serves everybody, not just the urban poor."
Ms. Castillo granted a series of meetings to several Focas members, including Ms. Bridges, after one parent questioned whether Cheremoya was out of compliance with several district mandates.
These sessions and other overtures that school-district officials made to Focas members upset some of the faculty back at Cheremoya. "When poor Latino or black parents ask for something, nobody listens. When the people from the hills do, everyone jumps," said Ms. Aldahl, the longtime teacher. "Why? Because they're wealthy, white, educated?"
Ms. Castillo said the parents weren't the main reason she was planning changes for Cheremoya. The school was already on her radar screen over the past year because of low test scores, the state underperformance ranking and indications that it hadn't implemented several important district requirements. However, Focas did provide "an impetus for me to do some things with the district," she said.
After ushering in three hillside parents for a final meeting, Ms. Castillo laid out a plan for making some drastic changes at the school, including "new management" and an after-school program. One thing she would not promise is to keep all the Focas children in one class.
"This school does not look good if all the kids in the neighborhood are on one track and the Hispanics are one and the Armenians another," Ms. Castillo said.
Ms. Bridges pressed the point. "Why do you mix them?" she asked. Shouldn't the district's priority be educating students -- a goal best served by having the English-only speakers together -- rather than pushing some social agenda?
Ms. Castillo was receptive to the argument. "The point is important," she said, considering it.
Then, without promising to keep the hillside kids together, Ms. Castillo vowed that she would make certain the school puts instructional priorities first.
Later, she explained that grouping classes by language skill -- required by state law -- unintentionally divided the school into Latino, Armenian and now possibly neighborhood children's groups. "We don't want segregation to occur as the result of meeting instructional needs," she said. Nevertheless she emphasized that improving academic performance is the number one priority of the district under Superintendent Roy Romer, a three-term governor of Colorado and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who was appointed last summer. "I want to see English-only students progressing," Ms. Castillo said. "It's not one [group] at the expense of the other."
Three weeks later, Cheremoya was abuzz with two pieces of news.
After six years as principal, Ms. Carter told the teachers that she would be leaving by the end of June to head another elementary school in the Los Angeles district. Meanwhile, Focas had gotten what it wanted most: All 10 of its children would be in the same class come August. They would be in class with nine other students, some of whom would be receiving English-language instruction. Joining Ms. Bridges as a parent in this first Focas class would be Ms. Clements, Mr. Davidson, Ms. Katz and members of six other hillside families.
Sitting in her office after her announcement, Ms. Carter wouldn't comment on whether Focas was instrumental in her leaving. "It's time for me to pass the torch," is all she would say. She did hand over an article from an educational journal that she recommended. Its title: "How Privileged Parents Undermine School Reform."
As word spread that the Focas children would all be together in the fall, an angry undercurrent ran through the school. Some teachers and parents complained that the arrangement created a destructive rift between rich and poor -- something public school is supposed to minimize. "There should be no special treatment for anybody," said Cara Schneider, an administrator who believed the Focas children should be mixed throughout the two English-dominant classes.
Others agreed that academics should come first but resented that the Focas class would inevitably excel with all its parental involvement, while the other kindergarten classes might lag behind. Mr. Escobar, for one, feared that "all of what they're working for now is for their children" -- and their children only.
Ms. Bridges said that Focas's efforts would benefit the whole school. She also recognized that, in many ways, the hardest work -- crossing the cultural divide -- would begin now.
"Now that we're parents there instead of outsiders, it will be different," she said.
When the faculty and the Latino and Armenian parents "see we have good intentions, they'll sign on," she said. Then she paused. "I hope it's not going to be the us-and-them school."
On a hot morning last week, Cheremoya's new principal, Terry Moren, greeted parents and children as they arrived for the first day of school. A former administrator at the school district, Mr. Moren has ambitious goals for the school and has pledged to work with Focas.
Focas member Dean Katz, video camera in hand, captured the anxious faces of his daughter Rowan and the other new kindergartners entering classroom No. 4. Hall Davidson, holding daughter Emmalee in his arms, pointed out the word "enfermeria" as they walked past the nurse's office. "See, this is in Spanish," he said. Ms. Bridges watched closely as daughter Sophie, in a crisp floral dress with a plaid backpack, filed past the American flag and the letters of the alphabet hanging at the front of the room.
After the parents left, the 15 kindergartners sat cross-legged on the floor, gazing attentively at teacher Dawnielle Armijo. Five Latino students who were learning English sat next to the Focas children in a semicircle. The students wore brown paper teddy bears around their necks with their names written in magic marker: Keaton, Rowan, Jocelyn, Jason, Sophie, Ciara, Briana.
"My name is Miss Armijo. ... It is our first day of school," the teacher began, carefully enunciating each word. "You're going to learn so much this year."
Just days later, some Focas parents were up in arms over Mr. Moren's new policy of requiring parents to drop off and pick up their children at the school gate. They wanted permission to walk their children to the classroom -- particularly the kindergartners. Mr. Moren refused to back down. He worried about security.
Some parents also objected to Miss Armijo's refusal to allow parent volunteers in the classroom the first few weeks. Others worried about the extreme differences in knowledge among children in the class, some of whom already can read, and others who aren't familiar with the alphabet.
Ms. Katz, mother of kindergartner Rowan Katz, was among the angry. "I have no doubt things will change, and I truly believe in the group and this effort," she said. "But it isn't going to happen overnight."
Three days into the schoolyear, Ms. Katz pulled Rowan out.
Write to Lisa Bannon at lisa.bannon@wsj.com3
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