WestchesterKids on the LAUSD and in particular Westchester High School

"We would like the Westchester community to continue to believe that this is their school.. There are a lot of young children in the area and we want them to send their children here" Ms. Dana Perryman - Principal, Westchester High School

Like many parents here tonight our most anxious moments began shortly after we made a promise. Like our parents before us and as we watched our children playing, we quietly promised them that we would always be there and to provide them with all of the necessities they will need to be successful in life.  Then we begin to look at their educational options and like a cold shower we realized how difficult the LAUSD is going to make it for us to keep that promise.

Our travels really began much earlier, even before we had our first child. We were aware of the constant battering that the LAUSD was taking in the television news and the papers. But we felt obligated to research our options objectively and with open mindedness. When our first child turned 3 in 1997 I wrote to our then LAUSD board representative Valerie Fields. In my letter I noted the districts obvious strengths. such as well-constructed classrooms, large campuses, playing fields and a huge pool of educational professionals. I also thought that things were looking up, we had a brand new school board member in Ms. Fields with hopefully a fresh perspective of how the district should be run. There was the Prop B-B initiative in the wings that would provide funding to give all of the schools a much-needed face-lift.

Just as I promised to look at the strengths, I also reminded her of what I thought were our concerns. There were the troubling CLAS scores that were recently published. CLAS was an earlier effort to report on the performance of each one of the schools through student testing. There was the awful 'whole word' reading program that was eventually canned in favor of the tried and true 'phonics' method that all of us learned by. There was bi-lingual education program that divided the classrooms and the community. And there was Belmont. That resource grabbing, opportunity stealing, budget busting mega-school. A school that will shortly exceed the $400 million cost of the high tech and glamorous Staples Center.

By the time the year 2000 rolled around. We finally committed to a private school education like so many families in our area. At that time the district was still sailing in stormy seas. It wasn't an easy decision because we could ill afford it but in addition to the lack of improvements at the time we also felt we were being toyed with by that awful 'point system' used to determine who could get into the better 'Charter' and 'Magnet' schools. This is not a good start. Our neighborhood school Westport Heights Elementary, was one of our communities most under-performing schools. We were told that we would automatically get some 4 points to be used at one of our communities better schools. Why can't all schools be better schools we wondered?  Some things are slow to change and after 3 years we could not wait any longer and the promises of LAUSD administrators was not enough.

Today, 5 years later we have noted some changes. Elementary schools are performing significantly better today. Classroom sizes are smaller, reading is still down but only marginally and math is up. Bi-lingual education is merely a shadow of its earlier days. The ugly point system is still there obviously indicating that even within our own community, 'not all schools are created equal'. And Belmont is back thanks to our previously reform minded school board.

I would probably not have given the LAUSD a second thought except for recent news articles in our local papers and the fact that someday our kids will enter high school. First there was the news that the LAUSD had announced that there would be additional bungalows added to the school to increase the 'capacity'. Another word for crowding more students onto the campus. It was in that Argonaut article that Ms. Perryman the principal of Westchester High School said: "We would like the Westchester community to continue to believe that this is their school.. There are a lot of young children in the area and we want them to send their children here".  

Later the councilmembers office had a meeting with Ms. Canter, Ms Perryman and a district facilities manager. From that meeting came the word that Westchester High School was designated a 'Commuter School'.

I began to wonder, was it really our school anymore? Then another somewhat unrelated article came out. This story had nothing to do with overcrowding but nevertheless it felt like a slap on the face for our communities kids and families.  You see, every week, like hundreds of other families here in Westchester and Playa Del Rey we begin our Saturday mornings by dressing our littlest ones in shorts and sneakers and load them into the car to play 'Teeny Tiny Basketball' at the Y, soccer T'ball or other such activities. In the following years we would repeat the cycle maybe hundreds of times a year, following a familiar pattern many parents before us have followed themselves in their children's activities like Jr. Lakers, AYSO soccer, T'Ball, Five-Pitch, Little League, swim lessons, dance, and more.

From 4 years old, until our children begin their high school education we play the coach, the team mom, we volunteer for field set-up, run the concession stand, sell raffle tickets and drive our kids to practice sometimes a dozen times a week.

This LA Times article was about the Westchester High School Basketball team winning the State CIF Championships. An event that anywhere else would have the community celebrating. This event would be different though. The newspaper article pointed out that none of the players in fact came from our community. A fact that had other LAUSD coaches from other schools complaining.

If this was a typical community high school in a typical community, our kids whose skills run from the ordinary to the exceptional might have that chance to play varsity basketball. But this is not a typical community high school anymore. The coaches at Westchester with Nike contracts as a lure, have the opportunity to hand select from the best. Not the best that Westchester/Playa Del Rey has to offer, but from the elite of Southern California.  As a parent I can only ask, "But what of our efforts, our kids efforts". Where is our children's opportunity to play varsity sports in our own high school? 

Opportunity was now the key word. But I'm not here tonight to talk about sports. I'm here to talk about academic performance and opportunities. But this is one of the more egregious examples of the lack of opportunities that exists at Westchester High School.

Remember what Ms Perryman had to say: 'We would like the Westchester community to continue to believe that this is their school'.

With that in mind lets begin to observe the drawbacks that 'increasing the capacity' would create for our children. Throughout the US the average enrollment for high schools is 865 students. In California the average enrollment is 1895 students and it's only that high because of LAUSD's propensity for larger schools.

Would United Airlines knowingly overload an aircraft simply because they fell short of capacity elsewhere? Of course they wouldn't because they know that to do so would severely compromise the performance of the airplane and jeopardize the lives of its passengers. Similarly, overloading a school might solve another schools capacity problems, but it's going to happen at our children's expense.

In 1999 Westchester High School received an API score of 4. Similar schools of the same size and demographics received a 9. In 2000 the score dropped to a 3 where it remains today.  I believe that increasing the enrollment will likely ensure that the school will continue to remain an academically low performing school.  88% of LAUSD high schools with 2000 or more students have an API of score 4 or below. What that means is that only 7 of 56 schools have better than an API of 5 or better. Only 4 of 56 have an API better than 6.

I can understand the problems that the district has managed to get itself into but solving those problems should not come at the expense of the community it serves. There needs to be better management of the crisis's that LAUSD finds itself in.  In medicine, doctors follow the tenet that says 'do no harm' when they are considering a medical procedure. LAUSD would better serve its communities if it would follow that same tenet before settling on a particular solution.

Increasing the capacity and forcing kids to endure travel on buses for an hour or two each day robs the kids of time at home where they can get additional sleep, eat breakfast with their families, maybe get last minute coaching from mom or dad on that important test. It sacrifices the important time in the afternoons and early evenings when homework assignments are best completed.

Increasing the capacity limits opportunities in the school. Tom Vander Ark, Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Writes in an article titled "Make them small" that "good small schools succeed because they combine high expectations with a more personalized learning environment. In these schools, students have an adult advocate, a mentor who helps guide them through school and ensure that they are personally engaged in their work. Structuring a school around rigor and relationships means kids feel respected, listened to and safer."

In this environment, not only are students more motivated but they are more connected to their school. The recently released National Longitudinal Study for Adolescent Health  found that students in small schools developed a greater sense of "connectedness" and were less likely to use alcohol, illegal drugs, become pregnant, or experience emotional distress.

So our children will lose their connectedness with their school as a result of the districts lack of problem solving skills. Opportunities are lost in other ways. Lets say your child is interested in getting on the school newspaper. Ordinarily, in a normal size school the student newspaper staff might consist of 20 kids.  Will a school with twice the enrollment increase the newspaper staff to 40 kids to maintain the same level of opportunity? And even if they did will the kids be able to participate at the same level as the smaller school or will they be merely 'bench players' occasionally writing real articles or pasting up this weeks paper. Will they add another paper? More likely 20 interested kids will simply find themselves denied the opportunity.

School administrators might argue that only 20-25 kids interested. Then ask them to explain to us why only half as many kids might be interested newspaper or theater, or yearbook as the smaller schools. Of course some people might argue that electives such as these are not really important. But they are, because like sports, they allow students to participate in classes that they clearly identify with. Something to connect with.

I think that it is important to note that Westchester High School has for the last five years a suspension rate of over 550 per year or a quarter of the schools enrollment. Perhaps this is a result of over crowdedness? It's more than 4 times that of Pacific Palisades high school a school of similar size.  Suspension rates this high have to affect the quality of the educational experience for everyone in the school. For what ever reasons. It is not limited merely to the suspended student and school staff. A larger school is not going to solve this problem. Only smaller schools that offer the students greater connectedness with teachers, classes, sports, and family will offer that.  

The district describes this predicament they're in, as temporary. But is this fact or fiction? The district knows that we are all just transients passing through the system. We ask the questions, they give us the canned answers and promise us that everything will be Ok and we believe them. Every year another set of parents ask the same questions and like those before them they get the same answers. Before you realize it your child has grown up and the schools problems are still there.  By then you will certainly know whether or not your child contributed to that awful API score of 3.  And you'll wonder if they have really have reached their potential. Children that don't reach their potential as they become adults often become burdens on their own families.

I'm sure that there are other solutions to overcrowding rather than busing students. Perhaps nearby industrial suites or unused business suites could be leased like off campus classrooms. The students could shuttle take 'Ride-Share' type vans back and forth between classes much like the large aerospace companies do today. However it's done, the district must shake this 70's mindset that problems are solved with buses. Clearly they only create more problems for students and families. 

When the opportunity presents itself this evening to ask questions, ask Ms Canter the hard questions. Remind her that we demand high levels of Academic Performance in our school. Remind her that we must have Academic Opportunities for our children. And finally and remind her of who she works for. Not the bureaucrats, not the unions, not the teachers. She works for us, the parents.