REMEMBER those compare and contrast essays from your school years? Two friends since 8th greade, now serving as teachers at JMHS, share concerns and insights for their new Los Angeles Unified School District Board member, charter school supporter, Ref Rodriguez. 

[posted from Living in Dialogue]

Two Los Angeles Teachers Welcome a New Board Member

By Michael Finn and Michael Jones

As it has every fall since it opened in 1931, the stately campus of John Marshall High in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz sits ready for the upcoming school year: new classes, new students, new hopes, new challenges. We’ve witnessed this cycle for over 20 years, as teachers and members of the community. This year Marshall High will also have a new LAUSD School Board member overseeing it—Ref Rodriguez. Mr. Rodriguez made his mark on the city’s education system by founding a string of charter schools. He was shaped by that work. But as he embarks on his first semester, the skills that he brings will be challenged by the realities of public education in Los Angeles. We believe Marshall High can provide some examples of those challenges.

One challenge will be to cease the false branding of public schools. Concerning LAUSD academics, during the campaign Ref wrote “even our highest performing students do not fare well when compared to other students across the country.” This would come as news to admissions officers at prestigious universities. Each year, Marshall’s highest performing students are accepted into Ivy League schools, into the most competitive of UCs, into MIT, into Cal Tech. They are accepted at a rate that would be the envy of any school. Every year Marshall’s Academic Decathlon finishes in the top five nationally and we have won the national title twice. By continuing to push the charter school party-line that all public schools are failing, Ref is committing a disservice to the school district’s brand. We challenge him to not only work on improving all LAUSD schools, but also to acknowledge the many examples of public school excellence.

Another challenge is the disregard that charter schools have for geography. Charter schools pick their students with no regard for boundaries or district, and hence they have no responsibility for serving any particular community. John Marshall High serves a series of neighborhoods, an ethnically and socio-economically diverse group of zip codes that stretch from Los Feliz to Atwater, from Silverlake to Echo Park. Though charter schools can rightfully claim that they create a community, it is not a community based on geography. At Marshall, the neighborhood is the school. Our former students’ children now sit in our classes. They see their uncle’s trophy in the case on the wall and become our children’s camp counselors. The neighborhood is seen in the classrooms, down the hallways, in the orchestra, and on the athletic field. Marshall has a pedigree built upon through the decades, from the accomplishments of the alumni (Tom LaBonge, Lance Ito, David Ho, Mike Haynes) to the accomplishments of the faculty (Helen Bernstein, David Tokofsky, Steve Zimmer). No charter school matches Marshall’s connection to its neighborhood and its past. That geographic connection strengthens the school and the community it serves. Though geography may be inconvenient to his vision, we challenge Ref to honor the neighborhoods that students live in.

Finally, selective enrollment is part of the culture of charter schools and Ref will have to leave that behind. During the campaign, Mr. Rodriguez spoke of the need for charter schools to be more accountable, including accepting Students with Disabilities (SWDs). We hope it’s not just campaign rhetoric, because since their inception, charters routinely turn away students with educational or behavioral challenges.   Even those charters that do accept SWDs don’t accept Visually Impaired students or students with severe or multiple disabilities. Those students, more costly to educate, are sent to district schools like Marshall High, where on any given day one can see Intellectually Disabled classes working on projects with their general education peers or Visually Impaired students playing music with their sighted peers. All students benefit from this inclusion. Some would say that a public school is not a public school unless it accepts every student in the neighborhood. At Marshall High 10% of our 2400 students are SWDs and we challenge Ref to have all schools, public or charter, match that number.

Charter schools were created with the admirable goal of being a petri dish for educational best practices. At some point over the last two decades, they have become insular and inward looking, and have contributed to a climate where charter and public schools tout their own accomplishments as if they weren’t serving the same students. On the public school side, things haven’t been perfect, but when improvements were needed, they were made for the whole system. They were made for all students. The way John Dewey intended. The way they do it in Finland. The way we do it at Marshall High.

Today, educational issues are quickly viewed as public vs. charter. But for the next five years Mr. Rodriguez will sit on the board that charts the course for all the city’s schools. We urge him to keep in mind that excellence can and does occur across all LAUSD. Mr. Rodriguez’s challenge will not just be to support excellence at the charter schools from whence he came or at places like Marshall High where it is already flourishing, but to support excellence across the city. Not just for the academically inclined student, not just for the student without multiple disabilities, not just for the student who hails from a family that can navigate the charter school application process, but to truly support and nurture excellence for all kids at all their neighborhood schools across all the city.

It’s Ref’s first day. Let class begin.

Michael Finn and Michael Jones grew up in Southern California and met in the eighth grade. They ended up living a mile from each other in the Silverlake area of Los Angleles. Jones teaches advanced placement government and economics, while Finn is a resource teacher and the special education department chair.

[to read more about Charter schools / privatization / special education, go to LIving in Dialogue.