Two weeks ago, as John Deasy took over as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for tearing up the teachers' union contract, the latest chapter in one school's ongoing tragedy was quietly unfolding.
"It has been a war," says Phil Keller, a longtime English teacher at Huntington Park Senior High, one of L.A.'s oldest and most overcrowded schools.
The campus is almost bucolic, a quintessentially Southern California spread dotted with palm trees and sand-colored buildings. But inside the walls of "HP," whose 4,200 students are mostly Latino and from low-income families, a fight rages.
"I think this is an especially urgent situation," Deasy says. He's referring to, among other things, the fact that 43 percent of HP students drop out and only 5 percent are proficient in math. That means 95 percent of the community's teenagers can't handle geometry or even, in many cases, basic algebra.
Debate over how to reform the school has, by most accounts, turned troublingly hostile and deeply dysfunctional. In one infamous confrontation, students cheered as a teacher shouted at reform-minded LAUSD school board member Yolie Flores. The dustup was recorded and posted on YouTube with the title "Parent Center Smack Down."
A disturbing flier created by teacher Keller declares that HP's failure has nothing to do with the teachers but is "all about the students."
"They waltz through school until they turn 18," Keller tells L.A. Weekly. "And then we've got to start throwing some of them into jail."
Keller blames the students' apathy and bad grades on the community. But students fare markedly better at some nearby high schools serving the same heavily Latino, low-income population.
Bell Senior High, in the notorious city of Bell, scored a 9 out of 10 on the statewide "similar schools ranking" — an important measure designed to correct for poverty, ethnicity and other demographics.
The ranking shows Bell is one of the top schools in California among heavily Latino, low-income campuses. HP, nearby, is not.
HP, with nearly the same poverty and ethnicity levels, scored a meager 4 on its similar schools ranking. At Bell, 27 percent of kids are proficient in math. That's more than five times as many students as at HP.
Reformers like Flores say it's not the community or the kids who have driven Huntington Park Senior High's academics into the ground.
A few weeks ago, parents at HP had good reason to believe that real change was around the corner. Three competing plans to fix the school, drafted by teachers and administrators, were in the hands of then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines.
On April 6, three mothers at the school's parent center were cautiously optimistic, even though the sloppy reform-planning process had driven away many parents. Community meetings led by LAUSD staff were unorganized, with nasty battles between cliques of teachers and administrators, says Martha Contreras, whose daughter attends HP. The plans also weren't properly translated into Spanish, she says.
And many parents didn't have time to attend meeting after meeting.
Not surprisingly, a March advisory vote among all parties was a disaster. Only one-quarter of HP teachers, 6 percent of students and less than 1 percent of parents bothered to vote.
So the three mothers espouse a dream that is exceedingly modest: "I just hope that whatever plan wins, they implement it," Maria Elena Gomez says.
But Cortines stunned everyone by dumping all three HP reform plans as inadequate.
"Why have they been telling us since October to go to meetings?" says Gomez, whose four children have attended the school. "This seems like a circus to me."
Janet Valenzuela, a senior at HP, says, "For Mr. Cortines to say these plans weren't enough, I think it's an insult."
To many parents, it appears nobody is in charge at LAUSD.
Now the problem falls to new Superintendent Deasy, especially since the strongly pro-reform Flores, who was recently profiled by L.A. Weekly, is leaving the school board in July.
Flores' demand for a dramatic overhaul of HP put some teachers on the defensive. And because she's taking charge of a new education organization funded with startup money from the Bill Gates Foundation, she has become an easy target for those who say public education is being corporatized.
But many parents relied on Flores, praising her for taking the bull by the horns. "There was nobody else who was going to change things," Contreras says.
Now, Gomez, one of the involved mothers, says, "I think there should be someone who really stays for a long time and works with the school community."
Deasy says he might appoint a special supervisor whose only job would be to oversee the reform process at HP — an unusually personalized step for the LAUSD behemoth.
The most divisive issue is a plan to carve the school into small learning academies, which teachers and students have loudly opposed. Instructor Claire Martinet insists on maintaining the school's "100 years of unity." Keller argues that small schools would raise administrative costs and stretch resources.
Lots of kids worry about something else: losing their football team, cheerleading squad and school colors. Flores insists none of those is at risk.
