What kind of cowardly a-hole targets low-income grade school kids in Watts who are rising above the South Los Angeles grime at the Watts Learning Center, stealing 32 computers and school projectors and cell phones?

Makes you nauseous. “Still in a state of shock,” about what this “depraved person” has done, says the president of the charter school's board, Gene Fisher. “Whatever gain that person got pales compared to our loss.”

The charter school could use some help.

Watts Learning Center has been doing very well with low-income, black children. But “the lesson plans were on those computers,” says Fisher. “Those were our tools for closing the Digital Divide.”

It'll be a long time before government funding comes through to replace them, so check out the phone number below if you can help.

The fascinating thing about Watts Learning Center is how well the kids are learning.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers Los Angeles both insisted, for years and years, that poor black kids in South L.A. could not be taught because of “poverty.”

As we now know, one real problem in downtrodden parts of Los Angeles is crappy teachers biding their time to get out of the “ghetto,” something the L.A. Weekly delved into in “Dance of the Lemons,” not long ago.

There are also the unprepared but well-meaning teachers who got their teaching certificates after attending California's inept schools of education, like the ineffective program over at UCLA.

So Watts went independent, with a charter school.

And found out the kids were smart after all.

Now some turkey comes along, on September 15, and takes what looks to be about $20,000 to $40,000 worth of equipment. That's just an L.A. Weekly guesstimate. It could be more.

Disgusting times we live in.

Anyone feel like helping?

The president of the charter school's board of directors, Fisher, says school officials can be reached at the school, at (323) 754-9900.

“We sure could use the help,” Fisher says.

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