MLA Partner Schools shows promise in turning around Manual Arts High

It’s difficult keeping track of all the reformers circling the Los Angeles Unified School District, vying to take charge of dozens of schools the district plans to spin off this year.

The school board and Supt. Ray Cortines plan to farm out operations for its 200 lowest-performing schools, in what is either a sign of new openness or an admission that L.A. Unified is incapable of raising achievement at failing schools.

Already, a handful of schools have been siphoned off by charter groups and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. So far, about all they’ve shown is how hard reform is.

Attendance is higher, but test scores have dropped at Locke High, taken over last year by the Green Dot charter. Teachers at eight of the 10 schools run by the mayor’s partnership say the group’s fumbling efforts have actually made it harder to get anything accomplished.

But there’s a glimmer of hope in a new project at the old Manual Arts.

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Manual Arts High School celebrated its 100th birthday this year. The classrooms are drafty; the buildings are faded; the campus has so many students, it operates year-round to accommodate them all. It’s on a rough strip of Vermont Avenue, just south of USC, in a neighborhood with the city’s poorest residents and highest rate of violent crime.

Forty percent of its students are still learning English, and 20% live in foster homes. Even its name and mascot -- the Manual Arts Toilers -- suggest that ceaseless struggle is its legacy.

That’s what attracted Mike McGalliard, the founder of MLA Partner Schools, who grew up in Oregon and went into teaching “because I loved learning,” then quit after two years “because I didn’t have the endurance.”

But he did have the passion. He became a consultant, with an enrichment program that made the rounds of inner-city schools, offering field trips, counseling and academic help to get students into college.

And he kept bumping into other consultants, offering help “to the same small circle of kids” -- those motivated enough to sign up or lucky enough to have parents who forced them.

It didn’t seem fair or efficient, he said. “I wanted everybody to get what we were giving a handful of kids,” McGalliard said. He wanted a school to run; a neighborhood to improve.

So, with a team of idealistic former teachers, some big-name Hollywood backers and a $4-million grant from Amgen Inc., he launched his nonprofit education reform group.

His group took charge of Manual Arts last summer, after spending two years running nearby West Adams Prep, a 2,200-student high school built to relieve overcrowding at Manual Arts. At West Adams, they built a program from the ground up. At Manual Arts, they’re partnering with Los Angeles Unified to try to reverse years of failure.

My visit to the campus this week left me betting on McGalliard. It’s not just the money that his group can spend -- $400 extra per student -- on grants for teachers and a 12-hour school day that offers clubs and classes until 7 p.m. Or the way McGalliard and his crew prattle on about being data-driven and community-centered.

I was convinced by little things I could touch and see as I walked the campus Wednesday -- things that didn’t cost much, but reflect the vision of teachers, the hopes of students and the hard work of their parents:

The drop-in center that 9th-graders can visit to talk to counselors about problems at home or in their classes. It’s decorated with college banners and furnished with a castoff table, mismatched chairs and a couch liberated from McGalliard’s home.

The splashy hallway murals of figures in motion, riveting faces, natural wonders and social protests, designed by professionals and created by would-be graffiti artists.

The trash heap that’s been transformed into a community garden; vegetables, herbs and native plants replacing broken chairs and discarded desks.

The idea came from science teacher Penny Aguilar, who graduated from Manual Arts and remembered the dumping ground as a garden. MLA gave her a grant to plan it. The parents contributed their labor, building walkways and composting bins. On Saturdays, the students tend it.

It’s a symbol of the transformation in progress

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It’s hard to slam Los Angeles Unified for failing at reform when it’s just trying to survive, with a projected $470-mllion deficit next year that may lead to 8,000 layoffs. But the bumbling has been painful to watch.

MLA Partners isn’t “doing some secret formula,” McGalliard said. “My staff takes things that other schools think about but can’t do” because of bureaucracy.

Manual Arts has other advantages. One-third of its teaching staff are alumni, who grew up in the neighborhood. The faculty has a mix of veterans and rookies, an openness to collaboration and a long history of social action.

And the neighborhood is an entry point for immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. The families are the working poor, “who haven’t given up hope, who came here so their children could do better than they have,” said Joshua Pechtault, the Los Angeles teachers’ union president who taught history for 20 years at Manual Arts.

I’ve always been leery of the “business model” applied to campuses. Businesses have to make a profit and can afford to dump defective products. Schools have a very different dynamic.

But I’m just as tired of the “shareholder” lingo, that gives power to everyone and let’s responsibility slide. And I’m disgusted by the politics and power-grabbing that stalls or strangles reform here every time.

It’s too soon to tell whether McGalliard’s group has it right. But they understand that three things are necessary for reform to thrive:

Investment. They reward creativity with grants for teachers to pay for instructional projects; that energizes and can’t help but attract innovative instructors.

Accountability. Administrators make daily visits to classrooms, and the principal tracks data on academics, attendance and campus safety. Teachers will be evaluated every year on their classroom performance.

Support. Five MLA staffers work in the community and on campus. “If I have an idea,” Principal Todd Irving said, “they can research it for me, so I don’t have to spend hours trying to figure out whether it violates a contract or something.”

And they understand that the school is not the only one that stands to grow. McGalliard’s crew is learning too.

When MLA took on the neighboring new campus, parents were allowed to decide what to call it, and McGalliard was surprised by their choice.

“They didn’t want the name of a radical Latino leader. . . . They wanted a neighborhood. West Adams. Preparatory.” That’s where they’re from, and where their children are going.

“They told us ‘We want a school open to us, where we can help. And that no matter how they come to you, you treat our children like they can go to college.’ ”

sandy.banks@latimes.com