Lennox School Spirit : ‘Little Tijuana’ Overcomes Adversity to Become an Educational Gem

This small town, wedged between Inglewood and Hawthorne in one of the county’s poorest areas, seems an unlikely setting for a success story.

Once a white, blue-collar bedroom community, Lennox has changed in the past 15 years into the “Little Tijuana of the South Bay” as waves of immigrants replaced the postwar residents who died out or moved away.

Now an endless chain of jetliners screeches overhead on the way to landings at Los Angeles International Airport, and the outside world hears about the town mostly as a graffiti ghetto inhabited by violent youth gangs and rapacious drug dealers.

Many of the immigrants--people from Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Asia and the South Pacific --live and sleep in shifts in homes that shelter several families. It is said that beds in Lennox never get cold.

No City Government

There is no city government; the unincorporated community is governed by a faraway county board. The only bastion of law and order is a sheriff’s substation, and its officers must watch over a much wider territory than the 1.4 square miles of Lennox, where only about 25,000 people live.

Yet the local schools, which might be expected to reflect the surrounding community, present a different picture.

The Lennox elementary district is one of the gems in California’s school system, according to state and county officials.

“Lennox is a remarkable example of a school district that has overcome enormous disadvantages,” said Stuart E. Gothold, superintendent of schools for Los Angeles County. “You could hardly imagine a worse environment for schools.

“But the staff and the board there have a contagious attitude that nothing is impossible when it comes to educating kids. The results have amazed people who are familiar with the district.”

Teaching Models

Gothold credited Lennox, which has a 97% minority student population, with originating a number of teaching programs that are used as models in other districts. “They’ve been in the vanguard in finding innovative ways to adjust to rapidly changing pupil populations,” he said. “What Lennox has faced is now the trend throughout the county.”

Gothold’s office gave top honors this year to Lennox for its teacher training programs, and he said he often advises other districts to “go see Lennox” when they have problems in areas such as student discipline and developing a bilingual curriculum.

Officials on the state level agree with Gothold’s assessment. “Lennox is definitely a success story,” said Ron Temple, a state Department of Education consultant who works with schools in the Los Angeles area.

What made the difference in Lennox, when other districts with similar problems have failed?

People Make Difference

“It’s the people who make the difference,” said Lennox School District Supt. Kenneth Moffett. “Right from the start we went out aggressively looking for the best teachers and administrators available, and we made them think they had really earned it if they got a job in Lennox.

“We also tried to encourage a few people who were here that maybe Lennox wasn’t the place where they should be teaching. As a result, we have a bright, energetic staff that welcomes the kind of challenges we face and most of all loves to teach kids.”

Lennox was well on the way to becoming a predominantly immigrant community in 1976 when Moffett left his job as an assistant superintendent in the Inglewood schools to head the smaller district here.

Run-down Facilities

“Our worst immediate problems were poor discipline and run-down facilities,” he recalled. “The kids were terrible. We had fights all over the place. So, I sat down with the staff and said, ‘Look, we can remain like this and maybe get worse, or we can do something about it. Probably nobody out there cares about us, so our task is to take care of each other and make this a good place to work and to educate the kids in the community, which is our job.’

“We’ve preached that all along and we’ve tried to make it happen.”

To restore order to the district’s five campuses, Moffett adopted the “assertive discipline” tactics of Lee Kantor, a Santa Monica-based consultant who advocates setting up uniform rules of behavior supported by an elaborate system of reward and punishment.

The two struck a deal in which Kantor trained a group of Moffett’s teachers “at a very low cost,” Moffett said, in exchange for using the Lennox schools as a testing ground for his ideas.

Specific Consequences

“It really works,” said Linda Sugano, a teacher at Lennox for eight years. “It’s very unusual for the kids here to talk back or use bad language. They know exactly what is expected of them and if they cause a problem, there are specific consequences. They never think, ‘Well, if I do this, what will happen?’ ”

The consequences begin with writing a student’s name on the blackboard, she said, then go on to “time out” in a workroom under the supervision of administrators, detention after school and finally psychological counseling and conferences with parents. Physical punishment is banned.

“But the other side of discipline is equally important,” Sugano said. “When the kids do well, we have a lot of verbal praise, pats on the back and awards of all kinds that go on every day. It’s the consistency, with every teacher always using the same rules, that makes it work.”

Restoring the district’s facilities, while struggling to find space for a student population that increased every year, took longer and what Moffett calls “megabucks.” District enrollment has nearly doubled in the past decade to the current level of about 5,000.

“We didn’t have the money to build castles,” Moffett said, “but we knew we could make this a place that we didn’t have to be ashamed to work in.”

Lennox, in a joint lawsuit with other districts under the jet landing patterns, forced the Los Angeles airport to pay for sound-proofing its buildings, while beginning an aggressive pursuit of state and federal grants for minority schools to pay for other improvements.

“If the money is out there, we’ll go for it,” Moffett said. Of the district’s $11-million budget for the current year, $1.3 million came from special grants.

The rebuilding effort shows in tidy grounds, freshly painted walls and remodeled classrooms. But by 1980, the district--already packed with portable classrooms--ran out of space. And one of the five schools, Larch School, was scheduled for demolition to make way for the new Century Freeway that is to loop through the southern edge of the town in 1989.

The schools went to double shifts, and in 1982 became the first elementary district in the state to convert all of its schools to a year-around class schedule.

Meanwhile, Moffett persuaded the state to put up $10.2 million to buy and renovate the closed Lennox High School and negotiated a deal with the California Transportation Department, builder of the freeway, to replace Larch with a brand new campus.

Typically innovative, the new school will be built almost entirely underground, with playgrounds on top in a park-like setting, according to present plans. “We can’t have windows anyway because of the jet noise, so we’re thinking that if we go underground, we’ll take care of that problem and vandalism, too,” said Assistant Supt. Charles (Chuck) Shields. “It would be the first in the county and one of a few in the state.”

Despite an enthusiastic teaching staff and innovative programs, the district’s student test scores, as measured in the annual California Assessment Program, remain among the lowest in the state.

Ashamed of Scores

“We’d like our CAP scores to be better because the teachers are ashamed of them,” Moffett said. “But we do look good in comparisons with other districts with similar minority populations and we do very well in other tests that show growth rates in basic skills.” He said the district’s average last year for improvement in basic skills was 1.8; a score of 1 represents the improvement expected in a year.

“Our average attendance rate is better than 97%, so we’re proud of that, too,” Moffett said.

Hal Hyman, principal at Jefferson School, noted that few of the district’s students speak any English when they arrive in Lennox and most have little or no school experience.

“And then there’s the environment,” Hyman said. “The poverty, the crime, the dope selling on Inglewood Avenue, the prostitutes walking the streets. Many of our kids live in hovels, like areas of Mexico City.

“It’s not your ideal learning environment, so we really have to work hard to give the kids a better image of themselves and what they can do.”

‘Right Image’

The “right image” and “the spirit of the place” are common themes that one hears in conversations with teachers and administrators.

“We start with the physical appearance of the place and that’s always got to be right,” said Jessie Sawyer, principal at Buford School. “If any graffiti goes up overnight or on the weekend, it’s got to come down right now, and the same for fixing broken windows or any other problems.”

High spirits, she said, are built by systematic reinforcement of “anything that’s positive and just a powerful determination not to let any problem get us down.”

“The support is tremendous, from Dr. Moffett and the trustees and the staff,” Sawyer said. “We’re always out patting each other on the back and looking for ways to make each other feel good about what we’re doing. When I go in a classroom, I look for a way to validate what the teacher is doing.”

Sawyer said she sometimes feels like a missionary. “I really feel I’m needed here,” she said. “I come on the campus in the morning, and maybe sometimes I’m kind of down in the dumps, and then some of these kids walk up and give me a flower or a hug and say, ‘Hi, Mrs. Sawyer,’ and everything’s great again.”

A Little Island

Sawyer compared the district to “a little island” in the community where children and their parents “can come and feel safe.”

“We don’t have a city government, so the schools perform a lot of those functions,” she said. “We’ve always got programs going to help the parents adjust to life in this country, and we work extra hard to earn their respect and make them feel a part of what we’re doing here.”

Jane St. John, the district’s director of instruction, said parents look on the schools as the “hub of the community” where they can get information and help on family and personal problems.

She said school-sponsored meetings cover topics such as health and nutrition, pregnancy and child-rearing, discipline in the home and immigration problems. The district operates a mobile dental clinic and children can count on two nutritionally balanced meals a day in the schools’ cafeterias.

United Staff

Mirtha Riera, PTA president at Jefferson, said the school staff “unites behind any effort to meet special needs, like gifts and food baskets at Christmas and buying groceries for a family in bad shape. Just the other day, a child was killed by a car and we took up a donation right away to help the family.”

Moffett’s “participatory style of management” is another key to high morale at the school, according to Jefferson teacher Mike Vail. “We don’t have that isolation between teachers and administration that you sometimes see in other districts,” he said. “We’re constantly asked to serve on committees to get our ideas on curriculum and anything else to do with the schools. Then when the board and Dr. Moffett reach a decision, we feel we can all go forward together.”

Despite its small size and the generally bad image of working in poor minority districts, Lennox can attract the “best of the best” teachers, some of whom take pay cuts to get an assignment, Moffett said. He said about half of the district’s 200 regular teachers have been hired in the last five years to keep pace with increases in enrollment.

Salary is an important factor, he said, “and in that respect we’re easily in the top half of county schools.” He said teacher salaries range from about $21,000 to nearly $40,000, with the average at $28,000.

School’s Reputation

But for Laura Marguez, the “reputation and spirit of the place” was the most important factor in her decision to apply for a job in Lennox. She had taught for four years in the Los Angeles system after graduating from USC.

“I’m bilingual, so I thought Lennox would take me right away,” she said. “But then I had to go through five or six long interviews and they kept saying, ‘Well, so you’re bilingual. So what? What else can you do for us?’ But when I was finally accepted in July, everybody welcomed me with open arms and really made me feel good about being here.”

What made the difference in Lennox? Trustee Edward Urrutia said a school board almost unknown for public squabbles was part of it. “We have our share of disagreements on the board and with Dr. Moffett,” he said. “But we don’t air our grievances in public.”

As for individuals, Urrutia added, “a lot of the credit has to go back to the superintendent. He has made the difference.”

Planned to Be Lawyer

Moffett, 49, a Washington state native, said he had never planned to be a teacher for more than a year or two when he took his first assignment in Inglewood in 1957. His first goal was to become a lawyer, he said.

But as a teacher and later assistant superintendent there, Moffett said, he found himself caught up in the Inglewood district’s desegregation struggles and more than a decade quickly passed before the Lennox board hired him.

“Looking back, I’d say I’m glad the road led to Lennox,” Moffett said. “I have a super family, a wife who teaches in Torrance, and two wonderful kids. This isn’t an 8-to-5 job, so I don’t see enough of them, but we’re doing what we have to do and spending quality time together when we can.

“Sometimes I think I should have gone on to that larger district or done other things, but really the only time I have any regrets is when I have to deal with these tremendous amounts of paper work. Then I have to back up and ask myself, ‘Is this really why I’m here?’

“But when I get to feeling that way, I just go out to the schools and talk with the kids and the teachers and parents, and it’s like a shot in the arm. Then I know it’s all been worthwhile.”