Once a Pioneer, Morningside Now Struggles to Catch Up

Bill Vidal, head maintenance man at Inglewood’s Morningside High School, shook his head with a mixture of disgust and frustration as he toured the 20-acre campus on a recent morning.

“The kids break things as fast as we fix them,” he said, pointing out a bathroom stall ripped from a wall and fluorescent lights knocked from their fixtures. “When the kids see me painting over the gang graffiti, some of them yell out, ‘What are you doing with our neighborhood?’ ”

Vidal didn’t have much time to talk. A failed power generator had knocked out heat and electricity in about half of the school’s classrooms the day before, and, as he walked by, a teacher complained that his room was “as cold as an icebox.”

Concerns such as these led more than half of Morningside’s students to protest campus conditions by walking out twice in the past two weeks. The students also appeared en masse at a school board meeting, where they were told by Inglewood Unified School District officials that some improvements are on the way.

Ironically, Morningside was known for its state-of-the-art campus and quality instruction when it opened in 1952. It has produced alumni such as Byron Scott of the Los Angeles Lakers, Olympic volleyball star Flo Hyman, multimillionaire real estate magnate John Arrillaga and Los Angeles Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg.

The high school is part of a district headed by Supt. George McKenna, a former Los Angeles Unified School District principal who achieved nationwide recognition as a champion of quality inner-city education.

But the years have also brought decay to the school, once described as having a country-club atmosphere, and to the neighborhood that surrounds it. Inglewood school district officials now consider Morningside their most troubled school. And Inglewood police say the neighborhood has one of the highest crime rates in the city.

“It’s sad that after 40 years the school has gone backward instead of forward,” says A. John Waldmann, 83, the school superintendent who oversaw the construction of Morningside.

Budget cuts have reduced Morningside’s maintenance staff from more than 20 to four, with occasional help from additional workers. Many Morningside students must share textbooks that cannot be taken out of the classroom. Teachers say higher salaries in Los Angeles are luring away many colleagues.

At a time when assaults and robberies are on the rise on and off campus, Morningside has five security guards and one campus police officer. Eleven police officers patrolled the Morningside campus about a decade ago; now that many are responsible for all 19 campuses in the Inglewood district.

“I work in Watts, in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and not one of the schools is as run-down as Morningside,” said Inglewood City Councilman Garland Hardeman, a Los Angeles police officer who teaches anti-drug workshops in schools there.

At Morningside, there is a mixture of acceptance and rage. Frustrated administrators and teachers point out that conditions have been steadily worsening for years. Angry students say they are receiving a substandard education.

More than 600 students walked off campus Feb. 9 and 13 to protest conditions. They say excellent students are still graduating--senior Lisa Leslie won a national student-athlete award this year--but the school’s run-down building, chaotic classrooms and outdated textbooks are robbing many others of the opportunity.

“When we graduate from Morningside, we have to compete with other students,” said Katrina Hamilton, 16. “How can we when some of our parents are (almost as old as) our books?”

Some students have complained that their textbooks have copyrights from the early 1960s.

Among the complaints students have taken to the Inglewood school board are that substitute teachers with little interest in teaching have become a fixture in some classes.

“Our protests hopefully opened the eyes of administrators to the unnecessary problems,” said Adrienne Jackson, Morningside’s student representative to the school board. “Students know it will take time and money, but we need help now.”

California Assessment Program scores at Morningside put it in the bottom 5% of schools in the state. The Inglewood district rates in the bottom 25% for the lower grades and in the bottom 5% for graduating seniors.

Although Morningside is considered the district’s crisis school, other Inglewood campuses are suffering too. Students at Monroe Junior High School, next to Morningside, walked out Friday in protest of conditions there.

William Rukeyser, a spokesman for state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, said the problems in the Inglewood district are not unique.

“Many, many California school districts are constantly feeling the pinch of not having the bucks they want,” he said. “That will be felt in teacher salaries, deferred maintenance and instructional materials.”

McKenna, who moved to Inglewood in 1988 from Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles, said past school boards made sizable budget adjustments to provide teachers with pay increases. The upkeep of facilities and the purchase of school supplies have suffered, he conceded.

McKenna told students last week that the district will move quickly to clean up campus restrooms, distribute additional textbooks and monitor substitute teachers.

But even as McKenna announced plans to improve campus conditions at Wednesday night’s school board meeting, another crisis was beginning. Morningside’s heat and electricity went out that night, forcing teachers to share classrooms or move their students to the cafeteria or library the next day.

Union President Cheryl Bell said teachers have suffered along with everyone else. The district is again locked in labor negotiations with teachers, who have not received a pay increase for the 1988-89 school year.

Not paying the teachers enough will only compound district problems by forcing teachers to leave for bigger salaries in Los Angeles, she said. The salary in Inglewood for a beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree is $22,614. In 1988, the last year for which figures are available, the district rated 25th out of the 43 unified districts in Los Angeles County.

“It’s going to take Donald Trump to refurbish that campus,” said Terry Coleman, a PTA member who lives near Morningside and has followed its troubles for years. “It’s going to take millions of dollars. As it is now, the teachers want to work in a better environment, but they also want a pay increase. Unfortunately, they can’t have both.”

Despite the school’s troubles, there have been high points. Morningside’s sports teams have been consistently successful and received national attention earlier this month when honor student Leslie scored 101 points in the first half of a basketball game.