Green TykesNapa Street School, located only a...

Green Tykes

Napa Street School, located only a few miles from the campus of Cal State Northridge but in an area of poverty and decline, is smack in the middle of the northwest San Fernando Valley’s war on drugs and vandalism.

“We are on the edge of what is known as the Napa Project, where there is a long history of crime, starting with graffiti and getting worse,” Napa Principal Allen Sussman said.

The challenge to teachers and administrators at Napa, as at other short-staffed, underfunded area schools, is not just to keep the kids off drugs, and out of gangs and trouble, but to give them a sense of their place in society and of society as a whole, he said.

It’s even harder than it sounds.

When Sussman came to the school in 1989, he was shocked by what he found. “The walls were covered with graffiti, things were broken everywhere, and there was a general feeling of decay.” Sussman, not one to be easily intimidated, decided that the situation was not going to defeat him nor his students and set about turning things around.

The principal brought his determination and a number of new ideas to the school, ideas that would serve to promote a sense of community between the educational institution and the people it serves.

One idea was a once-a-month workshop, which now attracts up to 100 adults, where parents learn what their children are learning.

Another is a class for the neighborhood’s Spanish-speaking 4-year-olds that gives them language support to prepare for kindergarten.

But the most important idea that Sussman promoted was that the school belonged to the children and parents, and that it could be reclaimed from the area’s criminal element.

“I wanted the parents and children to know that this was their safe place, a place that would be clean and wholesome and where people could learn,” he said. “They needed to know that if we band together, we could drive out the bad element that had given the campus such a dangerous feel.”

Sussman started his own ecology movement by making the kids his partner in eradicating grime. “We talk a lot about how this is our place to take care of and take pride in, so the kids have made a real investment here.”

They have planted flowers, put in drought-resistant landscaping, initiated a recycling program and decorated the school with a series of joyous murals where only graffiti once grew.

Sussman opened his door to the children and parents, and has left it open for anyone who wants to talk.

“We have made it OK not to fight, and for a child to come and tell me if someone is picking on him,” the principal said.

And Napa may be one of the few schools where being sent to the principal’s office is usually an honor.

“There are times when I have to dole out some discipline, but usually teachers send me students who are showing great improvement or excellence in the class work so that the children can show me how well they are doing.”

Quarterly Report

This was a great idea.

One of those ideas that couldn’t fail because the intentions were so good.

Oh, well.

It all began with the Chatsworth Chamber of Commerce finding out that there were 40 area first-graders who needed immediate and intensive help with reading.

The chamber decided to collect the $17,000 necessary to finance a program to do the job, got it started and then needed to come up with a way to get the money.

The answer they came up with was quarters.

Times are hard, things are tough, but surely people would be willing to give a handful of quarters to help 40 kids learn to read.

To make quarterly giving even more appealing and visual, the chamber folks, under the direction of chamber members John Halpin and Gary Thomas, decided to dedicate a milelong strip of Devonshire Street on which people could put their donated quarters.

They figured that if enough community members put a quarter or so down on the dedicated mile of the street, there would be exactly enough quarters to make up the $17,000.

Then they thought again.

“We weren’t exactly clear about how we could secure the mile of quarters,” said John Warner, another chamber member, or what might keep someone from coming along and just picking them up.

Back to the drawing board.

They gave that idea up, but came up with something else.

There would be a chamber festival in late November, and what better place to make a pitch?

Chamber members set up an elaborate booth explaining their educational mission, then gave the festival and nobody came.

“The wind was so strong it just blew everything away,” Halpin said. Including the chamber’s hopes of funding the program.

Halpin, a self-made man who owns Chars, a janitorial service, dug into his own pocket to meet this month’s $1,500 expense.

According to Halpin, the chamber program needs a corporate angel, and as interim angel his wings are just about flapped out.

“We’ve talked to some of the bigger companies in Chatsworth and had lunch in some executive dining rooms,” he said. “But I don’t think the people we talked to really understood what this is all about.”

Halpin said that he, indeed, understands how much this kind of program can mean to a child as he put a couple of his 10 grandchildren through something similar, and that the results were not only immediate but lasted a lifetime.

“If you don’t learn to read when the other kids do, you are disadvantaged for the rest of your life.”

Angels Need Apply

Chatsworth chamber members are not the only ones looking for an angel; the Salvation Army, as usual, is rounding up its seasonal heavenly band.

The army puts trees in sites around the Valley, such as the Sherman Oaks Galleria, where people are encouraged to “pinch” the ornaments.

For each ornament you take off the tree, you return with a present meant for the child whose description will be given you by the Salvation Army volunteer.

The Salvation Army is also looking for angels who will adopt a family, which can be done by phoning the office at (818) 781-5739.

Historical Happening

Everyone gets a candle and there are goodies and historic revelry for all when the students of Santa Rosa School in San Fernando perform in the Saturday presentation of Las Posadas. The Valley Historical Society is sponsoring the event, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Andres Pico Adobe in Mission Hills.

The program, which re-creates the search for the Christ child, will be followed by the breaking of a pinata and a treat of hot chocolate and pan dulce.

Overheard

“This Santa likes big girls who are naughty and nice.”

--Bearded gentleman in red

suit on his lunch break

to young woman at the

Sherman Oaks Galleria