7 Schools Win Funds to Implement New Ideas : Education: $10,000 grants will help campuses remove some stumbling blocks to change. Many choose teacher training.

For Jefferson High School English teacher Cathy Armstrong, it was one of the saddest, most frustrating days in her school’s 2-year-old reform campaign.

The school had rented a bus in January to ferry teachers and a handful of parents to an all-day conference at USC featuring national experts on school reform. The parents, all immigrants who spoke only Spanish, would keep up with the proceedings via a borrowed machine that simultaneously conveyed an interpreter’s translation.

But the machine never arrived, leaving the parents on the outskirts of the educational dialogue they had come to join.

Today, when a Los Angeles foundation announces winners of an awards program for schools attempting major reform, Jefferson will receive the means to remove such fundamental stumbling blocks to educational change.

The school is one of seven Los Angeles Unified School District campuses selected to receive $10,000 grants to improve education through basic restructuring of school programs and resources.

At the top of Jefferson’s wish list is a translating machine--which costs more than $4,000. The rest of its grant money will be used to provide child care during parent meetings and staff an on-campus center where Spanish-speaking parents can gather to discuss ways to improve their children’s education.

“Our parents very much want to accompany us every step of the way through restructuring,” Armstrong said. “But it’s been very discouraging to them when they aren’t able to participate or even understand the kinds of changes we’re considering.”

More than 90% of the South Los Angeles school’s 2,700 students are Latino and the vast majority have parents who speak no English and have little formal education.

“Unless we can involve them in a significant way in what’s going on at the school--and help them understand how important education is for their children--then most of what we’re doing is going to be wasted,” Armstrong said.

The seven schools being honored were selected from among 33 in the district that competed for School Restructuring Initiative grants, provided by the school district, United Teachers-Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, which funnels business donations to schools for a variety of innovative programs.

The grants--intended to help cash-strapped campuses reorganize to raise student achievement--will be awarded at a luncheon to mark the beginning of Educational Partnership Week, a series of events aimed at involving business leaders in improving the public schools.

“What we were looking for were schools that had a clear plan of where they wanted to go and were proposing things that would have some impact on restructuring, whether it was improving parental involvement or raising student achievement or providing more faculty training,” said Schelly Jensen, community affairs administrator for GTE and a member of the advisory committee that judged the proposals.

“What we’re hoping is that these grants will act as a catalyst to encourage other schools” where restructuring plans have been stymied by lack of money, Jensen said.

Seventy-eight of the district’s 600 schools have embarked on restructuring programs developed by parents, teachers and administrators at each campus. The district does not provide any funding to implement the plans. While some schools have been able to attract grants from the state and private agencies, other efforts have stalled for lack of money.

“You start with such high hopes, but people get discouraged and morale gets low,” said May Arakaki, principal at Fourth Street Elementary School, one of the grant winners. “Money buys time for people to get together and work out the kinds of major issues you have to deal with when you set out to transform a school.”

Most of Fourth Street’s grant will be used to pay teachers to meet during weekends and school breaks to prepare for the introduction next year of such teaching innovations as multi-age groupings, which let children learn at their own pace.

“It’s not really as simple as people might think,” Arakaki said. “Restructuring is a whole outlook change people have to go through about what makes a quality school. It’s taken us 2 1/2 years to get to this point, and the money is giving us the boost to make our plans a reality.”

Teacher training was a top priority for most of the seven schools winning grants.

Colfax Elementary School in North Hollywood will use most of its money to sponsor a weeklong conference for its 26 teachers on fresh approaches to instruction. Franklin High School, near Highland Park, will spend about $5,600 on staff development programs to build stronger student-teacher relationships.

At Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles, the grant will provide for planning sessions to begin implementing a proposal to reorganize the school into five “complexes,” each with a distinct educational focus.

Like Jefferson, the two remaining grant recipients are focusing on more immediate needs of their students.

Vaughn Street Elementary School, in a low-income area of San Fernando, will add two classes to its preschool program and offer home visits to teach school-readiness skills to children not enrolled in preschool.

And at Marlton Special Education School, the grant will pay for field trips that pair disabled and non-disabled children, and sign language classes for the parents of deaf students.

In addition, all 33 schools that applied for the grants will be linked with business executives who have the technical expertise to help them implement reforms.

“They’re trying to accomplish the same thing we in industry have been struggling to achieve--a more efficient and effective environment,” said Jim Dorrenbacher, senior vice president at McDonnell Douglas, which helped fund the awards.

“We’re hoping we can learn from each other in this process,” he said. “We’re as excited about this as the schools.”

Education Grants

Seven Los Angeles Unified School District campuses have been selected to receive $10,000 grants to improve student achievement through restructuring. The grants, drawn from corporate donations, are provided through the L.A. School Restructuring Initiative, a joint project of the school district, United Teachers-Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Educational Partnership.

Here is a brief description of the projects the grants will fund:

Marlton School, Los Angeles: This special education school serves blind, deaf, mentally retarded and autistic children from preschool through 12th grade. Marlton will teach sign language to the parents of deaf students, take disabled students on overnight camping trips and provide field trips and special projects linking Marlton pupils with non-disabled students from neighboring junior and senior highs.

Colfax Elementary School, North Hollywood: As part of its plan to redesign the school’s curriculum, Colfax will sponsor a weeklong training session this summer to familiarize teachers with innovative instruction.

Vaughn Street Elementary School, San Fernando: Vaughn will hire two college students to expand its preschool program from 90 to 130 youngsters and send instructors to preschoolers’ homes to deliver lessons that foster the development of “school readiness” skills. The grant will also be used to fund teacher workshops on improving student assessment.

Fourth Street Elementary School, Los Angeles: The multi-track, year-round school will bring teachers in during their vacations to attend conferences and plan for the introduction next year of such teaching innovations as ungraded classrooms and multi-age groupings. Part of the money will also be used to translate materials explaining the new approach into a variety of languages for parents.

Franklin High School, Los Angeles: Franklin will hire a parent to coordinate activities to increase parental involvement, and teach the faculty how to personalize relationships with students and build self-esteem. Training sessions will also explore ways to incorporate multicultural and cooperative learning approaches into classroom instruction.

Hamilton High School, West Los Angeles: Hamilton plans to reorganize its school into five complexes, one each for music, math and science, foreign languages, communication arts and the humanities. The grant will be used to train teachers and involve parents in implementing the changes.

Jefferson High School, South Los Angeles: Jefferson will use its grant to enhance parental involvement at the school. The school will purchase a translating machine so meetings can be held simultaneously in English and Spanish, provide child care during school meetings and hire a parent to staff a resource room where parents can work together on school improvement projects.