An Oasis of Hope Among Schools : Led by its new principal, Yvonne Chan, this school isn’t waiting for LEARN reforms, the bust-up-the-LAUSD ballot measure or any other instructions from above.

It’s the kind of comic strip you’d find wrapped around a piece of Bazooka bubble gum.

“Well, Johnny,” the principal says. “You seem to have a problem with school.”

“It’s not school I hate,” Johnny wisecracks. “It’s the principal of the thing.”

A few years ago, this wouldn’t have gotten many laughs at Vaughn Street Elementary School. Not only were test scores pathetic, but turmoil was so fierce that the principal became a target of death threats. She stayed off campus for two months.

What a difference three years make. Just three years . . . plus a visionary principal, an ambitious faculty and some dedicated parents.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Vaughn. Once considered one of L. A.’s worst elementary schools, it is now an oasis of hope. At a time when everybody seems to have a plan to fix the Los Angeles Unified School District--to reform it, restructure it or break it up--parents and educators would do well to keep an eye on Vaughn.

Led by its new principal, Yvonne Chan, this school isn’t waiting for LEARN reforms, the bust-up-the-LAUSD ballot measure or any other instructions from above. Vaughn is the first L. A. school to take advantage of a state law creating “charter schools” that operate with extraordinary autonomy. In effect, this school’s administration, faculty and parents are trying to break free from “450 Grand”--the term that school personnel use, often disdainfully, to describe district headquarters on Grand Avenue downtown--and make their own decisions about curriculum, budgets and personnel.

With a student body that is nearly all minority, this secession-minded school does nothing to help the arguments of those who glibly say that racism is the driving force in the San Fernando Valley-led movement to break up the LAUSD. More than 92% of Vaughn’s 1,200 students are Latino, mostly recent immigrants whose families crowd into tiny apartments and garages. Most of the other students are African-American, and a small number are Asian.

To be liberated from 450 Grand, Vaughn must have the blessings of 450 Grand. The Board of Education seems to see Vaughn as part of the solution, and Yvonne Chan is hopeful of a unanimous vote May 6.

This much is certain: Vaughn has earned the right.

Just ask Elsa Rojas. Three years ago, she became so fed up with Vaughn that she came to school to remove her daughters and put them in a Catholic school.

Then she met this Chinese-American woman who spoke fluent Spanish. Give us a few weeks, Yvonne Chan told her. If you don’t see dramatic improvement, come back and get your girls. Rojas agreed.

By then, Principal Chan was already hard at work. Her first step at rehabbing Vaughn was to enlist parents in a modest capital improvement project--the construction of a wall to create a courtyard in front of the school. Parents weren’t just sold on the aesthetics. “If there’s a drive-by shooting, we’ll know there’s a place to duck,” Chan explained.

Thus began many changes--on the campus, in the classroom, in the community. Staff morale soared. Fifth-grade teacher Thomas Eggerding said the new principal’s work ethic proved “infectious.” And when a foundation honored Chan with an educator-of-the-year award of $25,000, she donated every penny to the school.

Vaughn Street parlayed that money into more and larger grants that brought in nutrition and health programs and created a “family center” to provide job training and English classes for parents, as well as emergency food and clothing when needed.

Chan laughed when I asked her if she was independently wealthy. A native of Canton, Chan came to California at age 17 with $100 in her purse. She made ends meet washing dishes before building a 26-year career in education, including 17 years in the classroom. She lives in Northridge with her engineer husband. They just don’t need the money, now that the kids are grown and their grandparents have passed on.

So the answer was no, she’s not wealthy--not in the financial sense. But she figures her own experience--”I was a peasant too,” she says--helps her relate to parents like Elsa Rojas, an immigrant from Mexico.

Rojas’ daughters, you probably figured by now, are still at Vaughn.

It’s not surprising that political movements are courting Yvonne Chan. People who want to dismantle the school district ask her to come talk to their groups. So do backers of a voucher system measure to make it easier for parents to send their kids to private schools.

Chan is coy on some issues, outspoken on others. Vouchers, she says, would do more harm than good. Not surprisingly, Chan likes the fact that LEARN reforms will make principals more accountable for the success and failure of their schools. As for breaking up the school district. . . .

“That’s like asking I should vote on a UFO. . . . I’d have to see the plan. There’s no plan!”

So Chan, this revolutionary, hasn’t really chosen sides--with one exception.

“We’re on our side.”

For all the changes at Vaughn, this is just the first chapter. Test scores remain poor. And Eggerding, a former school principal himself, worries that the new management scheme envisioned for Vaughn under the charter arrangement would dilute Chan’s authority.

And it well might--not that Chan seems to mind. Instead she jokes about the “communistic” management scheme, brandishing charts like Ross Perot.

One shows the traditional administrative structure as a pyramid. The other shows the new “communications council” composed of nine committees, each with representatives from the administration, faculty and parents.

The committees look like covered wagons drawn into a protective circle. Inside those wagons Chan has written a message.

“Everyone has power . . . as much as you wish to give yourself.”

That, it seems, is the first lesson of Vaughn Street School.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Harris by writing to him at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Ca . 91311.