Successes Mount at Sheenway School--but So Do Bills

Hope is a scarce commodity in the heart of Watts. But at the Sheenway School and Culture Center, it springs eternal from the heart of Aunt Dolores.

Her real name is Dolores Sheen Blunt, but to 42 African American students in brown plaid uniforms, she is simply Aunt Dolores--a take-no-guff, stand-up-straight, spit-that-gum-out kind of principal who does something very special at this private school at 10101 S. Broadway, in the rumbling shade of the Harbor Freeway.

Blunt teaches respect, self-pride and manners in a neighborhood often short on all three. She teaches reading and writing and arithmetic too, but don’t expect to find much in the way of institutionalized book learning at Sheenway.

“We’ve got all kinds of state-approved textbooks the kids use as a resource and for research,” Blunt said. “I rarely use them when I teach.”

What she does use, in a one-room-schoolhouse setting for preschool-through-12th-grade students, is simple common sense.

“I go by what they don’t know,” she said.

Each day begins with morning assembly, where the children line up in neat rows to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and to sing their alma mater (“Sheenway takes us, Sheenway makes us true to what we are . . .”).

Each day also brings assorted conflicts of human nature. On a recent afternoon, two boys stood before Blunt, one seething, the other contrite.

They had been arguing, and the exchange had degenerated into critiques of each other’s mother. Blunt, in a low, steady voice, admonished them to “find someplace to talk and come to some conclusion and write it down so I can see it tomorrow morning.”

Blunt, a medium-sized woman with salt-and-pepper hair, then looked the angry student straight in the eye. “Robert,” she said evenly, “your temper’s going to be the death of you.”

Aunt Dolores’ charges come from all points on the spectrum of societal ills. Some show signs of sexual abuse. Others have parents who are in jail.

One 10-year-old boy, now being raised by grandparents, had been locked in a trunk as a toddler while his father had sex with prostitutes in his car.

“He lay there in the dark, in the trunk, hearing everything,” Blunt said, shaking her head.

Rolisha Smith comes here joyously, determined to study hard and make something of herself. Her 14-year-old brother is a gangbanger, and she frets that “he could get killed on the street.”

Her mother, single parent Gloria Bluitt, has high hopes for the 9-year-old. “She would not miss a day out of school,” Bluitt said proudly. “She had a fever and was sick for two days, and every day she wanted to get up and go to school.”

Bluitt also has hope for her son, even though he seems beyond it. Nothing fazes him, she says, not even the body of a Crips gang member she dragged her son to see, lying in the street with its face blown off by a shotgun blast.

Her son’s reaction was not what she had hoped for. “He fell out laughing,” the mother said softly.

These are the kind of children Blunt wants to save. “It seems natural to me to want to take care of the helpless,” she said.

That mission is exactly what her father, Dr. Herbert A. Sheen, envisioned when he founded the school in 1971, six years after the Watts riots ravaged this neighborhood. He died in 1976.

“He was so wise, I just automatically accepted his terms,” Blunt said, explaining why she gave up her own desire to become a doctor and took over Sheenway instead. “He thought that education was the only way to empower his people.”

Sheenway began as a preschool. Over the years, higher grades were added as more and more children came here, their parents complaining of violence and inadequate public school curricula.

There are 400 students on Sheenway’s waiting list, all of them needing financial assistance. Tuition is $260 a month, but few parents can afford that, so Blunt uses a sliding scale. Consequently, the school relies heavily on private donations and volunteers.

Blunt, 55, raised her five children along with the other students. Once widowed and once divorced, her longest-lasting commitment is to Sheenway.

It has nearly gone under several times. Richard Pryor rescued Sheenway about 13 years ago by donating $100,000. Lionel Ritchie bailed her out four years ago with $45,000--an amount she owed the Internal Revenue Service for employer tax payments that were embezzled by a volunteer.

Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents Watts, is a frequent contributor.

“I think she is a wonderful human being who has dedicated her life to that school,” Waters said. “There’s nothing she could ask me to do that I wouldn’t do. I love her, because no matter what kind of problems she runs into--and she’s had a few, I tell you--she finds a way to fix it.”

The bank is threatening to foreclose on Blunt’s home, which she has mortgaged twice to keep the school going. A balloon payment of $190,000 is due, and Blunt doesn’t have it. She draws no salary from Sheenway and is financially supported by her son and personal donations from friends.

“I put it in God’s hands,” said Blunt, standing in Sheenway’s kitchen on a recent morning.

“I told them they could keep the house. But I’ve got to find somewhere else to live,” she said. “Not here. If I lived here, I wouldn’t get no rest. I’d have dying babies on my doorstep, people needing counseling.”

As it is, she is at the school most days from early morning to past 9 p.m., planning menus, supervising day care and watching weekly karate classes. Volunteers teach dance, music and photography.

Cheryl Anderson, a student at Cal State Northridge, teaches phonics as part of her work toward a master’s degree in special education.

“My roommate went here,” says Anderson, 25. “The ideals are terrific.”

As Blunt scurried off to handle a minor crisis involving a cut finger, Anderson confided: “She needs a lot more help. She takes on a lot. She knows everything about every one of her kids. It’s too much for one person.”