Red-Letter Day in a Blue-Collar Town
On a scratch-and-sniff map of Los Angeles, Malibu would be the fragrance of SPF 5 tanning lotion, Bel-Air the scent of Chanel Cristalle and the city of Santa Fe Springs, in the industrial armpit of the county, would smell like honest sweat.
Fixed in the cross hairs of two freeways, shaped like it was gerrymandered to fit the angles of the railroad tracks for which it was named, Santa Fe Springs is one of those lunch-bucket towns that seem to go empty when the 5 o’clock whistle blows.
Yet 15,000 or so people live here, most of them Latino, blue- and pink- and white-collar, and all of them possessed of bragging rights that Malibu or Bel-Air would be pleased to claim: the highest rate of free-and-clear home ownership in the county, and, in the judgment of Redbook magazine, one of the top high schools in the nation.
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On any number of high school campuses in Los Angeles proper, that sharp, quick string of explosions would have sent students scattering for cover. At Santa Fe Springs High School, it was the popping of balloons in the school colors of black and yellow, ornamenting the Redbook honors celebration this week, and no one turned a hair.
SFSHS opened its doors 40 years ago, and the architect’s rendering hanging in the office of the school’s gangbusters principal, Sandy Thorstenson, does not look far different from the way the school looks now.
No security fence girdles the school, no gang graffiti mars it--none that stays visible for more than a few hours, anyway. Long-stemmed agapanthus blooms unbothered in brick flower beds. Students leave campus for lunch and stow their books in lockers--an amenity that drugs and guns have rendered virtually unheard of in other schools.
But other qualities brought SFSHS to the magazine’s attention, on a list it shares with four other California high schools, all of them in towns in the platinum-card income league.
Two-thirds of the SFSHS varsity sports players make the honor roll. In English classes, kids drill for SAT skills that students elsewhere pay extra to cram for. A quarter of the school’s graduates go to four-year universities. For those who do not, Dan Bradley’s new industrial “academy,” one of several themed study programs, puts carpeting under their feet and computer keyboards and lasers under their fingers. The academy gives to such work a dignity and status Bradley would not have envisioned when he began teaching plain old “shop” nearly 20 years ago.
The city may be working-class, but the industrial tax base is definitely in an exalted bracket. A city foundation helps with extras like microscopes and computers; local business people arrange internships and apprenticeships.
And the magic bullet that tops the wish list of almost every hand-wringing report on the state of schools: “parental involvement,” a bit of bureaucratese that covers checking homework and serving on committees and coaching soccer games--not just the perfunctory signing of report cards.
On the great day this week, a few of those parents sat in the school quad. Liz Mecha graduated from here 20 years ago and bought her parents’ house so her kids could do the same. Sheila Stevens bought land up near Sacramento, intending that her kids would never go to a public high school in L.A., and now they wouldn’t think of going anywhere but SFSHS. Nellie Avila’s elder son went from SFSHS to Harvard, and her younger son plans to do the same. Gail Rendon, whose relatives in Downey looked down their noses at Santa Fe Springs, finally shut them up with a few copies of the Redbook list and the note, “I don’t see Downey High on here.”
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By profession I am the looker-under of carpets, the peeker-behind of closed doors, the asker of the unpleasant question. What’s the catch? Cui bono, who profits? Are you sure this place isn’t really Stepford Springs?
A veteran teacher complained on the pages of the school’s aggressive student newspaper that many of the changes are feel-good and academically irrelevant. New ethnic mixes mean ethnic clashes. Since the Los Angeles riots, the school instituted twice-a-year diversity summits, and alumna Mecha was astonished to hear about kids posing questions that would stick in the throats of adults afraid of being labeled racist--like, “Why don’t Asian girls get split ends?”
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The TV vans had gone, the teachers, administrators and parents were nowhere in sight. Only four students, hanging out in front. So be honest: What’s the problem with this place?
Aurea Moya spent a year at another, rougher high school, in Bell. “You see a fight at other schools every day. Here it’s, what, once a semester? And look--we can sit there and have our lunch on the grass. It’s like a picnic. They actually have flowers here.”
What are their deepest worries, their concerns, what needs to change?
Denise Ward gives it a long thought and decides on this: “You have to ask the teachers for soap. They should have soap in the bathrooms.”
The others nod. By all means, yes. Soap.
