New Fremont High Principal Exhorts Parents to Help Out

Augustine Herrera walked around the largely empty auditorium Saturday, shaking hands with the few parents who showed up, many of them unaware that he had been named principal at Fremont High School last week.

“I need your help,” the seasoned Los Angeles Unified School District administrator pleaded in Spanish and English. “Don’t tell me, ‘Mr. Herrera, you’ve got to, you’ve go to,’ because I’ll tell you we’ve got to” work on improving conditions.

The plea for parental involvement was echoed by school board President Genethia Hayes. She called the meeting in hopes of setting up a parent council to help turn the beleaguered school around one week after its controversial principal, Guadalupe Simpson, was reassigned at Simpson’s request. Among the South-Central school’s immediate needs, Herrera said, are more training for teachers, more security, books and supplies, and more discipline among the 5,000 students.

Simpson, who is a cousin of Herrera, left Fremont on Oct. 29, not long after a survey revealed that more than half of its faculty had lost faith in her ability to solve the school’s problems, Hayes said. The board president added that she did not know where Simpson is working now.

Simpson, reached Saturday by telephone, declined to identify her new district job but said she is no longer a principal.

“I had just had enough,” she said of her decision to leave Fremont. “I’m not a martyr, not a missionary. . . . It was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.”

Simpson had long clashed with United Teachers-Los Angeles because of what the union viewed as her autocratic style.

Students, too, voiced frustration under Simpson’s leadership, and thousands walked out in September, demanding more permanent teachers, a new librarian and fewer searches by school police. They have also complained of inadequate access to counselors and not being advised on whether they’ve taken all the courses they need to graduate.

Such anger was absent among Saturday’s crowd, who applauded Herrera, a 36-year district employee and self-described “East L.A. veteran” who promised to work with them and to make fixes that would make the school a better place for their children.

“Major change doesn’t just come in five days; it will take some time,” he said. But “you have my promise I’ll work hard for you.”

Herrera is no stranger to troubled schools. Until last week, he was the principal designated for the Belmont Learning Complex, which sits atop a former oil field near downtown Los Angeles. The board is expected to vote this month on whether to complete the project.

He was principal of the old, overcrowded Belmont High School, which he helped divide into smaller “academies,” a move that was popular among students and teachers alike.

Herrera said it was his “personal choice” to come to Fremont. “It took me about two seconds to say ‘Absolutely, yes’ ” to the assistant superintendent’s request, he said.

Seventy parents, many of them familiar faces already active in school affairs, showed up Saturday to help craft a blueprint for the new council at the largely black and Latino school. Hayes, who represents the area that includes the school, was undaunted. “If there had been only two of you, I still would have come,” she told the crowd.

Black and Latino parents with poor language skills have been traditionally looked at as a “deficit” by schools, making them reluctant to get involved, Hayes said afterward. But by forming a parent council--she expressed hopes to start one at each of the 91 schools in her district--those parents could become a formidable force, she said.

Some questioned whether forming yet another committee would do any good.

“There wasn’t even a sign-up sheet,” one complained. “How are they going to keep in touch with the parents?”