A Dispatch From the Front Lines

By KRISTINA SAUERWEIN and KARIMA A. HAYNES

Oct. 15, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

In blunt and eager voices, students quickly reveal their assessments of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s most immediate, crucial needs and problems:

* “Metal detectors don’t work, because kids can hide weapons in their shoes and no one will say anything.”

* “The covers are falling off of my textbooks. Some of them look like they were here since my parents went to school. I have a health book that’s older than I am.”

* “I’d rather wait until I go home to use the bathroom.”

* “I can never find my teacher to ask her for help, because she doesn’t have her own classroom. We have a lot of traveling teachers, we’re so crowded.”

Those voices come from about two dozen students of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds in high schools throughout Los Angeles. In light of high-profile district debacles such as the $200-million, environmentally troubled Belmont Learning Complex, a half-completed high school near downtown, The Times informally interviewed more than two dozen students about their most pressing educational concerns.

Although just a small, unscientific sample in a behemoth system with nearly 708,000 students, the teenagers provided responses that highlight the need for district administrators to solicit students’ opinions more. Too often, school officials concede, the focus has been on attending seemingly endless meetings, hiring consultants and conducting lengthy and sometimes costly analyses, complete with colorful flip-charts.

“It’s easier than talking with students,” said mayoral candidate Steve Soboroff, chairman of a committee that oversees the spending of funds from Proposition BB, the $2.4-billion school repair and construction bond issue that voters approved in April 1997. “But students are the ones who know the most” about school conditions, followed by custodians, teachers, principals and, finally, district administrators, he said.

Like students across the district, Patricia Lopez, 17, a senior at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, said she is concerned about crowded classrooms, worn and torn books and a shortage of credentialed teachers. But overall, Lopez said her teachers have done a good job of preparing her for college. With an estimated 4,520 students in one of the district’s most crowded schools, however, she said there is only so much teachers can do.

To ease crowding, Roosevelt students attend school on different year-round calendars and, depending on the track, students might have a difficult time getting teacher references for college applications or properly preparing for Advanced Placement exams, she said. Many teachers are also hard to track down for help because they operate without a home base, traveling between classrooms.

“It’s, like, we’re crammed together,” said Lopez, a student body vice president. “It can make learning hard.”

A Catalog of Needs

Although not as packed as Roosevelt, the Westside’s University High School, with an enrollment of 2,411, still has funding needs, such as new textbooks, students said. Ronnie Thomas, 17, a senior from South-Central, said he is one year younger than his tattered health book, published in 1981.

Thomas and five other student leaders led a Times reporter on a tour of the school Monday, into rooms with concrete floors and pipes hanging from the ceiling.

In the library, six aging computer terminals sat silent and covered. Freshman Puya Abassi, 14, of Westwood complained that students can no longer search the school library’s computerized book catalog and must instead rely on the old-fashioned card catalog.

Girls decried their ground-floor bathroom, which had no hot water, a rotting ceiling and toilet stalls without doors. “It’s unbelievable,” said Valerie Horn, student body vice president. “I’d rather wait until I go home to use the bathroom.”

Outside, rickety wooden bleachers stood beside the football field, while the baseball field had a threadbare look, with little grass and hard-packed dirt.

Perhaps saddest was an area of the campus the students called Indian Springs, built on the site of a former Native American burial ground, a small park-like setting containing a natural spring.

The landscape was neglected. A chain-link fence surrounded brown grass. Plants were dying. A greenhouse had no glass, and its frame was covered with graffiti.

Of the once-beautiful area, 17-year-old Charlie Sheen (no relation to the actor) said: “It makes me feel proud that the school was once like this. It makes me want to make it better. But I wish the school board would help more.”

University High Principal Cynthia Ann Petty said the school has already received grants, including Proposition BB funding and federal earthquake aid, to fix many of the major problems cited by the students. This includes money to paint the bleachers, replace the library’s computers, repair a run-down greenhouse and install lawn sprinklers.

“Everything [the students] mentioned is either planned or in the works,” Petty said. “By the time June comes, and perhaps by February, there will have been great strides to remedy those things.”

Several students across the district said they felt comfortable discussing concerns with teachers and principals but criticized communication between local administrators and those in downtown offices.

“If there is no pressing need, we get bypassed,” said Mahta Eghbali, 17, a senior at Van Nuys High School and a student representative on its school-based management board. Her wish list for Van Nuys includes more funding for school supplies, campus beautification projects and recruitment programs for qualified teachers.

Fresh paint and new plants would boost student morale, she said. As for the faculty, Eghbali said that when longtime teachers retire, they leave behind a legacy of caring that cannot be easily replaced by inexperienced teachers.

Sadly, Celia Thomas said, her biggest concern at Gardena High School cannot be remedied completely. Every day, the 17-year-old said, she worries about school violence.

In January, her boyfriend, Jeffrey Gardner, the school’s starting quarterback, was shot to death while sitting in a car with friends in Lennox. Although the shooting did not occur during school hours, Thomas said a similar incident could happen at her school.

As student body president, she said she tells administrators that “we need more student activities during and after school so everyone will have something to do” instead of fighting.

Gardena Principal Michael Perez said the school has a safety plan as well as two police officers supervising the campus throughout the day, among other measures. If he had unlimited funds, however, he said he would increase security.

“It helps me to listen to students like Celia,” Perez said.

Trying to Make a Better Connection

Soboroff agreed, citing students in South-Central as a case in point. Taking about 200 photographs of corroded water fountains, missing ceiling tiles, and clogged toilets in the summer of 1997, dozens of teenagers helped steer $153 million in Proposition BB and district funding toward school repairs.

The youths presented the photos to the bond committee. “The students were very effective,” Soboroff said. “They were angry, but they didn’t come across as angry. They created a presentation, and they did it very respectfully.”

Bureaucrats and students learned from each other. “Not the typical three minutes and you’re up,” he said, referring to public meetings. “It was a life lesson.”

Historically, district officials “don’t have their fingers on the pulse” at campus schools, said Caprice Young, a recently elected Los Angeles Board of Education member who tries to meet with students several times a month. “There’s a big disconnect between students and the district.”

Officials said they are trying to make a better connection. Two years ago, for instance, board members initiated an annual survey seeking input on a range of topics, from graduation requirements to school activities to whether students needed more counselors. (In last year’s survey of 1,876 students, 44% said they had never met with their college counselor).

Each year, the district also hosts an annual informal gathering of 600 or so interested students. Supt. Ruben Zacarias and board member Julie Korenstein listened last spring as honor students, outcasts and former gangbangers talked about violence, sex and the influence of music.

“It’s very valuable to listen to the kids,” said Korenstein, who helped sponsor the 7-year-old sessions. “As adults, we can be busy and removed from their experiences.”

Korenstein also said that at every board meeting, at least three students from various high schools share their campus experiences, positive and negative.

Gohar Galyan, 18, a senior at Marshall High School in Los Feliz, has attended a board meeting. But she said members were late getting started and inefficient.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath that they could get anything done,” she said, her expectations further crushed by the Belmont fiasco. “I didn’t have a great deal of confidence [in the district], but Belmont confirmed it.”

She has complained to teachers, her principal and school board members and wrote an article for LA Youth, an independent citywide newspaper by and about teenagers. She lamented her water-damaged textbook, bad teachers and a classroom so jammed that students had to lean against the wall and sit on windowsills.

Galyan said she encourages students to speak up about campus problems, because otherwise their needs might go unnoticed. More teachers and administrators, she said, “need to show they care.”

Times staff writer Hudson Sangree contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

By the Numbers

The Los Angeles Unified School District is the nation’s second largest, after New York City.

Number of Schools

Elementary: 424

Middle: 72

Senior High: 49

Multilevel: 5

Magnet: 20

Continuation Senior High: 45

Special Education: 19