Educational Success Stories

Say July, and the first word that comes to mind is usually not school.

But tell that to the San Fernando Valley’s two new college presidents, who started work Monday. Or to North Hollywood High School administrators and teachers who Wednesday launched a new and controversial year-round schedule barely two weeks after classes ended under the old system. Or to parents of kindergartners who, two months before the Valley’s newest charter school is scheduled to open, wielded brooms and paintbrushes to transform a vacant North Hills church into classrooms.

Each of these examples illustrates changes facing Valley schools--and show how individuals and groups are rising to meet the challenges.

* Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester has an insider’s knowledge of the CSU system and a background well-suited to leading the Valley’s only public four-year university.

Before coming south to take this job, Koester served in the No. 2 spot at Cal State Sacramento as well as on numerous statewide education committees and task forces. CSUN should benefit from both her administrative experience and her extensive contacts. But equally important is her field of study--intercultural communication--and how she came to that field as the child of German immigrants in a small town in Minnesota.

Such a past may seem a world away from CSUN (although Koester, like many CSUN students, was the first in her family to go to college). But Koester’s academic journey, fueled by her excitement at meeting people of different values, religions, political beliefs and races, bodes well for leading a campus considered one of the most diverse in the country. Her enthusiasm for the transformative effects of education--and for her new community--is expressed in a column on today’s Perspective page.

* Mission College President Adriana Barrera’s background is also a big plus for her job leading the Valley’s newest, smallest but fastest-growing community college. Mission serves mostly low-income Latino students, a community that Barrera knows and understands on a personal level.

She, along with Koester and a vast number of Mission and CSUN students, knows what it’s like to be the first generation to go to college. Barrera’s parents never finished elementary school, but encouraged hard work and education. Barrera and all but one of her five siblings went on to college.

Like Koester, Barrera loved school and excelled. But a stint in a nearly all-white school in Ogden, Utah, her junior year in high school also taught her how it felt to be an outsider. She has a deep appreciation for role models and mentors, whom she credits with her decision to pursue and complete her doctorate in education.

Barrera went on to serve as president of El Paso Community College, and Mission College certainly stands to gain from her administrative experience there, particularly in expanding the campus. But equally important is Barrera’s fervent belief in two-year colleges as lifelines for their communities.

* The decision by Los Angeles Unified School District officials to put North Hollywood High School, ranked one of the top campuses in the nation, on a year-round calendar left parents and students understandably disappointed. But don’t count the school out yet.

Principal John Hyland and a team of dedicated administrators and teachers have worked hard to ready the campus for the big changes in store. And Hyland is determined to make not just the best of the situation but a better school, period. Hyland would like to expand the school’s acclaimed academies, or schools within a school, both on and off campus. His ideas range from a social justice academy to one that builds on the school’s proximity to the entertainment industry. He sees such innovations as not only increasing the number of students that North Hollywood could enroll but engaging hard-to-reach students in new ways.

That Hyland can find the energy to do still more after the hard work he’s already invested just to make do is testament to his and his staff’s dedication. It would be a shame if parents--whose involvement has helped make North Hollywood the success that it is--gave up on the school and pulled their kids out before seeing what Hyland can accomplish. Better that they heed the wisdom of North Hollywood junior Velvet Bell, who told a Times reporter last week: “It’s hell because nobody knows what to expect from year-round. But I’m going to try to turn it into an opportunity.”

* Speaking of parental involvement--and opportunity--parents of kindergartners through sixth-graders are already hard at work to help ready a new charter school, the Valley’s fifth, scheduled to open in September. Valley Community Charter is the brainchild of educator Brenda Buonora, who will serve as its director. According to Buonora’s proposal, approved by the Los Angeles Unified School District board, students will delve deeply into subjects and will help teach each other through oral reports. And like most charter schools, Valley Community emphasizes parental involvement.

Laboratories for change, charter schools are publicly funded, but control finances and curriculum and operate outside most state and local regulations. In return, charter schools promise that they will improve student academic achievement. If successful, the small and nimble Valley Community and other charter schools can help nudge the more cumbersome LAUSD in new directions.

The LAUSD clearly needs the nudge. The district’s troubles and failures have, for too long, given education a bad name. But in looking at the enormity of the district’s problems, it’s easy to miss the success stories, those individuals and groups working--even in July--to restore education’s luster. Who cannot wish them well?