Honors High: Making Best of Tough Situation

As the newly elected president of the Inglewood School Board, I am compelled to reply to “Parents Lose Fight Over Inglewood ‘Honors High’ ” (Aug. 16), on our City Honors High School. The doom-and-gloom tone of your article was very unfair to the 17,000-plus students who attend schools within this district. While the board is very concerned with the 74 students who were displaced by the decision of West L.A. College to deny space to them for an additional year, we were judicious in our efforts to find a suitable location to house this program.

Because we know the importance of maintaining a program of this caliber, this board directed our staff to work with the parents to look at numerous locations and submit their findings to us, with budgets attached. Keeping in mind that any site must meet the state’s education code in order to house students, the costs to move this program were prohibitive. Another caveat was the looming possibility of budget cuts from the state and federal government. While the choice may not have been popular with the parents of City Honors High students, this board is cognizant that the decisions we make also affect our 17,000-plus other students. We recognize that this program will be housed on the campus of one of our designated “underperforming” schools, but on that site we are still educating children, we are intensifying our teacher recruitment efforts and our seniors are graduating and attending institutions of higher learning.

Cresia Green-Davis

Inglewood