14-Year-Old Mover and Shaker Helps Get Library Built for Troubled Boys

Sixty-five years after opening its doors to troubled students, a Chatsworth school will soon have a library, thanks to the generosity of strangers, in particular a 14-year-old boy who wants to be an Eagle Scout.

An old locker room is being transformed into a library at William Tell Aggeler Opportunity High School, where only about 20% of the students are reading at grade level. Most of the school’s 130 students are boys who have had run-ins with the law and are referred by the courts. They live next door to the school in an institutional home called Rancho San Antonio “Boys Town of the West.”

“The majority of our boys have had years of school failure,” said Stephen Hooper, director of educational services at Rancho San Antonio. “If I can turn these kids into recreational readers, their chances of success in school will increase.

“Being a bookworm isn’t exactly cool, so we have to come in from the side door. Sometimes, it’s a skateboarding magazine. To find them one book they’re interested in, that’s the key.”

The library -- expected to open in late March -- will house the nearly 2,000 books now stored in Aggeler’s classrooms, 4,000 new books purchased with a $50,000 state grant, and another 1,000 books collected by Chas Duff, the Boy Scout responsible for the project, said Principal Robert Beck.

A volunteer is using a computer to catalog the books and students doing research will have access to a second computer.

“It’s a resource right on campus,” Beck said Friday, shortly after donated gray carpeting was installed. “It’s a great chance to do some higher-order skills like investigating and evaluating.”

Chas, a member of Boy Scout Troop 22, used some of those same skills in orchestrating the transformation of the old locker room. After hatching the idea of building a library at a school that didn’t have one, it took Chas five months to find a school that had ample space, then another 140 hours coordinating workers and raising more than $4,000 for materials and labor.

There were numerous delays, such as when the carpet installation had to be rescheduled because of rain. Even then, workers had to rip out and repour some concrete that hadn’t set properly.

“The lesson I learned the most is not to give up,” Chas said. “It’s like my neighbor told me, ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ ”

The Eagle Scout project has been a “great life lesson,” said Chas’ mother, Mindy Duff.

His efforts were recently acknowledged by Prudential Financial Inc., in partnership with the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals, which gave Chas the Prudential Spirit of Community Award.

As California’s top middle school volunteer, Chas won $1,000 and an all-expense-paid trip in May to Washington, D.C., where the national high school and middle school volunteer winners will be announced.

Shelley Deutsch, one of Chas’ teachers at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, said that since the student body learned of his prize, a dozen have expressed interest in wanting to participate in a large project. Deutsch oversees student volunteer work at the private school, which requires sixth- through eighth-graders to complete six hours of community service and an hour of school service a year.

Deutsch said Chas, an eighth-grader, has managed the library project while maintaining a 3.7 GPA, playing football and completing exhaustive applications for private high schools.

“I know a lot of adults who couldn’t do this,” she said.