Verdict in Mock Trials: a Win for Public Schools

The public school students from Jefferson Middle School in San Gabriel didn’t have matching blazers and plaid ties like their opponents from private school, but it didn’t matter Tuesday when Jefferson’s team won the Los Angeles County Mock Trial Semifinals.

“It feels great,” said Jefferson student Vanessa Menchaca, 13. “Everybody thinks public schools aren’t as good as private schools. I like to prove people wrong.”

The countywide competition began with dozens of schools. By last week, Jefferson was the only public middle school left, having defeated schools such as Harvard-Westlake Middle School of Beverly Hills and Laurel Hall Lutheran School of North Hollywood. In fact, both of Jefferson’s teams were still in the running, along with those of six private schools.

On Tuesday night in Los Angeles Superior Court, one Jefferson team defeated Viewpoint School of Calabasas, putting Jefferson in the final competition at the end of the month. The other Jefferson team lost to Riviera Hall Lutheran School of Redondo Beach.

Inside two quiet courtrooms, students acted as lawyers, witnesses, bailiffs and court reporters. Each of the four teams argued or testified in a fictitious trial of two street drag-racers who hit a car, killing two people. Judge Bradford Andrews presided over one trial, sustaining and overruling objections from the acting attorneys. During closing arguments, the students pumped their fists and raised their voices.

“They were excellent,” Andrews said afterward. “It’s their presence, their ability to stand up and express themselves. The teams were very evenly matched.”

Jefferson’s teams practiced in a bungalow after school and on weekends. Many of the 22 team members came from immigrant families and spoke a language other than English. About 42% of the students at Jefferson are Latino and 43% are Asian. About 30% are learning English, and 60% qualify for free or subsidized lunches.

One Jefferson student borrowed a blazer from the coach’s husband for the competition. Others bought theirs from Goodwill. One student taped his tie to cover a stain on his dress shirt.

The students sold chocolate to cover the entry fee of $400 per team.

“When we took down Harvard-Westlake, we were like, ‘Wow, this is an amazing feat,’ and we felt it,” said Heather Wolpert-Gawron, a Jefferson teacher and coach for the competition. She said their victories showed that “these kids can accomplish just as much as those other kids. These kids are just as capable.”

Jefferson student Tina Nguyen, 12, played the role of a prosecution lawyer against Riviera Hall on Tuesday. Even though her team lost, she said she was proud of her school’s overall victories against the private schools, which had more resources. The Riviera Hall team, in addition to a teacher/coach, had three working lawyers coaching it.

“It’s ironic,” Nguyen said. “We’re seen as dumber. Yet we beat all of them.”

The coach for Harvard-Westlake’s team, Noah Salamon, is an attorney who now teaches English at the school, where tuition runs $21,400 a year. He said the team members felt like the underdog because it was the first time the middle-school students had competed in the mock trial.

But the Jefferson teams, he said, “were astoundingly good. Their kids were really excellent.”

Jefferson’s mock trial program began in 1998 under Lee Rosental, a now-retired history teacher who still coaches with Wolpert-Gawron, a Shakespeare scholar who teaches speech, debate and language arts.

“Some people believe if you go to [teach at a] private school, you’re getting the most intellectual and the best students,” he said. But the Jefferson kids are smarter than he is, Rosental said.

The mock trial program was begun in California by the nonprofit Constitutional Rights Foundation 27 years ago to help students understand the legal system.

Though the middle school competition ends at the county level, high school winners go on to compete in state and national mock trial competitions.

In the past, students have debated cases about murders and credit card fraud. Foundation members write each case, designing them to be used also in classroom lessons.

As the trials begin, 250 lawyers and judges volunteer to score the teams or preside over the cases.

Of the 38 middle schools signed up when the competition began, half were private and half were public, said Laura Wesley, of the Constitutional Rights Foundation.

After one of Jefferson’s first victories early in the competition, team member Sean Lo, 13, heard some private school students grumble, he said, that they “lost to a public school.”

But several students said they don’t let the comments get to them.

Jefferson student Michael Guerrera, 12, is the son of a truck driver and a stay-at-home mom. “It would be a struggle for my parents to pay more money to get that kind of education,” like private school students get, he said. He and other team members call their campus “the little public school that could.”