Charter Job Lures Principal Out of Retirement

When Howard Lappin retired four years ago, many local educators celebrated him with envy. He had been an unconventional leader who turned a failing inner-city high school into one of the most respected in the nation.

But even as he gave his last commencement speech at the Foshay Learning Center in South Los Angeles, Lappin was thinking of his next endeavor. This time around, he would focus on charter schools -- a growing movement of publicly funded but independently run campuses.

To Lappin, 65, charter schools embodied all the concepts on which he had based his career: innovation, self-governance, enterprise and educational equity.

“The more I did research,” said Lappin, “the more excited I became.”

So last fall, bored with golf and office work, Lappin plunged back into the principal role as dramatically as he had left it. In an opening ceremony featuring balloons, tearful parent speeches and district leaders, Lappin introduced the College-Ready Academy High School, a charter serving 200 poor and minority students, near Foshay.

Lappin’s campus is the first of 20 charter high schools set to open over the next five years to serve disadvantaged students in Los Angeles. They will be run by the nonprofit Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools.

Parents desperate to find a small, safe school lined up to enroll their children. Some remembered Lappin, the white-haired man with slightly trembling hands who during his earlier 12 years as a principal turned an unruly, low-performing campus into a California Distinguished School. In 2000, Newsweek named Foshay one of the top 100 public high schools in the nation.

“He changed Foshay dramatically. It used to be a ghetto school. But it was peaceful when he was there,” said Marcela Aguayo,14, now a freshman at College-Ready. “My parents knew it would be a good high school because of Mr. Lappin.”

Not all public school leaders have embraced Lappin’s transition from mainstream schools to charter. Some see the movement as a threat to district control.

Once, superintendents and district officials used to line up to have drinks with Lappin at education functions, but now, “I don’t think many people want to have a drink with him at all,” said Yvonne Chan, principal of Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in the San Fernando Valley, the first charter school established in L.A. Unified.

Lappin said he maintains good relationships with many in the district, even though charters “always represent a fringe and a threat for some.”

He said he wants L.A. Unified to embrace charters as educational models that will help relieve overcrowding.

But if his experience at Foshay is any indication of how charters ultimately will be received by the district, Lappin said, he isn’t holding his breath.

“I don’t think they picked up on much of what we did at Foshay,” he said.

The district assigned Lappin to Foshay in 1989, at a time when it had a 22% dropout rate and averaged 400 student suspensions a year. Known for his stubborn style and hot temper, Lappin recalled nearly crying when he first walked the graffiti-marred halls.

Immediately, he urged teachers, parents and principals to help him reform the school. Together, they made decisions.

They kept the school open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and for several hours on Saturdays, as a haven for students. They changed the middle school into a K-12 learning center. They required student uniforms and instituted a “Tolerate no tardies” policy.

Lappin became a fundraiser, soliciting donations for mentoring and parenting programs. He opened a technology center and bought a bus for field trips.

The dropout rate plummeted. Graduates went on to Ivy League universities such as Cornell, Yale and Harvard.

But with success came envy.

Many principals thought, “There goes Howard, always getting backed by the school board, the business world, the national association for principals,” Chan said, adding that some critics believed “Howard is a lot of show.”

Lappin acknowledges he made enemies. Some principals asked him, “What did you do to get all that media?”

Now, he is back in the spotlight and happy about it.

“I love publicity,” he said. “What can I tell you?”

Lappin moves more slowly now, and his temper has softened. But he is still a hard-charging leader.

Some College-Ready teachers have complained about the long workdays Lappin implemented. They begin at 8 a.m. and stay until 4:15 p.m. most days.

He requires all students to take college preparation courses. Those who are failing must spend the lunch period in tutoring sessions. In four months, students’ language arts test scores have risen slightly.

“It’s not earth-shaking, but we’re getting there,” he said. “At least we are making progress.”

Lappin leaves his Porter Ranch home at 6 a.m. to arrive at school in time to greet parents on busy Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and round up students at a nearby doughnut shop. They call him “Papa Lappin.”

Walking past walls decorated with UCLA, Harvard and Dartmouth flags, Lappin tells one student to pull up his pants. As at Foshay, all students must wear uniforms.

During lunch, he dishes out Chinese chicken salad to students. He has to squeeze the budget to feed them, he said. Lunch for the whole student body costs $550 a day, but he is allocated only $450 a day.

Next year, Lappin will add sophomores to the school, which now consists of freshmen. He already has 100 applicants for 125 spots.

Lappin’s office walls are decorated with photos of former President Clinton and newspaper clippings about Foshay.

“I have a big ego,” Lappin said.

“We all want to say to ourselves, ‘Look, I was successful. These kids were successful because of me.’ ”

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Personal points

Howard Lappin met his wife, Ilene, when they were students at Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles. She was 16. He was 17. They went on a date at the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, which L.A. Unified is converting into a school.

* He used to be a big fan of the San Francisco 49ers, but not anymore.

* His second grandchild, Cassiday, was born May 19, 2005. His grandson, Liam, will turn 3 in July.

* Lappin and his wife are Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust. In July, they plan to visit the concentration camps during a two-week trip to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.

* After he retired, Lappin followed a workout plan at a fitness center three days a week. But since returning to work, he has rarely seen his personal trainer or been to the gym.