A triumph 14 years and $10 million in the making
Kindergarteners in handmade sun and rainbow hats stand on our neighborhood elementary school’s shiny new stage belting out a heart-lifting song. At first I can’t decide whether to label this cheerful ribbon-cutting ceremony the symbol of a triumph or a fiasco.
It’s been a while since my wife and I showed up at the first meeting to discuss the need for an auditorium at Mount Washington Elementary School. At the time, our youngest son was a year away from starting kindergarten. In a month he graduates North Hollywood High bound for Cornell. The story of why it took 14 years and $10 million to get the children at this hilltop campus a sheltered place to eat and perform says plenty about the L.A. Unified School District and public education in America. Listen, please, and learn.
The saga began with parents grumbling that our kids had to waltz and warble their way through talent shows and holiday celebrations on an asphalt playground. Even in the rain or under a brain-baking sun.At that first meeting -- probably a potluck, definitely in someone’s kitchen-- a parent suggested that a school auditorium might also serve as a much-needed anchor for the community, a place for concerts and lectures, and the sort of grass-roots public meetings that get auditoriums built.
“Yeah!” neighbors said. “Cool!”
Of course, the district wasn’t building much back then. So I popped off a half-baked idea. Raising private money for an auditorium might be easier if we named our little project after Mount Washington’s most famous resident, the beloved -- and then still living -- Los Angeles Times columnist Jack Smith. Maybe we could make the building a center for children’s literature. We could share our resources with sister schools in poorer neighborhoods and bus in students from across the district for workshops.
At this point a parent who lived near the school butted in to shred me and the idea of building anything. He wasn’t alone in his wrath. It took only a couple more such meetings before I retreated behind the facade of journalistic neutrality.
Other parents refused to back off.
Calling themselves the Friends of Mount Washington School, they swarmed around the notion that for students to succeed, they need the help of their community; that every community needs a gathering place; that there’s no better place for neighbors to come together than the local public school.
As they pursued this seemingly simple plan, principals came and went. Some obstructed. Some helped.
Friendships foundered. Nastiness flared. Fundraisers depleted homes of baked goods and used NordicTrack machines.
Anyone in a position of civic authority found themselves sucked into the project by a shifting cast of relentless parents. Pockets of money materialized, but complex earmarking often limited how it could be spent. Parents floated a local bond measure. It failed.
Finally, in the late ‘90s, voters began backing construction bond measures and Supt. Roy Romer’s Seabee pals fired up their backhoes and nail guns. The Friends of Mount Washington finagled its way into the new mother lode of construction gold.
I don’t have space to describe all the sad setbacks Mount Washington Elementary encountered, even after construction crews at long last broke ground.
Here are two:
That ground turned out to be tainted, and getting it hauled to the right dump took eons.
Then, with just weeks to go before completion, an inspector reported that the fire suppression “deluge tank” installed to douse the stage held too few gallons of water to meet code. A pump was needed to provide pressure. Crews installed one and built a pricy shed to house it on the playground. In the end, a project I’m told was to have been 17,000 square feet and cost about $2 million wound up costing more than $10 million for a more modest 10,900 square feet.
With that dough, the district could have bought seven of the hill’s nicest McMansions -- lawns, pools, music rooms, gourmet kitchens -- and let one grade have the run of each. Instead they got a nice room with a stage, a new library (our friend Clare, the librarian, loves it), a teachers lounge (the teachers reportedly don’t like it much) and a slick stainless-steel, commercial-grade kitchen that no one can use, I’m told, because there aren’t quite enough students in the school to justify hiring the personnel to run it.
A district press release applauded the Jack and Denny Smith Library and Community Center as the first parent-driven project of its kind in the district’s history. Supt. David Brewer said its completion would “make headway for other community groups and organizations to bolster and take ownership of their neighborhood schools.”
But then this is LAUSD we’re talking about.
Our neighbor Warren Christensen, by all accounts the most tenacious force behind the effort, continues to fight what he sees as the pointless fees and stupefying tangles of red tape district officials keep shoving under his nose as if to discourage the very community use for which the building was designed.
And yet, on Saturday, June 2, the neighborhood will open its school auditorium for a daylong “community showcase” featuring music, dance, art exhibits, storytelling and lots of food.
Years ago, Christensen offered a quote from Goethe: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
I think of that at the ribbon-cutting as I watch the singing children and their teary-eyed parents.
I think of that a few minutes later, as I eat cupcakes with Mrs. Bohannan, my own children’s kindergarten teacher, returned from retirement in a walker to admire the changes at her school.
And I think of that quote as I seek the right ending for this, my final School Me column.
I remain troubled by all that needs fixing at so many public schools. But our little Mount Washington auditorium -- yes, it’s a triumph -- assures me that things aren’t as futile as some presume. Sure, people’s efforts were plagued by inertia, backstabbing, incompetence, sloth and stupidity. But a group of determined parents teamed with engaged leaders and (belatedly, expensively) pulled it off.
I have no doubt that at least a few of the moms and dads I see holding their kindergarteners’ hands on the asphalt playground will press on. I have faith in them and in the majority of teachers, principals, education writers, charter revolutionaries, endlessly harrumphing gadflies, charmingly cocky union bosses, aphorism-spouting former admirals, and mayors-who-would-be-president, district- and nationwide.
May they and the students they serve find more triumphs than fiascos in the glorious struggles ahead.
