Graduation was only eight days away for Kenny Hoang when former Lawndale High School Principal Damon Dragos walked into his class during a final exam.
Dragos interrupted the silence of the exam room. Hoang paid little attention to Dragos' entrance until he saw a classmate point at their AP literature teacher, Linda Lai, who just had read a note from Dragos.
“She put a paper over her face and started crying,” said Hoang, headed to the University of California this fall, referring to his teacher. “She is someone who has a lot of composure. You would never expect her to cry.”
She had just gotten the word that other teachers in the four-campus Centinela Valley Union High School District also received this spring: she'd been transferred out of her school. Hearing that their favorite teachers wouldn't be there when classes resume in September set off a spontaneous march that sent hundreds of students out of their classrooms and on to the school track on the west side of campus – the closest they could get to the CVUHSD school district building – to loudly chant in unison against a district administration that has invoked a level of distrust, suspicion and fear among school staff, parents and even students.
Adrian Castro, a recent Lawndale High School graduate, was in the lead on June 16 walking hundreds of Lawndale students across the Lawndale High track to protest a recent round of teacher transfers. The student protest march was civil and orderly.
“This is the one thing for sure: teachers were not a part of this,” said Castro, the former Lawndale ASB president. “This was impromptu. It was a spur-of-the-minute decision. Teachers tried to stop us."
But they couldn't stop the students, who were determined to support their teachers just as their teachers have supported them.
Leslie Montes hoped to convey some advice — some parting words before departing for Harvard in the fall — to the Centinela Valley Union High School District board in her final months before leaving Leuzinger High School in Lawndale.
Montes, who graduated with a 4.2 grade-point average, hoped to tell the board it wasn’t right to entice students to attend school with giveaways. Perfect attendance during a specified period of time? Students could win movie tickets to an iPod in a raffle.
Montes won a camera.
“It’s the right intention, but it’s going about it the wrong way,” Montes said in a phone interview, the week she was about to depart for Harvard. She had hoped to read a letter she prepared at a board meeting near the end of the school year until she learned it had been canceled.
Getting students to engage in school is tough when there is a lack of continuity in school leadership and the absence of a strong teacher-administrator-superintendent relationship. Leuzinger High School has been ranked in the bottom 10 percent of high schools in California for over a decade. Since Superintendent Jose A. Fernandez took over the district in 2008, critics say that he has not put the school in a position to succeed.
Even in achievement, Margaret Fagano is not happy.
The principal at Prairie Vista Middle School let loose a joy-filled, exasperated sigh from her chair, looking at a rolling cork board covered with charts in the faculty room.
“Look at that number!” she said.
The charts on the wall send a dual message to Prairie Vista faculty members: it showcases achievement to the faculty, but the colorful charts also keep the faculty focused on the need to continue improving.
Debbie Johnson, principal at Lennox Middle School, by many accounts was one of a handful of people who was strongly disliked by Jose A. Fernandez, superintendent of the Centinela Valley Unified High School District.
With Dr. Cheryl White in charge of the district, there were many key positions at the district level left unfilled. The district did not have an assistant superintendent of human resources or an assistant superintendent of educational services. A micromanager, White also had holes at the directors of facilities, fiscal services and food services positions.
Johnson, according to several accounts, kept the educational services department running as director of curriculum and instruction under White. She continued to play an important role after Fernandez was named interim superintendent in 2008.
“She had put in place a lot of programs, and she had put in place a lot of talented people to make these programs work,” a former assistant superintendent said.
In the summer of 2009, Johnson asked Fernandez to make her the principal of Leuzinger High School.
“Leuzinger High School got to a point where they were in crisis,” Johnson said. “I told him I would pull them out of crisis and give them the leadership they need. He refused, even though two of his assistant superintendents told him that was the best idea. He refused.”
There are no comments yet, be the first!
