First off I want to thank the Westchester/Playa Del Rey Neighborhood Council for putting on this excellent forum and even deviating from the regular agenda to allow large group of people to speak. The Neighborhood Council is a first class way for the community to have a say and to be heard in our community. 

The Good News, The Bad News and the Expected News.

(6-4-02) Marlene Canter with Westchester High School Principal Dana Perryman bravely briefed and took questions from a surprisingly near full house of people who met at the Westchester/Playa Del Rey Neighborhood Council Meeting at the Senior Center.

Not surprisingly the meeting was pretty much limited to single questions (not the fault of the organizers) from the audience which mostly addressed how the surrounding neighborhood was affected by the presence of students and how the school will address those issues when more kids are bused in.

The Good News
The good news was that the LAUSD is currently building 79 new schools and from my subsequent research, 17 of those schools will be high schools built primarily where they are needed. In the South Central, Central, Eastern portions of LA and the Valley. How that will affect Westchester High School remains to be seen.

The Bad News
The bad news was that there are going to be more students added in the 2002/2003 school year but that the numbers would only be about 300 this coming year. The numbers though will go up significantly in the following years reaching the expected 3600 limit maybe in 2003/2004 or 2004/2005. This news was not received well by the audience and prompted some booing.

When people questioned them about the low API test scores, Canter and Perryman would point to the handout they made available that had a large list of names of students and the Colleges that they plan to go to. It is not known to me just how accurate the list is or if these colleges are actually enrolling the named students and recently there has been news of one Valley district that will not allow a student to participate in graduation ceremonies unless they submitted evidence indicating where they plan to go on to college or enlist in the military.

This appears to be some coordinated attempt by schools and districts to distract attention away from the low API test scores and substitute them with a better looking, though un-audited collection of student college applications and cast doubts on the SAT-9 results by comparing the two. After all, there has got to be something wrong with standardized tests if all the kids are going on to college! In related news, the LAUSD recently voted to not participate in the SAT-9 testing. LAUSD argues that the tests are not synchronized with State standards and that it is unfair to minorities. Parents want the testing to continue as it is their way to monitor the performance of the schools.

As noted previously, most of the questions seemed to refer to how homes in the surrounding area might be affected. A few parents plainly declared that given the current conditions they could not enroll their children in the public schools.

Canter and Perryman repeated numerous times through the night that if parents in the area did enroll their kids into the local schools there would not be nearly as much busing since the seats are first reserved for local kids and only when they are not filled are they then made available to 'commuter kids'.

The Expected
Towards the end of the question and answer session, I attempted to address both the school officials and the audience with my 'parents perspective of why many of us do not have enough confidence in the system to enroll our children, but when Canter saw that I had a prepared statement she suddenly did not have the time to allow me to read it took a few more questions and left shortly thereafter. I seems the school district and our new board member are not big enough to take a little criticism or that the criticism can only be dished out in a very controlled one question, one parent at a time.

Later in the meeting I met one parent who had made the commitment to enroll her son in the school.  She approached me after the meeting and told me that she saw www.westchesterkids.org and she felt that it took on a very hateful and destructive view of the school. I told her that couldn't be further from the truth and that my concern is with the LAUSD. How do you criticize the district without pointing out the deficiencies in our own local school? After all, what Westchester/Playa Del Rey parent would listen if I spoke about Jefferson High? I then said that I was concerned with the very low API score of 3 demonstrating the low academic performance of the school. District wide there are only 7 high schools of 56 that are at or above 5!( View chart )

She then told me one of the reasons that the scores are so low was because of the bused-in kids. My response to that was that I don't believe that at all. I believe that many if not most of those kids have the potential for 6's 7's and 8's. The problem that I saw was the combination of long commutes and crowded schools that do not help kids connect to their educational environment. As a parent I am concerned that it might also lower the academic potential of our kids well. Not something most of us (parents) are willing to risk.

I'm sure that there are other solutions to overcrowding rather than busing students. Perhaps nearby industrial suites or unused business suites could be leased like off campus classrooms. The students could shuttle take 'Ride-Share' type vans back and forth between classes much like the large aerospace companies do today. However it's done, the district must shake this 70's mindset that problems are solved with buses. Clearly they only create more problems for students and families. 

David Coffin