The principal of one of Los Angeles' most troubled high schools lashed out at the city school system Thursday, saying the behemoth organization is resistant to dramatic reforms needed at his campus and other low-performing schools.
"It is criminal to allow a school to continue on year after year, the way this one has," said Frank Wells, head of Locke High School in South Los Angeles. "I went to Locke thinking I could turn it around, but I ran into a brick wall."
Wells' comments came in an impromptu, impassioned speech given at a charter school in Inglewood run by Green Dot Public Schools -- one of the state's leading operators of publicly funded, independently run charter schools.
Until talks broke down last month, Green Dot founder Steve Barr had been negotiating with Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David L. Brewer and school board President Marlene Canter over a sweeping reform plan that would have divided Locke, near Watts, into several smaller schools. The two sides could not agree on how much autonomy Green Dot would have in running the schools.
Barr said he invited Wells to visit Green Dot's Animo Inglewood campus in light of the failed discussions with the district's top leadership that had neglected to include Locke administrators or teachers.
"No one who was actually from Locke, and Green Dot had been talking," Barr said. "I'm hoping this leads to some communication about what to do about the school."
Neither Barr nor Wells would elaborate on where that discussion might lead. But one likely possibility is that Green Dot will try to convert Locke into a charter school. For that to occur, a majority of the permanent teachers at the school -- those with two or more years' experience -- would have to agree to the idea, according to state law.
"Nothing is going to change in the lives of [Locke's] kids unless we do something revolutionary overnight," Wells said.
His words took on particular significance because U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was also visiting the Green Dot school and listened intently as Wells spoke in a room full of parents and teachers. Afterward, she introduced herself to Wells and reiterated her request to legislators to toughen the language of the federal No Child Left Behind Act to make it easier to overhaul chronically low-performing schools.
