Even as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promises to enlist teachers and parents in his reform plan for Los Angeles schools, he has largely overlooked another group with a stake in his new enterprise: students.
Villaraigosa might want to listen to 16-year-old Yamileth Capetillo, who goes to class on an empty stomach many days because her crowded high school, the Santee Education Complex near downtown, runs out of hot food for the second lunch shift.
The mayor might also consider seventh-grader Michael Santizo, who fears that his education at Gompers Middle School in Watts has suffered because of long-term substitute teachers in math and science.
And then there is Roosevelt High School senior Cristhian Barrera, who must take Advanced Placement calculus during his vacation because the class isn't available on his track at the year-round school of 5,000 students in Boyle Heights.
Students at those three schools and four others were not given an opportunity to vote in elections last month in which teachers and parents decided whether the campuses would join Villaraigosa's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.
That, the students believe, was a mistake.
"We're the ones whose education is at risk," said Cristhian, a member of Roosevelt's Student Council. "Why not let the students be heard?"
Deputy Mayor Ramon C. Cortines, who will lead the partnership's new board of directors, agreed with the students.
He said he thinks it was wrong not to give them at least an advisory voice in the recent elections. And he insists now that they will be included in planning sessions that begin this month for the five schools that chose to join the mayor's partnership, including Roosevelt and Gompers, as well as Markham, Stevenson and Hollenbeck middle schools. Santee is awaiting a final vote of its teachers this month.
"Young people need to be provided the opportunity to become contributing citizens," Cortines said. "They have a lot to say."
Cortines said he believes the new partnership can address some of the problems raised by students, including the lack of lunch food at Santee.
But details have yet to emerge.
And late last month, it became clear that students weren't the only ones who felt left out. Michael O'Sullivan, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the administrators union, said he considered the elections invalid because there was no inclusion, as promised, of school administrators, about 35 to 40 people at the seven balloting schools.
