'Neglect' cited as part of problem at Locke High
Turmoil as the campus awaits its transition to charter school status may have contributed to a riot this month. A district official concedes that inattention from L.A. Unified has made the interim more difficult.
The impending transition from a traditional school to a charter school has left Locke High in a difficult purgatory, said students, parents, teachers and administrators, and may have contributed to tensions that boiled over into a campuswide melee involving about 600 students earlier this month.
The rioting occurred after months of turmoil as the district prepared to hand over the troubled Watts campus to Green Dot Public Schools, which is poised on July 1 to become the first nonprofit organization to run a traditional school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Inattention from the school district made the transition period all the more difficult, recently hired Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said.
"We did neglect Locke," Cortines said in an interview with Times reporters and editors. "And we neglected it as it related to security. . . . I would suggest we abdicated our responsibility."
In the middle of last year, Locke was a low-performing but relatively calm campus in a gang-plagued neighborhood. Third-year Principal Frank Wells was generally well regarded for his ability to control students without alienating them.
But the district yanked Wells in May after he openly sided with Green Dot's effort to build faculty support for making Locke a charter school, thereby removing it from direct district control.
To replace Wells, officials brought in retired Principal Travis Kiel, who lacked Wells' knowledge of the campus and its student body.
Many students protested Wells' removal. And after his departure, campus vandalism and graffiti rose dramatically.
"A few days after he was pulled out, there was kind of like a mini-riot," said 18-year-old senior Veronica Zuniga. "A lot of students felt they had nobody to restrain them. They started going wild in the hallways."
The school has had persistent problems with students wandering halls and grounds, not bothering to get to class on time, several teachers said. Nearly 20% don't show up at all on a typical day -- a long-standing issue at the school with an official enrollment of 2,600 students.
Another challenge was that, last fall, Locke had an influx of students from a neighborhood dominated by Blood gang members, said teachers, security staff and Green Dot employees.
This proved a recipe for conflict at a school whose black students come primarily from neighborhoods associated with the rival Crips. The school also is plagued by Latino gangs, who are potentially hostile to one another as well as to the black gangs.
