Garfield High, which became nationally known as the real-life setting for the film "Stand and Deliver," will be among the initial 12 local campuses, including six high schools, eligible for takeover because of persistent academic failure, officials announced Friday.
The nation's second-largest school system will invite bidders from inside and outside the district to run these schools next year through a proposal process that is still being developed.
The Los Angeles Board of Education authorized this school-control plan in August; it applies to low-achieving existing schools and to 51 new campuses set to open over the next four years in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Garfield, which for decades has served a largely immigrant Latino population in East Los Angeles, reached a high-water mark in the 1980s, when math teacher Jaime Escalante built his famed calculus program.
Under his leadership, dozens of students passed the Advanced Placement calculus test every year, a rare feat even at the nation's elite schools.
Last year, only 5% of Garfield students tested as "proficient" in any math class.
"All these schools need the attention that this will focus on them," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, author of the policy.
Other schools include:
* Maywood Academy in the southeast Los Angeles County city of Maywood. The school opened four years ago. Maywood city officials are interested in obtaining substantial control over the school, said City Councilman Felipe Aguirre.
* Jefferson High in Central-Alameda. District officials successfully opposed a previous charter conversion attempt by Steve Barr and his Green Dot Public Schools. Barr later engineered a takeover of Locke High.
* Lincoln High in Lincoln Heights. Teachers helped staff a volunteer summer school after budget cuts slashed district offerings. One potential course that failed to attract sufficient enrollment was an activism seminar with the proposed class project of recalling Flores Aguilar because she voted for budget cuts that resulted in layoffs.
* Burbank Middle School in Highland Park, where parents have long worried about gang influence on campus. The school also has two new magnet schools that, some argue, already are the basis of a promising reform.
* San Fernando Middle School, the only Valley campus.
