Birmingham High School

Few chapters in recent Los Angeles public school history have been uglier than the one that is expected to culminate today with a Board of Education vote on whether to allow Birmingham High School to effectively secede and become a charter school. For months, the San Fernando Valley campus has been torn between pro- and anti-charter forces who have accused each other of, among other things, bullying, vandalism, burglary, racism and fraud.

If there was a brick wall, they walked into it. If there was a land mine, they stepped on it. When the history of charter schools in the United States is written, Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley may stand as a cautionary tale of all that can go wrong when a regular public school tries to convert to an independent charter. Yet despite all the obstacles -- despite a hostile teachers union and shattered friendships, despite a lawsuit and a last-minute financial meltdown -- Birmingham threw open its doors Wednesday as L.A.'s newest charter school.

A winter of discontent at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys has given way to a spring of discord. Next, it appears, is the summer of dissolution. The school of 3,200 students is undergoing a fierce struggle over its future and, in a sense, over the destiny of public education in Los Angeles. On the one side are the principal and perhaps a majority of teachers, who want to leave the Los Angeles Unified School District and open in the fall as an independent charter.

Two gang members were arrested Friday in connection with a shooting earlier this week near Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Walter Oswaldo Guerra, 18, of Van Nuys and Sanderson Montes, 18, of North Hollywood were being interviewed Friday night and are expected to be booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon or possibly attempted murder, authorities said. Both are affiliated with the Mara Salvatrucha street gang, police said.

\o7 \f7 On a September day 4 1/2 years ago, nearly 1,100 ninth-graders -- a little giddy, a little scared -- arrived at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. They were fifth-generation Americans and new arrivals, straight arrows and gangbangers, scholars and class clowns.

Each morning, when Gabriela Ocampo looked up at the chalkboard in her ninth-grade algebra class, her spirits sank. There she saw a mysterious language of polynomials and slope intercepts that looked about as familiar as hieroglyphics. She knew she would face another day of confusion, another day of pretending to follow along. She could hardly do long division, let alone solve for x. "I felt like, 'Oh, my God, what am I going to do?' " she recalled.

Isaac Castillo watched uneasily as a pack of 15 boys streamed out of a Van Nuys McDonald's. They paraded across Balboa Boulevard, ignoring four lanes of traffic. Isaac and four of his friends headed toward their car in the Del Taco parking lot. The other boys closed in. One faced Isaac. \o7You wanna fight?\f7 All year, Isaac, 17, had dodged confrontations with this group of teenagers. A rivalry over a girl had escalated into a bitter grudge.

One after another, high school dropouts said recently that they gave up in part because they felt no personal connection to their school, Birmingham High in Van Nuys. When Principal Marsha Coates announced plans Wednesday evening to strengthen the bonds that tie students and their families to the school, she didn't have to go far to illustrate the problem. Only about a dozen parents turned out for a meeting called to discuss the school's plans to significantly reshape itself.

A 16-year-boy was shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire near Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley on Wednesday afternoon in what Los Angeles police believe was a gang-related homicide. The shooting took place about 3:40 p.m. -- about half an hour after classes let out -- across the street from the campus near Balboa Boulevard and Haynes Street in the Lake Balboa neighborhood.