Chartered Schools

Risk-taking charter school operator Steve Barr is launching an effort through which parents would wrest political control of the L.A. school system from unions, school bureaucrats and other entrenched interests. The plan is for parents to form chapters all over town and improve schools, one by one, using the growing leverage of the charter school movement.

In a startling acknowledgment that the Los Angeles school system cannot improve enough schools on its own, the city Board of Education approved a plan Tuesday that could turn over 250 campuses -- including 50 new multimillion-dollar facilities -- to charter groups and other outside operators. The plan, approved on a 6-1 vote, gives Supt. Ramon C. Cortines the power to recommend the best option to run some of the worst-performing schools in the city as well as the newest campuses.

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.

California charter schools outperform traditional public schools in reading but significantly lag in math, according to a national study released Monday by researchers at Stanford University.

Locke High School English teacher Katy Bridger tried to give her fifth-period seniors a test while Byron Gordon sharpened pencils noisily, Deon Crockett wandered the room complaining at full volume and a girl cursed just as loudly at Deon for being rude. Daniel Dominguez dozed in the back. Pressing on, Bridger, a 23-year-old recent political science graduate from Tennessee, told students to put away their cellphones and iPods. One student demanded to know why, muttering the F-word.

A teacher-driven effort to unionize a celebrated Los Angeles charter school has, for the first time, extended the reach of the powerful local teachers union into schools that have largely -- and purposely -- operated without representation. Nearly 80% of teachers and other qualified staff members at The Accelerated School south of downtown have turned in pro-union signature cards, organizers said last week.

Arts and education philanthropist Eli Broad today will announce his largest investment to date in Los Angeles charter schools, $23.3 million to jump-start at least 17 new campuses run by two major charter-school organizations. Broad's gift is believed to be the largest by any private donor to local charter schools and underscores his goal of creating effective schools outside the direct jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Unified School District. L.A.

Jennifer Murphy knows tough schools. She has been cursed at and threatened, has broken up fights and confiscated weapons. Still, she looks slightly queasy as she sits in her glass-walled principal's office, staring at a huge flat-screen monitor. A videotape is playing. It shows a teenage girl standing outside the main office of Murphy's school. The girl glances around furtively, then hoists herself onto a counter and slides through a pass-through window, into the office.