Locke Senior High School

At a better school, in a less desperate part of the city, Zeus Cubias might have shrugged off the disruption. But after a decade teaching at Locke High School -- one of the worst in the Los Angeles public school system -- he was annoyed when a recent geometry class ended with one more small reminder of how much things need to change. Cubias had wolfed down his lunch and hustled back to his room for the start of class. He launched enthusiastically into a special two-day lesson he had devised.

Music teacher Reggie Andrews teaches Locke High School students that it pays to attend school and to learn--literally. "Some people on campus don't like the idea of kids getting paid to go to school, but I know some of these kids wouldn't be here otherwise," said Andrews, 45, who has been teaching at Locke since 1968. About 600 students participate every year in Andrews' programs to improve attendance, grades and self-esteem.

A lunchtime fight at Alain Leroy Locke High School in South Los Angeles exploded into a major disturbance Friday, with teenagers allegedly swinging pipes and bats at one another, school and police officials said. As many as 300 students participated in the melee, which was the second such disturbance at a Los Angeles Unified School District high school in as many weeks. Six teenagers were arrested on charges ranging from weapons possession to assault on a peace officer.

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.

Challenging the balance of power in the city's public school system, a leading charter school organization is poised to wrest control of a failing high school from the elected Los Angeles Board of Education.

The family of 15-year-old Deliesh Allen, who was shot as she left Locke High School last week, pleaded Tuesday for an end to gang violence, requested prayers for her recovery and offered forgiveness to the alleged gunman. "We have got to stop the violence ... for all the children who've been shot," said Candacy Roberts, one of Deliesh's four aunts who held a news conference outside Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where Deliesh remains on life support.

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.

Sure it seems odd to be eating spicy chicken wings and discussing Aristotle with a young Muslim who thinks she's on the U.S. government's terrorist watch list, especially while hanging out with a bunch of high school teachers at Hooters. But then everything about Simone Shah's almost yearlong effort to return to teaching in Los Angeles has had a "Through the Looking Glass" quality. I began talking to Shah in March.

Perla Guzman didn't want to go to Locke High School after her older brother was beaten up on the way to his fifth period algebra class. She was even more doubtful her freshman year when she discovered a girl passed out in a bathroom stall who had tried to get high by inhaling air freshener. "But then I thought, 'If my brother can go through this, then I can go through it,' " she said. "I can do what he did." In some ways, Guzman may have done even more.

The family of Deliesh Allen-Roberts has stood and prayed by her bed since St. Patrick's Day, when she was shot in the head outside Locke High School. Their vigil ended on Good Friday morning, when the 15-year-old was pronounced brain-dead at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.