Private Schools

Mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán hosts "Open Call," KCET's new Thursday evening show featuring performances at Southern California's top arts schools and institutions. The L.A. native maintains an active performing schedule - her next gig is singing the role of Bertha in San Diego Opera's production of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," opening April 21 - and helps groom young artists as the director of L.A. County High School for the Arts' Office of Community Engagement. Tell me about "Open Call.

LIANGHE, China - When kindergarten was dismissed on that April afternoon, 6-year-old Ren Xinyi and her younger cousin hurried home. They were eager to check out a plastic bag they had spotted on the way to school that morning with their grandmother, who had taken it home without thinking twice. Xinyi looked inside and grabbed a blue pencil and notebook; 5-year-old Ren Zhaoning took out a children's yogurt drink and sipped half of the creamy white liquid before handing it to her cousin.

When Lashon Academy opens its doors this fall, its students will be taught to read and write in both English and Hebrew - a first for a public school in Los Angeles. But the approval of the charter school last month has raised concerns that it and others, particularly dual-language charters, blur the line between private and public campuses by accepting public money to cater only to a certain demographic. Lashon Academy, planned for Van Nuys, is modeled after the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn, N.Y., which opened in 2009.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Sixteen children and a teacher were killed Saturday when their school van burst into flames in eastern Pakistan, apparently due to a short circuit. President Asif Ali Zardari expressed "deep shock" over the tragedy and ordered authorities to investigate the incident. Pakistani media quoted police officials as saying the van was moving through eastern Punjab province when a short circuit ignited gasoline leaking from the fuel tank. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the van was carrying 24 children.

A new foundation created by proponents of school vouchers is offering $2.4 million in private school scholarships for low-income children in Los Angeles and Orange counties, a foundation leader said Tuesday. Similar to projects operating in about a dozen U.S.

Most solicitations don't begin with the words "don't give," but that's the approach being used this year by the private Oakwood School in a clever, celebrity-packed appeal timed to its annual fundraising drive.

At the private New Roads School in Santa Monica, 20 families decided not to re-enroll in the fall because of financial nervousness. At Loyola High School near downtown, 40 families have come forward since the beginning of the school year seeking financial aid to help cover tuition costs, even as the school's endowment -- heavily invested in equities -- has taken a battering in the financial market.

LIANGHE, China - When kindergarten was dismissed on that April afternoon, 6-year-old Ren Xinyi and her younger cousin hurried home. They were eager to check out a plastic bag they had spotted on the way to school that morning with their grandmother, who had taken it home without thinking twice. Xinyi looked inside and grabbed a blue pencil and notebook; 5-year-old Ren Zhaoning took out a children's yogurt drink and sipped half of the creamy white liquid before handing it to her cousin.

A study released last week by the libertarian Cato Institute showed that students are transferring in unexpectedly large numbers from private schools to charter schools, but it framed the shift as a largely negative development. It's true, as the study reported, that such transfers cost states and taxpayers more; unlike private schools, charter schools get most of their funding from state tax dollars. Still, we see a lot to celebrate. For years, urban public school systems such as the Los Angeles Unified School District have tried, with limited success, to lure private school families as a way of bringing in more enrollment and resources.

Re "Costly migration to charters," Aug. 28 Someone needs to officially diagnose the Los Angeles Unified School District with bipolar disorder. Instead of celebrating the fact that, because of the proliferation of charter schools within the district, "parents of means" are regaining enough confidence in public education to re-enroll their children in public schools, L.A. Board of Education members like Steve Zimmer are complaining that the influx of these students is putting a financial burden on the district.

Los Angeles' two mayoral candidates said Tuesday that they support making teacher evaluations public, going well beyond a level of disclosure that is supported by top school district officials. City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti said they backed the release of individual performance evaluations based on so-called "value-added" formulas, which are controversial both locally and nationwide. These measures use the past performance of students on state standardized tests to help gauge a teacher's success, taking into account such factors as race and income.

You could say that Carpenter Elementary in Studio City owes its survival to students from other neighborhoods. A generation ago, their presence kept the campus from being shut down, after local families fled to private schools to avoid Los Angeles Unified's mandatory busing program. By the time busing ended in 1981, fewer than 50 of Carpenter's 450 students were children from the neighborhood. Former Principal Joan Marks spent years going door-to-door, luring locals back with the promise of a school they could be proud of. Today Carpenter Community Charter has almost 1,000 students.

Re "Tax vote reflects differing realities," March 9 The Times should be wary about printing such an enlightening article, which notes that though voters in less well-off L.A. neighborhoods overwhelmingly supported Proposition A (the failed half-cent sales tax increase on the city ballot last week), those in wealthier areas decisively rejected it. To document the wealthy's disdain for taxes that might help the poor risks banal accusations about fomenting "class warfare. " Readers might draw unjust conclusions about those most vociferously opposed to tax increases for the public good.

When Lashon Academy opens its doors this fall, its students will be taught to read and write in both English and Hebrew - a first for a public school in Los Angeles. But the approval of the charter school last month has raised concerns that it and others, particularly dual-language charters, blur the line between private and public campuses by accepting public money to cater only to a certain demographic. Lashon Academy, planned for Van Nuys, is modeled after the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn, N.Y., which opened in 2009.

The last issue of L.A. Youth has gone to press. The newspaper produced by teenagers for teenagers survived for 25 years in city schools but now has reached the end of its run. "It's over," said Donna Myrow, L.A. Youth's executive director, who started the newspaper with students working at her kitchen table. Over the years, it grew to have an office of its own, where students would come to produce a newspaper that was distributed to the classrooms of more than 1,200 teachers across Los Angeles County.

I grew up in South Los Angeles at a time and in a neighborhood where, even for a child, having a gun pointed at you happened. For me, the first time was when I was 12 years old. I'd gone around the corner to visit a friend and a pretty new girl who had recently moved in next door to him. We were roughhousing, and somehow the girl fell and hit her head. She stood and accused me of deliberating hurting her; then she left. Before I could decide what to do, she had returned with a gun, which she pointed at me. "You hurt me," she said, tears running down her cheeks.

When he was a kid, Kent Taylor bounced from school to school in South Los Angeles until his family landed in Inglewood. In sixth grade, he started classes at an elementary school under the LAX flight path. Thirty-six years later, he's back where he began. "This very classroom set me on my course through life," he told students at Oak Street Elementary on a recent day. As some of them whispered, wondering if the slender African American man before them was President Obama, Taylor spoke of how he struggled to read and do math until one teacher singled him out. "I understand what you are going through because I have been there, sitting right where you are sitting.

It's not exactly where you might expect to find an example of public school success: The campus is in a former flower mart, across the street from the Greyhound station and a short walk from skid row in an industrial area of downtown Los Angeles. But inside the Para Los Ninos Charter School, children defined by disadvantage are proving skeptics wrong. I paid a visit to the school last month, after I'd mentioned it in a column about an effort by parents in nearby South Park to create a new Metro Charter school for children living in the upscale neighborhoods near L.A. Live downtown.