LAUSD Approves Huntington Park HS Overhaul

Huntington Park - Presented with high dropout rates and failing test scores, the Los Angeles Unified School District board voted today to drastically overhaul Huntington Park High School, despite an exuberant march by hundreds of students who walked out of class and paraded to the board meeting.

The move means about half of the school's teachers will be replaced, and all faculty and staff members will have to re-apply for their jobs.

The campus will also be broken into a series of "small-learning communities," including the existing Libra Academy, a small-school learning environment.

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy said urgent change is needed, citing consistently low performance by students and a historically high drop-out rate. He noted that Huntington Park High School has 1,397 ninth-grade students, but only 645 seniors.

"One out of three students who enter Huntington Park in ninth grade will drop out within the next four years, seven out of a hundred students will actually attend a UC or a CSU," Deasy told the board. "Huntington Park is among 8 percent of California's lowest-performing schools."

Hours before the board voted, about 300 Huntington Park High School students walked out of classes and made a roughly five-mile march to LAUSD headquarters for the meeting.

The students were accompanied by some adults and police escorts to ensure they stayed out of the streets. Buses were on hand at the district's headquarters to take the students back to campus, but after the board's vote, the students continued to chant outside the building.

Student Veronica Franklin spoke at the board meeting, saying she understood the need for change at the school, but she questioned the fast track the district was taking. She asked whether such a change being taken in six weeks would be "positive change for us students."

"As a student I understand that Huntington Park High School needs to change. Change is essential. But we also need change in a positive and productive way," she said. "A reconstitution may be the answer, but the big question is, is there enough time?"

"Will Huntington Park High School be a certified school where students will actually be taught by well-qualified educators and not long-term substitutes?" she asked.

Deasy insisted that moving quickly was essential. He also stressed that Huntington Park's problems cannot be blamed on the fact it is in a generally low-income area.

"No one had better stand up in front of this administration and say the students cannot learn at high levels because youth happen to live in circumstances of poverty or do not speak English in their home as their first language," he said. "Not only is that garbage, it is proven to be not true in LAUSD. We have schools in LAUSD where more than 90 percent of the youth live in circumstances of poverty and scored the 90th percentile in their assessments. ... It is not destiny. It's our obligation to make that better."