In a surprise vote, the district board blocks LAUSD’s takeover of Locke High

In a dramatic move, the district board rejected the Los Angeles Unified School District’s attempt to regain control of the Locke High charter school in Watts, allowing an outside nonprofit to continue running the campus based on the “best interest” of students.

After about two hours of deliberation, the decision came up for a vote by members of the LA County Board of Education. The outcome was not known until the statistics flashed on the screens at the front of the meeting room at Downey.

Before the vote, three board members spoke in support of the outside party – Green Dot Public Schools – and two against it. The outcome will depend on the decision of two board members who did not reveal how they depended.

Adding to this fear is that on Tuesday evening the Alain LeRoy Locke College Preparatory Academy graduation ceremony was taking place at the same time the board was considering its future. Locke’s society was torn between two emotional events.

When the votes were cast, Green Dot won. In a 5-2 vote, the board rejected the district’s employee evaluation, which was in line with the LA school district’s description of the school as “chronically underperforming.”

The room erupted with cheers among the many Green Dot well-wishers.

“I want to come back next year to the school that trained me to be,” said 11th grader Genesis Castorena before voting. “Locke is not just the building, but the people inside.”

For board president James Cross, disrupting the education of about 1,000 Locke students was a problem.

LA Unified, which has denied the school’s charter renewal, would have had to build a new school from scratch on the Locke campus in about two months. About $7 million in Green Dot/Locke-specific grants will not go forward. These grants pay for services such as mental health support, college preparation support and partnerships with other vocational training organizations.

LA Unified officials believe in their ability to manage Locke at least as well as Green Dot, which also operates other schools in the district. But under state law, to deny that Green Dot is still waiting for a five-year renewal, district officials had to make a case, using data, that the Locke High charter “failed to meet or make sufficient progress toward meeting standards that benefit the school’s students” and that “the closure benefits the students.”

Both LA Unified staff and the district reached the same conclusion to deny the charter — based largely on low scores on the state’s 11th grade test. They also cited complaints such as high absenteeism rates and graduation rates that trail nearby campuses.

A green dot and he had to make an argument on merit.

Green Dot presented data showing how much test scores and other academic measures improved after students enrolled at the charter school, which serves a high-poverty neighborhood where students and their families face steep challenges — and where students’ scores were low before they arrived at Locke.

“The entire program is designed on one premise: Students who face the greatest obstacles need the most targeted support,” said Green Dot Chief Executive Cristina de Jesus. “Locke’s student-to-adult ratio ensures that every student is recognized and always engaged by an adult invested in their growth,” he added, giving one example of the school’s ethos.

The staff includes seven mental health professionals and a foster youth specialist.

Board member Theresa Montaño was not allowed.

“I have looked at this data many times,” said Montaño. “Students were not succeeding. Red blood was coming out of every report,” he said, referring to the color of the indicators representing insufficient achievement levels.

Keeping the school under Green Dot would represent continued unfair scrutiny of children, he said. LA Unified, by contrast, has proven it can run successful schools and returning to control of Locke would be an “opportunity.”

Board member Margaret Granado echoed that point, saying the campus will not return to the way LA Unified was last in charge, in 2008.

But board member Yvonne Chan said it’s a disservice to Locke students and staff to downplay evidence of student growth. “Good intentions” would not be enough, but the school can show more than that and earn the trust of the community and local officials, he said.

He challenged that removing this constitution “will greatly benefit the children… For me, closing this school will have immediate and disastrous consequences.”

The decision means Green Dot will continue to operate a school that was considered one of the worst — or at least one of the most challenging LAUSD campuses — when, in 2007, LA Unified approved a teacher-led petition to defund the school.

It was a first for LA Unified.

And it was a first for Green Dot, which had been creating new public charter schools from scratch, one grade at a time, to instill a strong culture of motivated families who choose to enroll assertively.

In contrast, at Locke, Green Dot agreed to manage an existing, struggling, attention-grabbing campus with occasional strife, absenteeism, single-digit tuition rates, a 40% graduation rate and few college students.

Although Locke has improved significantly in 17 years, so have the district-run schools in the area. Recently, the test scores of nearby schools have surpassed those of Locke, although Locke’s scores have also risen.