Valley School Takes Meetings to Inner-City Parents

Traditional “back to school” meetings teach parents a little bit about where their kids learn.

But Monday, teachers at Taft High School in Woodland Hills got a lesson about where their students live--20 miles and a world away in South-Central Los Angeles.

An hour after sunrise, the Taft faculty crowded into yellow school buses and lurched through morning traffic to Jefferson High School to meet parents of students bused to the suburban campus.

More than 40% of Taft’s students follow the same routine every school day as they catch buses from other parts of Los Angeles--some leaving home as early as 5:45 a.m. and not returning until 9:30 p.m.

“We need to let parents know we really do care about their kids,” said attendance counselor Dennis Creed as he and several dozen teachers streamed off buses and filed into Jefferson’s dimly lit auditorium.

That was part of the intent, Principal Ron Berz said. The trip was coordinated by Creed, who visits absent students at home to find out why they are not at school.

Creed and other teachers thought the trip would help faculty members understand the pressures their students face and give them a chance to meet parents who otherwise could not make the drive.

Waiting for them were about 60 parents such as John and Quilla Adams, whose 16-year-old son, LeJon, is a junior at Taft. LeJon, math teacher Tom Simpkin told them, is a good student, knows his numbers, but needs to do his homework.

Had the Taft teachers not come to Jefferson, some parents said it was unlikely that they could have attended a back to school night on the Woodland Hills campus. Too far to ride a bus. Too much traffic to drive.

“This is much better,” John Adams said. But, he added, as helpful as it was to him, the trip benefited the teachers more. “Some of the teachers have never been down here. They’ve never been to South-Central before.”

Indeed, many had never seen the contradictory neighborhoods of tidy bungalows and tumble-down apartment buildings--a place where different rules often apply.

That was why they made the trip, Berz said.

“We need to understand where these children are coming from,” Berz said. “We need to see how they live and the conditions they live under. Some of the teachers have never seen this.”

For English teacher Alice Thomas, Monday’s bus ride made her better understand what her students confront outside the classroom, that daily life for them is more like “Lord of the Flies” than “Walden.”

“When I socialize, the last thing I think of doing is taking a tour of Watts,” she said as the bus rumbled toward Downtown. “Frankly, I’m afraid to come down here by myself. Today, I found myself thinking: ‘My God, our kids go through this every day?’ ”

Teachers sat two to a seat in the cramped bus, but students often are forced to sit three to a seat. Normal conversation was at shouting level and noise reverberated through the metal shell of the bus.

“I’ve always encouraged kids to study on the bus,” Thomas said. “But they can’t do it. They just can’t do it.”