Seventh in a series
Re “District Leaders Have Not Kept Culver Park a Priority”
Culver Park High School teachers Karen Lanier and Leslie Johnson were occupying desks in a ready-to-abandon classroom along with their former colleague David Mielke, President of the Teachers Union, exploring why, as all believe, community support for the continuation school has eroded.
Relatively, Mr. Mielke was the greenest of the teachers with the shortest tenure at Culver Park, 19 years.
If they still had the upstairs backing from the School District that vanished in recent years, they say, the school would not have been forced, against its desires, to quit the green El Marino Language School campus and transfer to bungalows in a parking lot adjacent to Ballona Creek.
“A few years ago,” Mr. Mielke said, “there were real community supporters on the School Board, like Kay Lyou. She was a patron saint for the school.”
In Bygone Days
Ms. Lanier spoke up. “We also once had a principal who understand what continuation school could be, what alternative ed could be. She was brilliant. She built the program up, and she had the support of the superintendent, Curt Rethmeyer.”
“The principal, Anita Johnson, really was an advocate for the school and for students in the ‘80s and ’90s,” Mr. Mielke said.
Outsiders sometimes refer to Culver Park’s 16-to-18-year-old students as at-risk type, but that term is a pejorative for the faculty.
“Kids are here for different reasons,” said Ms. Lanier. “We have a Gate student here…every kid is here for a different reason. They are not successful at the high school.”
What is their common bond?
“School-phobia, truancy. They can’t handle the energy at the high school, the massive amount of people, the coming and going.”
Ms. Lanier suddenly spoke in a hurried voice as she emulated the students’ objections: “‘Thirty kids in a classroom and this paper is due Friday, and it’s not done, and the failure built up over a week.’
“They need a program where they can work individually with a teacher.”
The problem for some students with high school, said Mr. Mielke, is the notion that one size fits all.”
Currently on the faculty at Culver City High School, he gave an example:
“‘Today we are studying the Equal Rights Amendment,’ and there is not flexibility for the kid not interested in that on that day.”
“Or,” Mr. Lanier chipped in, “doesn’t take in information in a group of people.”
(To be continued)
