Lake View Terrace School Granted Autonomy

Hoping to create an educational oasis in a time of unrest over the city’s public school system, a Lake View Terrace elementary school Monday became the San Fernando Valley’s second campus to be granted autonomy as a charter school by the Los Angeles Board of Education.

The school board voted unanimously to approve Fenton Avenue School’s charter petition, which would free teachers to design their own curricula and reorganize classes in a push to raise student performance. Campus officials also would assume far greater financial powers than now accorded them by state and local school district policy.

“This means the beginning of being able to dream,” teacher Yvette King said after the board’s vote. “It’s exciting to be able to work with a document that we’ve created and that we can be accountable to.”

The charter is still subject to approval by the state Board of Education, which will probably take up the matter at its September meeting. But the Los Angeles school board is the highest hurdle for charter applicants to clear, according to the process established by the state Charter Schools Act last year.

The law allows up to 100 schools in California to be exempt from the voluminous state Education Code, which regulates everything from campus grievance procedures to proper treatment of animals by students. Only 10 schools from any district can achieve charter status. Fenton Avenue School is the Los Angeles Unified School District’s ninth.

The eighth, an elementary school on the Westside, also was approved Monday.

In developing its charter application, teachers and parents at Fenton Avenue School took several cues from neighboring Vaughn Street School in Pacoima, which received approval from the state last month for its ambitious proposal. As at Vaughn Street, Fenton Avenue officials hope to take over many operational details--such as school maintenance--as well as educational ones.

Under the charter, no class will have more than 25 students. Children of different ages will be grouped instead of separated according to grade level. Youngsters having difficulty academically could receive tutoring after school as well as Saturdays, when teachers hope to organize field trips involving parents, many of whom are Latino and speak little English.

Principal Joseph Lucente said he and his staff members will be working between now and Jan. 1--when the charter is to take effect--to put in place the seven teacher- and parent-driven councils that are to govern the school. The transition period also will allow school officials to get a grasp of the campus budget so that fiscal autonomy, an important element of the charter petition, can be achieved.

School board members applauded Fenton Avenue’s effort and said they were especially pleased that the school serves an overwhelmingly minority student population in a fairly poor area.

Several board members had earlier expressed concern that most of the schools taking advantage of the charter option--with the exception of Fenton Avenue and Vaughn Street schools--are situated in the more affluent, Anglo portions of the school district, which has an enrollment that is 87% minority.