The first battles we had to were for our school’s immediate survival. July—and the demolition of our decrepit building—was a long way off. Meanwhile, we had already been abandoned by L.A. Southwest College—President Levy having essentially served us our eviction notice for July 1st 2005—and by the Los Angeles Unified School District which had made no effort to fight the eviction or to figure out an alternative to keep our school open.
The college now refused to accept our incoming mail. That could sabotage our seniors applying for college and for financial aid.
The plant facilities department ignored all requests for repairs or maintenance on our buildings or the broken air-conditioners of our mostly windowless bungalows.
LA Unified wasn’t authorizing any new expenditure. The previous spring I’d spent about three hours filling out the paper work to order books for the AP Literature class I was now supposed to be teaching; those orders had never been processed. Nor the orders for any other new books for our lame duck school.
Meanwhile, hundreds of new algebra books sent by the district, ordered from the central office for every high school—none of which had requested them. Non-returnable—charged to the school’s text book account.
$4,000,000 worth. The district official responsible for this was, according to the Los Angeles Times, later investigated for fraud.
Mostly we had to battle against our own resignation—pretend our school had a future so we could be of some use to our students.
They didn’t know this was our last year—at least they weren’t supposed to know.
Ms. Jackson had us in her office at lunch the second day of school to say that she would get the AC running in our rooms and take care of any other problems if she had to fix them herself or beat someone over the head with a 2x4.
“If anyone from this college or from LA Unified or anyplace else gives me any procedural nonsense, I will hurt them.”
She moved among us with her usual swagger, the one that said I am trying to do right by these children our children—and everyone better get the fuck out of my way. Pam Jackson had grown up in this community. She’d attended local schools and eventually worked as an assistant principal at Markham Middle School, one of the roughest in the country. She had chased drug dealers and gangbangers and sexual deviants off that school’s perimeter. She’d seen a courier executed in front of the student store and then counseled children who had also witnessed it, and a lot of other brutality. She was demanding and could even be harsh with some kids but not nearly as harsh as she could be with lazy, incompetent, cynical, or stupid so-called educators.
She promised to stay all weekend if necessary to get things working right around our school. She said, “I don’t care if the school is going to close next month or next week. The problems need to get fixed and they will get fixed.”
We knew her promise was good. It always had been.
That was a reassuring thought—also a scary one. Some of the teachers in that room had never worked for another principal.
Some of us had.
I remember my 4 years at Middle College and the rumors that "the school would be getting a new building next year" and "next year" and... well I graduated. I envied forthcoming students knowing that they'll be the ones who would enjoy the new MCHS classrooms, a gym, and a CAFETERIA for God's sake! Memories of running from Mrs. Rainwater through the bungalows, or attending a Charlap "party" when you were tardy or out of uniform. I took pride in being able to attend college-classes and that would give me the one-up when I attended college. In retrospect we took pride in a school that was unconventionally deprived yet we stuck it through. No football team or even official cheerleaders but we stayed; I can't remember seeing people leave to attend a different school. And now, a MCHS alumni with no school to revisit and cheer on, I hold the memories with gratitude!
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