KABC (7) TV News
October 19, 2007

ABC7/KABC-TV
Top Story
October 19, 2007

Charter High Schools Prepare Students for College Demands

Goal Is To Get College Graduates to Return to the Community

By Adrienne Alpert

SOUTH L.A., Oct. 19, 2007 (KABC-TV) - New numbers show enrollment has declined once again in Los Angeles city schools. Though LAUSD is still the largest school district, the number of students has declined from a high of 700,000 to 653,000. While a number of factors have contributed to the decline including birth rates and the economy, charter schools are a big factor.

The English class at View Park Preparatory Charter High School is one of nine charter schools run by the Inner City Education Foundation. Seventy-one students were the first to graduate from ICEF schools last year. All of them are now in college.

Brittany Carraby is now a freshman at UCLA. She's one of six from ICEF and was View Park's first valedictorian.

"I think it definitely would have been harder to get into UCLA if I had not gone to View Park Prep because they prepare you go to a college," Carraby said. "I think I would still be here, but the road would have been a lot harder."

Mike Piscal started the Inner City Education Foundation. The foundation now runs nine charter campuses. Charter schools are publicly financed, but independently operated.

Piscal left teaching at an exclusive private school in 1994 to bring college prepatory classes to a community that sees only a handful of its high school graduates finish college.

"You cannot go to a LAUSD high school for four years and expect to go to college and graduate," said Piscal. "You will fail out of college."

The goal of Piscal's charter schools is to bring college graduates back to the community.

"Who are going to be the doctors of this community? Who are going to be the lawyers? Who are going to be the teachers and principals? We're going to open as many high schools as it takes to produce 2,000 college graduates per year," Piscal said.

Yasmin Kavanagh is an 8-year veteran teacher who's spent the last two in charter school. She would not give up teaching at a charter, though it meant giving up some union advantages.

"I feel that my job is to be an advocate for the students," said Kavanagh. "I don't need someone to be an advocate for me because I advocate for my children. I don't think I've given up anything at all, I love every minute of my job."

The proof that schools can inspire is here with a new ninth grader.

"I want to go to college to get a degree in music," said freshman Jesse Robinson IV,

The students in these charter schools are not hand-picked--they are chosen by lottery.

There are 1,900 student currently enrolled. Five thousand are waiting to get in.