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Hope High
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| Students of the CALS Early College High School in front of the Wilshire Boulevard mid-rise where their school is housed. Some of the students have spent their entire high school careers in the Financial District. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
Downtown Charter School Graduates Its First Senior Class
by Evan George
If they need to get somewhere, they hop the metro. If they're hungry, they might grab a bite at a nearby food court. When it comes time to work it off, the fitness center is a few city blocks away.
These urban pioneers don't don power suits though, or even bedroom slippers. They sport carefully pressed high school uniforms.
Nestled in the Financial District, CALS Early College High School has for the past four years been an unusual learning experiment in an even more unlikely location. This week, the charter school hits a milestone, as it graduates its first class of seniors.
A few months after the ceremony on June 30, school officials say 90% of the mostly Latino, working-class students are off to college.
With a campus that spans two floors of a mid-rise office building, the high school at Hope Street and Wilshire Boulevard is an anomaly among Los Angeles educational institutions. There's no bell to signal the end of the day. No California-style courthouse of lockers. In its first year, some classes met in suites at the nearby Wilshire Grand Hotel.
Students say they know their education has been less than conventional, but that they wouldn't have it any other way.
"We were kind of guinea pigs," said Jesse Almeda, 18. But that also meant many more opportunities, added the polite prom king. "I wanted a football team, so for a school project, I worked on [starting] it. This year we had a team, a full season, uniforms and everything."
Students say the school is so intimate that the principal knows their families, their personal tastes, even where they live.
"I just can't picture myself anywhere else," said Veronica De León, 18, another graduating senior, who will attend Occidental College in Eagle Rock this fall. "It's every component put together that makes [the school] so great."
Those components include relatively small classes, personalized assistance in applying to colleges and a flexible curriculum. The 280-student school also comes with a tiny campus - the result of transforming office cubicles into the halls of learning.
Administrators say the limitations of the Downtown Los Angeles location fit perfectly with the school's mission: to extend education beyond the classroom and to conform to L.A.'s urban realities.
"I wanted to do something really interesting and different with the high school," said co-founder Dr. Ref Rodriguez.
"I realized that Downtown was growing and emerging into this amazing place and I wanted the kids to come out of their neighborhoods and come into the center of the city and see what happened there during the day on a regular basis."
Chartered Course
The entrepreneurial learning experiment didn't start in Downtown. It just seemed the logical next step.
In 1999, Rodriguez and Jacqueline Elliot opened the Los Angeles Unified School District's first charter middle school. The San Fernando Valley facility placed an unusual emphasis on preparing kids for college early. Like other charters, it is funded by the LAUSD, but maintains control over most management and curriculum decisions.
In 2000, Rodriguez and Elliot used the same model to start CALS Charter Middle School in Glassell Park, a neighborhood with troubled public schools where Rodriguez grew up. That year he acted as principal.
When the first round of students neared the end of eighth grade, Rodriguez said parents asked him to expand the program, worried about sending their children to Glassell Park's massive Franklin High School.
"I saw the whole charter school thing as an entrepreneurial venture," Rodriguez said. "And we really wanted to make good on our promise about college."
Working under the CALS banner, Rodriguez and Elliot scouted locations, weighed their options and finally seized on Downtown. In 2003, they established CALS Early College High School after convincing the owner of the building at 700 Wilshire Blvd. that knocking down walls to build classrooms for high school kids was a good bet. It was a tough sell, Rodriguez admits.
Most of the eighth graders who graduated that year from the middle school became the new high school's entering class. Every September since, they've added a grade, drawing CALS middle school students and fresh enrollees. According to school officials, 98% of the students are Latino, and most will be the first in their family to attend college.
This week, the first high school class will receive their diplomas, granting the school a bittersweet validation.
"I've been with them for seven years and I was their principal when they were sixth graders," Rodriguez said. "My heart aches in a way."
Loft Learning
Like the urban living of the school's neighboring loft dwellers - the soon-to-debut Roosevelt Lofts abuts the building; the opened Library Court sits one block northeast - the CALS approach to learning means less time spent indoors and more time out and about. That includes hitting the weight machines at 24-Hour Fitness (a few blocks away at 505 S. Flower St.) in place of traditional P.E. and slogging it on the Red Line to a college physics class at L.A. Trade Tech.
In that way the building on Wilshire acts almost as "homeroom," the Financial District boulevards as hallways and the rest of Downtown as satellite classrooms. That urban campus fits the curriculum.
"We started college before high school," said senior Ammy Reyes, 18.
That's not hyperbole. The school's principal, Darryl Adams, said all incoming ninth graders take an introductory college course before starting high school. That's to prepare them for the community college classes they must take on top of their high school curriculum.
"Some of them are graduating... almost with a full community college degree. We have a couple with a full year of college already," said Adams.
According to CALS officials, the school has garnered a 716 on the Academic Performance Index, earning it a spot in the top 20% of schools its size.
When the 44 graduates walk this Saturday, many of them already know where they're headed, with 90% of the senior class accepted into a four-year college. Many will continue at community colleges, a smattering have accepted scholarships to private schools and others will attend University of California schools, from Irvine to Santa Cruz.
When asked where she is headed, Reyes responded in typical fashion. She detailed her plans in a hypothetical tone before catching herself.
"I mean I am going to UC Davis."
Contact Evan George at evan@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 6/25/2007
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
These urban pioneers don't don power suits though, or even bedroom slippers. They sport carefully pressed high school uniforms.
Nestled in the Financial District, CALS Early College High School has for the past four years been an unusual learning experiment in an even more unlikely location. This week, the charter school hits a milestone, as it graduates its first class of seniors.
A few months after the ceremony on June 30, school officials say 90% of the mostly Latino, working-class students are off to college.
With a campus that spans two floors of a mid-rise office building, the high school at Hope Street and Wilshire Boulevard is an anomaly among Los Angeles educational institutions. There's no bell to signal the end of the day. No California-style courthouse of lockers. In its first year, some classes met in suites at the nearby Wilshire Grand Hotel.
Students say they know their education has been less than conventional, but that they wouldn't have it any other way.
"We were kind of guinea pigs," said Jesse Almeda, 18. But that also meant many more opportunities, added the polite prom king. "I wanted a football team, so for a school project, I worked on [starting] it. This year we had a team, a full season, uniforms and everything."
Students say the school is so intimate that the principal knows their families, their personal tastes, even where they live.
"I just can't picture myself anywhere else," said Veronica De León, 18, another graduating senior, who will attend Occidental College in Eagle Rock this fall. "It's every component put together that makes [the school] so great."
Those components include relatively small classes, personalized assistance in applying to colleges and a flexible curriculum. The 280-student school also comes with a tiny campus - the result of transforming office cubicles into the halls of learning.
Administrators say the limitations of the Downtown Los Angeles location fit perfectly with the school's mission: to extend education beyond the classroom and to conform to L.A.'s urban realities.
"I wanted to do something really interesting and different with the high school," said co-founder Dr. Ref Rodriguez.
"I realized that Downtown was growing and emerging into this amazing place and I wanted the kids to come out of their neighborhoods and come into the center of the city and see what happened there during the day on a regular basis."
The entrepreneurial learning experiment didn't start in Downtown. It just seemed the logical next step.
In 1999, Rodriguez and Jacqueline Elliot opened the Los Angeles Unified School District's first charter middle school. The San Fernando Valley facility placed an unusual emphasis on preparing kids for college early. Like other charters, it is funded by the LAUSD, but maintains control over most management and curriculum decisions.
In 2000, Rodriguez and Elliot used the same model to start CALS Charter Middle School in Glassell Park, a neighborhood with troubled public schools where Rodriguez grew up. That year he acted as principal.
When the first round of students neared the end of eighth grade, Rodriguez said parents asked him to expand the program, worried about sending their children to Glassell Park's massive Franklin High School.
"I saw the whole charter school thing as an entrepreneurial venture," Rodriguez said. "And we really wanted to make good on our promise about college."
Working under the CALS banner, Rodriguez and Elliot scouted locations, weighed their options and finally seized on Downtown. In 2003, they established CALS Early College High School after convincing the owner of the building at 700 Wilshire Blvd. that knocking down walls to build classrooms for high school kids was a good bet. It was a tough sell, Rodriguez admits.
Most of the eighth graders who graduated that year from the middle school became the new high school's entering class. Every September since, they've added a grade, drawing CALS middle school students and fresh enrollees. According to school officials, 98% of the students are Latino, and most will be the first in their family to attend college.
This week, the first high school class will receive their diplomas, granting the school a bittersweet validation.
"I've been with them for seven years and I was their principal when they were sixth graders," Rodriguez said. "My heart aches in a way."
Like the urban living of the school's neighboring loft dwellers - the soon-to-debut Roosevelt Lofts abuts the building; the opened Library Court sits one block northeast - the CALS approach to learning means less time spent indoors and more time out and about. That includes hitting the weight machines at 24-Hour Fitness (a few blocks away at 505 S. Flower St.) in place of traditional P.E. and slogging it on the Red Line to a college physics class at L.A. Trade Tech.
In that way the building on Wilshire acts almost as "homeroom," the Financial District boulevards as hallways and the rest of Downtown as satellite classrooms. That urban campus fits the curriculum.
"We started college before high school," said senior Ammy Reyes, 18.
That's not hyperbole. The school's principal, Darryl Adams, said all incoming ninth graders take an introductory college course before starting high school. That's to prepare them for the community college classes they must take on top of their high school curriculum.
"Some of them are graduating... almost with a full community college degree. We have a couple with a full year of college already," said Adams.
According to CALS officials, the school has garnered a 716 on the Academic Performance Index, earning it a spot in the top 20% of schools its size.
When the 44 graduates walk this Saturday, many of them already know where they're headed, with 90% of the senior class accepted into a four-year college. Many will continue at community colleges, a smattering have accepted scholarships to private schools and others will attend University of California schools, from Irvine to Santa Cruz.
When asked where she is headed, Reyes responded in typical fashion. She detailed her plans in a hypothetical tone before catching herself.
"I mean I am going to UC Davis."
Contact Evan George at evan@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 6/25/2007
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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