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Life & Times Transcript
02/16/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Los Angeles's mayor wants to take over the LAUSD. The idea is gaining momentum and opposition. Don Dear>> Since we have no vote in who the mayor of Los Angeles is, we would have absolutely no democratic right to make a change or to any way respond to our concerns about our schools. Val Zavala>> And then, it's all drama on tonight's edition of FilmWeek. Our critics tell us which films are worth the angst. These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> A major battle is brewing over control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has made it clear that he would like the nation's second largest school district to be under mayoral control and that has sparked strong reaction from unions, teachers, staff and even other cities. Sam Louie brings us the controversy that could impact hundreds of thousands of students. Antonio Villaraigosa>> "I can't say it more clearly. Reforming public schools is the central challenge facing Los Angeles and it will be a central priority of my administration." Sam Louie>> When Antonio Villaraigosa was sworn in as Mayor of Los Angeles last July, he envisioned a brighter future for the city's public school students. Antonio Villaraigosa>> "Dream with me of a Los Angeles where kids can walk to school in safety and where they receive an education that gives them a genuine opportunity to pursue their own dreams." Sam Louie>> Those dreams may be out of reach for thousands of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Students score in the bottom third on national standardized tests. The graduation rate is at sixty-seven percent and a quarter fail to meet state standards in English and math. Antonio Villaraigosa>> People are ready. They want to do something about these schools. They want a leader who rallies them around the idea that we need more in the way of authority for parents and teachers to make decisions on school sites. Sam Louie>> And Villaraigosa believes that he's that leader, so he's making a bold move. He's proposing that control of the Los Angeles school district with its eight hundred sixty campuses and seventy-seven thousand employees be taken away from the school board and given to the mayor's office. Thomas Saenz is the counsel to the mayor. He's working on a bill that would give citizens a chance to vote for or against mayoral control of LAUSD. Thomas Saenz>> It is best going to be achieved with one person able to answer for the successes or failures of the school system. It means there is one person who everyone within the school system will look to to provide the vision, to tell them where they need to go, how they need to go, what they need to accomplish to make sure that the system is working. Sam Louie>> Predictably, LAUSD's school board members are strongly opposed to that idea. Marlene Canter is the school board president. Marlene Canter>> Although change that we are seeing is not fast enough, it's steady and it's stable and it's strong and it's moving in the right direction and I believe that we don't mess around with trying things out on kids. >> "So if X is equal to 2, how much is Y equal to?" Sam Louie>> Canter points to the rise in test scores at Alta Loma Elementary School as a reflection of the district's overall success with young students. Marlene Canter>> This school has jumped two hundred points in their score, from four hundred to now close to seven hundred. We're seeing this all over Los Angeles. Five years ago, I think, there were twenty-five schools that scored over eight hundred. Now we have a hundred schools. Sam Louie>> She understands that vast improvements also need to be made at the middle and high school levels, but she insists that a drastic change like mayoral control is the wrong way to go. City government, she says, is already over-burdened. Marlene Canter>> The bloated bureaucracy of the city is dealing with many, many facets of the city's housing, transportation, safety, airports. You wouldn't want our kids to get lost in the shuffle. [Film Clip] Sam Louie>> But proponents say that getting lost in the shuffle is what mayoral control would prevent. How? By establishing more schools like this one. This is Synergy Charter Academy. It is a charter school. Charter schools are independent of the district. They govern themselves, including their budget. [Film Clip] Sam Louie>> Meg and Randy Palisoc taught at LAUSD for a combined ten years. They were frustrated with the district. Meg Palisoc>> It broke my heart that I felt powerless to really make a difference with such a large school district. Sam Louie>> So two years ago, they started Synergy Academy in South Los Angeles. With only twenty students per class, the students here made significant gains in its first year. Meg Palisoc>> We were amazed and excited and really proud of our families, the parents, the students and the teachers, because in one year we outperformed all the schools in the 90011 zip code and most of the schools in our neighboring areas. Sam Louie>> Caprice Young is the president of the California Charter School Association. She says that there would be many more schools like Synergy Academy if the mayor was in charge. Caprice Young>> We need more magnet schools. We need more small schools. Charter schools have oodles of kids on the waiting lists, thousands and thousands of kids on the waiting lists. And a mayoral administration of the school district would be more supportive of these kinds of small schools and special schools. Sam Louie>> Young is also a former LAUSD school board president. Caprice Young>> Having been in that chair, having been president of the school district, I can tell you that that bureaucracy is enormous and it's just not going to change without a big outside push. See, I think that's where the mayor can come in and do that kind of big outside push. Sam Louie>> But there's another problem with mayoral control. The jurisdiction of the Los Angeles school district extends well beyond the city's boundaries. LAUSD is the second largest school district in the nation. It covers more than seven hundred square miles and also includes twenty-six other cities. Community members in some of these areas believe that mayoral control of the district would strip them of their voice in education. Don Dear>> It would be like taxation without representation. It wouldn't be right. Sam Louie>> Don Dear is the former mayor of Gardena and retired middle school teacher. Right now, Gardena, Carson and Lomita have one board member representing them. Don Dear>> So at least we have one school board member that is responsible to us directly that we can elect or change if necessary. If the mayor of Los Angeles has total control and was able to appoint whoever he pleased, since we have no vote in who the mayor of Los Angeles is, we would have absolutely no democratic right to make a change or to any way respond to our concerns about our schools. Sam Louie>> Dear is also a member of a commission proposing different strategies on how to govern the school district. One plan he'd like to see considered: break up LAUSD into nine small districts. Don Dear>> We'd have a locally elected school board like other school boards in California who would actually run the educational program for the people in our area. Sam Louie>> Shifting control of the school district to the mayor's office will be a long and complicated process, but the mayor has already formed a fundraising committee to support an election on this issue. If it makes it to the ballot, it will still need the approval of voters in Los Angeles and possibly surrounding cities. Antonio Villaraigosa>> "Dramatically improving student achievement and graduation rates is the goal." Sam Louie>> With the future of seven hundred thirty thousand students on the line, the question of who will run Los Angeles schools may be the single biggest issue on Villaraigosa's ambitious agenda. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Hena Cuevas>> The recent unrest in southern California prisons has many wondering what's behind the tension between blacks and Hispanic inmates and could this be a reflection of the greater picture of race relations in Los Angeles? For some answers, we spoke to Joe Hicks from the nonprofit organization, Community Advocates, because we need to remember that this same kind of tension has also been showing up in our schools. What were your first thoughts when you heard that there was renewed unrest at the prisons? Joe Hicks>> Well, my initial reaction was, you know, here's a reproduction of an old pattern. We've been seeing these sort of riotous behaviors taking place in jails for a number of years, so this is nothing new here. It's a fairly old pattern that things on the street seem to spur actions in the jails and vice versa. So this is nothing new here. The level of it, though, the fact that now there's been several days of it, is, I think, what's new here. There's seems to be a longevity here. They were just sort of sporadic outbreaks that would sort of go away for some period. I think what we're seeing is a reflection of what is actually going on in communities in terms of black-brown gang conflict. Frankly, it's fairly new. You know, the conflict in jails is old, but what apparently seems to be driving it now is actual gang conflict in South Los Angeles. Previously, these gangs had kind of skirted around each other. Now they're apparently confronting each other and that's apparently reflecting itself in a couple of ways. One, we're seeing a manifestation in schools, a very odd way. But also in jails, a very dangerous way. Hena Cuevas>> And even when we hear about the schools, we hear that it is between the Latino students and the African-American students. Why the tension between these two groups? Joe Hicks>> Well, there's a lot of demographic changes taking place in the areas where these conflicts take place. South Los Angeles, Pacoima, Inglewood, Compton. These areas had previously been primarily black communities and now primarily Latino communities. Watts is something like seven percent Latino. That's a big change within a thirty year span. You've got in fact another population displacing an older population and, at some places, the conflict is simply about cultural domination. We're going to rule. We're going to control what goes on here. We're going to control the schools. We're also going to control what goes on inside the jails. Gang conflict is also developed in people who get contempt for who controls drug turf, who gets the "goodies", as it were, from the proceeds of drug distribution and sales. So all this has really come about within a relatively short period of time, but it's not a mystery what caused it. To those who claim, "Oh, it's got nothing to do with race", well, of course, it does. It's sort of a denial of reality that race and ethnicity clearly plays a role in what we're seeing, in what's taking place here. Hena Cuevas>> We've been seeing it in the schools and we're seeing it in the prisons. Is this some kind of a warning sign as to what's going on with race relations in Los Angeles? Joe Hicks>> Well, I think we should take it as a warning sign because clearly it's a dangerous thing taking place here. If we have some generalized war that breaks out between black and brown gangs in South Los Angeles, this is a scenario that everybody, of course, does not want to see take place, so we have to take note of it. Now the question of what do you do about it because there's a lot of hand-wringing going on. You got pastors in there visiting the prisons and talking to people. We got the human relations commissions wringing their hands over this kind of situation, but what we actually do about it is what I think we have to be more reflective about and really consider what are the things you can actually do. Frankly, at this point, it's a law enforcement issue. They've got to be able to control what goes on in the streets in terms of those people that are frankly just shooting and killing each other because of this contesting for turf in a lot of the inner city neighborhoods. Hena Cuevas>> How important is it going to be to realize that it is a race issue? Joe Hicks>> Well, it's important to diagnose any problem correctly. We say, oh, it's about classes, not really about race, or it's about this as opposed to that. You got to get it right in terms of trying to figure out what's really going on here. At one point, it was easy. It was a black-white paradigm and everything was diagnosed in a kind of black-white scenario. That's not the issue in a lot of cities particularly like Los Angeles where, in fact, whites are in the minority here. So conflict of racial or ethnic tends to have this kind of "people of color" characteristic which makes some people uncomfortable. But the reality is, this is about race conflicts. It's about communities trying to find who controls and some people are resentful about the changes in these neighborhoods. Now this isn't a generalized, universal problem here. You have to make note of the fact that most people in their daily lives live comfortably side by side with others. This is mainly an issue of gangs. It's mainly an issue of kids, in fact, acting out based on their notions of who has the ethnically controlled institution and issues in the prisons and jails that seem to be a manifestation of gang issues on the streets. So we have to, first of all, figure out what's going on and figure how we get appropriate steps to respond to this. Hena Cuevas>> You mentioned that part of the problem in the prisons is with the gangs, but what about the schools? Joe Hicks>> You know, I have a very interesting analysis of what's going on in the schools. I think we've had several decades of kids being immersed in sort of a multi-cultural elite system that seems to be translated by them as an ultimate sense of pride in my group and a lack of concern for other groups. Now that obviously is the other side of the coin, that message that's attempted to be conveyed here, but we've had several generations now of this. We've seen, in fact, a rise in the conflict as opposed to a leveling off or a diminishing of the conflict. So we can't continue to say let's give them more and more human relations training. It's obviously not working, so we've got to stop and say what's going wrong here. We're talking to kids about tolerance and pride in their group and they seem to be receiving a very different message. What might we be doing different here? So I think there needs to be some checking of this unbridled attempt to instill pride. The celebrations months, Black History Month, Cinco de Mayo and all these kinds of celebrations of ethnicity and ethnic pride, seem to be in fact in some way, I would argue, stirring this pot of feeling great about yourself and feeling as if any slight against your group is a slight to be defended against, which I think is part of the problem in our schools. Hena Cuevas>> Thank you, Joe Hicks, for this new perspective. Joe Hicks>> You're quite welcome. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. First up this week is a film from director, Joe Roth. It's adapted from a Richard Price novel. "Freedomland" stars Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by film critics Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor and Scott Foundas who's film editor for the L.A. Weekly. Well, Peter, please start us off on "Freedomland". Peter Rainer>> "Freedomland" is based on a Richard Price best-selling novel. He also wrote the screenplay for it and it was directed by Joe Roth, who's directed films in the past, but is mostly known as a studio executive. It's about a racial rumble in northern New Jersey between essentially a black inner city and a blue collar white community that borders it. Julianne Moore plays a mother who is bloody and reeling from what she says was a carjacking and Samuel Jackson, who's the detective who sort of oversees the inner city, interrogates her and pretty much figures out that there's something going on here more than what she's saying. The film is, to me, very overwrought. The performances are very overwrought. It reminded me a bit of Spike Lee's "Clockers", a film I also didn't like because it was also based on a Richard Price novel. Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Scott? Scott Foundas>> Well, I think "Clockers" was infinitely better than this movie. The film is pitched in such an hysterical tone. In the very beginning, in the scene where Samuel L. Jackson is interrogating Julianne Moore and he's having an asthma attack and he's shoving the doctors out from coming into the room and he's practically shaking her as if she was hysterical. Essentially, he was going completely out of his mind. The whole film is like that. The cameras are rolling around. Everyone is shouting and screaming at each other and a lot of it is just unintentionally funny. You never really feel any real tension, but I will say that Julianne Moore really gives it her all. She's sort of game for whatever the movie throws at her. I think it's actually a very strong performance in a kind of ridiculous role and a ridiculous film. Larry Mantle>> Our second film this week is a directorial debut from playwright, Adam Rapp. His film, "Winter Passing", is a family drama that stars Zooey Deschanel and Ed Harris. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Peter, what did you think of "Winter Passing"? Peter Rainer>> This was the first feature by Adam Rapp who's done a number of renowned off-Broadway shows and the film betrays a certain staginess. You can tell that it's a first feature by a playwright because each scene is kind of there to make his point and then you move on to the next scene and that makes his point. It's very actor-oriented which, in this case, isn't entirely bad since it has a terrific cast. Zooey Deschanel is very good in this movie. It's the most emotionally layered performance, I think. At times, she looks and acts a bit like Debra Winger. But ultimately, the problem with the movie is that it doesn't really -- it's very conventional, trying not to be. What it says is that the way to deal with relationships between warring family members is to have better communication and to open up, so it's more Dr. Phil than Dr. Chekhov. But it has some good emotional moments in it from the actors. Will Ferrell gives a very good straight performance. Larry Mantle>> Third up this week is a Russian horror-fantasy film, "Night Watch". [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Scott, what did you think of "Night Watch"? Scott Foundas>> Well, we'd be here all day, Larry, if I started to try to explain the plot of this movie which involves warring factions of vampires and evil and good battling it out for centuries and then it's a modern-day Russia. But what I like about this film is that, once you get into it and you start to try to decipher the mythologies that it's presenting and this plot, it's actually very entertaining in the way of a good fantasy genre picture like "The Matrix" or "The Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars", all of which it owes a lot to. But it also has the kind of over-arching sort of Greek tragic dramatic art that all of those movies also have. It was made for four million dollars. It looked like it cost ten times that or more. It can play with all the big boys in Hollywood and it actually out-grossed most of them when it opened in Russia last year. It became the most successful Russian-made film of all time and it's intended as the first part in a trilogy. The second part has already been done and the third part is supposed to be United States-Russian co-production. What I will say is that, towards the end of the film, you start to feel that you're being set up for a sequel and there's a lot of loose ends that aren't tended to, but I enjoyed it a lot for what it is. Larry Mantle>> Peter, what did you think? Peter Rainer>> Well, I think it was more geek tragedy than Greek tragedy (laughter). There's a lot of kind of, you know, videogame-ish visuals going on in this film. It's very exciting to watch when it's not being like totally lurid and disgusting. For me, the interest of this movie is more sort of sociological than aesthetic. I think it's fascinating that the Russians are now making these kinds of, you know, western supernatural fantasy pictures like "The Matrix" when, for years, we sort of associated Russia with the sort of Soviet cinema era with movies about tractors and wheat harvesting. Now they're just diving into this, you know, western schlock as much as anyone and, in some ways, out-doing some of the people that they're topping. Larry Mantle>> And our final film this week comes from Mexico. "Battle in Heaven" from director, Carlos Reygadas, who did the controversial movie, "Japon". [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Scott, we call on you to tell us about "Battle in Heaven". Scott Foundas>> Well, this is the second film by the Mexican director, Carlos Reygadas, who made a very striking debut a couple of years ago with a film called "Japon". It was about an old man who wanted to die and found a strange kind of salvation in the form of this elderly Mexican woman who he then ended up having sex with in a rather notorious scene. This movie sort of feels, I think, like Carlos Reygadas spent the last couple of years wondering what he should do for an encore. Because from the very beginning, it sort of sets out to shock the audience and it doesn't have any of the kind of emotional resonance that "Japon" did which, for all of this kind of attention-getting aesthetics, was ultimately sort of a profound movie about the search for meaning in life. The character in this film is on a similar journey, but basically the film is sort of a full frontal assault on everything that is sacred in the Mexican national character from Catholicism to soccer to sex. It's more of a stunt than it is anything else. Larry Mantle>> Well, that will do it for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC with critics Scott Foundas of the L.A. Weekly where he's film editor, and Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor. Please join us again next time for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. Val Zavala>> You can hear a full hour of FilmWeek Friday mornings at eleven a.m. on KPCC public radio. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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