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5/21/07
This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
She's never had a normal family. Now she's eighteen and on her own.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> I'm not scared about falling down or, you know, messing up. I messed up a lot. I've bumped my head and I came back up and I saw that I'm ready to do what I have to do.
Val Zavala>> And then, how do you make a great painting? Sometimes even a great painter like Ed Moses can't tell you.
It's all straight ahead 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>> For most of us, turning eighteen was an exciting time. We were adults, at least legally. But for teenagers in foster care, turning eighteen can be a frightening time. Many of them are turned out on the streets and they end up living there unless they have help. Hena Cuevas introduces us to one young woman who's determined to beat the odds.
Hena Cuevas>> Jennifer De La Rosa turned eighteen last March. Like most eighteen year olds, she's thinking about her future, jobs, college, a career. But statistics are against her. Jennifer, who's now an adult, could be living in poverty or, worse yet, on the streets. She's one of an estimated twenty-five thousand foster children in Los Angeles County.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> I was moved around from foster home to foster home and I kept going AWOL which kind of means running away.
Hena Cuevas>> She was only three months old when her birth mother abandoned her. She and her older sister lived with their father until he got arrested.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> And when he got out of jail, he was deported to Mexico, so I haven't seen him since.
Hena Cuevas>> The girls were separated and bounced between relatives. Then at fourteen, Jennifer got in trouble with the law. That landed her in the foster care system. What was it like bouncing from home to home?
Jennifer De La Rosa>> It was hard. It was hard not having a mom and dad figure. It was hard being with all these other people that were not our parents. It was hard because they had children of their own.
Hena Cuevas>> Jennifer kept running away. Finally at seventeen, her probation officer recommended she be sent here to Rosemary Children's Services in Pasadena, the first real home she's known.
Rosemary Children's Services is one of the oldest nonprofit organizations working with foster children. More than forty girls are part of their residential program, ages thirteen to eighteen. The younger ones share the main cottage, as it's called. The older ones, like Jennifer, live in regular houses in groups of six. They're all responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the home.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> It was scary because of the huge amount of girls there are and we're all like at the same ages. I mean, it's like thirteen through eighteen. I was scared about how it was going to be like when you wake up every day to these girls. It's like a big high school.
Hena Cuevas>> One of the scary parts for Jennifer is the intense group therapy.
>> "Okay, Rosa, in the house, you have not been listening to staff direction or redirection. You have been caught several times by numerous staff in Lauren's room."
Hena Cuevas>> The school she goes to is a non-public school run by the Center.
>> "So what would be after the secretary? Is it a comma or is it a period?"
Hena Cuevas>> And she also gets one-on-one therapy that's helping her deal with her feelings of abandonment. Today she's talking about the rare chance she got two years ago to ask her birth mother a question that had been haunting her.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> The question was why did she leave me? She said that -- it was crazy. She was like, "Jennifer, I didn't come here to talk about that." So it hurt a lot. You know, I was in tears. I was like, "Wow, you know, I haven't seen you in all these years and then I ask you this question and it's like you can't even lie to me and tell me like something just so I can like say, oh, okay, you know." There was a reason behind it.
Hena Cuevas>> Jennifer is reaching a milestone in life that even surprises her. This June, she graduates from high school.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> And that's what's kept me like focused and motivated is school. Out of my four older brothers and sisters, none of them have graduated high school. Thank God, I'm going to be the first.
Hena Cuevas>> She credits Rosemary Children's Services for giving her the discipline she desperately needed, but old habits die hard. Did you run away?
Jennifer De La Rosa>> Yes, I did run away, yeah.
Hena Cuevas>> Why?
Jennifer De La Rosa>> Because of the fact that, before I came here, I decided after running away from my previous foster home, I decided that maybe I can do it on my own and maybe I should just like rent a room. So I did that. I was working full-time and I quit on school.
Hena Cuevas>> Philip Solomon is the Director of the residential program. He says that it's not uncommon for these girls to feel as though they can take care of themselves.
Philip Solomon>> Some of them want to be independent young adults when they're thirteen or fourteen (laughter), but we like to slow them down a little bit to help them learn what they need to know so that, when they turn eighteen, they are well prepared to take on that role of providing for themselves.
Hena Cuevas>> In Jennifer's case, now that she's eighteen, she can move out. She's going into transitional housing, but is she ready?
Jennifer De La Rosa>> I'm not scared about falling down or, you know, messing up. I've messed up a lot. I bumped my head and I came back up and I feel that I'm ready to do what I have to do because it's like I'm on my own now and, if I mess up, I'm messing up for myself and not for anyone else.
Hena Cuevas>> When the girls turn eighteen and the state rules that they can leave the system, they usually move into transitional housing. In Jennifer's case, the rent that she will pay for the next two years will be about half of what she would normally pay.
However, one of the biggest problems facing the county is that the number of available beds is a lot less than the number of kids leaving the foster system. Every year, more than four thousand foster kids age out, as it's called. But beds at transitional homes are scarce. There's only room for one in four foster kids. More than forty percent of them end up living on the streets.
>> "So are you having any reservations about leaving? Getting nervous?"
Jennifer De La Rosa>> "Not really. I'm excited, but at the same time, it's going to be like a big step."
Hena Cuevas>> But these girls face more than just trying to find an affordable apartment. Executive Director, Greg Wessels, says emotional problems can follow them for years.
Greg Wessels>> If we all kind of think back to when we turned eighteen and where we were and were we ready, well, these are girls who sometimes have significant emotional issues that are in the same place and are on their own.
Hena Cuevas>> So literally, they are by themselves.
Greg Wessels>> They are by themselves. There are some casework services and some mental health services, but usually not enough.
Hena Cuevas>> That's why he says their doors are always open, just like a family.
Greg Wessels>> And I will always want the girls to know that, no matter what they do, as long as they are willing to come back and start working on their problems again, we'll be here.
Hena Cuevas>> Jennifer already has three jobs lined up and was accepted into Cal State Los Angeles. She wants to be either a first grade teacher or a dance instructor. But there's one thing she's still not ready to do: face her mother again.
>> "So you're not ruling it out completely?"
Jennifer De La Rosa>> "Right, but just not now. I'm not ready. I'm really not ready. I don't want to be rude about it. I just want to be calm and talk to her and go over it. Maybe she'll have answers this time, but I don't feel like it's going to hit me too hard, like it's something that I want, but I can't beg somebody to give me love or something that they don't have for me."
Hena Cuevas>> The one person Jennifer longs to be reunited with is her older sister.
Jennifer De La Rosa>> That's one of the things that kills me because we grew up together and it's like now we're just apart. It's like I feel that I need her and I know that she needs me too.
Hena Cuevas>> With her low-rent apartment, jobs and college classes, Jennifer has a good chance at making it. But should she slip and fall again, she knows the doors are always open at Rosemary's. I'm Hena Cuevas 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".
Val Zavala>> There is no more powerful force in California education than the Teacher's Union. Yet some say that the union puts teachers' interests above those of our students, but the union says that the teachers bear the most responsibility for educating our kids. So is the union an obstacle to reform or the key to improving our schools?
David Lehrer of CommUnity Advocates moderates our debate between A.J. Duffy, President of United Teachers Los Angeles, and David Abel of New Schools Better Neighborhoods, a critic of the Teacher's Union. The Kitchen Table is made possible by Ralph Tornberg.
David Lehrer>> How does UTLA view school reform? How important is it on your agenda of priorities?
A.J. Duffy>> It's our number one priority. I mean, in our new contract that we just negotiated, first time ever class size reduction, first time ever caps on balloon classes, a beginning to be a fair and equitable salary which we feel is critically important to retain the good teachers and to entice the bright young minds in college and the second and third career people.
We've done some things aside from the contract like the Belmont Center of Choice which is a reform movement to give local control to about ten schools in the Belmont area high schools, bring teachers and parents and administrators to the table, to do hiring, to do professional development, craft the curriculum that's necessary for the students that live in the communities that the school services.
David Lehrer>> David, Duffy says UTLA is a change agent for school reform.
David Abel>> There are many things that Duffy just said that are meritorious and supported in the community. I think teachers need to be paid better. I think they are working for some things that would help education, but they're the only voice in town. Everyone else has dropped by the side. He is the most powerful person. You're talking to the equivalent of the most powerful person in LAUSD by having Duffy here, he and his union.
They ought to have a voice, but they ought not to be the only voice. You know, absolute power absolutely corrupts and our conversations about education reform are not extensive enough. They're allowed to be taken down tributaries by talking about one off examples. They're talking about rehashing issues that most of their members agree with, but they never talk about the issues that really would drive some of their members crazy, but would be welcomed by parents, by students, by community leaders.
A.J. Duffy>> What issues?
David Abel>> It's a very narrow conversation.
A.J. Duffy>> What issues? What are you talking about?
David Abel>> Well, Duffy, you raised the Belmont Zone and I think that's a great program, but you can't explain to me why that isn't district-wide as a policy. You can't explain to me why the charter schools which you don't agree with mostly for administrative convenience. You just don't want to organize school by school in a seven hundred mile school district.
A.J. Duffy>> We're going to get there.
David Abel>> But you haven't shown me in your collective bargaining agreement you just signed, a three-year agreement, where the elements of reform, lessons learned from those charter schools, are incorporated in that contract. Because those aren't the issues that drive your members. The issues that drive your members are health benefits and that's why we spend three million dollars in this race in the Valley over an election about health benefits.
A.J. Duffy>> That's not true. What drives my numbers --
David Abel>> -- is that not the key issue in the race for you?
A.J. Duffy>> No, that is not the key issue, absolutely not.
David Abel>> But you just said it was.
A.J. Duffy>> The key issue is to continue driving reform. The Belmont Zone of Choice is not the only other game in town. We have an agreement about Parkman Middle School which is an expanded school base management school. I'm not going to go into --
David Abel>> -- there are eight hundred schools in Los Angeles Unified School District. There are eight hundred schools.
A.J. Duffy>> This school district has refused to reform. The demonstration project --
David Abel>> -- you are the school district.
A.J. Duffy>> The demonstration project districts --
David Lehrer>> -- don't you have a majority of the membership, or you did on the school board, and if you're interested, why didn't reform take place?
A.J. Duffy>> You know what? Because David's fallacy that we control the school board is in fact a fallacy because, if we did control the school board, we would have a dozen more Parkmans, we would have more Belmont Zones of Choice because UTLA is all about local control of schools, which we believe means quality education and decision-making for parents and teachers and administrators and, if you get local control of a massive amount of schools which we are pushing for, then you have less bureaucracy.
David Abel>> The conflict that Duffy has, it's part of his union responsibilities both to be a progressive and to protect his members, is that if a bad teacher exists in the school and well-known, he's obligated to protect that teacher. That's his obligation.
A.J. Duffy>> By law, by law.
David Abel>> You made the law, but by law. So he has a problem of being a true reformer from the constituents' point of view because he has to do that service.
A.J. Duffy>> And yet, according to the Los Angeles Times, over two hundred teachers were fired last year. We brought peer review and assistance into the district and you know what? Every teacher who gets a bad write-up has to go in it. Not administrators, and I know we got a lot of good administrators, but we have a lot of bad administrators that should have --
David Lehrer>> -- you know, it seems the consensus in this town seems to be that -- actually, this country -- public education is in terrible shape, test scores are inching up slowly in Los Angeles, but all too slowly. It becomes a major issue periodically when elections --
A.J. Duffy>> -- if you believe in test scores.
David Lehrer>> But wouldn't it be in your membership's interest to really shake things up and to have, you know, semi-contented parents out there who know their kids are moving up instead of this kind of, you know, status quo which you take Belmont and you've got Parkman and there are hundreds of other schools out there that something has to be done?
I mean, I know as a parent of four kids who've been through the public school system, it is a challenge to navigate this system and to make sure your kids get a quality education and you just watch it for twenty-five years deteriorate steadily.
A.J. Duffy>> I have been in office for a year and a half and, during that time, we have the Belmont Zone of Choice, we have Parkman Middle School, we are trying to get Families of School Projects going which is not just an education innovation, but it's an urban planning education where students get into a mini-district away from the bureaucracy that includes early childhood ed centers, elementary, middle, high schools --
David Abel>> -- all meritorious. Ask him what's in the contract that takes this district --
A.J. Duffy>> -- so that they can be a part of --
David Lehrer>> -- David, what is happening in the contract?
David Abel>> You just negotiated probably the most advantageous contract UTLA has negotiated in twenty-five years. What's in that three-year contract that picks up on these experiments that ought to be praised? You're talking about good things in a district of seven hundred square miles and nine hundred schools. What's in that contract?
A.J. Duffy>> Class size reduction, class size caps and the living contract. The first time, we didn't throw --
David Abel>> -- you didn't throw any of those out of the Belmont contract? You didn't take any of those out of the charter schools?
A.J. Duffy>> No. For the first time, this district will now be able to sit down with the union on an ongoing basis and negotiate items.
David Lehrer>> And you'll be able to raise the issue of wages all the time?
A.J. Duffy>> Wages, as re-openers, are aside from the living contract concept. We will be at the table aside from re-openers with issues for counselors, with issues for further class size reduction. I'm going to be working with the district to go upstate and raise money for lower class sizes --
David Abel>> -- with hopefully more than five percent of the voters vote in the May election. That's what we need.
A.J. Duffy>> I would like to see that.
David Lehrer>> I want to thank you both for coming today. David and Duffy, it's been a very enlightening conversation and we appreciate it.
A.J. Duffy>> Thank you, David.
David Abel>> Thank you, Duffy.
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.
He's been a central figure on the Los Angeles art scene since the late 1950s. He's eighty-one year old painter, Ed Moses, and he has two shows opening at the same time. Not bad in the art world where youth is often lauded over experience. Vicki Curry goes to the studio of Ed Moses where color is bursting from the walls.
[Film Clip]
Ed Moses>> I don't know what form it's going to take and I don't know until I see it, until I get it. Then I'm immediately bored. So that's what's kept me motivated. People say, "God, you're sort of amazing for such an old bastard." I said, "Because I've never lost that desire to discover and explore."
Vicki Curry>> Ed Moses has been making art for more than half a century. Looking at his body of work, it seems he's concerned less with developing a signature style and more with the quest to try something new.
Ed Moses>> These bled the edges which got softer edges. When I tried to make them precise earlier, they just weren't cooking. They just didn't look right. People say, "Well, you are always changing." I say, "No, I'm always mutating." I respond to other artists in responsive rebellion to them, showing them how to do it or how I would do it, but leads me into that, into something that I haven't seen. The thing is, can you make a painting that you haven't seen? Well, good luck.
Vicki Curry>> Ed Moses' curiosity and drive led to a life-changing decision in the late 1940s that eventually landed him in the middle of the acclaimed Los Angeles art scene. He grew up in Long Beach and served as a surgical technician during World War II. He had planned to go to medical school, but that plan started to fall apart once he enrolled at Long Beach Junior College.
Ed Moses>> But I had rotten grades. I probably had ADD, but they didn't have a term for it at that time. I couldn't memorize, I couldn't learn anything. This friend of mine said, "You've got to meet this art teacher. You've never seen anybody like him." Well, I hadn't. I'd just been around straight people all my life, feeling the person that was out of sync with everything, but trying to join in, you know.
So I saw this guy and I immediately signed up and I had no talent, no ability and everybody was doing all this kind of stuff with drawing and I didn't know what the hell to do. Finally, I dipped them in and I just started moving them all over and nothing was happening. So I got my fingers and I did this big finger painting all over.
So he put my canvas up there and said, "Now here's a real artist." Everybody looked at me and, from that time on, they all followed me around like I was a real artist and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I still don't. To this day, I don't know what I'm doing.
Vicki Curry>> He's the only one who thinks so. He enrolled in a Masters program at UCLA and had his first major exhibition before he even finished his degree. It was 1958 at the influential Ferus Gallery, home to a group of young artists who would go on to international acclaim: John Altoon, Billy Al Bengston, Wallace Berman, Ed Kienholz, Ed Roche, George Herms, Robert Irwin.
Ed Moses>> It was a "bad boy" gallery at that time and we all thought we were great and everybody else was stupid. We all were very competitive and we'd show each other work.
Vicki Curry>> Ed Moses has never looked back, but unlike many of his peers, he's focused almost completely on painting.
Ed Moses>> Yeah, I'm sort of habitual now and I'm aggressive by nature and compulsive, so it's a kind of ritual maybe. Every morning, I paint. I was always sort of obsessive and I liked repetition. I thought, if I repeated it enough, something would break open, but I'm not trying to express myself. I'm trying to discover things. I'm more of an explorer for personal madness through physical paint on a canvas. I really like these. This is the first turnaround I've had.
Vicki Curry>> Oh, really?
Ed Moses>> Yeah, I've been working on these for about three months, but I like this one. This is going to be a honey when we take it in.
Vicki Curry>> Moses says the materials and the process of working with them are as important to him as the final product.
Ed Moses>> Because I never know what I'm going to do, what colors I'm going to use. I get out here and I say, "Oh, we'll do this." I did one day in black, as you see.
Vicki Curry>> Oh, right.
Ed Moses>> In a response. So I'm always rebelling to what I'm doing, thinking I'm going to get too comfortable with this, so I have a lot of things going. So I have to spoil a lot of canvas. I like to be like a writer used to be with a typewriter and he'd tear out and tear out. Then "Oh, yeah" and then that's his lead-in. Well, sometimes they look amazing. I think, if you just put it out there, if you do it enough times, something will happen. Secret sauce will appear.
Vicki Curry>> Moses seldom uses a recipe in his search for that secret sauce. His work has alternated between controlled and free-form.
Ed Moses>> I have a hard time being out of control, but I like being out of control. Intellectually, I like the adventure. My psyche and my dream world doesn't like it at all. Terror is my constant companion. That's who I hang out with. That's who appears at four a.m. when I wake up with a start. I think this terror is always there for us, but we deny it, we cover it, we control, do all these kinds of things.
So I decided to let it run rampant. But that's my obsession. I'm obsessed by this and trying to find something that I can go, "Wow", that's not organized. Sometimes when I do it, I just put it on the wall and walk away and leave it. Don't look at it, then come back and be surprised or horrified. That's what painting is all about. Does it have a presence? Was there some connection between you, the canvas and the paint that's authentic? That's great. I love looking at that one down there. That combination is extravagant.
Vicki Curry>> Moses still paints every day, but even after all these years and all those paintings, his work still isn't easily recognizable. But Ed Moses just can't stop experimenting.
Ed Moses>> I don't want to be a professional artist. I don't want this to be a job or something. I hate working. So what do you want to do? Well, I just want to flop around like a fool and maybe once in a while something goes boop or something like that and you say, "Wow, look at that.".
Val Zavala>> You can see Ed Moses' work at two galleries in Santa Monica, the Frank Lloyd and the Bobbie Greenfield galleries in Bergamot Station through June 2. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
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.
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Sponsored in part by:
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