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Life & Times Transcript

8/13/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

How should a high school in a poor neighborhood be graded?

Gregory McNair>> They don't teach well. I think that's what the facts showed. That's what the data shows. They're not teaching these students well.

Diana Rubi>> To shut down this school with so many students that are going to colleges. It's terrible.

Val Zavala>> And then, how does a successful woman end up in love with an inmate and why?

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.

With additional support for Life and Times from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> What if a school in a poor neighborhood had really low test scores and yet it managed to send every one of its graduating seniors to college? Well, that's the situation for Discovery Preparatory Charter in Pacoima, and those low test scores are now threatening to get the school closed and that's triggered a huge controversy. Sam Louie has our story.

Sam Louie>> Diana Rubi is taking one of her last tests in high school, but by all accounts, the seventeen year old senior has already overcome one of her biggest personal tests: finishing high school.

Diana Rubi>> Once I got here, I was like I still didn't know how to do long division when I got here and I was in tenth grade. Honestly, I didn't think I was going to graduate. I didn't have it in mind. I was just thinking about my friends and I would rarely go to school. I would ditch.

Sam Louie>> That was before she transferred from a public high school to this charter school.

Diana Rubi>> "Hi, guys. How was your test?"

Sam Louie>> Discovery Preparatory in Pacoima. Pacoima is a poor area in the northeast San Fernando Valley. Discovery Prep put Diana on the college track.

Diana Rubi>> When I got here, it was completely different like my mentality changed because they instill that in your head and they want you to go to college and be successful.

Sam Louie>> So much so that Diana has earned a four-year scholarship to attend Biola University.

Diana Rubi>> It's awesome because my mom struggles because she has two jobs. She's a single mom now, so she struggles a lot and I know she wouldn't have been able to help me.

Teacher>> "There are two things that you need to pay attention to. When you get to Part B, eleven to thirteen, it will say to refer to . . ."

Sam Louie>> Discovery Prep opened only five years ago. Since then, it has ridden a wave of success in sending students to college.

Matthew Macarah>> In our first year, we had a hundred percent of our students enrolled in college, either two-year or four-year colleges.

Sam Louie>> Matthew Macarah is the school's Executive Director.

Matthew Macarah>> This year, we have students accepted to UCLA, Dartmouth, Penn, Lewis & Clark.

Sam Louie>> So why is Discovery Prep in jeopardy of being shut down? Why is a school that's sending ninety-seven percent of its seniors to a university or community college in danger of closing? It has to do with being a charter school. Charter schools are independent public schools that operate under contracts with local school districts.

Here in Los Angeles, there are a hundred three charter schools, the most in the nation. But in order for them to remain open, charter schools must meet certain academic standards, and Discovery Prep is not meeting those standards specifically for the state's STAR test, otherwise known as Standardized Testing and Reporting.

Gregory McNair>> We want to support them to the extent that it's reasonable, but we also want to hold them accountable.

Sam Louie>> Gregory McNair is with LAUSD's charter school division. His office is recommending that Discovery Prep's five-year charter not be renewed. And how low are those test scores? In 2006, test results show none of the students passed at a proficient level in chemistry, algebra and geometry and, overall, the school is at the bottom ten percent when compared to other similar schools in the state.

Gregory McNair>> It wasn't just one bad year. They didn't meet the criteria for two straight years and that's why they're in the situation they're in now.

Sam Louie>> So how do students with low test scores get into college? Well, the state tests and the college entrance exams are totally different tests, but Discovery Prep officials acknowledge they will now start taking those tests just as seriously.

Matthew Macarah>> The STAR testing is very important because while you guys are preparing for SATs and CASI and AP tests to get into college, we also need to prove to the state and to Los Angeles Unified that we're a good school based on just our STAR scores.

Sam Louie>> Discovery officials blame the low scores on unforeseen circumstances.

Matthew Macarah>> We were taking students from Community Charter Middle School that had, you know, test scores that were phenomenal to test scores that were very low, from local middle schools from Los Angeles Unified where we had students who were boycotting the test and just going through and filling out NC because the principal had been let go.

Sam Louie>> But LAUSD's charter school division feels it's inappropriate to blame the students.

Gregory McNair>> We have to stop blaming the students for the bad performance of schools. We have to teach the students that we have and I'm somewhat disappointed to hear a charter provider blaming the students for the inability to perform.

Sam Louie>> McNair says that teachers have to accept responsibility for the low scores.

Gregory McNair>> They don't teach well. I think that's what the facts showed. That's what the data shows. They're not teaching these students well and the bottom line is they're not meeting the overall criteria. I can't just look at college applications and college admissions. I have to look at the entire picture.

Sam Louie>> Discovery Prep still believes too much weight is placed on standardized tests and not enough on real-world results like going to college.

Matthew Macarah>> A lot of the teachers spend a lot of time working with kids in small groups to optimize and make sure the students who need additional challenges get pushed, but the students who are having difficulty in a class are able to get the one-on-one and small group instruction that's absolutely necessary to make sure that they're able to be prepared for college in four years.

Sam Louie>> So where do parents stand on the controversy?

Leticia Rubi>> I have four kids. I'm working hard and I'm really proud about Diana. My family, everybody is happy because she's made it to university and is the first who's going to do it in our family. Everybody is happy.

Sam Louie>> Leticia Rubi is a single mother. She's thrilled her daughter, Diana, is college-bound.

Leticia Rubi>> Well, that's really important for us. I mean, it's something that all the family wants for his kids. I thank the school because it's for this school that she's going to make it.

Diana Rubi>> To shut down the school with so many students that are going to colleges. It's terrible.

Sam Louie>> What would be your reaction if they did shut down the school?

Diana Rubi>> I'd be very sad. A lot of my friends who are juniors and sophomores told me, "Now my chances of going to college are a lot smaller."

Sam Louie>> The debate over Discovery Prep's future has been going on for the past school year. Finally after numerous meetings, the Los Angeles School Board voted on the school's charter status. In a vote of five to two, the board renewed Discovery's charter, but it's only for one year instead of the requested five years. That means, for the time being, Discovery Prep will stay open.

Matthew Macarah>> We haven't taken the STAR as seriously as we should have. When we take it seriously like we are going to do from now on, you're going to see that we do very well on our STAR tests as well.

Sam Louie>> As for Diana Rubi, she's grateful that others will get the chance she's getting to head to college and dream big.

Diana Rubi>> I'm going to attend Biola University as a biochemistry major and I hope to move on to medical school and become a surgeon.

Sam Louie>> I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> So what do you think? Should Discovery Prep be closed? You can post your opinion. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog.

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>> Overcrowding in California prisons has reached a crisis point. There are more than a hundred seventy thousand men behind bars. But have you ever thought about the women, the girlfriends and wives of inmates? What is life like for them? That's the subject of a book called "Visiting Life" by a woman who fell in love with an inmate doing life for murder.

Bridget Kinsella is a graduate from Columbia Journalism School who worked for fourteen years in publishing. Then her life started unraveling. Her husband revealed he was gay. She found herself divorced, childless and despondent. I met her at Sofitel Los Angeles Hotel where she explained how this three-year relationship with a convict began.

You've written a book called "Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside". Were you one of those women doing time (laughter)?

Bridget Kinsella>> (Laughter) Yes, I was, believe it or not. I wrote a book that I never thought in a million years I would write. I never thought it would be my story, but I think that's what life is. You know, what we think we would never do in a million years.

I had a friend who taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and I was a trying my hand as a literary agent at the time. So I read somebody's work. His name is Rory Mann and we started to write back and forth to each other.

Val Zavala>> He is an inmate?

Bridget Kinsella>> He's an inmate serving life for murder which he did commit. Life without parole.

Val Zavala>> At Pelican Bay?

Bridget Kinsella>> Pelican Bay State Prison, yes. So I was encouraging him to write and we started to write letters back and forth to each other sharing our lives.

Val Zavala>> Was he a good writer the first time you read his stuff?

Bridget Kinsella>> Oh, blew me away, blew me away.

Val Zavala>> Really?

Bridget Kinsella>> And then to put that into letter form later as we started to tell each other our life stories and just bare our souls for one another, yes, it's compelling. He's a compelling writer.

Val Zavala>> So you first read his manuscript, then you started corresponding in writing and then you decided to meet in person and then you fell in love?

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, I tried not to. I have to be honest. I tried really hard not to fall in love with him because I know that's not a smart thing to do.

Val Zavala>> No, no, it's not.

Bridget Kinsella>> But at the time, I was going through a midlife crisis of my own. I was turning forty. I moved from New York to California a few years before to restart my life and I was trying so many things just to sort of get back into my life after a devastating divorce that I never quite got over. One of the things I never got over was the fact that I didn't have children.

What Rory did, when I first met him, is he let me say this out loud without saying, "Oh, well, you still have time" or "You still can do this". He didn't bright-side my pain. He let me actually talk about it and that was so real to me. Then he loved me. I could tell that from the very beginning and I tried not to reciprocate, but it was too compelling.

Val Zavala>> How often did you visit each other -- did you visit him?

Bridget Kinsella>> (Laughter) I went to visit him. He can't really come to see me. I would go every other month or so and that became the pattern. Then by the second visit, I had crossed that line already.

Val Zavala>> That was my next question. At what point did you feel yourself falling for him?

Bridget Kinsella>> Right away, but the second visit, I allowed myself to cross that line. He was begging me basically, "Give me your pain. Let me swallow it up. Let me lock it away so you can get better and get back into the world."

Val Zavala>> Here's a tough question. He committed murder. What were the circumstances?

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, he was a teenage runaway. He ran away when he was thirteen and he had an abusive background. A few years later, a friend of his was killed. He was a drug dealer as well. Rory had gotten out of the life. He'd moved on. The girlfriend of his best friend called and said that John had been killed.

Val Zavala>> Meaning a former colleague drug dealer had been killed?

Bridget Kinsella>> Had been killed. So what Rory did is, he got a gun and he used it.

Val Zavala>> On the person who killed --

Bridget Kinsella>> -- on the person who killed --

Val Zavala>> -- so it was a revenge killing?

Bridget Kinsella>> It was a revenge killing, yes.

Val Zavala>> Who did he kill?

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, he was nineteen at the time and he killed a kid a couple of years younger than himself, so this was really horrific. These guys were like playing "Scarface". Life didn't even have meaning to them. As he says, he did the worst thing possible and he'll never be able to get that back. He doesn't play the victim. He did the worst thing and he has to take responsibility for that.

Val Zavala>> He must have been an incredibly charming, charismatic, persuasive man. Did you feel that maybe you were being manipulated?

Bridget Kinsella>> Yes, actually, I did wonder about that because you hear that these guys are really manipulative. So I was questioning all of that, but as time went on and we really exchanged more than just ideas, I mean, we exchanged our hearts with one another, I know it's real and it's the best thing he's ever done in his life.

I don't go off and marry him. That's not the end of the book. That would not be a happy ending for me. He knew that from the beginning. He knew me letting go of him was going to be the end of our story.

Val Zavala>> So you would visit, what, once every couple of months which is not real often. Were there also letters? I mean, how did he change your life?

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, the letters came all the time. We exchanged letters a lot. You know, I'd get a letter from him and I'd return it right away and vice versa.

Val Zavala>> Phone calls?

Bridget Kinsella>> He can call collect when he gets access to a phone. That's the only way that they can call. He actually called me before I ever went to visit. I was a little surprised at how soft-spoken he was, but mostly it was letters. As we progressed in our relationship, our letters progressed into a world of fantasy. You know, one of the things I was trying to heal in my life was not having a family of my own. With Rory, we had created an imaginary family life together.

Val Zavala>> Really?

Bridget Kinsella>> I know a psychologist probably could have a field day with that, but it really helped me get to a point of healing. It also helped him. I asked him now that he's read the book what he got out of this whole experience. He said he learned how to love a woman like a grownup man. Not a nineteen year old boy obsessed with sex and all those other things, but with responsibility for who that person is and who that person wants to be.

So what we did for each is we helped each other become the people we need to be, and that doesn't mean we get to be together. I really wanted to understand why and how that happened, so that's why I looked out at these other women who were in the visiting room. I wanted to know their stories. Not women who write to Scott Peterson or seek out a famous inmate. I wanted stories like mine, just somebody it happened to and why and what it meant for them.

Val Zavala>> What did you find out from those other women?

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, I'm not a sociologist, so this is not a sociological study. But I think what I discovered is, if there was a common thread, most of us walked in there wounded. So most of the women had this wound and most of the men were willing to talk about things.

I mean, that's the thing about these relationships. They're extremely romantic because you can exist on the physical realm. You exist on the intellectual and emotional realm. For someone like me who was wounded emotionally, that really helped me.

Val Zavala>> So after you've gone through this yourself and you've learned about other women who have been in love or married to inmates, what kind of advice do you give a daughter or somebody?

Bridget Kinsella>> Actually, that's a very good question because I'm not an advocate for this. I do not necessarily recommend women enter these type of relationships with somebody in prison.

Val Zavala>> Because a lot of women get conned?

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, a lot get conned, and also it's just extremely difficult to maintain them. One of the women who got married and talked to me about it said the preacher told her, "I'll give you five years. That's about how long these things last." They're seven and counting, but still, it takes a lot of work. If my niece came to me, my twenty-eight year old niece came and said, "Aunt Bridget, I just met this guy in prison", I'd say, "Honey, we're sitting down and having a conversation."

Val Zavala>> Well, Bridget, thank you so much for sharing a very unusual but fascinating experience. I really appreciate it.

Bridget Kinsella>> Well, thank you.

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.

Val Zavala>> Some sad news. Merv Griffin has died. He was eighty-two and died of prostrate cancer. He was a popular band singer and creator of the hit game shows "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune" and he has a new game show coming out in September called "Merv Griffin's Crosswords". A couple of years ago, he gave Patt Morrison a tour of his favorite spots in his adopted hometown of Beverly Hills.

Merv Griffin>> So this is Bedford. We're still in the flats of Beverly Hills.

Patt Morrison>> You're a regular Thomas Guide (laughter).

Merv Griffin>> I am a Thomas Guide. My son just made a U-turn on Wilshire Boulevard. Unheard of (laughter).

Patt Morrison>> Well, let's keep looking at more of your Beverly Hills.

Merv Griffin>> Oh, boy. Every street is a memory for me.

Patt Morrison>> You've been here in Beverly Hills longer than just about everyone else.

Merv Griffin>> It's strange. I'm eighty years old now, but my memory is fresh. I remember more names from those days, you know, the late 1940's and again the early 1970's, than I do today.

Patt Morrison>> What brought you to Beverly Hills?

Merv Griffin>> Freddy Martin's Orchestra. I was singing with Freddy Martin's band who was the Hollywood favorite orchestra. They played the Cocoanut Grove and we played there and there I sat every single night. I sat out in front of the band, you know. All the stars would come to me because Freddy was conducting to request songs.

For example, Howard Hughes came every single night and always with a great beauty on his arm. He did have his tennis shoes on. Danced in his tennis shoes. And he always requested the same song (singing).

Patt Morrison>> I should have known better.

Merv Griffin>> Memory is hot.

Patt Morrison>> And you moved to Beverly Hills when?

Merv Griffin>> I moved to Beverly Hills because we had a long engagement at the Cocoanut Grove and lived first on 204 South Reeves Drive. This is South Reeves, a block south of Wilshire, at the second building on the left. Pull over to the side here. There it is. Oops, there's an apartment here for rent.

Patt Morrison>> How much did it cost you?

Merv Griffin>> Twenty-eight dollars a week. It was just one room with a Murphy bed.

Patt Morrison>> Pulling it down out of the wall.

Merv Griffin>> Pulling it down and it had a little Pullman kitchen and a couch and that was it. I would get home at two o'clock in the morning when we finished at the Cocoanut Grove. I would drive back here. But the maitre d', Michael, at the Cocoanut Grove used to give me things for my apartment.

I didn't have a coffee maker or cups or any silverware or anything, so he'd just give them to me from the Cocoanut Grove. I'd be parked over here a block behind Will Wright's and then I would walk over here with my brown bag filled with all this silver.

Patt Morrison>> You looked like a burglar at three o'clock in the morning.

Merv Griffin>> And I got stopped by the cops. "What are you doing?" I said, "I sing with Freddy Martin's Orchestra and I live right here. I'm coming home after work." "Oh." Then I'd be praying that the bag didn't go rattle, rattle, rattle. It was all filled with fake silver (laughter).

It felt like a village. Even today, there's only thirty thousand people here. Lord knows in 1948 how many people were here. And Rodeo Drive was just a simple street with little stores, not very classy. All this on the right was all parking lot and then, of course, over on the left here where Louie Raton is now was the great Fred Hayman store. Fred Hayman really was the instigator of this becoming the great shopping street like Rome, like --

Patt Morrison>> -- Bond Street.

Merv Griffin>> Bond Street, Madison Avenue in New York. I did my whole show from here and we parked Rolls Royces across the street and I did the show from the front of all these Rolls Royces. As I would walk up and down Rodeo Drive, the various shopkeepers would come out and tell me about their stores. That was one of the first big promotions for Rodeo Drive.

Merv Griffin>> "Rodeo Drive is a mere two and a half blocks long, but because it's populated by the world's most lavish stores, it's been referred to as The Half Mile of Style, The Gold Paved Ride."

Merv Griffin>> I was the first to leave New York and do my show here on a permanent basis. So I flew out. Tony and my wife, Julann, stayed back there until I found a house. The minute, the first day we moved in, I saw all these Hollywood buses outside and you could hear the man broadcasting. I said, "Gee, they find you so fast here (laughter)". I was amazed.

Patt Morrison>> (Laughter) The star is home.

Merv Griffin>> It wasn't until I gave a party for Michael Caine. Then at the party for Michael Caine was James Bacon, the columnist. He walked in and said, "Whoa, Merv, I haven't been in this house since the murder." I said, "What murder?"

Then I started to realize why all the celebrity buses were here. He said, "Well, this is where Lana Turner's daughter murdered Stompanato." And here's the house. Then I moved up to what had been Leonard Firestone's estate and didn't realize that there had been a murder there. Well, not a murder. There was a shooting because the man was attempting to kidnap Leonard Firestone.

So then I had moved out from New Jersey on a farm where a very famous murder had happened, but I didn't know that before. Then we moved to a home that had no crimes. It's a lovely home. We got a divorce. So it was murder that was keeping my marriage.

Patt Morrison>> I gather.

Tony>> Maybe if they'd stayed married, there might have been a fourth murder.

Patt Morrison>> That's right (laughter).

Merv Griffin>> We'd have murdered you, you son of a gun (laughter). And here's my little house that I owned for seventeen years.

Tony>> His grandkids, they called it Poppa's house.

Patt Morrison>> The Beverly Hilton.

Merv Griffin>> They couldn't understand why I had a buffet every day.

Tony>> They would say, "Can we go to Poppa's house? We want to swim in Poppa's pool (laughter).

Merv Griffin>> As you know, it was a very big honor that Beverly Hills named this little street here.

Patt Morrison>> Merv Griffin Way.

Merv Griffin>> Yes. It is one of the most traveled streets. This is your only real access. This is Santa Monica Boulevard -- no, this is Wilshire -- over to Santa Monica Boulevard without having to go all the way around the Beverly Hilton.

Patt Morrison>> So we are going home for you when we come to the Beverly Hilton.

Merv Griffin>> Well, yes. "There's the man. Good to see you again."

>> "Good to see you again. We miss you."

Merv Griffin>> "Thank you."

Patt Morrison>> Now tell me the history of the hotel. What was here before the hotel?

Merv Griffin>> It was built in 1955. Richard Nixon opened the hotel officially. He was Vice President under Eisenhower in the 1950's.

Richard Nixon>> "We have seen a great metropolis constructed in this era."

Merv Griffin>> I bought it in 1987. I sold "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" to Coca-Cola in 1986 and decided to head my life towards hotels, my second great love after, you know, performing.

Patt Morrison>> Well, you were at one point the biggest taxpayer.

Merv Griffin>> The largest employer and the largest taxpayer in Beverly Hills the whole time I had the Hilton.

Patt Morrison>> So this is your town.

Merv Griffin>> Well, it is. I grew up in San Mateo which I'm very proud of, but then when I left, I left being in the business and touring with the bands and then the contract with Warner Bros. and back to New York. I went back to New York for fourteen or fifteen years, back to do Broadway and records and started my talk show in New York. Then I finally just said I'm going home and came back to Beverly Hills.

Patt Morrison>> So this is home.

Merv Griffin>> It really feels like home.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Merv Griffin died at age eighty-two. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, 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.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Sponsored in part by:


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