June 2009 Archives

A Muslim 12th grader at a San Fernando Valley campus schooled me on the complexities of ethnic identity.

For most of the past decade ethnic fights at her campus, Birmingham High School, and neighboring Grant High School have been as predictable as the Santa Ana winds or traffic in the Sepulveda Pass. The headlines out of the Van Nuys schools appeared clear: Hundreds of Armenian and Latino High School Students in Campus Brawls. Some fights were so bad, on several occasions school district police summoned the LAPD for reinforcements. Students say perceived disrespect was the most common trigger.

Campus administrators began clamping down with tougher discipline and by training teachers to nip conflict in the bud. They were helped by Cal State Northridge professors who helped guide conflict mediation sessions.

Graduating senior Saaliha Khan is one of 40 students at Birmingham High signed up this year as a peer mediator. She has stood out among students this year for her enlightened leadership. That praise comes from fellow students and administrators. Princeton University said so too when it handed her the Princeton Prize this year for her efforts to diffuse ethnic tensions at Birmingham High School.

More

Teachers at the Los Angeles Unified School District are resorting to increasingly extreme measures to block the likely layoff of thousands of colleagues.

A handful of hunger strikers are nearing their third week of fasting to draw attention the looming layoffs. The school board's set to ax more than 2,000 teachers by the end of the month to close a massive budget deficit.

A tent city, a Cortinesville, sprouted last week on the steps of the 29-story school district headquarters where activists accused Superintendent Ramon Cortines and the school board of balancing the district's budget on the backs of school children.

Marco Flores, a first grade teacher, at Manchester Elementary School in South L.A., had fasted for five days. He agrees it's an extreme measure and said he's doing it out of frustration that the parties involved weren't doing more to protect student learning. "About three weeks ago we sort of decided that what's happening in Los Angeles with education was just unacceptable. The union and the district were just not doing anything. We were going to start next school year with class sizes that were too big."

Since he was hired as deputy superintendent last year and the school board elevated him to superintendent in January, Ramon Cortines has been praised by many teachers as the most in-touch top administrator in recent memory. He knows schools, from the classroom to headquarters, many said. Cortines and the school board have said the cuts they've approved are painful but necessary.

More

A little guitar from Veracruz could save the Chicano movement. That little guitar, the ukele-looking jarana, is turning up more and more in the hands of young men and women at Mexican American cultural centers and political protests in Southern California. It's the centerpiece of son jarocho, a zydeco-paced music from the gulf coast of Mexico that's the blending of 500 years of Spanish, indigenous and African rhythms.

Jarana players dodged LAPD rubber bullets at MacArthur Park two years ago. They kept up the spirits of the South Central farmers. Rage Against the Machine front-man Zack de la Rocha strummed a jarana four years ago alongside some young Veracruz musicians at a LA County Museum of Natural History concert.

One of the outposts in L.A. for son jarocho is the guitar strings-making company Guadalupe Strings. The owner, 27 year-old Jacob Hernandez, had a rent party on Saturday at the El Sereno shop that showed how the music's serving as a bridge for Chicano and Mexican musicians.

Jacob played percussion for Domingo Siete, the L.A. band that's close to Quetzal, arguably the heirs-apparent to Los Lobos. Many of the musicians in the Quetzal-Domingo Siete crews have gone to Veracruz many times in the last decade to soak in the music, watch a new generation of musicians learn son jarocho and to watch how entire towns celebrate the music in large fandangos, or town festivals, that go into the morning. They want music to have the same effect on Chicano neighborhoods in Southern California.

More

There's a student movement brewing in the schools hardest hit by budget cuts. The movement's L.A. Unified epicenter is now the Santee Learning Complex just south of downtown Los Angles.

A couple of weeks ago hundreds of students from the high school refused to enter their first period classes and instead marched peacefully a couple of miles north to the 29-story school district headquarters on 3rd and Beaudry streets.

On their way they chanted slogans like, "Students united will never be defeated!" They were there to protest the planned layoff of thousands of teachers to close a looming budget deficit. Schools in poor neighborhoods, like Santee, stand to be hit the hardest by these layoffs. You see, the first teachers on the chopping block are the ones with just a few years of experience. And in working class, immigrant neighborhoods like the one around Figueroa and Washington streets near Santee High School that's a large portion of the teaching corps. Administrators would fill some of the jobs but class sizes are expected to balloon no matter how the cuts are carried out.

More