Inglewood School District Works to Avoid Bankruptcy with Flashy Magnet School Instead of Fiscal Reforms

The state should go ahead at take over the district. It'll probably save taxpayers money in the long run and neighboring communities can be spared the social engineering that the Inglewood School Board hopes will allow the district to avoid a bailout by Sacramento.

See the Los Angeles Times, "In Inglewood, a sparkling new campus and looming bankruptcy":

When Johnny Young looks at La Tijera School, he sees more than the gleaming new facade of steel and stucco, the technology lab outfitted with 36 desktop computers, the fitness center with spinning cycles, treadmills and weights.

The Inglewood school board president sees salvation for his beleaguered district, the most financially precarious in California.

Socked by state funding cuts and declining enrollment, the Inglewood Unified School District is expected to go broke by May. Inglewood is one of seven school districts in the state that projects red ink through next year and is closest to the brink of bankruptcy, according to state fiscal management officials who work with troubled schools.

Without quick action, the Los Angeles County education office recently wrote, there is a "strong potential" that the state will have to bail out Inglewood with an emergency loan. That would trigger the California Department of Education to fire the superintendent, sideline the school board and take over district management until the loan is repaid, which could take 20 years.

But Young is confident that such drastic measures won't happen, and projects like the new La Tijera School are one reason why. He predicted that the $24-million state-of-the-art campus that opened in January, paid for with a construction bond, will attract hundreds of new students. And new magnet programs and publicity drives at other schools should bring in even more, he said. More students means more state funding — about $5,200 per pupil.

"We are very optimistic we will come out of this and avoid a state takeover," Young said.

But a long road of hurdles lies ahead.

Estela Ponce reflects on one of the district's biggest challenges. Like hundreds of other parents, Ponce moved her three children from Inglewood schools to charter campuses.

She said her two older children were not being prepared for college; her daughter, now a senior, was getting A's at Inglewood High School but scoring below basic on state standardized tests. When asked why, she said, her daughter blamed poor teachers.

Ponce's third child was attending Centinela Elementary, a district school that surpassed the goal of 800 on state standardized tests last year. But she put him in a charter last fall after his highly regarded second-grade teacher was moved to another grade. Ponce said too many teachers at Centinela couldn't control their students and set low academic standards

"They don't provide the education my child deserves," she said.

These are the families that need excellent public education systems, and the schools are failing. But read the rest of that article. The district is bad hands. Even the teachers' union supports a state takeover.

See my essay from yesterday, "Why Progressivism Should Scare the **** Out of You."