At Los Padrinos, I worked with a number of interesting students. Most of them were gang bangers, some of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There were even some students who had finally "seen the light." They had had a spiritual awakening, wanted to do more with their lives than break curfew, break their chances, break the law.
One student's story was really interesting, though, not so much for the laws that he broke to get arrested, but the other laws that he broke, in order to get an education.
This kid lived in North Hawthorne, meaning that he was destined because of the zip code laws to go to Hawthorne High School, an institution that looks more like a dreary prison than a campus that prizes learning and creativity.
To say the least, his mother and he were having none of that.
Rather than enroll in another failing inner city school, with race riots, low test scores, and uncommitted bureaucracy pushing for superficial innovation, this student would get up at 5:30am, take the local Metro train to Los Angeles, then stop at a friend's house in West Los Angeles, from which his friend's mother would drive him to Pacific Palisades High School, at least an hour and a half away from the South Bay.
In order to qualify for that school, the young man had submitted his friend's home address as his own. One more example of the extent to which a family will go so that a child can go to a good school.
A voucher system, more than in-house school reform or even charter schools, is the only real solution to the chronic failure of public schools. Why should a family have to lie their way into a better school? If a student is willing to hitchhike to a site with better facilities, engaged teachers, and a safe campus, then why forbid that student merely because he or she does not live in the local sip code of the school?
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