"We are not going to continue to merely sit back and watch our students, staff, and community suffer. We understand our rights." - The Lokrantz Community
My reputation as an independent journalist who covers the LAUSD in ways that the corporate media will not has resulted in the receipt of some interesting pieces of mailing coming into my inbox. Some, like the copies of email messages sent by David Fehte to parents at El Camino Real Charter School just before the Daily News released an article exposing corruption at the school piqued my curiosity and fueled my coverage of the scandal. The copy of the lawsuit against North Valley Military Institute made my blood boil. Last week when I received a copy of an email sent to LAUSD Board Members from members of the Lokrantz community it brought tears to my eyes.
Lokrantz is a Special Education Center that serves the District's most vulnerable students, many of whom have severe health challenges. The campus was built to be physically welcoming to these students and to meet their needs. The first thing that I noticed when I visited the school was that the curbs in the bus drop-off area were even with the door of the bus to accommodate students with mobility issues. The campus includes a hydrotherapy pool and facilities for physical therapy. The playground is wheelchair accessible.
When I first ran for School Board in 2015, the incumbent, Tamar Galatzan, was pushing to close the campus to force the students onto general education campuses. With the election of Scott Schmerelson, the school found a champion, but parents still had to file a lawsuit against a School District that claimed that "special education centers are unnecessary because the District can 'provide all supports and services... at a general education site".
In the years that followed, the school began to once again flourish. The last time I attended an event at the school, the principal announced that they were looking to expand the age ranges that could be serviced on the campus. Unfortunately, the COVID crisis provided an opportunity for foes of the school within the LAUSD bureaucracy to attack the school once again.
With each of the students requiring specialized assistance, the operations of Lokrantz are extremely complex and require a strong principal who is experienced with the services that these children require. The District decided, instead, to make the school share a principal with another campus. Even worse, the other school the current principal is assigned to is a Career Transition Center, which also has a student body with specialized needs that require a full-time principal.
The lack of full-time leadership is contributing to the decay of the campus facilities. According to the letter sent to the Board of Education, the "therapy pool has been broken for many, many years with no real progress being made to fix it." The "much-loved playground is falling apart" with a replacement for a broken piece of equipment "sitting in the local district parking lot for a year."
The student body is once again shrinking with only 50 students currently attending the school. According to the community, the district staff is once again being told to not offer this highly qualified school to parents during the IEP process. Reportedly local district offices are telling parents that Lokrantz is "not an option."
To make matters worse, the school's advocate is no longer its Board Member. The shifting borders from the redistricting process places the school in Nick Melvoin's Board District 4. This is the same board member who tried to kick a CTC off another campus to make room for a vanity project.
A week after reading the email, my sadness has been replaced by anger, as this school should have already been protected. My proposed "Improving Special Education Within the LAUSD" resolution was influenced in part by past battles fought to keep this school open, including the requirement "that the Special Education Centers will continue to be operated on specialized campuses, will be fully funded, and will not be co-located on general education campuses."
Another aspect of the proposed resolution would require that a magnet school serving students who have an interest in careers related to special education be created to operate on a Special Education Center campus. With enrollment declining at Lokrantz, district staff has moved into areas that are not being used for classroom space. This space could have been used instead for the magnet school, which would have satisfied the goal of promoting inclusion in a way that allowed children with special education needs to maintain access to facilities created especially for them.
I have brought the idea of a magnet to Board Member Schmerelson on several occasions and each time he has agreed to look into the concept without taking further action. He also remarked that the idea sounded "like a fantastic new frontier that should be opened in the LAUSD Magnet program" in his candidate questionnaire for the 2020 election.
During the last election, Dr. Rocio Rivas, the representative for Board District 2, agreed to sponsor and support the proposed Special Education resolution. She also stated that the concept of a special education related magnet school was "an idea worth exploring."
The community at Lokrantz needs your help in persuading the Board to take immediate action. Please contact your representative (look up your Board District here) and ask for them to provide assistance in keeping this and all the other Special Education centers fully funded and available as option during IEP's. Also, if you have not done so already, please sign the petition asking the board to pass the proposed "Improving Special Education" resolution.
- Board District 1: (213) 241-6382 George.McKenna@lausd.net
- Board District 2: (213) 241-6020 Rocio.Rivas@lausd.net
- Board District 3: (213)241-8333 Scott.Schmerelson@lausd.net
- Board District 4: (213) 241-6387 Nick.Melvoin@lausd.net
- Board District 5: (213) 241-5555 Jackie.Goldberg@lausd.net
- Board District 6: (213) 241-6388 Kelly.Gonez@lausd.net
- Board District 7: (213) 241-6385 Tanya.Franklin@lausd.net
This is the letter that was sent to the LAUSD Board by the Lokrantz community:
Dear Board Members,
The parents, staff, and students of Lokrantz need your support immediately. For many years now our school community has suffered. We do not get the support or frankly the respect we deserve. We are not going to continue to merely sit back and watch our students, staff, and community suffer. We understand our rights. Please take the time to read over these important comments from our community. We should not be worried year after year of our campus closing or losing its valuable resources and supports.
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