Our School: Student Impact

“California Connected” takes you back to “Our School,” but this time presents it from a kid’s eye view.

When seventh grader Erik Stewart returned to Mount Vernon Middle School in Los Angeles after the summer break, he was surprised to see the physical changes around campus.
“There’s not even graffiti on all the lockers and it’s much better than last year,” reports Erik. “It shows that they really care for the kids.”

Among the transformations this year, the campus was divided into four sections, so-called “houses,” so that teachers would share the same cluster of students throughout the day.

The goal of this reform was to better coordinate lesson plans and foster relationships between teachers and students.

However, it is no simple task to coordinate the schedules of 1,850 students and more than 80 teachers in the midst of the other dramatic changes implemented at Mount Vernon this year, so only about 70% of the students were correctly “housed.”

We met one such student who has been enrolled in two physical education classes since September. As a result, the student has missed out on months of history instruction.

Last year, we learned that one in five of the middle school students read at or below third grade level. This year, the school has a remedial class called “Language!”, a program that starts at the kindergarten level and is designed to bring students up to a third grade level.

The problem is that there are 700 students in the program because the tests used to determine placement were administered incorrectly and inconsistently across the district.

Principal Scott Schmerelson says another major hurdle remains—one that is not confined to school grounds: getting the parents actively involved in helping the school, by simply supporting both academics and discipline at home.

Erik’s grandmother, Claudette Cryer, agrees with Schmerelson on the role of parents in the educational process.

“Whatever you do at home is a reflection of the way the kid’s doing at school,” says Cryer, “If you let them run wild at home they are going to do the same thing [at school].”