Publications

Winter 2005 Newsletter

Community Charter School Engages NSBN and Its Community in Re-Imagining Its 100-Year-Old Campus

The Santa Monica Boulevard School, now a charter school within the LAUSD, has been an integral part of its Hollywood neighborhood since 1910, evolving with the changing populations. The school is beginning to plan and raise funds for a campus building project, and NSBN is working with administrators and community stakeholders to bring new services and facilities for the community into the project. In this interview, Vahe Markarian and Andy Johnsen, co-principals of the Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter School, discuss their hopes for the project and the opportunities and challenges of the charter framework.

As a charter school, you have the flexibility to plan and construct new educational facilities, and to offer family-friendly services in ways that most others within the LAUSD cannot. Share how you allied with NSBN and other stakeholders to begin master-planning and modeling your campus?

Vahe Markarian: We have been looking to expand our campus, replace some of the somewhat dilapidated bungalows that we presently have, and get a new building. At the same time, we have entertained the idea of trying to get a dual-use building just as other charter schools have done. We talked about the idea of bringing in a community clinic for maybe four or five years. So, that's pretty much been our motivation. And then we heard about the New Schools Better Neighborhoods; we contacted NSBN, and planning took on a life of its own after that.

What more does your campus need?

Andy Johnsen: New Schools Better Neighborhoods really helped us to bring to reality some of the dreams that we've had for our school. We have floated around the idea of how great it might be to have a health clinic on our campus, and how awesome it would be to be able to build a new building. And then NSBN came along and helped us to make some real concrete plans.

We are school people, so we know reading and writing and arithmetic pretty well. But when it comes to some of these other areas like facilities and health care, we don't have the expertise. We kind of have a vision for what we'd like to do, but it really helps to have all these other people at the table to help us clarify our thoughts and tell us what is possible and what is necessary.

What are the physical assets on campus now, and what is possible? What's visionary and realistic?

VM: We have a medium-sized, specialized program serving 1400 kids in pre-K through 5th Grade. We always want to expand our pre-K program, as we did this year, but now we're at capacity; there isn't any more space anywhere on campus. With a joint-use facility and the commitment of the community and foundations to this project, it would be possible to either increase the number of classrooms or extend our hours to an all-day pre-K program.

What are the needs of the families and children in the 20 sq. blocks that Santa Monica Blvd. Community Charter School serves?

AJ: Our community is primarily firstgeneration immigrant families from Latin America, mostly from El Salvador and Guatemala. About 30 to 35 percent of them are actually getting government assistance like CalWorks, and a lot of our kids don't have any health coverage at all. So, when our kids get a cough or something, they often have to sit for a day or two down in the local clinic, away from school. For something more serious, they have to go to the emergency room, and they miss a lot of school because of that.

At our school, we serve the whole child. There just isn't any way to divorce the physical well-being of a student from his or her academic achievement. When kids are not feeling well or when they're missing school, there is a huge impact on their reading, on their writing, and on their general achievement at school. So, the possibility of having a clinic here on the site that could serve individuals quickly and get them back into class would be really fantastic for our kids.

Who are some of the other stakeholders who have come together as long-time and new friends of the school and potentially of this site-planning project?

VM: Well, any project requires a lot of actual funds to make it a reality. One of our long-time adopters, Paramount Studios, has been on board supporting us in this project. They have made a commitment to help with a capital campaign, not to provide the dollars but to point us in the right direction to raise funds.

AJ: NSBN has involved UCLA's Center for Healthier Children and Families for health care advice. The architects Fields Devereaux are working on plans and the actual building. Paramount Studios, our own Governor's Council, and the Los Angeles Free Clinic are also involved.

Your school is a conversion charter school. How does your status as a community, conversion charter affect your working relationship with LAUSD, especially your access to school bond dollars that have been approved by the voters of Los Angeles and the state?

VM: We know that, as an independent charter school, we are fully responsible ourselves for starting a project like this. That means we don't get direct support from LAUSD. We're on our own. There have been two bonds passed in the past two years, Measure K and Measure R, which provide $60 million combined for charter school construction. Now, LAUSD gets to determine how those funds will be distributed among charter schools. I believe that what they are focusing on right now is increasing seats, so they want to use those funds to either start up new charter schools or provide funds for charter schools that will increase seats. In our project, I think we will increase seats, but we will also be replacing some of them because we're talking about swapping out old bungalows for a new building. So, we're not sure if we will qualify or if the district will allow us to access the bond funds.

Both of you were teachers and administrators at the school before its conversion to a charter school. What has changed; what is the value added for the faculty from converting to Charter and from having the school governed by parents and the community?

AJ: Decisions are made right here at our school. We are so close to them that we are able to respond to needs almost instantly. This building project would be - I don't want to say impossible, but next to impossible - very, very difficult as part of the typical district reality. As a charter school, the people sitting at the table are the people who are interested, who are stakeholders, and who can make the final decision.

VM: Not only do we get to make decisions here, but we get to make decisions that best suit the needs of our kids. In a big district like LAUSD they have to make one decision that is supposed to meet the needs of almost 800,000 kids. Here, we make a decision for 1400 or 1500 kids. Another benefit of being a charter school is that we can implement these decisions much more quickly. If we decide to do something we can do it immediately, rather than waiting a year to year and a half before it comes to reality.

Returning to the mission of the Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter School, how does your laser-like focus on children translate itself out in your facilities planning? What are your hopes for the new facility -your programmatic dreams? And why is it so vitally important to accomplish both?

AJ: I'd say one of the things that we really set out to do when we became a charter school was to really be a hub - a center of our community. In fact, that is why we changed the name of the school to Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter School. We look at the charter structure as a way to really become the center of the community. For a long time, we have had full-time parent programs here, and have tried other things to reach out. But this is the first major project that will really create a strong, visible link with our surrounding community. It will be a tangible thing to show people that our school is a viable center of the place where they live.

Many educators and public officials think that schools only provide seats for instruction and that a campus "ends at the fence." How do you best explain to educators and the larger community how that viewpoint doesn't fit with your own experience at Santa Monica Community Charter School?

VM: Communities like ours have so many needs. As Andy said, we have firstgeneration immigrant families, 90 percent of whom live below the poverty line, and where parents are working two or three jobs. We really need to make the school open and available for the kids and the community. That is one of the reasons why we're open nearly every single Saturday to bring the kids in and provide all sorts of different enrichment activities for them.

We want to provide more core curricular support with intervention courses for kids who are at risk. The school can't end at the fence. Our kids are our responsibility, and not just during school hours from eight to three. We want to make sure they're taken care of, and that they have all the opportunities that any other kids in middle-class or upper-class neighborhoods might have.