How Charter Schools in Hollywood Uphold the Racist Tradition of Redlining Segregation
Our schools are more segregated than ever. While racial segregation in schools is on the rise nationwide, it seems like in liberal Los Angeles, we would be doing better. But in the heart of Hollywood, we are leading the way with racial and class segregation with the popularity of charter schools. In order to understand the trends in segregation, we should take a look at how this type of institutionalized racism was designed to segregate.
In the 1930s, a system of redlining was used by banks to determine which neighborhoods were “good” and “bad”, where it would be safe to give loans, and where it wouldn’t be. These decisions were based largely on race, with the number of Blacks and other minorities being listed in a housing tract. Further, these maps ensured that certain neighborhoods would never gain the affluence of home equity by depriving families of the option of home ownership, the single largest cause of the racial wealth gap today. Poor kids got poor schools- the banks made sure of it.
While LA today still predominately followed and developed according to this racist design, some neighborhoods weren’t so cut and dry, like Hollywood.
Looking at the 1939 Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) map of a Hollywood neighborhood, we can see that Le Conte is located in area C83, designated as “Yellow”, but being the home school of both The Hollywood Hills green and blue area A41 B69 and the area immediately south, redlined area D29. On the corresponding documentation, we see that while Le Conte’s area was “static” and had “few foreign families, no subversive minorities, and zero negroes” there was a “Threat of infiltration of subversive racial elements” read: too close to people of color living in poverty in Tract D29.
In its 100 year history, Le Conte has experienced many incarnations, eras when it was and was not deemed a worthy home school choice to Hollywood Hills parents, as it was always also the home school to lower income students of color, which as too large a population at a school is almost always going to be the criteria by which it is deemed “bad”. Sometimes it has succeeded as a successfully integrated school, as my colleague Steven Lee who attended in the late 1970s noted, “Le Conte was the place to be. All of the Hollywood Hills kids went there.”
When I taught at Le Conte from 1999-2008, I found the faculty very well-qualified and caring, and the students, many of whom I know today and who went to Ivy Leagues and UC colleges were always amazing in spite of frequent assumptions to the contrary. Le Conte has at present such a high percentage (nearly 100) of students who qualify for free lunch (the leading measure of poverty in education) that the entire school gets free lunch. While I am by no means the only Cheremoya parent who currently chose Le Conte as the school for my children, I am the sadly the only parent in my neighborhood who did. My gifted children continue to excel at every standardized test you put in front of them, and my daughter is taking an AP class in 9th grade. That is what middle class children do. That is who the tests were designed for. Standardized tests were designed to perpetuate racist and classist school systems that benefit more affluent students.
While parents of the Hollywood Hills wouldn’t choose Le Conte, it’s interesting that they chose Citizens of the World Charter which occupies space on its campus. This school, as most charters, employs less qualified, less experienced teachers with fewer credentials. Both Citizens of the World and Larchmont Charter operate on LAUSD campuses that serve low-income students of color, Le Conte and Selma respectively. If these campuses were not deemed worthy by the middle class and white families who have now miraculously found sharing the campuses acceptable, in the company of more middle class and white families, with lesser qualified teachers, it is very reasonable to ask those parents why. It’s even better still for these parents to ask themselves why they made such a choice and what that choice conveys to their children about their deeply held values. If we tell our children that everyone is equal, but we put them in schools that do not reflect the population of Los Angeles, what is our message to our children? What do we fundamentally believe about students of color who are poor and their ability to learn? What do we deprive our children of by putting them in schools that don’t accurately represent the diversity of our beloved City? Before you answer, “I’m not racist because…”, hit pause and sit with the thought that you, consciously or not, are indeed perpetuating institutionalized racism.
Our country grew rich on other people’s land using free labor. It is not hard to imagine that decades after the end of slavery, maps segregating America would keep its children from attending school together. It is not surprising that schools in poor neighborhoods were underfunded and performed poorly, that tests would be designed expressly to prove that low-income schools were bad and middle class schools were good. What is hard to believe is that in 2020 when given the choice, parents’ knee-jerk reaction is often segregation. In Michigan, choice meant more middle class white families chose segregation, with a decrease of sixty percent in enrollment of white students and nearly one third of their charter schools that received federal grants for charters never even opened while forty four percent of the charters that did open have since closed taking millions in federal money and closing a few neighborhood schools along the way. We aren’t Michigan. Are we? If you look at the enrollment growing exponentially at Larchmont Charter alone, from 448 students in 2009 to nearly 1500 in 2015, an increase of over 300 percent in just six years, statistically we’re worse.
As these charters grow, and grow hungrier to monetize students enrolled, they are letting in more low income students of color. As the middle class baby boom wanes, that trend will continue. Data from 2015 revealed Citizens of the World is 60% Middle Class (39.3% low income), and correspondingly, has a 60% meets/exceeds standards on the English test (SBAC), which leads little to the imagination about which 36% of the students aren’t meeting the standards. Point being that they aren’t doing any better at all with low-income students. On the other hand, Le Conte, which has nearly all low-income students, has 30% of its students meeting or exceeding English standards. While that might seem damning to some, I see it as excelling with a population that a charter school on its campus has zero success with. What is going to happen when it continues to enroll more low income students of color? How far will the scores drop before middle class parents flee? The same parents who don’t want public schools because of their unchecked biases aren’t going to choose a charter that fails by the same criteria. Since charters are business, like donut shops, they close. In comparison, all of the public schools in Hollywood are around 100 years old, and all of them are being negatively impacted by charters. Charter growth brings up a lot of concerns about accountability and curriculum, but above all, it reminds me that they can implode just as quickly, and often they do. (Most recent California data shows 43 charters closing in one year).
Every parent wants what’s best for our kids, and as the recent scandals have shown, if our advantages don’t put us ahead, we will often buy our way. But in the meantime, we are creating and perpetuating social ailments our children will still be trying to solve. When are we going to acknowledge the disparity in educational funding and care about all of the other children’s access to the privilege being middle class provides? When are we going to acknowledge the value and humanity as equals by showing our children that we are indeed equal, and where we have access, we share? When are we going to divvy up our resources? More importantly, when are we going to acknowledge the existing greatness in our students of color? Because they are indeed, at this moment, in our schools, great. I’m going to say that again because it doesn’t get said enough: our neighborhood schools and the students who attend them are great. Period.
On the one hand, if you feel that your neighborhood school with predominantly students of color who live in poverty isn’t good enough for your child, maybe you should ask yourself why you have decided that those two characteristics limit your views on who can and who can’t achieve academic excellence. On the other, if you feel like you’re above them, it’s better that you keep from damaging the existing students by bringing your privileged kids in to fix the school. We don’t need any white saviors in public schools. We need people who appreciate what a school offers and can enhance that. Yes, more resources are great. I’ve coordinated thousands of dollars of books and author visits to my kids’ schools: yes it helped, no it wasn’t live saving.
I wish parents saw the bigger picture of how schools were designed to be segregated and that putting charter schools on these campuses just makes the segregation more obvious. I wish there were a way to integrate schools without feeling that we are doing them some sort of favor. There is, to the benefit of our entire community and yes, that absolutely includes our children, but it requires an amount of self-reflection and humility that many aren’t yet ready for. Some parents are forming groups on how to integrate middle class kids into urban schools without smothering them in privilege. Unfortunately, these groups are not yet active in our very segregated pocket of Hollywood.
