PARENTS PUSH FOR CHANGE? …OR CHARTER LEVERAGES TAKEOVER AT COMPTON SCHOOL? - In the first test of a new law, charter company may take over McKinley Elementary.
BY TERESA WATANABE AND HOWARD BLUME, LOS ANGELES TIMES | HTTP://LAT.MS/HU33VS
Ismenia Guzman, who has led efforts to persuade McKinley Elementary School parents to petition for change, picks up her daughter, Alexandra, 6. (Michael Robinson Chavez, Los Angeles Times / December 5, 2010)
December 7, 2010 -- Ismenia Guzman frets that her 6-year-old daughter is at least a year behind in reading. Victor Barela is worried that his fifth-grade grandson still doesn't know his multiplication and division tables. And Shemika Murphy is determined that her younger daughter get a better education than her older one, who seemed to be doing well in elementary school only to bring home Ds and Fs in middle school.
Together, they and scores of other families whose children attend struggling McKinley Elementary School in Compton plan the first test