By Martin J. Blank and Ryan Fox, Coalition for Community Schools
Walking through the halls of John C. Fremont High School in South Central Los Angeles with senior Kevin Valiencia, one finds an unexpected inner city public school in one of the most maligned neighborhoods in the country.
A climate of cooperation, enthusiasm, unity, and endless possibilities permeate throughout school. A strong juxtaposition with the surrounding community in which neighborhoods blocks apart from each other are often at war. Kevin himself has seen his friend stabbed, drive-by shootings and police raids near his home.
It's not that the troubles found in other schools don't exist inside Fremont. Less than 40 percent of its students graduate in four years and test scores still lag behind state averages. But the angst and conflict found in many other struggling urban schools is minimal at Fremont. The suspension rate at Fremont is far below the rates at other high schools in the district. While the dropout rate is still very high, those numbers are gradually improving. Nearly 85 percent of those that did graduate in 2009 and 2010 continued on to a post secondary education.
"There's unity (at Fremont)," Kevin said. "We're all in this together."
As a community school, Fremont has put in place partnerships and mechanisms to help better combat the challenges it faces. Fremont operates as a partnership between school leaders and an external partner, in this case the Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), a widely respected education intermediary. LAEP provides a community school coordinator at Fremont who brings school staff and community partners together to solve problems.
Fremont's teachers are advocating for their students with high-level classes that provide them with the kind o