GO PUBLIC Film Offers Inside View of Schools
MARCH 4, 2014
GO PUBLIC offers an authentic fly-on-the-wall perspective of a public school district that every voter needs to see. This fresh and recent documentary film gives the viewer a frank, and sometimes painful, look inside the lives of the people in Pasadena Unified Schools – and it’s a long shot from the tree-lined lawns of the famous Craftsman neighborhoods we know from Rose Parade week. This is the nitty-gritty of public school life. The focus on quality, real quality, from everyone at school, is a heartening lesson for any viewers, voters, district decision-makers and educators. Could every school district, every classroom, every office, withstand this kind of exposure? Could our own ethics pass the documentary film test?
Watching GO PUBLIC takes you through the sisyphean day (May 8, 2012) of a public school professional. It begins sweetly enough, with glimpses of parents gently waking their kids, teens shuffling to the bathroom, a principal girding himself with black coffee while he talks about all the testing in the day ahead, and the challenges of managing “one more thing.” It’s gratifying to get to spend time with the “others” at a school: the tattooed mom in the parent center, the librarian, the janitor, and best of all, the campus security guy who chases down truants and “those kids” who seem to have out-of-the-classroom priorities. There is no narrator; you hear the stories from the people whose lives are shown. The film is a 90-minute documentary built from 50 short filmsthat you can see on the GO PUBLIC website. The directors are brilliant at showing the essence of