Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 2)
Geological strata reveal historical periods of plant and animal life eons ago. Schools birthed in reform unveil similar strata.
In Part 1, I recounted teacher-founders’ (Jose Navarro and Jeff Austin) creation story of Social Justice Humanitas Academy, a Los Angeles Unified District school located in the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley. These founders placed its origin initially at Sylmar High School where they and other teachers established a Humanitas school-within-a school, offspring of an interdisciplinary curricular reform sponsored by the Los Angeles Education Partnership. LAEP’s Humanitas innovation began in the mid-1980s and slowly spread through the 1990s across LAUSD high schools. Aimed at engaging low-income Latino and African American youth to take academic courses that would prepare them for college, the teacher-led Humanitas program at Sylmar High School gained traction with a growing number of students. The teacher founders who had designed and governed the school-within-a-school, however, wanted more autonomy. They wanted their own school.
Second stratum of reform in SJHA
At the district level, the Board of Education at this time sought to expand parental choice in those neighborhoods where predominately low-income minority children and youth attended low-performing local schools. The reform idea of giving parents more choices among LAUSD schools gained speed and political support. In 2009, the Board of Education approved a Public School Choice resolution to establish innovative and rigorous schools designed to turn around low-performing schools across the district. Teams of teachers, parents, community activists, and others drafted plans for new schools in each of four rounds that Public School Choice sponsored. The superintendent’s review team critiqued proposals. In many cases, proposers revised and re-submitted their plans.
At the same time, another LAUSD reform was underway called “Pilot Schools.” The two streams of reform converged as the teachers at Sylmar High School CONTINUE READING: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
