Locke High sees progress, but there’s still a long way to go

Fences, draped in an impermeable black canvass, play a huge role in limiting student fights and vandalism at Locke High. They allow an omnipresent security force to exert rigid control over the habitually unruly hallways and grounds. The fences also represent internal borders meant to define a more nurturing setting at a school marked by high dropout rates, low student achievement and episodic chaos that sometimes escalated into violence.

Small schools are integral to the methodology of Green Dot, the charter-school nonprofit that now runs Locke. Students at small schools, the theory goes, are less likely to fall through the cracks, drop behind academically and eventually drop out.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Teacher Katy Bridger works with students in her 5th period senior English class. The resourceful rookie instructor persuaded a local bowling alley to give these students a bowling party recently because of the group’s academic progress. These students, on average, have not yet reached “proficiency,” which is the state’s goal. But this class has improved more than any other that she’s teaching, despite some students who miss school a lot and others who are sometimes disruptive.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Cassandra Garcia and her boyfriend Salvador Picas, both 16, meet up after school as a bus prepares to leave campus. The bus routes, at a cost of about $500,000, are a key addition this year at Locke even though the district says most students live within “walking distance.” In this Watts-adjacent neighborhood, walking often home means traversing the territory of one or more gangs.

When asked why they take the bus, many students laugh and say they’re lazy. But if pressed further, some acknowledge they feel unsafe walking home, even after learning to avoid certain blocks and keep track of periods when gangs ramp up the violence. Even the football players are hassled, said bus driver Cynthia Kumara, and have said they are grateful for the late bus that comes back for them after practice.

“To me, Locke is very, very dangerous school,” she said, referring mostly to the surrounding neighborhood. One off-campus shooting happened behind her bus; in a separate incident while she was driving, she saw a young victim being removed from a city bus stop where he’d been shot.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Students rehearse the final wedding scene from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. During the performance, a beaming Joe Malone watched his daughter Lashay play the stolid “Leonata,” lord of the castle and mother of the bride. He could have sent his daughter to Venice High in West Los Angeles, but he’d heard of positive developments at his alma mater. “At first I thought it was crazy breaking Locke up into small schools,” he said. “But I understand they had to do something.”

Locke High students haven’t attempted Shakespeare in recent years. Drama and English teacher Aubrey Whitlock said her drama group has grown from five to 15: “For the students to have the guts to do a Shakespeare play -- this would not have flown last year when there was so much negativity. It’s like night and day.”  (Stefano Paltera / Los Angeles Times)

Locke High student Marcelo Torres, 16, stands inside the school’s handball courts after climbing the fence to play a game. Security guards quickly arrived to send the student back to class. The handball courts have traditionally been a hangout for Latino students -- and, if poorly monitored, can become an area where students go to ditch class. They’ve also been the scene of fights related to gang rivalries. The nearby basketball courts have traditionally been a hangout spot for black students, and had some of the same security issues. Since taking over the campus, Green Dot has kept these areas closely supervised and scheduled the handball courts and other outdoor areas for use by different academies at different times, making supervision easier and lessening the potential for conflict.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Locke High School students, in their school uniforms, walk home past graffiti along 111th Street near Watts. Rival gang turf surrounds the school, and students are occasionally harassed or even caught in the crossfire. The school uniforms are intended, in part, to defuse such conflicts on campus. But the uniforms have proved no panacea. A number of students resisted wearing them or tried to get away with not tucking in their shirts or wearing their pants below their hip bones, with their boxer shorts showing.

At the start of the year, The Times pulled four students at random from a line of youths who’d shown up the first day out of uniform. The school had provided loaner uniforms to each student as well as a warning to get with the program. Of these four, only one apparently made it through the entire year at Locke: One, a junior, left school in February after excessive absences. Another, a sophomore, was sent home for the year with several weeks remaining in the term after repeated behavioral problems. The school could find no record of a third student, also a sophomore -- it’s possible that he’s listed in school records under a different name. Senior Terry Vance was the only one of the four to stay on at Locke. He still hated the uniforms, and didn’t like school much better either. He had an up-and-down year marked by attendance issues. He said he won’t be receiving a diploma because he has yet to pass the math part of the high school exit exam.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Mature olive tree, pepper trees, new turf and other new landscaping elements have brightened up the quad this year at Locke High, which is under the management of Green Dot Public Schools. The hallways and bathrooms are cleaner and better maintained as well, although no one would confuse Locke with a private school or a typical suburban high school. The lunch area remains drab and worn, for example, although students do report that the quality of the food has improved.

The planting of the mature olive trees was financed by actress Cameron Diaz, who had requested that her gift remain anonymous. Green Dot has proved skilled at raising money to support its efforts at Locke and at start-up charters serving urban students. But some have questioned whether this level of support is sustainable, and whether the transformation model at Locke could transfer to other L.A. Unified campuses.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Security aide Rogelio Cardenas said he sees both toughness and vulnerability in Locke High students as he controls traffic at an opening in the fence that separates Locke from the gang-plagued streets outside. The black canvass on the fence helps screen out distractions, and also makes it impossible for troublemakers on the outside to target student for harassment -- or worse -- once they are inside the campus.

“These students already know they’re in a hole,” Cardenas said. “Once they leave from this high school, there may or may not be a second chance, but we’re in a safe environment here. This is the new Locke.”

Off campus, students remain literal targets. Two students were shot just off campus this year. Both survived, but one transferred to another school. All told, the carnage is light compared to some years. “They survived,” 10th grader Ryan Delgado said of the wounded students, shrugging. “You get used to it.”  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Students at Locke 4 play basketball during lunch. Locke 4 is one of eight small academies into which the school is divided -- five on the main campus and three offsite. The bungalow in the background houses a classroom for the Opportunities program, which has become the usual destination for students returning from juvenile detention. The primary mission of Locke 4 is to get students back on track if they are far behind on credits or have serious behavior issues. Because these students rarely have access to the rest of campus (including the gym), staff and students improvise for recreation.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Locke High School security guard Terry Overstreet keeps watch as students socialize during a lunch period. Students and staff almost uniformly say that an increased security presence this year -- at a cost of $700,000 -- has made the Watts-adjacent campus safer and calmer. Last year, a campuswide brawl erupted in May, and fights and vandalism were commonplace.

Early on, the discipline under the new administrative regime could become quite heavy-handed. Twice in the fall, guards pepper-spayed students. In one case, a guard acted when a student, on his way home after school, failed to heed a command to stop and extinguish a cigarette. Since then, administrators have re-trained guards, running them through scenarios in which they practice how to defuse conflict.

“What we believe is that if a student is not following your directions and trying to walk away, allow that student to walk away,” said Locke cluster director Kelly Hurley. “We will see that student the next day and there would be consequences.”  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Ashley Nolan, center, dances as part of half-time activities during a June exhibition basketball game. The charter-school organization that now operates Locke had never run a traditional high school sports program prior to this year. A few key coaches remained at Locke, which helped keep the sports program largely on track. The charter company, Green Dot, also funded some improvements and overdue maintenance to the equipment and fields.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Martha Levin, a science teacher at Locke 4, works with a student in a computer-study program set up for students who are far behind in academic credits. In the past, many of these students would have dropped out or been transferred out -- they were just too far behind. But this program, called Advanced Path, gives students a chance to catch up while remaining in Locke. Most of the students attend in either a morning or afternoon block of four hours. They can also log on at home. The cavernous computer lab, built into a refurbished shop class, has 90 computer stations.

This year, 30 students turned things around quickly enough to graduate in June. Advanced Path is a separate company from Green Dot, the charter organization now running Locke. Advanced Path provides the materials, computers and teachers salaries. In exchange, it gets to keep what’s left of the money generated by the student attendance, which has been mixed. On average, students are making it to class a little less than four days a week.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Students regularly gather after school to participate in a ninja hand-slap tournament. The session begins with a traditional moment of silence.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Porsha Westbrooks, 18, gets a kiss from her mother Deborah Wilson, following a graduation ceremony in which she was the sole participant -- at Locke High, students graduate immediately after completing all of their credits. Porsha was a 5th-year senior who enrolled in the Advanced Path Academy, a program for credit-deficient students; she plans to study cosmetology.  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)