WAKE UP, Westsiders! -- It's time start believing in our local schools, again.

On the Westside, there was a time not too long ago when you did not have to worry as to which school you would send your child. You sent your child to the neighborhood public school because it was a good school; that’s why you chose to live in that neighborhood. There weren’t lines, lotteries or carpools to go to schools 10 or more miles away. Traffic around the neighborhood school wasn’t a big issue because mostly everybody walked to their local school. Your community was a good community because it had a good school for that community. Some say that this time has passed, but in some areas of Los Angeles, this thinking is coming back in fashion.

On the westside of Los Angeles, there is a growing movement of parents and residents looking to improve their communities by building and bringing back good schools to their neighborhoods. We are not just talking about new construction, and we definitely are not talking about charter schools; we’re talking about parents and residents getting involved and asking more from the public school system that is already in place. We are talking about communities coming together and demanding that the Los Angeles Unified School District provide better schools for their communities and the District is responding.

Due to a conflation of factors, our Westside community schools have been experiencing a decline in enrollment. The current and largest threat to enrollment is charter schools. People have been leaving their community public schools and flocking to charters in droves in hopes of finding that one-of-a-kind program that will be uniquely tailored to get the most out of their special snowflake. They are even willing to drive 10 or 15 miles out of their own neighborhood and invade someone else’s neighborhood in hopes of finding this magical pedagogical paradigm.

Instead of investing in their local school and thus improving their local community, people have shunned them, and sought greener educational pastures elsewhere. Now, we have a situation where parents are going to other neighborhoods to get the best education for their child. I have to ask, what’s so wrong with your local school? What is so wrong with the other kids and families in your neighborhood that you have to go 15 miles away to find a school with a good community?

On the Westside, parents have raised this concern and are demanding more, and LAUSD is responding by investing in schools and implementing programs that are bringing families back to their local schools. Westside schools now have language, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), music, dance, business and oceanography programs. Students at Mark Twain, Broadway, Grandview, Short and Stoner are learning Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Latin and French.

The language schools are especially popular and are bringing many students back to their local school. The Grandview and Broadway Spanish immersion programs have helped boost enrollment. At Broadway, the Mandarin Immersion (MI) program is so popular that parents will line up early in the morning to sign up for a spot, and the program has grown so much that it needs more space. Next year, the MI program will be moving a mile away to Mark Twain Middle School. These are the kinds of programs LAUSD needs to continue building and supporting if it wants students to come back to their community schools.

Without this type of investment in these programs, students will leave their community schools and go to charters to seek these types of programs. This will create empty space at local schools which charters will then use to co-locate and fill with children from outside the neighborhood. A charter co-location would mean many issues for our Westside neighborhoods, including creating traffic and safety problems, and many problems for the local schools such as loss of resources and loss of space.

If we want to have better neighborhoods on the Westside, we need to start getting involved in and re-investing in our local community school. This would create safer neighborhoods, reduce traffic and mean better schools for our neighborhood children.

So, I say, it’s time for us to start believing in our local community public schools. It’s time for us to demand more from LAUSD and also support LAUSD’s efforts to improve our local schools. Working together, I think we can help create better communities on the Westside, and a better future for our children.