Go East, Young Students, Go East

Meanwhile, over on Wilshire Blvd., the sixth and seventh grade students from Larchmont (the original Larchmont, to whom we owe our existence) are staking out a new site for their junior high school.

Larchmont has taken over the top two floors of an old Episcopalian school that stands in the shadow of the controversial, astronomically expensive, shiny, new $578 million Robert Kennedy High School.

The building is church gothic and feels like a tired, classic school in New York City.

The gym is on the top floor, and there is more space on the roof.

The rooms are cool, with old fireplaces at each end, and rippled, 1920's panes in the leaded windows, but also old.

A week before class was about to start at a Board Meeting last week the school looked woefully unprepared. We heard parents had been painting madly for a week but it was hard to tell.

It was a reminder that no matter how much the LCW parents gripe, or feel, at moments, forgotten or overlooked by Larchmont and its Board, we are deeply indebted to that school and its founding parents. They are always, always the pioneers. They started the original school at St. Ambrose, and took that risk. They staked out the property at Hollygrove, and transformed it, making one set of second graders learn all alone one year to hold that space. And now they are sending their kids to the heart of Koreatown for a new experiment--a Larchmont Charter Junior High School.

They have hired a cool new guy who looks like Juno Diaz and came from a charter school in South LA. He is young, cool and Latino.

Some parents are bailing and sending their kids to private school or magnet schools or the local public schools. It is just too much of a chance. As the kids get older the academic stakes are higher. They will need to pull in more kids from other schools which will mean a bumpy period of integration as kids educated under different philosophies meld.

I wondered what I would do if Theo were in seventh grade. Would I send him?

I want to say yes, but I don't know.

The place is a thrill for sixth and seventh graders. It is highly urban and you can ride a bus or subway to school. It feels like an adventure. Kids like feeling like pioneers. It is us old fogies who crave a guarantee.

Anyway, I am taking a moment to thank all those Larchmont parents who are the trailblazers in this crazy start up school experiment, willing to submit their kids to a new school they hope will work. Failure is not an option.

If you feel moved, send them a donation.