Waiting for Superman

Two nights ago we went out with a bunch of friends from our Charter School (and our Executive Director, head of the Board of Larchmont Schools and her daughter, and our principal) to see the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim about the state of public schools in America.

The film had its L.A. premiere at the LA Film Festival and the screening was packed. This was a huge theater--as big as an opera house--and when the doors opened we sprinted up three flights of stairs and escalators to try to score seats in the balcony because every seat in the house was full.

For anyone who has been following education in the news and reads, not much of the information was surprising. You could have gotten all the facts and figures and depressing data from a year of reading the LA Times, New York Times, New Yorker and Newsweek. Not groundbreaking research.

But the emotional impact of watching four families fighting to get an education for their child, mothers willing to get up at 5 a.m. for the shot at great teachers, parents trying in phone call after phone call to reach a teacher who would not respond, of families who know that education is the way up and out of poverty in America, and are aware that their local public school is not only letting them down, but could fuck up their kids lives forever--that drama played out on screen breaks your heart.

I can testify that our whole row was just sobbing and shaking. You could feel the tears and shoulders trembling down the entire row of theater seats. You could feel people crying two seats away, and you could hear people snuffling behind you.

The daughter of the Larchmont Schools Board Member was so upset by the plight of Daisy, a little girl from Boyle Heights about to go into a Junior School that had a devastating drop out rate, and pinning all her hopes on a public lottery to a charter school (she didn't get in...) that she begged her mother to find Daisy and pull some strings to get her into Larchmont's new upper grades.

Guggenheim and his team hope that this film will function as a call to action for all Americans. That it will start the revolution. That it will motivate citizens to fight the Teachers Unions (who, in this film, are portrayed as the villain in our educational disaster drama).

Go see it. And text "possible" to 77177.

And then see what you can do for your local schools.

If you are wavering about whether you have the time, the passion,the energy to care, watch these kids and their families and you will. You will feel so guilty that you are letting them down that you will sit down and move mountains.

I promise.