This Week's Topic: Echo Park's Newest School

Welcome to the first edition of Moms Talk, where local parents offer their thoughts on a hot topic or field questions from other parents. This week, we're hearing from Lisa Baca-Sigala, an Echo Park mother of twins and a member of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council, along with Staci Eddy of Angelino Heights, who's a Keller Williams realtor and mother of a "clap-happy" 6-month old.

This is meant to be the start of a discussion, so please feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments box below. Some of our topics are sure to stir up some passionate responses, so whether you agree or disagree, please keep it clean and civil. Remember, your kids can read our site, too.

Let's get started with this week's question:

One of the biggest issues being discussed is who should run Echo Park's new school: Camino Nuevo Charter Academy or the Community Partners Design Team? What should parents take into consideration when preparing to make a decision? Also, how do you approach this kind of situation with children who ask about it?

Staci Eddy: I think parents should take three things into consideration:

1.) The needs of their own children

Camino Nuevo Charter Academy's mission is to provide a rigorous academic environment for Spanish fluent children, with an emphasis on college preparation (particularly into the local community colleges and the Cal State system). The current student body is 95 percent Latino--something to consider if you're the parent of a non-Spanish speaking child.

The Community Partners Design Team is an alliance of teachers and parents whose progressive teaching philosophy, conceptual learning, focuses on students experiencing knowledge and learning holistically. While bilingualism is encouraged, it would be a primarily English-speaking school.

2) The needs of the community

Camino Nuevo would be a charter school, so it would service kids from a wide area--not just Echo Park and the immediate neighborhood. And while its Latin bias helps historically underserved children within our community, it does appear to exclude non-Spanish fluent kids.

The Community Partners Plan would service the local Echo Park/Silverlake Community directly and is committed to reflecting the diverse demographic makeup of our neighborhood and kids. Another part of the Community Partners program also involves reaching out to local businesses and organizations to provide experiential learning for the children, which would have implications for the neighborhood as well.

3. Their philosophical and politcal priorities regarding education

Camino Nuevo, like all charter programs, is a relatively small organization. It's reactive to parent and student needs and free of the bureaucracy of the LAUSD and teachers unions. However, it's also a private company, which may present other drawbacks.

The Community Partners Plan would be run by committed veteran educators and parents who promise access and flexibility. However, being a product of the LAUSD presents its own set of concerns for the program.

Parents should carefully consider these three categories. When we sat down and reviewed the information, we decided what was best for our daughter was also best for the neighborhood: the Community Partners Design Team. While we're definitely supporters of the charter movement, in this instance, we were willing to give LAUSD the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that with our community involvement and influence we could help the school achieve excellence, despite the city bureaucracy.

There is a document out called the "Central Region Elementary School #14 Executive Summaries" put out by LAUSD. It contains more thorough descriptions of both programs.

Lisa Baca-Sigala: I have spoken about this issue to my twins. They are 11 and go to Our Mother of Good Counsel Catholic School, which is our parish.  In the community, we also work with several neighborhood elementary schools volunteering. We do get to see a lot of Echo Park's youth in action.  CRES 14 is a new place with everything state of the art and an opportunity to be in a safe, clean environment.

For me personally, I think the choice for CRES 14 is very simple: It should be a local district middle school with the plan presented by the LAUSD/UTLA team.

Charters are good options to consider when a district school is failing.  However, CRES 14 is not even built, and the local community is entitled to have our public taxpayer dollars be used to provide for a local district public school. This is America, and we are all entitled to a good quality public district school education.

More than 200 families–some of them had lived in their homes for decades–were displaced from the community so that CRES 14 could be built. At the very least, the legacy and sacrifice by those families should be given weight by the LAUSD Board Member who will be voting in March.

Echo Park has learned the hard way and suffered with the Gabriella Charter School, lead by Liza Bercovici. Charter schools are not accountable to anyone in the community or parents.  They are not required to hold public meetings, and they are a private, for-profit business governed by a hand-selected Board of Directors who are not elected or answerable to voters or the community.

CRES 14 is the FIRST middle school that will be located in Echo Park, and it is a long time coming. No matter who gets the school, it will be held to a higher standard of scrutiny by the many parents, residents and community leaders who make their lives and deeply care about, especially our youth.

2) Valentine's Day is coming up, so how do you explain/approach the concept to kids?

Staci: On Valentines Day, I would take the opportunity to discuss the importance of love in the world and how powerful and magical it is. I would explain that, like Christmas or Hanukkah, Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, it's a day set aside specifically to celebrate those we love and cherish. Though kids may not really understand the concept of romance yet, they know what it means to love and be loved, and they see it everywhere--hopefully, right at home every day. It's a day to make everyone you care about feel extra special, which is why we shower them with cards and candy!

Lisa: Valentines Day is about love – it is feeling butterflies in your stomach and smiling when you think of your special someone because they make you happy!