Local news organs and dedicated community activists have all raised hell.
Centinela Valley has issues.
Yet nothing is being done about it.
From the Leuzinger Alumni Associations who decry the tear-down of historic buildings, to the voters in Wiseburn, Del Aire and Hollyglen who increasingly question and challenge the zip-code mandate requiring them to enroll their kids from elite public-private institutions to the failing Hawthorne High School.
If we really cared about educating young people properly, let us forgo once and for all the political attacks on specific entities. Let us deal with the heart of the matter: choice.
Let parents choose where they enroll their kids, regardless of how close or how far the school may be from the child's home. Do away with the zip-code laws which trap parents and children to settle for the local, urban school which suffers under no pressure to reform or innovate.
Centinela Valley is moving slowly in the right direction, having permitted students to choose which of the three comprehensive high schools that they may attend. Torrance Unified does the same, permitting Torrance residents a greater degree of choice within a much larger district.
However, schools that rely on the poor spending habits of Sacramento deserve more freedom in allocating tax-payer revenue; and the tax-payer deserves a greater say in how those monies are raised and appropriated. A stronger connection from the community dealing with well-budgeted lasting reform — with choice — is the much-needed transformation which we need to see.
Unfortunately, solutions and innovation do not sell newspapers. Petty partisan rancor between school boards and unions does, along with the inappropriate airing of administrative disagreements between faculty and school site administration.