An $8 million Gates grant vs. recent LAUSD improvements. Which direction will these Locke High School educators choose? Inner city school changes are no small matter. Starting from scratch has its share of good and bad. How does a district choose the future for its students?

In light of a Green Dot charter that intends to relieve Locke High School and multiply it ten-fold, Cubias, a 32-year old educator, voices the plight of the classroom in one of the nation’s most desperate school systems. 

Los Angeles Times: LAUSD has a lot riding on Locke’s charter choice 

"Sorry, Cubias," one student called out, "I won’t be here. Field trip to the beach."

Me too," a chorus of others chimed in.

Standing at the front of the room, the teacher bowed his head and rubbed his eyes wearily — the frustration welling up. Half his students would be absent the next day, and no administrator or other teacher had bothered to tell him. The lesson he had designed would have to be postponed.

"I’m just tired, man," he said later. "Tired that whenever you want to do something positive for the kids, it’s a struggle. It shouldn’t be this hard." …

For Cubias, 32, a Locke graduate who grew up in the poor, violent neighborhoods surrounding the South L.A. campus, the field trip debacle reflected larger problems at a school he sees as struggling in an ineffective district. Much of the charter school’s model appeals to him. …

Green Dot’s plan for Locke calls for the large campus to be divided into several small, autonomous schools with separate faculties and principals.

With a small central office and administrative staff for their schools, Green Dot officials say, they funnel more state funds into classrooms than the district does and give teachers and principals considerable control over budgets and instruction. …

Teaching leaves him exhausted, but Cubias clearly enjoys the four remedial algebra classes he teaches each day in the lab. Students work on their own, each struggling in different areas and often calling out, "Cubias, some help!" or "Cubias, over here!" He moves from one to the next, leaning over their shoulders, helping them work through equations and graphs.

He understands them — how they feel like they could drop out and no one at the school would notice or care — because he used to be one of them. Once a failing student who frequently ditched classes in order to hang out at the school’s handball courts, Cubias credits a demanding English teacher with keeping him in school.

"People tell me my problem is that I take this too personally," he said. "I have a really hard time explaining to them that I do take this personally because this is personal for me."

This is the type of story that cannot be ignored.

Blog your thoughts on…

• taking teaching personally … isn’t that dedication?
• deciding for an inner city schools’ future - administrators and educators in debate
• charter schools ground-up remodeling of schools - fitting a cube into a round hole, and making it work for the students