Good afternoon, CharterFolk.
Today it is our honor to recognize Natasha Barriga, Executive Director of Resolute Academy in the Watts community of south Los Angeles, California, as CharterFolk Extraordinaire.
As some CharterFolk know, during my time in charterland I have made it a personal obsession to visit as many charter schools as possible. I made it to more than 600 during my days at CCSA and have visited at least 50 others across the nation over the years. Of all the visits I have made, none impressed me more than the one I made to Resolute Academy in the spring of 2015.
The school is located in a community I am well familiar with, at 112th Street, right in the heart of Watts. I had done my teaching at Hooper Avenue, 61 blocks due north. My wife taught six streets south. My Little Brother had lived just a few miles away, off Compton Avenue.
112th Street Elementary School is located immediately adjacent to Nickerson Gardens …
… which is one of the big housing projects that was built in Los Angeles during the Second World War. LAUSD has had a habit of locating charter schools in portables on the back of the campus such that the schools become a buffer between the district’s elementary school and the housing project.
The first time I visited one of those charter schools, I was completely appalled by what I saw. The district’s neglect of the facility over the decades had left gaping holes in the blacktop right where kids had to walk to class. Ceilings were literally falling in on classrooms. Piles of broken cinderblock and other refuse were strewn about. Kids were eating and taking recess in classrooms because the district refused them access to the campus’s cafeteria or playground, and no other space was safe to use. I came away from that visit telling CCSA staff that, if we couldn’t do something to help that school with its facilities situation, they should fire us all and find someone who can. It was an educational setting as challenged as any I have ever seen in my 30 years in public education.
By the next school year, that charter school had relocated to a different facility nearby, just like the other charter school that had been located at 112th Street previously. Both of those charter schools have gone on to become desperately needed, excellent new options for the families of Watts. But neither them nor the district for decades before them had had intent to operate a great program on the back of the 112th Street campus for the long term …
… until Natasha Barriga came along.
Natasha grew up in Los Angeles and after graduating from Loyola Marymount went on to join Teach For America where she ended up serving as the inaugural senior-year English teacher at Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High School. By all accounts, Natasha was a stunningly great teacher and within a few years was selected for a fellowship by BES …
… where after a year she had gotten a charter approved …
… and began recruiting students at parks and community events …
… making a strong impression on every parent that she met.
The following fall Resolute Academy opened serving 99 students in 5th and 6th grades.
Approximately 4% of residents of Watts 25 years and older have received a four-year college degree.
The mission of Resolute Academy is that all of the school’s students will go on to secure such degrees. As Natasha put it:
I didn’t come here, my teachers didn’t come here, so four kids [of the school’s first 99 students] can get into great. We came here so that absolutely every kid can … be on that stage and have that moment.
By the time I got there in the spring of the school’s first year, the campus had been transformed. Where before there had been broken pavement too dangerous to even navigate, kids were playing.
Classrooms that had before been in a state of decay had been reborn.
And where before there had been heroic educators doing all they could just to hold things together, now there was quality instruction …
… and engagement between students and teachers …
… at whole new levels.
One of our highest need communities that had seen education clinging to a rock face for decades had witnessed the birth of something …
… Resolute.
Led by someone who embodies what it means to be …
… resolute.
And that resolution has endured. Seven years later, Resolute Academy has gone on to become a successful college preparatory middle school serving approximately 250 students, generating outcomes with Latino and Black students from low-income families that far exceed what is happening in other public schools.
Today across all of public education, charter and non, we see a level of challenge beyond anything we have experienced before. Resolute Academy, like so many other schools across the nation, is rising to those challenges with students …
.. and educators …
… the whole school community …
… demonstrating a level of resiliency that is beyond what is easy to understand.
Natasha Barriga is a shining example of one who knows that, shoulder to shoulder with the kids and communities we serve …
… we will stand resolute in the face of the challenges that confront us so that ultimately all kids access the great public education they deserve.
It’s why we couldn’t be more honored than to recognize Natasha Barriga today as CharterFolk Extraordinaire.