Ricardo Lizarraga
Elementary School
Located in South Central Los Angeles (SCLA), Ricardo Lizarraga Elementary School is a traditional public school that currently serves 586 students in grades Pre-Kinder to Grade Five (PK-5). Ninety-nine (99%) percent of its enrollees are students of color, with 95.2% Hispanics, 3.2% African Americans and 1.5 % other races (see Table 1: This is not precisely reflective of the demographics of South Central Los Angeles which, according to Data USA, is 74.7% Hispanic, 34.4% White and 23.2% African Americans (https://datausa.io/profile/geo/la-city-south-centralwatts-puma-ca).
As of October 2019, 94.19% of RLES' student population come from low income households, earning less than $58,385.00 annually (Los Angeles census Report), 89.08% of whom are considered within the socio-economically disadvantaged category.
Now in its 16th year, Lizarraga Elementary School has a staff composition of 30 classroom teachers and six (6) support staff, 77% of whom are Hispanic, 8% White, 5% African American and 8% Asian. The student-teacher ratio of 23:1 is similar to that of the state average ratio.
MISSION and VISION
Ricardo Lizarraga Elementary School supports all students in their journey towards a successful future by setting high expectations through rigorous, standards-based instructional programs. It aims to prepare students for middle and high school, with the hopes of opening doors for them by being college ready.
Vision: a safe and nurturing environment made up of welcomed and supportive families,
an involved community, a highly motivated staff, and, of course,
students committed to excellence in learning
Academic data gathered over four consecutive years reflect below expected scores on the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC), but consistent, though minimal annual growth. As of the 2018-2019 school year, SBAC scores showed students scoring an overall of 53.3 points below standard. However, this reflects an increase of 9.5 points from the previous year, with 26% of the students scoring Meets or Exceeds Standards on the English Language Arts component and 27% of students meeting or exceeding standards in Mathematics.
Another continuing challenge that our school experiences is its high chronic absenteeism rate. Ricardo Lizarraga Elementary School is one of the schools identified as repeatedly failing to meet the 96% or above attendance rate. The California Dashboard and MyData reflect this information, further revealing the steady increase of students who are chronically absent: from 13.1% in the 2017-2018 school year up to 36.7% in 2019-2020 (Spring Term at the onset of the pandemic).
Upon further disaggregation of data by ethnic subgroups, there emerged a disproportionate rate of African Americans who are chronically absent. This presents an equity gap that the school has somehow failed to identify all these years. (See Table 2).
This data from RLES definitely presents an urgency that the school must attend to because research, particularly that of Triplett and Ford, has repeatedly shown the correlation between attendance and academic achievement, graduation rate and future employment opportunities. As students miss school, performance weakens and further widens the income-based achievement gap.
If we, as a school, wish to produce college-ready students and open doors for them, RLES must find ways to give students and their families reasons to want to stay in school.
In 2016, in an effort to address low reading scores, the school joined the Early Language and Literacy Plan (ELLP) cohort that focuses on accelerating progress and achievement in the English Language Arts, specifically in the area of literacy. It is data-driven and aimed towards developing multi-tiered systems of intervention to strengthen literacy skills in children during the first three years of their experience in school. To work on improving attendance, a group of teachers investigated and tried to address the chronic absenteeism among our African American group. (This will be detailed in the Leadership Project section).
RLES is a model Academic English Mastery Program (AEMP) school. This means that RLES is an “emerging model of excellences in culturally and linguistically responsive teaching” and serves as a site for other teachers district wide to observe lessons in English Language Arts and Mainstream English Language Development (MELD) classes. Its goal is to ultimately facilitate the acquisition of Academic Language among students whose first language is not Standard English. This is through the implementation of the five areas of culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy (responsive environment, responsive management, responsive literature, responsive vocabulary and responsive language).
In response to the equity gap seen in attendance, RLES initiated data-driven action plans that aimed to keep our African American students and families connected throughout this year of the pandemic.
Connecting with community is something our school values and recognize as vital to making a difference in families' lives.
Another asset RLES has is its efforts to strengthen Community relations. The school is named after a police officer who was fatally wounded when he responded to a domestic disturbance in the neighborhood. We enjoy a partnership with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and, every year, the students enjoy being the recipients of the Newton Division’s toy drive and participants in their summer marathon.
More importantly, we celebrate the late Sgt. Lizarraga’s birthday with the police department.
With the current crises in the nation, these casual interactions allow them to have conversations that hopefully lead to an assurance that their families can count on their neighborhood police.
Forging this trusting relationship was further reinforced through a collaborative venture between the school and the department. In 2019, RLES and LAPD Newton Department created and launched a coloring book that teaches students how to stay safe when in and around the neighborhood. Stranger Danger vs Safe Strangers is just one of the things this coloring book teaches. This was distributed to all the children in the whole school.
By maintaining positive interactions and camaraderie with our neighborhood police department, RLES is able to develop or even strengthen this community's trust with law enforcement, despite what goes on around the nation. This relationship that the children have with LAPD Newton Division helps establish the trust for law enforcers in the community.
In my five years of teaching in this school, it has always amazed me that parents who have had their children move on to Middle and High school remain to volunteer at Lizarraga. It is a testament of a community who works in solidarity with each other. Here, we also have teacher-leaders with deep roots in this community and who, like the author bell hooks, choose to remain in the community to "maintain that marginality even as one works, produces, lives at the center" to become the voice of hope that the families in this community can count on.