High school rejects outside aid

Dorsey High School has rejected a takeover effort from former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, reports Howard Blume in today's Los Angeles Times.

Riordan was seeking to take over the South L.A. campus in a similar fashion to the effort fronted by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with his Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. The plan would have divided the largely African-American school into academies, like Green Dot's effort at Locke High School.

Meaningful local control sounds good to Noah Lippe-Klein, a veteran Dorsey history teacher and a union representative. He had joined faculty and parents last year in petitioning the district for more academic counseling, along with better college and career guidance; expanded, updated vocational offerings; and more Advanced Placement courses.

"We are definitely against any kind of takeover or any kind of outside organization imposing its ideas on Dorsey," he said. "And that's what this comes across as."

Riordan's group is called Pathways-to-Success. Incidentally, the Riordan Foundation was one of the primary backers of Carson's new charter, New Millennium Secondary School.

LAUSD's Senior Deputy Superintendent Raymond Cortines notified Riordan yesterday that Dorsey would reject the ex-mayor's bid, Blume writes.