The Los Angeles Service Academy

Central LA

East LA

South LA

San Gabriel Valley

San Fernando Valley

Westside

LASA works annually with about 30 high school juniors from all across the Los Angeles Basin. Most of our students come from public schools and public districts; some come from private schools. We add as well about six teachers or administrators, and as many as three collegiate interns. Our design is simple. We plunge the students into a four-day summer introductory seminar that teaches them the broadest strokes of Los Angeles history and culture (issues ranging from seismic vulnerabilities to film studio history, and from city governance to immigration and demographic patterns. We do so with experts and remarkable documents from archives at The Huntington or Central Library. We build every participant's library by supplying them with key texts on LA issues and LA history.

From that summer immersion, we move to a once-a-month Saturday LASA session. Each of these Saturdays (eight or nine per year) embraces a particular infrastructural issue: water, transit, the harbor, law enforcement, cultural expression/institutions, technological innovation, etc. Each session grapples with its issue in conversation with an expert. These are give and take sessions, and LASA students are prepared to ask good and difficult questions. We meet at key sites: water facilities, City Hall, high-tech operations, LAPD headquarters, the harbor complex, etc. We always get the participants out into the landscapes of greater LA; walking tours, our LASA bus, test-your-knowledge light rail explorations, etc. Each day ends with all of us tired and very well informed as to this or that major issue within the infrastructural networks that make up metropolitan Los Angeles. Along the way, and throughout the year, we work hard on community building efforts: public school and private school interfaces at the individual, face to face level (our students become friends with one another across the city and across circumstances); we work with our teacher participants on building collegiality across schools and districts. Along the way, we carefully encourage all LASA students to think about their role as citizens of the metropolis and their trajectory as soon-to-be college students, a status we embrace by bringing college admissions' officers in to talk about the application process regarding the move from high school to college or university. LASA teaches kids about LA, shows them that they have an important role to play here, and fosters friendships and community while doing so.

The 2050 metric is really important to us at LASA. We embrace the long-term. We work with a fairly small group of participants at a time. We are about to welcome our third LASA class (in early August). It has thirty high school juniors. We have three collegiate interns and about a half dozen teachers. That's a small footprint in terms of making a difference. But: we will soon have close to a hundred LASA students, past and present, with which to build foundational change in greater Los Angeles. Then 130, 160, 190, and so on. Even thinking of thirty-per year (we expect to expand that number) gets us to well over 1000 LASA-ites by 2050. If, in the long-term, we can establish networks of knowledge, civil and civic service and awareness, and public obligation among our graduates, we will have accomplished our highest goals. In other words, there's a scenario in our head about problem solving in LA in 2050. And the principals involved in wrestling with said problem are LASA graduates -- they've built knowledge over the years, they've established efficient networks of collegiality and collaboration, and they get down to solve infrastructural problems and puzzles with greater skill and vision because of all this.

Of course there are short-term goals. Teach a broad cross section of kids about LA; draw a diverse group of young people who may come from very different circumstances or parts of LA together, allow them to discover commonalities of experience and curiosity. Put them into the landscape, teach them about going to college, show them how transit works, empower them to use libraries well help them learn to express themselves in public settings; have a lot of fun on a Saturday LASA day.

We think LASA is spot on with experiential learning objectives. We think greater Los Angeles is an astonishing learning laboratory for history, policy, landscape, culture, and urbanism, and we think no one is too young to begin to grapple with his or her place in the metropolis. We think LASA helps make LA navigable, and we think that we empower and built the confidence of the young people who join us each year.

At the very center of the experience, we know LASA benefit four specific groups. First and foremost are the high school participants themselves. Those benefits accrue, we think, in post-LASA years, in that we make efforts to keep in touch, to track our graduates into next phases of their lives and budding careers. Second, we think the program benefits our collegiate interns. Since inception several years ago, these have been Occidental College students solely, a reflection of that college's commitment to public/civic service through the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute (UEPI). Neither of LASA's directors are affiliated with Oxy (one of us is at USC, the other at Colburn School of Music). These interns see their undergraduate training enhanced by their interaction with the city and our high schoolers. Third, we believe the teacher participants, some of whom have been with us since we started, benefit from taking their curricular interests into the city and its landscapes. They also benefit from collegial exchange with their colleagues from other institutions. Fourth, co-directors Bill Deverell and Doug Smith benefit from the opportunity to work with younger, non-collegiate students on this regular basis and get to enhance networks of collaboration throughout greater LA.

Those are focused beneficiaries. There are more, we think. Our LASA students take their experience back to their families. These families often repeat our fieldtrip experiences; we go to point A on a given Saturday and the student brings her family back there on the next Saturday. The friends of our LASA students benefit similarly, and we recruit new LASA students from these ranks.

Most widely, we believe LA benefits. Not yet, perhaps. But we think the lines of friendship, knowledge, and commitment to public service and awareness cannot help but make LA both work better and become a better place to live and work. That's LASA's promise, we think, and it makes it all very exciting to us.

Percentage of community college students completing a certificate, degree, or transfer-related program in six years

Academic Performance Index scores

College matriculation rates

Greater content knowledge about the region, its infrastructural networks, its history, and LASA participant's places within that.

We will track our students into colleges/universities.

We will watch as recruitment and application curves rise in the face of greater awareness and interest in LASA.

We will look to 2050 in the expectation that LASA and LASA students are keystone mechanisms within the wide project of making LA better and a better place to live, work, learn.

High school students are hungry to learn how to navigate and make sense of the gargantuan metropolis.

High school students have little difficulty establishing connections and friendships across wide differences of background, circumstance, or experience -- if given the chance.

We have two key challenges. One is conceptual: how to expand, widen our impact, grow -- but not at the expense of the specialness and community established and sustained by our relatively small numbers year to year. We can solve this. But it will take thought and careful planning. We could add students at a regular clip -- five or so more per year. That would be growth, and it would be manageable, at least in the short term. We could run LASA wings or parallel experiences with several groups. We could offer an experiential LASA (the Saturday model) to one group and an abridged experience to a larger group (in the summer, for example). This is a good problem to have; we are at work figuring it out.

Our second is funding. We are at work on broadening our philanthropic outreach. It is gradual. We have been successful in drawing seed support to launch and sustain LASA for several years. We think we can successfully build upon that, and we think that the LA2050 opportunities and objectives meet our vision and goals directly; this is a spectacular opportunity for us to take the next philanthropic step.

Money (financial capital)

Publicity/awareness (social capital)

Community outreach

Quality improvement research