1933 Hillhurst Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027

My daughter attended fourth grade at Franklin this year. Ultimately, she withdrew because the principal and teacher refused to open a window and consistently run air filters in the classroom, even when there were covid cases in the classroom and in the school. We REALLY wanted her to attend, as it is our home school, the kids are nice, and our daughter is a social butterfly. We went back and forth with the principal, teacher, and LAUSD admin, all of whom insisted that the LAUSD policy was that windows could not be opened, even though there are many schools that do have windows open. It came down to the teacher, who didn't want to open a window; and the principal, who backed whatever the teacher wanted. So, we got unlucky with the assigned teacher, but the principal wouldn't consider transferring her to another classroom, either, where another teacher might have been amenable to opening a window. It was all very frustrating trying to get them to open one fricking window so that our daughter could attend school. We thought that since she is highly gifted, the school might budge, but it didn't help one bit. So we homeschooled, and in the fall, our child will have to travel 45 minutes each way on a school bus to a magnet school that serves highly gifted children and has no problem opening a window or running air filters consistently. Even though we'd rather have her attend the local neighborhood school that is a 5-minute walk from our house, there are other significant concerns: 1. Construction on a new school building will be ongoing until 2027, creating an active construction zone with lots of air and noise pollution during the school day and decreasing the playground space by more than half. 2. The main school building is not earthquake-safe. It has been on the AB 300 list, identifying school buildings needing earthquake retrofits, since 1999, and NOTHING has been done to address this so far. Why are they building a NEW classroom building instead of fixing the old one, when the new one is NOT slated to replace the old one? 3. The gifted programs (GATE and SAS) exist, but pretty nominally. My daughter was identified as highly gifted, but there was no differentiated instruction or special programming for her. The most her teacher did was she seated her with three other gifted kids, but they didn't get differentiated instruction or assignments. Some positives: nice kids; nice parents; diversity; talented and encouraging art and music teachers.