Unschooled: Save Our Future

Plot Summary

Students file into Save Our Future, a South L.A. charter high school for at-risk teens. Charlotte Austin Jordan, founder of SOF, is the bearer of bad news - their school has been shut down. Two months earlier, California Charter Academy (CCA) Founder C. Steven Cox, accused of misappropriating twenty-three million dollars, abruptly shut down his charter school, displacing thousands of students throughout California. Save Our Future was a CCA site and casualty. Thus begins a harrowing roller-coaster ride for hundreds of at-risk teens holding on to their dream for a high school diploma. We follow Jordan's emotional and heartfelt struggle to get the school reopened. We witness how the students cope with facing yet another disappointment in their uncertain lives. We observe teachers and staff who come to school on a daily basis for weeks without pay. We meet concerned parents who have seen their children fail in L.A. public schools and fear failure again if they are to return. We see a community bind together as volunteers work to bring the school's facility up to code. The topic of education has suddenly gone from overlooked to center stage. As we continue to make difficult decisions in very tough economic times, which will be of greater funding priority - schools or prisons? According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2003), 75% of state prison inmates are high school dropouts. In 2008, the L.A. Times reported that the high school dropout rate in California is 1 in 4 students; the statistic is even more grim in Los Angeles - 1 in 3. Are inner-city teens really not being "left behind" as our national educational policy claims?