Reese, a former community counselor, was hired under contract by the city in 2000 to run Bridges at Audubon. Bridges serves more than 4,000 students a year at 27 middle schools. Bridges after-school program to deter students from joining gangs by offering sports, tutoring, field trips and anger-management classes. In 1997, the city of Los Angeles launched the L.A. Reese asks him: “What is a challenge, today, you are trying to overcome?” “I want to be a lawyer,” says the boy whose brother was slain. Regardless of athletic talent, Reese explains, they need a backup plan. “Aw,” one boy moans, “how you gonna say that?” It’s more likely they won’t “have any chance to be a professional athlete.” “Stop looking at all that bling, bling,” Reese tells them. He chose to look up to those male characters instead. But Reese found himself more fascinated with books like “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and “Manchild in the Promised Land” by Claude Brown. ![]() As a child, his role models were pimps, hustlers and drug dealers. Reese, 45, grew up in New Orleans, where his mother owned a nightclub. He wishes these boys dreamed beyond becoming sports stars or rappers. Sitting in back of the room wearing a “Harlem” baseball cap, with arms crossed like a case-hardened judge, Reese shakes his head. “My goal in life,” says one 11-year-old, “is to be a football player, a basketball player or a break-dancer.” Another student’s brother was killed two years ago. One student’s father has been in prison since the boy was a baby. ![]() Later, inside a dim Leimert Park theater where Reese has led them, 10 boys fidget. In back of the campus, Reese is gathering a group of boys for a trip to Leimert Park. He should be on his way to See a Man, Be a Man, like he told his mother he would. Spectators say school staff caught the girls stumbling drunk. They are watching as two girls are wheeled into an ambulance. Tyree darts outside and joins a crowd of students. The bell rings in the dean’s office, and school lets out. “You think we can have a father-and-son event at this school?” Dailey says. Perhaps not coincidentally, Audubon is among the lowest performing schools in the state, in the bottom 10% on the state academic performance index.Īt Audubon, Dailey spends much of his time listening to pleas from desperate mothers who tell him: “I just need help.” He says 99.9% of the parents he deals with are mothers or grandmothers. Of households with children under 18 within Audubon’s attendance boundaries, 46% are headed by a single mother. He may be exaggerating, but a Times analysis shows that Audubon serves an area with the second-highest percentage of students without fathers among the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 78 middle schools. Tyree’s life mirrors that of many Audubon students: He is a child of a low-income, working mother and knows nothing of his father, not even his name.īy Reese’s count, 80% of Audubon students do not have fathers at home. Lately, his defiance has turned toward Reese too. These days, Tyree says he would rather race mini-motorcycles, known as pocket bikes, than follow rules under Reese’s watchful eye. Reese took him swimming or on field trips, bought him hot chocolate and gave him Dodger tickets. Tyree showed up often at the meetings back in seventh grade. He mentors boys and shares his experiences of growing up without a father. ![]() Torrence Brannon-Reese, who runs a campus program for fatherless boys called See a Man, Be a Man, has talked to Tyree many times.
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