Raising the Bar: Urban Oasis Yields Student Achievement

By Brad Rumble and Timothy G. Thomas Principal, May/June 2015 Each autumn, the yellow-rumped warbler arrives on the campus of Leo Politi Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles. Throughout the winter, their clipped “snip, snip” is a part of campus life: tiny bursts of grey, white, and yellow flitting from the school’s coastal live oaks to California sycamores. By mid-spring they are gone.