By John McDonald
I was saddened to learn of the passing last month of Peggy Funkhouser, a gracious, talented woman who had a transformative impact on public education in Los Angeles and beyond.
Among many accomplishments, Peggy was the founder of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership (LAEP), a nonprofit organization that sprung to life in 1984 in the wake of the report, “A Nation at Risk,” with the idea to “do something to help children and schools in Los Angeles.”
In 1989 I was lucky to go to work with Peggy helping LAEP with its communications. I still remember the first time I met her, walking down the hall to her little office and turning in the door to meet her. She was a very attractive white woman in her mid-fifties with dark blue eyes, turned out in a tailored blue suit with a big choker of pearls, a look more junior leaguer than urban education reformer.
At first, I really did not understand what she was trying to do at LAEP. It seemed at times like she was just throwing great cocktail parties for teachers. But I came to understand it was Peggy’s way of showing some kindness, appreciation and respect for educators too often denied it. She was bringing teachers, often isolated in their classrooms, together to share ideas and experiences, treating them as professionals deserving of support and recognition.
One of the first things she did at LAEP was to launch the “Small Grants for Teachers” initiative, providing grants of $250 to teachers for innovative classroom projects. All the teachers had to do was write a few sentences describing their ideas for the project. LAEP gathered them in a booklet and shared them with teachers across the school district, spreading the ideas. At gatherings honoring the recipients, teachers would come up to Peggy, often with tears in their eyes, expressing their appreciation and telling her the grant was the most important thing that had happened in their careers. Peggy was happy that the grants were meaningful to teachers, but it broke her heart that a little $250 award was the only meaningful appreciation and support that too many teachers had ever received. Over the years LAEP would give hundreds of thousands of dollars of those small grants to teachers.
Those grants helped LAEP to earn the trust of teachers and opened the doors to ongoing collaboration. Those early “cocktail parties,” would grow into some of the nation’s first and most successful teacher networks, fueling teacher-led professional development and leadership to improve instructional practice in the humanities and mathematics and science instruction.
While she pursued her work with a smile and gracious optimism that at times seemed out of place in the racially and politically charged world of the LAUSD, many would find it a mistake to underestimate Peggy. She was a prodigious fund raiser, engaging and earning the trust of philanthropic foundations and raising millions that she used to try and leverage change in the LAUSD. She often compared the school district to a large elephant, and said LAEP was just a small flea. She used those funds to pinch the elephant in just the right spot, and she could pinch hard.
Peggy was persistent to the point of being relentless. She pushed the LAUSD to foster teacher leadership and to change how schools were managed and governed. She also pushed the community to do more for schools, prodding corporate foundations and leaders to invest in school programs, making clear they had a responsibility to do so.
She built on those efforts to forge connections between schools and communities, bringing health care and other resources to campuses to meet the needs of children and families. Those efforts still today serve as a source of ideas and inspiration for community school models across California.
She was also instrumental in the formation of the Los Angeles Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN), sharing her expertise and credibility to help launch the effort and encouraging funders to invest, knowing that in doing so, she was placing the financial health of her own organization at risk.
Today, LAEP is forty years old and Peggy was long retired when she passed. But her fierce commitment to equity, her deep belief in and respect for teachers, and the innovations in educational practice she helped to spark live on. She made a difference in the lives of children and educators, and made public education Los Angeles better. In these times, that’s worth taking a moment to appreciate.
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