LOS ANGELES – In the heart of Hollywood, a made for TV superhero is desperately needed.

“I know they have to be some type of children around here, let me stop in, and check and see if we can find someone that needs some schooling,” says father of two Lafayette Reed.

While most teachers and parents, fight to get small classes; Reed is trying to grow class sizes at Selma Avenue Elementary School.

“I’m on my way to another homeless shelter to see if they have some type of children’s program, I’m doing this because we are in need of students,” says Reed.

Selma Avenue’s enrollment is down, and Reed, a part-time staff member for the school has until Normal Enrollment Day on September 20 to get as many kids enrolled as possible to prevent grades from being combined or even eliminated. Like in 2016, when the school stopped offering 6th grade.

“We don’t need no more schools closing down,” says Reed.

Selma is 76 percent Latino, and 7 percent African American. Ninety one percent of the students are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged, which means they are eligible for free or reduced priced meals, or have parents/guardians who did not receive a high school diploma. A third of the students are English learners.

Reed will go almost anywhere looking for parents.

“I was trying to get the kids in school and everything,” Reed says to a worker at a homeless shelter.

Occasionally, he succeeds in finding a future student.

“She’s going to bring her daughter to the school tomorrow and try to enroll her. That’s a win,” said Reed.  

But he has a long road ahead, Selma Avenue had 145 students enrolled in 2018. By comparison, the two closest elementary schools, Gardner Street Elementary and Melrose Avenue Elementary, had 413 and 311 students respectively.

Reed’s son’s second grade class has 25 students, which is one of the bigger classes at the school. The 3rd grade class next door, only has 15. The average for the district is closer to 30.

Los Angeles Unified School District says the biggest risk the school faces right now is that they might be forced to combine two grade levels, but that could turn off more parents and further affect enrollment.

“So I’m fighting to keep everything going the way it needs to go, it’s something that’s from my heart, it’s not for the pay, it’s something that I’m trying to do and I have to do it, I have to do it for the kids, because they deserve more, and so if the parents would see what I’m doing maybe they would get out here and fight just as hard as I’m fighting,” said Reed.

The school of Marilyn Monroe and Carol Burnett now has a different kind of super hero, a father, fighting for his son’s school.