Ruth Beaglehole, early childhood pioneer in LAUSD, dies

Ruth Beaglehole, who spent more than a half a century as an advocate for children and parents in Los Angeles, died last month at 81.

An immigrant from New Zealand who made her life in Los Angeles, Beaglehole jumped into community advocacy and took on the city as her own.

Over the decades, Beaglehole founded a child care center for working families, taught parenting classes to LAUSD students who were pregnant or parents, and spread the gospel of nonviolent parenting, a philosophy that underpinned her advocacy and her way of living, according to her loved ones and fellow organizers.

Since her passing, tributes and remembrances have continued to celebrate her legacy, including Tuesday at an LAUSD school board meeting that adjourned in her honor.

"Ruth Beaglehole was an incredible force for good in the world," said board member Karla Griego, who led the adjournment.

A community childcare program in Echo Park

Beaglehole left New Zealand in the 1960s and made a home in Los Angeles. She joined a group of UC Berkeley graduates who brought the activism of their college careers to L.A. Many in that group moved to Echo Park and got to work on community projects including a food co-op they called the Food Conspiracy.

The idea to start a child care center grew out of that effort, according to her daughter Susan Goldberg.

" My mother looked around, and she saw that there was a real need for quality, affordable child care in the neighborhoods where parents live and work," she said.

Beaglehole was a preschool teacher by training, and a good one, according to those that knew her. So she started a childcare center right there in the double garage of the apartment complex where she lived — offering care to some kids in the neighborhood for just $20 a month.

The daycare, known as Playgroup, was all about the collective: Beaglehole encouraged parental participation in the classroom, and her curriculum was explicitly about social justice.

Her son David Goldberg recalled at her memorial that the kids would sing the civil rights song "We Shall Not Be Moved" alongside the more standard "Wheels on the Bus."

"I don't believe that the preschool years are just important for individual development. Children really have to learn how to relate to their peers. They have to learn about racism. … They have to learn about sexism," Beaglehole says in archival footage of those years.

Running a child care out of a couple of garages did pose some technical problems: There were no bathrooms, so the small children were marched upstairs into the apartments to use the toilet. One of those units was rented by another legendary Angeleno, former LAUSD president Jackie Goldberg, then a community activist and educator whose brother was married to Beaglehole for a time.

The child care center soon had to move out of the garages due to zoning laws, but not without a political fight. Beaglehole took parents to address the L.A. City Council, kids in tow. With time the rules were changed to allow for preschools in residential areas, according to the L.A. Times.

"She was very instrumental as an organizer and as a spokesperson for the need for childcare for working people that is affordable and high quality," Jackie Goldberg said. "There was outrage in the whole city about child care, because there was too little of it and what there was was very, very expensive."

Outreach to pregnant and parenting high school students

What started as a group of parents in a couple garages in Echo Park grew into a life's work. In the 1980s, Beaglehole founded the Teen Parenting and Childcare Program at LAUSD’s Los Angeles Technology Center, working with students who were pregnant or parents.

Young people there could take parenting classes alongside academic classes. Beaglehole used techniques like role-play and theater, and encouraged young mothers she worked with to share their own stories of childhood trauma in order to be better parents.

This work led to the culmination of Beaglehole's decades of advocacy, according to her daughter Susan: The Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting, which she founded in 1999. That work focused on teaching adults to treat children with respect and dignity, challenging common notions about rewarding and punishing children for their behavior.

Beaglehole would teach parents who were there under court orders side by side with those who signed up for her courses voluntarily.

“This work brought together folks from all different classes, all different needs," Susan said. "And yet, when they came into a parenting class together, they found that the challenges, the soulful challenge of being a parent ... that it doesn't matter the class."

Beaglehole's son David Goldberg said at her memorial that his mother's practice and teachings of nonviolence didn't mean she didn't struggle or experience anger. He remembered with laughter that people were surprised to learn that his mom cursed "like a sailor."

"It was an anger that was put into something. In every one of her steps in her life, in her journey, it was about connecting and building movements," he said. "To really know Ruth is to know that part of her."

David Goldberg said that his mom's legacy is in her family and community who carry her spirit into their own lives and work.

Karla Griego, the LAUSD School Board member who honored Beaglehole at Tuesday’s meeting, took her classes when she was a young mom.

"Ruth created a space not only to learn about your child, but also to learn about yourself," she said. "And be kind to yourself and therefore be open to your child."

Correspondent Adolfo Guzman-Lopez contributed to this report.