Look Back at Students Who Gave Principal Breakfast in Bed

April 10, 2009 — -- On an October morning in 2002, when most of Los Angeles was just waking up, a group of kids from View Park Prep School was buzzing with excitement by the surprise it had cooked up for principal Mike Piscal.

Emeril Lagasse had arrived at the school to bring breakfast in bed to Piscal.

The students had sent a music video to the "Good Morning America" Breakfast in Bed Contest, asking us to salute Piscal -- and feed him!

It turns out, Piscal's story was one well worth saluting, and revisiting.

Piscal had given up a teaching job at a privileged school for wealthy children to pursue his dream of opening a school that would help get inner-city kids into college.

He maxed out his credit cards to fund it. The first classroom was a borrowed church basement.

He established View Park Elementary School in 1999 and then a middle school in 2001.

The two schools he created when "GMA" visited now include 13 charter schools, including elementary, middle and high schools.

"Right now we have 3,000 students in 13 schools and we intend to grow to 17,000 students in 35 schools and the reason why is half the kids in South L.A. drop out of high school," Piscal told "GMA."

In south central Los Angeles, an area hurting from gangs and drugs, less than 10 percent of youths complete four years of college.

Piscal's charter school organization, the Inner City Education Foundation, aims to turn around those statistics.

"We are at the epicenter of everything that is wrong in America and there are wonderful children that live in this community," he said. But "the whole system is not working for the children."

His success rate has been astonishing. Virtually all ICEF students go to college. Education experts everywhere are sitting up and taking notice.

"It's an amazing explosion of activity in this community where before there was really nothing. He's a pioneer," said Priscilla Wohlstetter, a University of Southern California education professor.