The best/the worst/the golden age

4LAKids: Sunday 15•Nov•2009 In This Issue: • The Worst of Times | LAUSD ULTIMATUM: PAY CUTS OR LAYOFFS: Superintendent tells unions 8,500 employees could go to offset $480 million deficit • The Golden Age: HIGHER EDUCATION MASTER PLAN GETTING IGNORED • Race2Top meets NCLB: THE ‘HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHER’ DODGE • FOR $20 NO CHILD GETS LEFT BEHIND • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. The Best of Times: It gets no better than last Monday. MONDAY MORNING AT TEN O'CLOCK AS THE DAY BEGINS... LAUSD broke ground on a new elementary school, too long in the coming, in Echo Park. There had been drama and angst in the run-up – and a certain amount of NIMBYism from folks from an adjacent back yard. But the school is coming and the community will be served. Hopefully Echo Park will get the school they want+need …not the one the politicos and the neighbors want for them. Adults made boring speeches, politicians were self-congratulatory and kids sang and danced and recited the Pledge of Allegiance as only elementary school children can, mispronouncing the big words with a patriotic fervor that cannot be missed. The Republic for Richard Stands was made proud. ON MONDAY AFTERNOON the other end of the spectrum was addressed in a similar manner as the ribbon was officially cut on Central High School #9 – The High School for the Fine and Performing Arts. There were pretty much the same speeches and self congratulation, talented young people blew us away with their talent – and if the pledge was not so grand the harmonies and melodies told us that The Arts and Arts Education are Alive and Well @ 450 N. Grand. I arrived at the event an hour early, giving me the chance to explore the school on my own without a tour guide. The architecture sings. The library soars. The young people bubble; enthusiasm flows around every angle and down every hallway. In my exploration I met with a music teacher I knew from my daughter’s middle school career. She is by nature a serious person, an excellent teacher not given to nonsense – the kind of music instructor who expects one to practice and stares down a bad excuse or a sour note. She was smiling ear-to-ear in her new digs – a music department with practice rooms and - I dare say - kids who practice. I ran into a construction guy I know, beaming with self satisfaction at how well the school had turned out – if not the direction of the District. Even better I came across a student – or to be honest, he came across me. “Mr. Folsom… remember me? I went to high school with your daughter.” “Of course I remember,” I lied. “How is this working for you …do you like it here in this new school?” Again the smile, ear-to-ear. “It’s great. I like the school, I like the teachers. My friends and I are learning stuff. And we’re having fun!” And, before I could say it: “It doesn’t get any better than that.” Indeed. ...FUN IS THE THING THAT MONEY CAN'T BUY. ¡Onward/Hasta adelante! -smf __________________________________________________ A 4LAKids reader (squish61) asks “Would it be possible to remind readers that this district that cares so much for reform is responsible for our huge class sizes? They should have decimated out-of-classroom spending first. If they think charter class sizes of 20:1 are best, why not make that the priority? • Not only would it be possible, it has been done! • Point taken – but to be nit-picky, the definition of decimated is to reduce by 10%; this has been done. (The etymological origin of ‘Decimate’ was the Roman practice of killing every tenth legionnaire in a unit suspected of cowardice …talk about accountability!) • Who are the ‘they’ who think that charter class sizes are best?, Supt. Cortines is of the belief that CSR isn’t really effective until you get to around 15:1. 4LAKids believes in incrementalism and that the ideal needn’t be the enemy of the good -- 20:1 is better that 25:1 and vice versa . • The real concern is that the lessons-learned and work-done by charters are not being discussed ...let alone implemented. Los Angeles has more charters than anywhere else and what do we have to show for it? The current thinking seems to be that the Charter itself is the Da Vinci Code/quick fix/magic bullet. That is no more correct than the union contract or an enchanted resolution of the school board being the answer. I’m not even sure we understand what the question is! -smf The Worst of Times | LAUSD ULTIMATUM: PAY CUTS OR LAYOFFS: Superintendent tells unions 8,500 employees could go to offset $480 million deficit By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News 14 Nov 2009 -- Los Angeles Unified schools chief Ramon Cortines told unions Friday [the Thirteenth] that they must accept a combination of furloughs and pay cuts this year and next or the district will be forced to lay off up to 8,500 employees. Saying the district needed to bridge a $480 million budget gap for the 2010-11 school year, Cortines asked all employees to accept four furlough days this year and a 12 percent pay cut next year. SEIU Local 99, representing service workers, and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles said they were open to discuss the concessions. A United Teachers Los Angeles representative was not available for comment. In a letter sent to all employee union leaders Friday, Cortines described the district's financial picture as "the worst budget crisis in years" and he urged all bargaining units to cooperate. Unlike last year, he said, the district was not in any position to offer any early retirement incentives - like those recently approved by the Los Angeles City Council for city workers. "Almost every department will be affected," he added. "We are being forced to function in a different way than in the past. ... It is to our students' benefit to work together now more than ever." Cortines said the concessions would be necessary to maintain current staffing levels and service. He added that if no concessions are agreed to, the district would have to lay off from 7,500 to 8,500 employees — requiring some 14,000 reduction-in-force notices to go out in March — up from about 8,000 notices that went out last March. The district has to put out more notices than expected layoffs because of formulas that lead to uncertainty over which employees will be subject to layoffs. "We are looking at one in five employees who will be informed that they may lose their jobs," Cortines wrote in the two-page letter. All of the district's eight employee unions will have to agree to concessions before Dec. 8, when the district will have to submit a new balanced three-year budget to the Los Angeles County Office of Education. SEIU, representing many of the district's lowest-paid workers, has scheduled a vote of its members next week to approve four unpaid furlough days. "We understand that there is a really terrible budget deficit and the cuts from Sacramento are dire," union spokeswoman Blanca Gallegos said. "We are really just trying to prevent further loss of jobs," she continued. "We've already seen 500 custodial positions cut this school year, and we realize to address this deficit we need to take these steps." Judith Perez, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, said her union was prepared to work with the district to find solutions. "If you ask me if I'm in favor of furloughs, I'll tell you no, but we are ready to sit down and negotiate," Perez said. But what the district really needs is concessions from UTLA - something the union has fought for decades. UTLA president A.J. Duffy was unavailable for comment Friday. The news of more cuts comes just months after LAUSD eliminated more than 5,000 jobs - 2,000 teachers, 400 counselors and an estimated 2,800 nonteaching school workers to cover a $596 million deficit. Still, many of those workers were later rehired as other employees took an early retirement incentive package. Last year, no employee unions came forward with any concessions. However, last year the district had federal stimulus funding to ease the pain of the budget squeeze. This year, Cortines said, the district will not have the same funding. The district projected it would need to eliminate full-day kindergarten and all arts and music programs to close a projected budget deficit of $1.1 billion through 2012. Officials also included concessions that they hoped to get from employee unions, including 27 furlough days for out-of-classroom teachers and a 5 percent salary reduction for all district staff. They sent that in a budget to the county Office of Education, which rejected it because the concessions had not been agreed to by the unions. Now the county wants union approval in writing before it signs off on LAUSD's budget. The four furlough days that officials are asking for this year would cover an existing deficit of between $50 million and $60 million this year, district officials said. The 12 percent pay cut would cover the $480 million deficit projected for next year - one that Cortines and other officials said could grow even bigger. "Teachers are working their butts off this year. ... Those laid-off teachers made all class sizes bigger, and to ask those teachers to now take a pay cut is difficult," said Jose Navarro, a history teacher at Sylmar High. "But if you ask me personally if I had to take a furlough day or two to help my students I would ... and I think a lot of the teachers I work with closely would share that view." The Golden Age: HIGHER EDUCATION MASTER PLAN GETTING IGNORED By Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, November 13, 2009 -- California's Master Plan for Higher Education - which set academics ablaze with the promise of a nearly free college education for all who qualified - is limping toward the half-century mark largely ignored by lawmakers who don't even pretend they can live up to its expensive commitment. That's the finding of a report The Master Plan at 50: Assessing California’s Vision for Higher Education released Thursday by the state's Office of the Legislative Analyst. It says today's reality of soaring student fees, volatile college budgets and enrollment caps are so far removed from the guiding Master Plan, that something must be done to bring them in line. The Master Plan was crafted in 1960 to establish a coordinated system of colleges and universities, with the goal of steering students appropriately toward the University of California, California State University or community college largely free of charge. "Today its assumptions look pretty quaint," said Steve Boilard, the report's author. "There's a big disconnect between what the state's priorities are and what's actually going on." That point is not lost on thousands of students and families angry about rising fees at a time when many can't even get into basic courses. At a recent protest in Long Beach, where the CSU trustees raised yearly fees by 20 percent to $4,026, students held an all-night vigil, reading aloud from the Master Plan. "Accessible, affordable, high-quality and accountable" were its guiding principles for higher education. Nominal fees were to be charged only for such ancillary categories as recreation costs. Yet next week, UC regents are expected to raise fees by 32 percent, topping $10,000 for the first time. It would be the eighth fee increase since 2002. California's budget crisis has led to cuts of more than $500 million from CSU since last year, more than $800 million from UC, and more than $700 million from community colleges. The new report doesn't fault state lawmakers for the out-of-control economy, but says lawmakers have failed to set policies to guide colleges and universities through turbulent times, as the Master Plan calls for. With no new policy on how much students should pay for their education, "fee levels have been unpredictable and volatile, with little alignment to the cost of instruction or to students' ability to pay," the report says. Not only are lawmakers unaware of what it costs to educate students, they lack a policy for funding enrollment growth, the report says. The result is hit-or-miss decision making. CSU announced recently that it must trim enrollment by 40,000 over two years, and had to cancel enrollment for next spring. Although lawmakers can't micromanage the schools, they have "tremendous leverage over fee decisions by how much state funding they appropriate," Boilard said. "So they could enter into a conversation with the universities and say, 'We're going to build you a budget with the expectation that fees will be at X level. And if you're unwilling to enact those fees, we'll reconsider the amount of state support." Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), who chairs the Assembly Higher Education Committee, said those conversations have already begun in preparation for hearings on overhauling the Master Plan, possibly in December. "California has dramatically changed in 50 years," Portantino said. "We need to make sure the promises made are kept." Ricardo Gomez of the UC Student Association agrees. But the Cal undergrad is skeptical that conversations and hearings will change the fundamental problem. "We've been lobbying legislators for years telling them that UC is not living up to the Master Plan," said Gomez, legislative affairs chair for the association. "We can talk about innovative solutions, but at the end of the day it comes down to fully funding higher education," he said. "The state needs to increase its revenues." THE CALIFORNIA MASTER PLAN FOR HIGHER EDUCATION In 1959, state lawmakers asked the UC regents and state Board of Education for a plan that would develop, expand and integrate the curriculum and standards of California's colleges and universities for years to come. The plan approved in 1960 called for periodic increases in fees for noninstructional services, such as activities and athletics. Faculty salaries would be paid by the state. Most of the Master Plan principles are not codified in state law. Here are two of its key provisions: * Eligibility targets: The top 12.5 percent of graduating public high school students are eligible for UC. The top 33.3 percent are eligible for CSU. Everyone 18 or older who can "benefit from instruction" is eligible to attend a community college. * Other goals: Higher education should remain accessible, affordable, high-quality and accountable. THE FULL REPORT: The Master Plan at 50: Assessing California’s Vision for Higher Education Race2Top meets NCLB: THE ‘HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHER’ DODGE New York Times Editorial November 13, 2009 -- Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been widely held in high regard since he was appointed in January, but no honeymoon lasts forever. Mr. Duncan’s came to an abrupt end earlier this week when he issued long-awaited rules that the states must follow to apply for his $4.3 billion discretionary fund, known as the Race to the Top Fund, and the second round of federal financing under the $49 billion federal stimulus package known as the state fiscal stabilization fund. The rules for the Race to the Top Fund, which is designed to reward states that embrace reform and bypass those that do not, are generally sound and have been greeted with enthusiasm. But some school reform groups and some in Congress have reacted with dismay to the part of the stabilization fund that was supposed to require the states to end the longstanding and reprehensible practice of shunting unprepared and unqualified teachers into the schools serving the poorest students. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 was clear in requiring states to remedy situations in which high poverty schools were being disproportionately staffed by teachers who were inexperienced, unqualified or teaching in fields that they had not majored in. The country would be much further along on the reform trail had the Bush administration followed the law. Instead, it allowed the states to define away the problem by re-labeling the existing, inadequate teacher corps as “highly qualified.” Congress tried to discourage the use of inexperienced and unqualified teachers a second time when it passed the stimulus act. Education advocates inside and outside Congress expected that the stabilization fund application would be explicit and ambitious on the issue of teacher equity. They were understandably disappointed to find the issue couched, once again, in euphemistic language that asks the states to describe in vague terms whether the teacher corps is “highly qualified.” The Congressional Black Caucus is unhappy with this approach. The Education Trust, an influential research group that deals with reform issues, accused Mr. Duncan of papering over a serious problem and squandering an opportunity to force “truth-telling about unfair teacher-assignment practices.” The language in the application reflects timidity at the White House and in Congress, where some voices wanted to delay the fight over this issue until next year when Congress will likely reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The language also reflects the sometimes excessive influence of boutique alternative certification programs, which want to keep doors open for teachers who might be shut out under traditional criteria. But the facts on the ground remain inescapably clear. Children in poor neighborhoods will continue to be poorly served at school until Congress pushes the states to provide them with better, more effective teachers. The Rules for the Race to the Top Competition (the offical title) summarized in the Executive Summary FOR $20 NO CHILD GETS LEFT BEHIND An editorial by Dale McFeatters, | Scripps Howard News Service 11/13/09 -- It's too bad Rosewood Middle School in Wayne County, N.C., wasn't allowed to go ahead with its planned fundraiser. The results might have proved fascinating. A $20 donation to the school would allow students to raise their grades by 10 points on any two tests of their choosing. A $60 donation would get the 20 points, admission to a 5th period dance and a special pizza lunch for the student and a friend. The idea originated with a parents advisory council and the money would have gone to buy digital cameras for the school computer lab and a high-tech blackboard. Principal Susie Shepherd, who initially approved the plan, told the Raleigh, N.C., News and Observer, "Last year they did chocolates, and it didn't generate anything." When word got out, school administrators were horrified by the idea of cash for grades and cancelled the fundraiser even though Shepherd indicated that a 10-point improvement on just two tests would be unlikely to affect a student's final grade. Actually, in an indirect way, the idea speaks well of the students and their parents, who give the school itself high marks, that they would care enough about doing well on tests to spend $20 to do even better. Besides, rewards for generous cash contributions aren't exactly unknown in the academic world. In colleges and universities, they're called honorary doctorates. Maybe Rosewood should try that instead. More: Dumb Fundraising Tricks HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources CASH-FOR-GRADES PRINCIPAL RETIRES: By The Associated Press 13 November -- Goldsboro, N.C. (AP) -- A North Carol.. http://bit.ly/2v7Ov7 HAWAII’S TEACHER FURLOUGHS CALLED MIND-BOGGLING: by The Associated Press 13 November – Honolulu (AP) -- U.S. Ed.. http://bit.ly/3iSTcW The '09-'10 Contract: AALA SUNSHINES. WILL THEY SEE THE LIGHT?: FROM THE ASSOCIATED ADMINISTRATORS OF LA UPDATE.. http://bit.ly/3pc4tL TEN9EIGHT - SHOOT FOR THE MOON: Why You Should Watch Mary Mazzio's New Documentary: Posted to Business Week Onl.. http://bit.ly/3aKr3c LAUSD WILL APPEAL TO STUDENTS TO GET PARENTS COUNTED IN 2010 CENSUS: By Connie Llanos Staff Writer | LA Newspap.. http://bit.ly/1W9cxV No budget/No clue: Lead line in Tucson TV story about the Arizona state budget” "At least we’re not California'.. http://bit.ly/3tUK5i Public Policy Institute of California Survey: CALIFORNIANS AND HIGHER EDUCATION: Mark Baldassare, Dean Bonner, .. http://bit.ly/2MNJ09 MORE CONTROVERSY AROUND SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN: Written by Alex Garcia, San Fernando Valley Sun Contributing Writer.. http://bit.ly/1YfC9j 2 from School Construction News: GREEN SCHOOL RETROFITS + DON’T CUT THE M & O BUDGET: Green School Retrofits: J.. http://bit.ly/4zB5k9 RULES SET FOR $4 BILLION ‘RACE TO TOP’ CONTEST + CALIFORNIA MAY GET UP TO $700 MILLION IN ‘R2T'’: EdWeek:Rules .. http://bit.ly/22kag6 Briefly: CA HIGHER ED GETS HI MARKS, 4 LA LATINOS WIN MATH+SCIENCE SCHOLARSHIPS, JOB TRAINING GETS STIMULUS $: .. http://bit.ly/2NgKwt LAUSD’S GOAL SHOULD BE BETTER SCHOOLS: The weakness in the Public School Choice Resolution isn’t the work rules.. http://bit.ly/44dWGV DIRTY TRICKS DEPORTATION FLYER SINKS TO A NEW LOW + smf RANTS: L.A. Daily News Editorial Nov 12, 2009 -- HOW do.. http://bit.ly/1cfPAM SMMUSD/CPES/SMMPTA STATE OF OUR SCHOOLS COMMUNITY REPORT: THE STATE OF OUR SCHOOLS Santa Monica - Malibu Unifie.. http://bit.ly/17awL8 Dumb Fundraising Tricks: SELLING TEST SCORE POINTS: ●●smf checked the sources here, expecting (and hoping) to f.. http://bit.ly/4GDZk No budget/No clue: SCHWARZENEGGER WARNS OF MORE ACROSS-THE-BOARD BUDGET CUTS: Michael Rothfel.. http://bit.ly/DKbUl The news that didn’t fit from Nov 15 EVENTS: Coming up next week... Monday Nov 16, 2009 VALLEY REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #9: Construction Update Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Hazeltine Elementary School 7150 Hazeltine Ave. Van Nuys, CA 91405 Tuesday Nov 17, 2009 9TH STREET SPAN K-8 REDEVELOPMENT: Meet-the-Architect Design Meeting Time: 5:00 p.m. Location: 9th Street Elementary School 820 Towne Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90021 Tuesday Nov 17, 2009 VALLEY REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #7: Construction Update Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Strathern Elementary School 7939 St. Clair Ave. North Hollywood, CA 91605 Wednesday Nov 18, 2009 CENTRAL REGION HIGH SCHOOL #13/TAYLOR YARD: Construction Update Meeting Time: 6:30 p.m. Location: Glassell Park Elementary School Auditorium 2211 W. Avenue 30 Los Angeles, CA 90065 Wednesday Nov 18, 2009 VALLEY REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #6: Construction Update Meeting Time: 6:30 p.m. Location: Rosa Parks Learning Center 8855 Noble Ave. North Hills, CA 91343 Saturday Nov 21, 2009 CENTRAL REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #13: Fun Fence Art Day Time: 9:00 a.m. Location: Pio Pico Span School 1512 S. Arlington Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90019 *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: ***MEETS IN THE LAUSD BOARD ROOM @ 12:30 PM WED NOV 18 SPECIAL TIME *** http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

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4LAKids: Sunday 8•Nov•2009 In This Issue: • SIX LAUSD SCHOOLS RECEIVE BLUE RIBBON HONORS: Two Valley campuses on U.S. Department of Education's A-list • LAUSD REFORMS MAY SKIP PILOT SCHOOLS: District, teachers union at odds over expansion plan. • ENROLLMENT DIPS AT L.A. UNIFIED: The loss of students, apparently to charter schools in some cases, is bad news for the district's budget • NO WAY TO SECURE SCHOOL FUNDING + BETRAYING THE CALIFORNIA DREAM: We're destroying the education system that made the state great • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. Congratulations to the students, faculty, parents and staffs at • CLIFFORD STREET ELEMENTARY in Echo Park, • DANUBE AVENUE ELEMENTARY in Granada Hills, • DELEVAN DRIVE ELEMENTARY in Eagle Rock, • HAMLIN STREET ELEMENTARY in West Hills, • SOLANO AVENUE ELEMENTARY in Elysian Park and • 156TH STREET SCHOOL in Gardena – named Friday as National Blue Ribbon Schools — the country's top honor for schools. Good job! _____________________________ WHILE DRIVING ACROSS TOWN the other evening – minding my own business (something the LAUSD superintendent and Board of Ed would prefer I’d do more of) the pundits on National Public Radio engaged in a debate: “Is Afghanistan Ungovernable?” (Historically it has been …at least since the time of Alexander the Great.) A déjà vu alert sounded somewhere in the deep recesses, disturbing old locker combinations and the atomic number of cesium – and an odd synapse fired in dim recall of similar rhetorical questions asked and unanswered - ancient and new: • Is California ungovernable? • Is LAUSD ungovernable? • The city and county of L.A.? • The state of LA – except by the likes of Jean Lafitte and members of the Long family? Maybe ungovernability is a state of nature …like chaos. If that’s true the charter operators are in for a rough ride …and the pilot scholars better fasten their seatbelts and stow their laptops deep in their flight bags. Only a month or so back PILOT SCHOOLS were the flavor o’ reform o’ th’ moment; now UCLA is pulling back [see UCLA's LAB SCHOOL EXPANSION IS POSTPONED in 4LAKids 18Oct09] and (swap the ‘C’ for a ‘T’) UTLA is seeming to be having their own second thoughts. [LAUSD REFORMS MAY SKIP PILOT SCHOOLS] And Ray Cortines threatens: "If the union puts a moratorium on pilots, I will push for more charters." The best headline this week is “FORD FOUNDATION GIVES $100 MILLION TO REFORM URBAN HIGH SCHOOLS”. Until one realizes that for every dollar invested by the Ford’s and the Hewlett’s and the Gates’ (or even the feds) the state is cutting the budget by a far greater amount. The Ford Foundation’s $100 million is a nationwide commitment over seven years. There are 27,468 US high schools; this represents $520 per school per year. $100M just becomes some bake sale money …not to mention the strings attached. THE CITY COUNCIL, unable to balance the city budget or hire the magic bullet/benchmark of TEN THOUSAND POLICEMEN instead have mandated (or maybe requested) school uniforms at all LAUSD schools. Never mind that about one third of LAUSD is outside their jurisdiction …or that they have no jurisdiction in LAUSD anyway. And while we wonder in wonderment at them wasting their own time, wonder about this: Why didn’t the lottery money fix education funding? …or hiking the trash fees hire those 10K policemen? Do the Algebra: BQ ≤ Pu. The bloviation quotient among the electeds is exceeded by promises unkept. MORE TO WONDER ABOUT: The feds are putting billion$ into the stimulus so that folks will spend and turn the economy around. And the State of California in rare bipartisan agreement is merrily increasing payroll withholding by 10% so that the opposite happens …and right at the beginning of the holiday shopping season to boot! Raising withholding is not raising taxes – it just takes the stimulus money out of circulation. Do the Econ: someone is failing elementary school Keynesian economics – and they are doing it in Sacramento. Meanwhile Superintendent Cortines was in China this week - sharing best practices and lessons learned in his career in education – telling the Chinese how to run their schools. He is the guest of a group that identifies ‘élite’ (their word) Chinese students and qualifies them for ‘élite’ US and European university educations. These very young people – the future workforce completion for the kids he and we are educating here – are described by Thomas L. Friedman in “The World is Flat” as being the folks poised to ‘eat our lunch’ in the globalized 21st Century. But, in truth, that doesn’t even come close. I have, over my desk, a poster from a Chinese university that asks: “What good is a 21st Century Education if it doesn’t prepare us for the 22nd?” That, gentle reader, is the goal to which we must advance …Onward! -smf SIX LAUSD SCHOOLS RECEIVE BLUE RIBBON HONORS: Two Valley campuses on U.S. Department of Education's A-list By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News Nov 7, 220 -- WEST HILLS — Two San Fernando Valley campuses were among an elite group Friday to receive a National Blue Ribbon — the country's top honor for schools. Parents, teachers and students at Hamlin Street Elementary in West Hills and Danube Avenue Elementary in Granada Hills cheered the good news. "We don't always get a lot of recognition," said Victoria Christie, principal of Hamlin Street. "This really lets us know that we are doing things right." Beyond doing things right, to earn the top honor from the U.S. Department of Education a school has to excel on a number of fronts. It has to meet all of the federal government's goals for student proficiency in reading and math, or it has to have a dramatic improvement in test scores. The feat is so difficult that this year only 264 schools in the country - and six in the Los Angeles Unified School District - earned the honor. "This recognition reflects excellent instruction, a strong focus on academic achievement, a learning environment that meets the needs of all students, and stellar results," said LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines. "These jewels of LAUSD outperform schools with similar enrollments throughout California and demonstrate one of our core beliefs: All children can learn and excel." Across the district, Clifford Street Elementary in Echo Park, Delevan Drive Elementary in Eagle Rock, Solano Avenue Elementary in Los Angeles and 156th Street School in Gardena were also recognized with the designation. 'Hard work can pay off' All six schools shared above-average test scores, based on the Academic Performance Index - the state's key standardized test benchmark that is graded on a 200 to 1,000 point scale. Danube Avenue earned an API of 837 last year and Hamlin Street scored 886 — well above the state's goal for all schools of 800 and LAUSD's average score of 694. Performing dances and songs from Hawaii, Japan and China, and sporting blue "Hamlin Husky" T-shirts and sweaters, students at Hamlin celebrated the big award Friday during a school assembly. Fifth-grader Connor Ferguson even thanked his teachers for pushing him so hard in the classroom. "This makes me so proud of my school," Connor said. "It shows that hard work can pay off." Christie, who arrived at Hamlin five years ago, credited her teachers' use of student data and targeted intervention programs during the school day with boosting her school's scores. "It helps us figure out exactly what kind of help every child needs," Christie said. Nurtured by teachers Danube Avenue Elementary School plans to host an event to commemorate the award next year, when the school gets its Blue Ribbon logo painted in the front entrance of the school, the school's principal, Sharon Geier, said. She praised her staff for helping her students excel academically. "It is our goal to ensure that every child achieves his or her full potential," Geier said. "When any of us — an administrator, a teacher or a member of our support staff — see a test score, we see a child, not a number." Teachers at Hamlin also stressed they pay attention to students' emotional needs. At Hamlin almost half of all students come from low-income families and a third are learning English as a second language. "Sometimes we find ourselves playing several roles — teacher, parent, counselor — the bottom line is we will do whatever it takes to get our kids to do their best," said Ricki Averback, a second-grade teacher at Hamlin Street. Mayby Iraheta, a mother of a fourth- and second-grader at Hamlin and a sixth-grader who graduated from the school last year, said her children also feel nurtured by their teachers — something she thinks ultimately helps her kids do better. "Our kids excel here because teachers work hard and care," Iraheta said. "This has been happening here for a long time. It is just today that the rest of the world hears about it." LAUSD REFORMS MAY SKIP PILOT SCHOOLS: District, teachers union at odds over expansion plan. Cortines: "If the union puts a moratorium on pilots, I will push for more charters." By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group/Daily News Posted: 11/05/2009 09:33:32 PM PST/Updated: 11/05/2009 09:48:53 PM PST Nov. 6 -- With just 10 days left before Los Angeles Unified begins accepting bids from outside operators to run some of its underperforming schools, the best option for the district to retain some of those schools might not be available. Pilot schools — small schools where parents and staff have more influence, but the district still has control — have expanded in recent years as an alternative to traditional schools. They are also an alternative to popular charter schools, which are publicly financed but operate independently of the district. Both types of schools are eligible to take over operation of traditional public schools under the district's ambitious "Schools Choice Plan." But because the district and the teachers union have not been able to agree on a plan to expand the number of pilot schools, now limited to 10, it might not be an option at a time in the district's history when options and choices are needed most. Since teachers at pilot schools work under a more flexible contract, the teachers union is uneasy about seeing them grow without more protection for teachers. District officials, which see the pilot schools as an innovative way of reforming schools without giving up control, want the union to step out of the way and allow pilot school expansion. "I will not allow some teacher representatives to hold back educational progress ...," LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said recently in an interview. "If the union puts a moratorium on pilots, I will push for more charters." The district would like to have an agreement by next week ahead of the Nov. 15 deadline for the first round of applications. But United Teachers Los Angeles officials say certain elements of the contract need to be changed to ensure teachers are protected. For example, UTLA wants to see teacher discipline handled by arbitration, rather than by LAUSD personnel, as the pilot school contract currently allows. "I am trying to come up with contract language that expands pilots and that also has the possibility of passing a vote of my governing bodies," said UTLA President A.J. Duffy. The pilot school model, imported to Los Angeles from Boston, has been generally supported by UTLA because it gives teachers more control. At a pilot school, a board made up of teachers, parents, administrators and students in high school makes all budget, curriculum, calendar and staffing decisions. But the amended contract under which teachers work at pilot schools — known as a "thin" contract because it is 70 pages compared to the standard 300-page contract — also streamlines several policies affecting teachers, including how they are hired, fired and disciplined. As the union continues to work on a new proposal with the district, community organizations have begun to pressure UTLA to approve an expansion of pilots, and protests are being organized by local groups for next week. Duffy said he understands the community's frustration. "There are some very well-meaning people within the union who do not see change as something that is necessary, and I disagree," he said. In the meantime, district officials in charge of guiding schools through LAUSD's reform effort say their hands are tied now as they wait for an agreement on pilot schools. "The union is holding this hostage, and we find that unacceptable," said Edmundo Rodriguez, LAUSD's pilot school director. "There are literally hundreds of teachers and thousands of parents that cannot stand to function in the same old educational system." Currently there are seven pilot schools districtwide, all located around the Pico-Union neighborhood west of downtown, with 10 expected to open soon. Rodriguez said an additional 40 schools across the district have now expressed interest in converting their schools to a pilot model, including at least half of the schools that LAUSD put out for bid under the school choice plan. "I don't understand why the union would stand in the way of the most progressive option currently available for schools who want reform but also want to maintain district and UTLA affiliations," said Veronica Melvin, executive director of Alliance for a Better Community. "It is so odd that they choose to do this now ... at a time when leadership is needed more than ever to allow reform to happen." ENROLLMENT DIPS AT L.A. UNIFIED: The loss of students, apparently to charter schools in some cases, is bad news for the district's budget WITH FUNDING BASED ON ATTENDANCE IT HAS RESULTED IN FEWER TEACHERS AND LARGER CLASSES. By Howard Blume | LA Times November 4, 2009 -- An apparent exodus of students to charter schools, combined with an overall enrollment decline, is disrupting Los Angeles-area schools and exacerbating an ongoing budget crisis. Local independently run charter schools added more than 9,500 students this fall, a surge of almost 19% to more than 60,000. At the same time, enrollment is down more than 19,000 students, about 3%, at schools affiliated with the Los Angeles Unified School District. Total district enrollment has fallen to 678,441, down from a peak of 747,009 in 2003. The drop has long-term implications, because school districts receive funding based on student attendance. Some ramifications are immediate: Schools simply cannot afford to employ more teachers than their student enrollment will pay for. The result is that many schools had to release teachers and distribute students into other classes a month or more into the school year. The latest disruption comes on the heels of the layoffs of about 2,000 teachers in July. For the moment, no additional layoffs are planned, officials said. Edged-out teachers fill vacancies elsewhere or work as substitutes on full salary until a position opens. But that doesn't make the sudden changes any less disruptive. By district calculations, Mulholland Middle School in Van Nuys had about eight teachers too many, though clever schedule shuffling and budget management reduced the casualties to four teachers. Each of the four had been directly responsible for about 175 students, and almost no one among the school's 1,750 students escaped the effects. Physical education classes, which already had been packed with more than 50 students, are now accommodating more than 60. At least one class ballooned briefly to 70. Elective computer classes ended; that teacher was needed for math. The band teacher agreed to mix beginners in with his advanced class, frustrating for eighth-grader Richard Catalan. He also misses his former math teacher. "And classes are larger," he said. "It's harder for teachers to keep track of how the lesson is progressing." Principal John White postponed back-to-school night for a month and Assistant Principal Jacqueline Purdy led a crisis team that reworked the schedule, giving priority to placing qualified teachers in core academic classes. Purdy paid a former school clerk out of her own pocket to help out. The clerk had been bumped from the campus during the recent budget cuts. Teacher Ricardo Stewart agreed to handle sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade history, tripling his preparation duties. Albert Estrada added on sixth-grade math and sixth-grade science to his eighth-grade science responsibilities. Match coach Gabriel Ortega added a math class to his full-time teacher-training duties while three other teachers gave up planning periods. "It's hard getting used to new teachers, and new faces in the classrooms," said eighth-grader Emily Pinto. "It was a big adjustment." Overall, the Mulholland faculty has shrunk by about 10 teachers and the enrollment by about 100 students, said Assistant Principal John Ford. "The classes are kind of big," said Eva Vargas, Emily's mother. "And then they had to move all their schedules around. I'm worried that they're a little behind in math." At the Santee Education Complex, a high school south of downtown, the faculty has shrunk from 140 to about 100 in a year, said Principal Richard J. Chavez. And ninth-grade enrollment was 200 fewer than expected. Many factors affect enrollment, including birth rates, the availability of jobs and housing prices, but the growth of charter schools hasn't abated. Charters are publicly funded and operate free of many district regulations. This fall, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, a charter organization, opened five new schools, a connection not missed by Santee teacher Jose Lara. "We think some of the students are going to charters," Lara said. "We've got to improve our educational program and prove to the community that we're doing a good job as well." also see: FALLING ENROLLMENT THREATENS LAUSD BUDGET (Daily News) NO WAY TO SECURE SCHOOL FUNDING + BETRAYING THE CALIFORNIA DREAM: We're destroying the education system that made the state great ► NO WAY TO SECURE SCHOOL FUNDING: A bill that would attract federal school grants also includes too many disparate ideas to be practical. Los Angeles Times Editorial November 4, 2009 -- If California schools want a piece of $4.2 million in new federal education grants, they'll have to make some changes. Legislation* by state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) and several coauthors would pave the way for those changes, but the bill is so awkwardly constructed at this point, with so many unnecessary and possibly harmful additions, that it doesn't deserve the fast-track passage Romero is seeking. The bill moves in the right direction in enacting common-sense reforms that were outlined by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan as requirements for states that want to compete for Race to the Top grants. The grants are intended to spur innovation at lackluster schools across the nation. One prerequisite: eliminating state limits on the number of charter schools that can be created. That's currently 100 per year in California. Romero's bill would lift the limit. But from there, Romero goes off in her own direction with an unrelated proposal that would open enrollment throughout California's public schools. Children in low-performing schools could transfer to whatever school they wanted, in any district, whether or not those schools were open to taking more students, unless they could show they have no possible space. The Obama administration hasn't demanded any such change, and good public schools already have an incentive to welcome outside enrollment: They get more state money for each student. Legislation passed earlier this year will encourage more districts to admit students from outside their boundaries, but that's a decision each district should be free to make for itself. Another provision would shut down some underperforming schools and send the students to surrounding schools. It's true that districts have been too reluctant to completely revamp failing schools, and the state needs a mechanism to force their hands. But those schools should be reconstituted with new leadership and staff and an improvement plan -- or be handed to a charter operator -- rather than having their doors shut. This bill would force students into longer commutes to schools that, in Los Angeles Unified at least, already are crowded. Romero has tossed a hodgepodge of disparate ideas into this bill, some good, some poorly thought out, and others that already have been achieved through previous legislation. As her bill goes to committee this week, it should be streamlined into a simple piece of legislation that accomplishes one aim: qualifying California schools for the federal funds they urgently need. ►BETRAYING THE CALIFORNIA DREAM: WE'RE DESTROYING THE EDUCATION SYSTEM THAT MADE THE STATE GREAT CALIFORNIA'S HIGHER-EDUCATION DEBACLE: Watching the decline of the California State University system from within its boardroom mirrors the erosion of the California dream. Op-Ed By Jeff Bleich | LA Times November 4, 2009 -- For nearly six years, I have served on the Board of Trustees of the California State University system -- the last two as its chairman. This experience has been more than just professional; it has been a deeply personal one. With my term ending soon, I need to share my concern -- and personal pain -- that California is on the verge of destroying the very system that once made this state great. I came to California because of the education system. I grew up in Connecticut and attended college back East on partial scholarships and financial aid. I also worked part time, but by my first year of grad school, I'd maxed out my financial aid and was relying on loans that charged 14% interest. Being a lawyer had been my dream, but my wife and I could not afford for me to go to any law schools back East. I applied to UC Berkeley Law School because it was the only top law school in the U.S. that we could afford. It turned out to be the greatest education I have ever received. And I got it because the people of California -- its leaders and its taxpayers -- were willing to invest in me. For the last 20 years, since I graduated, I have felt a duty to pay back the people of this state. When I had to figure out where to build a practice, buy a home, raise my family and volunteer my time and energy, I chose California. I joined a small California firm -- Munger, Tolles & Olson -- and eventually became a partner. This year, American Lawyer magazine named us the No. 1 firm in the nation. That success is also California's success. It has meant millions of dollars in taxes paid to California, hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer time donated to California, houses built and investments made in California, and hundreds of talented people attracted to work in and help California. My story is not unique. It is the story of California's rise from the 1960s to the 1990s. Millions of people stayed here and succeeded because of their California education. We benefited from the foresight of an earlier generation that recognized it had a duty to pay it forward. That was the bargain California made with us when it established the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960. By making California the state where every qualified and committed person can receive a low-cost and high-quality education, all of us benefit. Attracting and retaining the leaders of the future helps the state grow bigger and stronger. Economists found that for every dollar the state invests in a CSU student, it receives $4.41 in return. So as someone who has lived the California dream, there is nothing more painful to me than to see this dream dying. It is being starved to death by a public that thinks any government service -- even public education -- is not worth paying for. And by political leaders who do not lead but instead give in to our worst, shortsighted instincts. The ineffective response to the current financial crisis reflects trends that have been hurting California public education for years. To win votes, political leaders mandated long prison sentences that forced us to stop building schools and start building prisons. This has made us dumber but no safer. Leaders pandered by promising tax cuts no matter what and did not worry about how to provide basic services without that money. Those tax cuts did not make us richer; they've made us poorer. To remain in office, they carved out legislative districts that ensured we would have few competitive races and leaders with no ability or incentive to compromise. Rather than strengthening the parties, it pushed both parties to the fringes and weakened them. When the economy was good, our leaders failed to make hard choices and then faced disasters like the energy crisis. When the economy turned bad, they made no choices until the economy was worse. In response to failures of leadership, voters came up with one cure after another that was worse than the disease -- whether it has been over-reliance on initiatives driven by special interests, or term limits that remove qualified people from office, or any of the other ways we have come up with to avoid representative democracy. As a result, for the last two decades we have been starving higher education. California's public universities and community colleges have half as much to spend today as they did in 1990 in real dollars. In the 1980s, 17% of the state budget went to higher education and 3% went to prisons. Today, only 9% goes to universities and 10% goes to prisons. The promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here, has been abandoned. Our K-12 system has fallen from the top ranks 30 years ago to 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending. And higher education is now taking on water. At every trustees meeting over the last six years, I have seen the signs of decline. I have listened to the painful stories of faculty who could not afford to raise a family on their salaries; of students who are on the financial edge because they are working two jobs, taking care of a child and barely making it with our current tuitions. I have seen the outdated buildings and the many people on our campuses who feel that they have been forgotten by the public and Sacramento. What made California great was the belief that we could solve any problem as long as we did two things: acknowledged the problem and worked together. Today that belief is missing. California has not acknowledged that it has fundamentally abandoned the promise of the Master Plan for Higher Education. And Californians have lost the commitment to invest in one another. That is why we have lost our way in decision after decision. Today, everyone in our system is making terrible sacrifices. Employee furloughs, student fee increases and campus-based cuts in service and programs are repulsive to all of us. Most important, it is unfair. The cost of education should be shared by all of us because the education of our students benefits every Californian. We've gone from investing in the future to borrowing from it. Every time programs and services are cut for short-term gain, it is a long-term loss. The solution is simple, but hard. It is what I'm doing now. Tell what is happening to every person who can hear it. Beat this drum until it can't be ignored. Shame your neighbors who think the government needs to be starved and who are happy to see Sacramento paralyzed. We have to wake up this state and get it to rediscover its greatness. Because if we don't, we will be the generation that let the promise for a great California die. Jeff Bleich is the chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees and most recently served as special counsel to President Obama. This is adapted from his speech to the board. * smf: The Times' link points to a previous version of the Romero bill, SBX5/1. CHECK HERE for the most recently amended version. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources Be Informed/Get Active: PETITIONS AND PARENT/FACULTY/STAFF/COMMUNITY INFORMATION & PETITIONS FROM UTLA & AALA RE THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE RESOLUTION UTLA & AALA continue to strongly oppose the school choice motion and are working with civil rights organizations and other district unions to investigate legal options to fight this motion. Tenth District PTA’s Board of Directors encourages PTA chapters and units – and all community stakeholders - to study the issue and circulate the petitions as they feel appropriate. The governance and operation of our neighborhood schools is a fundamental PTA concern. (more) ACLU SUIT ALLEGES FLORIDA NEGLECTING SCHOOLS Friday, November 06, 2009 9:20 PM By The Associated Press ●●smf’s 2¢: The class action suit: Aho, et al v. Florida, et al is interesting in that the defendants – essentially the students of the Palm Beach School District hold the plaintiffs – the governor and other statewide electeds including the state Board of Ed – accountable for alleged local shortcomings in their education – not the local school board. STIMULUS FUNDING REPORTS POSE PUZZLE FOR WATCHDOGS Friday, November 06, 2009 8:52 PM By Michele McNeil | Ed Week | Vol. 29, Issue 11 November 6, 2009 -- Even as the Obama administration tries to make good on promises of unprecedented transparency and accountability in economic-stimulus funding, the first reports from states and school districts show the difficulty of figuring out—in detail—how the money for education has been spent. In the broadest sense, the quarterly stimulus SCHOOL-BASED PHYSICAL EDUCATION KEY TO IMPROVING HEALTH IN LOW-INCOME ADOLESCENTS Friday, November 06, 2009 7:10 AM Science Daily (Nov. 6, 2009) — School-based physical education plays a key role in curbing obesity and improving fitness among adolescents from low-income communities, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and UC Berkeley. The study, which identifies opportunities for adolescents to improve their health based on routine daily activities, OBAMA OFFERS SCHOOLS MONEY FOR BACKING INITIATIVES Friday, November 06, 2009 5:38 AM By JULIE PACE | Associated Press 5 November -- MADISON, Wis. — Pushing for a link between student test scores and teacher pay, President Barack Obama on Wednesday dangled $5 billion in federal grants to states willing to undertake a top-to-bottom overhaul of their schools in support of White House priorities. The day after fellow Democrats lost gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, FORD FOUNDATION GIVES $100 MILLION TO REFORM URBAN HIGH SCHOOLS: The New York-based organization pledges the funds to seven cities, including Los Angeles, to research and improve teacher quality, student assessment and school funding, among other things. Friday, November 06, 2009 5:07 AM By Mitchell Landsberg | LA Times November 5, 2009 -- The Ford Foundation pledged $100 million Wednesday to "transform" urban high schools in the United States, focusing on seven cities, including Los Angeles. The seven-year initiative is among the largest philanthropic efforts aimed at improving education in the United States and, as described, could both complement and challenge aspects of the EDUCATION IN THE EASTSIDE Friday, November 06, 2009 4:58 AM Op-Ed by Hon. Esteban E. Torres | Eastside Publications Group [Eastside Sun / Northeast Sun / Mexican American Sun / Bell Gardens Sun / City Terrace Comet / Commerce Comet / Montebello Comet / Monterey Park Comet / ELA Brooklyn Belvedere Comet / Wyvernwood Chronicle / Vernon Sun] < CALIFORNIA SCHOOL BOARDS GROUP SNUBS STATE LEGISLATORS Friday, November 06, 2009 9:52 PM by Howard Blume | LA Times LA Now Blog November 5, 2009 | 6:14 pm And the winner is ... no one. That’s right. Nobody won this year’s Legislator of the Year Award from the California School Boards Assn. because schools suffered so much from funding cuts approved by the state Legislature that the group didn't want to single out any lawmaker for praise. “Sure, there are some legislators who CITY COUNCIL APPROVES UNIFORMS FOR LAUSD Thursday, November 05, 2009 3:38 PM from kabc-tv online Report typo or inaccuracy The Los Angeles County Unified School District? Where does one begin? There is no such school district. Councilman Huizar was once a school board member and twice the president of the board of education. That was then, this – the last time I looked, is now. The city council must have better things to do …like balancing the LONG BEACH UNIFIED PARCEL TAX FAILS Friday, November 06, 2009 10:12 PM By Kevin Butler, Staff Writer Long Beach Press Telegram Posted: 11/03/2009 08:21:20 PM PST <<11/3/09 - L-R Volunteers, Ward Johnson, Ida Thompson and Cynthia Motex were off to a slow start at the Olympic Sailing Center in Long Beach voting on Measure T. Photo by Brittany Murray / Press Telegram Election results LONG BEACH - A ballot measure that would establish a five-year parcel tax GAO CALLS FOUR STATES, INCLUDING CALIFORNIA, 'HIGH RISK' FOR STIMULUS SPENDING PROBLEMS Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:43 AM from news stories The U.S. Department of Education has identified four states that are at “high risk” for economic-stimulus spending problems, according to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office. California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas have been singled out for intensive technical assistance by the Education Department to help them implement good practices in using the HEALTH FOUNDATIONS JOIN FORCES TO IMPROVE CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS Friday, November 06, 2009 6:03 AM by Amina Khan | LA Times LA NOW blog November 3, 2009 | 6:58 pm The California Education Supports project, a new joint venture between three nonprofit foundations, held its first forum Tuesday to address the effects of mental and physical health on California students. Nearly 100 community leaders, students, health and education professionals piled into a Manual Arts High School classroom to CRISIS IN SCHOOL LEADERSHIP SEEN BREWING IN CALIFORNIA: Policy Experts Say State Lacks Comprehensive Human-Resources Policies for Principals Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:17 PM By Lesli A. Maxwell | Ed Week | Vol. 29, Issue 10, Page 9 Published Online: November 2, 2009 November 4, 2009| In California, where school budgets are being slashed and achievement remains stubbornly low in many districts, there is mounting concern that the supply of principals is too limited to manage the financial and academic challenges facing public schools. Complicating matters, the FALLING ENROLLMENT THREATENS LAUSD BUDGET: "The growth in charter enrollment, however, does not help the district's financial picture since the alternative schools are funded independently of LAUSD" – but 'Public School Choice' offers up 36 more this year! Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:01 PM EDUCATION: District sees student numbers shrink 10 percent since 2002 By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer LA Daily News (Online from the Contra Costa Times) Posted: 11/03/2009 08:31:53 PM PST | Updated: 11/03/2009 08:33:33 PM PST 11/4 - Enrollment in the Los Angeles Unified School District has fallen to less than 680,000 students this year, nearly a 10 percent decline since its peak seven years For Profit/Higher Ed: AT UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX ALLEGATIONS OF ENROLLMENT ABUSES PERSIST Tuesday, November 03, 2009 7:43 PM by Sharona Coutts, ProPublica ^^A University of Phoenix building in Tulsa, Okla. (Flickr user Lost Tulsa)^^ November 3, 2009 6:00 pm EDT - After federal regulators accused the University of Phoenix of systematic enrollment abuses in 2004, the school's parent company paid out nearly $10 million to resolve the allegations. Phoenix allegedly had broken the law by tying recruiters' pay to STUNNED LONG BEACH WILSON HIGH STUDENTS GRIEVE FOR SLAIN CLASSMATE Tuesday, November 03, 2009 7:41 AM Friday night's shooting jolts parents who consider campus to be the safest school in Long Beach. Odell Smith, 16, covers his face and grieves with fellow Woodrow Wilson High students at the spot where Melody Ross was shot and killed. "I just saw her moments before she was shot...she was smiling," said Smith. (Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times / November 2, 2009) By Seema Mehta | LA Times CA Elections: TAXES & BONDS TOP LOCAL BALLOTS - OXNARD, CULVER CITY & PALMDALE SEEK SCHOOL PARCEL TAX Tuesday, November 03, 2009 7:40 AM Many cities and school districts, hit hard by the recession, will ask voters Tuesday to approve new spending. By Jean Merl and Ann M. Simmons | LA Times November 2, 2009 - Across Southern California, recession-pinched cities and school districts are asking their voters for help in Tuesday's local elections. Besides choosing from among scores of candidates for city councils, school boards and POLICY SKIRMISHING PUTS LAUSD REFORM AT RISK: Disputes by charter operators over boundaries and parents over where reforms are targeted first are threatening the Public School Choice initiative. Monday, November 02, 2009 5:46 AM LA Times Editorial November 2, 2009 -- It's back to business as usual at the Los Angeles Unified School District, and that's not a good thing. The district's potentially transformational initiative to open about 250 schools to outside management is in danger of being undermined as various interest groups stake out turf. The central goal of the program -- to radically refashion education for the SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN TARGETS SAN FERNANDO MIDDLE SCHOOL AND 35 OTHERS Monday, November 02, 2009 5:46 AM By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer, LA Daily News Editor's Note: San Fernando Middle School is one of 36 campuses up for bid under the School Choice Plan, a reform effort that allows non-profit groups to vie to operate underperforming and new schools. The Daily News will follow this campus as it progresses throughout the controversial conversion this year. Oct 31, 2009 | Established in Meanwhile, elsewhere… FOR DEBATE: WHO PICKS SCHOOL BOARD Monday, November 02, 2009 5:43 AM By WINNIE HU | New York Times November 1, 2009 -- MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- THE hot button in Tuesday’s election in this school-obsessed suburb is not Democrat or Republican, Corzine or Christie, but something closer to home: Who gets to choose the school board? Montclair, whose system of magnet schools has become a national model of racial integration, has one of the few remaining appointed boards Update: 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL FATALLY SHOT AFTER HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAME IN LONG BEACH Monday, November 02, 2009 5:22 AM Cara Mia DiMassa | LA Times LA NOW blog October 31, 2009 | 7:27 am A 16-year-old girl died after a shooting following a football game at Wilson High School in Long Beach.Two people were wounded. Long Beach police spokeswoman Sgt. Dina Zapalski said the shooting occurred Friday night at about 10 p.m., just as people were leaving a football game between Wilson and Long Beach Polytechnic. The news that doesn’t fit from Nov 8th EVENTS: Coming up next week... Monday Nov 09, 2009 Central Region Elementary School #14: Groundbreaking Ceremony Time: 10:00 a.m. Location: Central Region Elementary School #14 1018 Mohawk St. Los Angeles, CA 90026 Monday Nov 09, 2009 Central LA New High School #9 School for Visual and Performing Arts Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony Time: 5:00 p.m. Location: Central LA New High School #9 School for Visual and Performing Arts 450 N. Grand Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90012 _______________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

The taxonomy of curiousity

4LAKids: Sunday 1•Nov•2009 El dia de los muertos In This Issue: • L.A. UNIFIED TO ALLOW PARENTS TO INITIATE SCHOOL REFORMS • L.A. SCHOOLS LEADER CONSIDERS SHORTENED SCHOOL YEAR TO BALANCE BUDGET, LEAVES TOWN • MANY L.A. STUDENTS NOT MOVING OUT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES • PLENTY OF QUESTIONS BUT NO EASY ANSWERS IN WAKE OF GANG RAPE: Brutality of the incident at Richmond High is hard to fathom. • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. LEWIS CARROLL gave us the word "Curiouser" - as in: “'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English)". I have used the word before in describing the goings-on in LAUSD, and have also resorted to 'Wonderlandian" and "Carollian" - but the curiousness often exceeds the positive/comparative/superlative adjective taxonomy. I don't dare to go for "Curiousest" because there's always next week …or the one after that when the superintendent returns from his junket to China. What curiosities have we this week? THE SUPERINTENDENT AND THE BOARD have set sail in the ship of Public School Choice, with what passes for a plan settled upon, and with pretty much everyone unhappy - but the votes counted and secured nonetheless. The plan, which the media had formerly described as Boardmember Flores Aguilar's Resolution (discounting the mayor's fingerprints) is now the Superintendent's Resolution according to The Times. The amendments that make it Cortines' - notably the "Parent Involvement" piece - have even more of the mayor's fingerprints, if not DNA. Or the left-behind e-evidence that MSWord leaves when docs are edited on city hall computers. [To be fair: when out of town - even only as far a Pasadena - the mayor claims authorship of the plan.] RE: THE PARENT INVOLVEMENT PIECE • I live and die Parent Involvement, I deeply resent it when anyone puts a feather as ugly as this one in their cap and calls it "Parent Involvement"… it's pure "macaroni"! And I'm being politically correct only so this gets past the LAUSD 'naughty language' e-mail censor software! (see http://bit.ly/11psvn and the Gübernator's acrostic to see clever ways to elude censorship without deleting explicatives) • The parents that "insisted" on this are the Los Angeles Parents Union aka Parent Revolution, a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Dot Public Schools. • Ben Austin, the executive director of the LAPU, worked for the mayor before he became a Green Dot employee, first in the Green Dot takeover and now as LAPU/PR chief. Austin was the mayor's choice for a school board seat - but his nominating petitions were circulated his in the wrong school board district. "Picky…picky …picky" as comedian and perpetually failed presidential candidate Pat Paulson used to say. • If Parent Involvement in identifying PSC Schools is so critical why was parent's majority opinion not sought in the current go round? I doubt if 50%+1 of the parents in the existing schools listed are so anxious to put their schools up for grabs. And the parents at the new schools being offered up haven't even been identified yet • From the Green Dot Mantra/Six Tenets: #3 EMPOWER PRINCIPALS, TEACHERS, PARENTS AND STUDENTS TO OWN ALL KEY DECISIONS RELATED TO BUDGETS, CURRICULUM AND HIRING. I don't see any ownership - let alone empowerment - of anyone except the supe and the school board in the PSC Resolution. AN ASIDE: Last Sunday I attended the ten-year anniversary celebration of the Advancement Project; it was a great event among great folks celebrating great accomplishments …and the Washington Prep Jazz Ensemble played beautifully . . . but cool! At the event Mayor Tony was a speaker, presenting an award to Chief Bratton. The mayor (who pronounces his title as if it were the name for a female horse: Not a Stallion but a Mare) used the opportunity and the microphone to trumpet his successes in taking over the school district (really?) and in running the schools he does run (really²?) and the failures of LAUSD, resorting to the tired and statistically dishonest 50% dropout rate number and acknowledging none of the recent progress made. Standing up and shouting: "You lie" seemed an option…but I didn't want to embarrass our hosts or my wife, seated next me. Afterward I confessed my temptation and she suggested that I should've thrown my shoe as well. BELOW you will read of actual failure - failing to teach English Language Learner students English. True bilingual youngsters who are redesignated as proficient in English have the highest success rate in college - it's a better marker for success than high SATs, straight A's or socioeconomic advantage. This is not new news, this is known fact. The challenge is great but that LAUSD fails in this is abject failure. And I still have both my shoes. MEANWHILE: The superintendent proposes - albeit as a worst case scenario - to reduce the school year … and then leaves town. Maybe on his way back from China he can stop in Hawai'i and see how well reducing the school year has been received by parents there. Or teachers, principals or students. We ran four election campaigns for Props K, R, Y and Q guaranteeing a 180 day traditional calendar; the voters voted overwhelmingly in favor of this. Oh well, another promise made to the voters and taxpayers potentially broken. FINALLY: How about a cost accounting on how much it will cost the District to implement the Public School Choice Resolution? Every Board Report and Resolution has a statement about Budget Implications attached; this implementation cries out for a definitive, comprehensive and auditable BUDGET IMPLICATION REPORT. • How much has the effort to date cost? • How much will it cost in operation and administration costs to implement the resolution over the next five years? • What is the impact on the Districts General Fund and on the Bonded Indebtedness? Immediately, short term and long term. • Factor-in contesting a lawsuit. • How much will it cost of LAUSD prevails in court? • How much if it fails? • How much in lost ADA income as money goes to outside operators? What is that impact on the general fund? • What is the fiscal impact on LAUSD over time? • How will spending money in this way benefit children and improve student outcomes …and how will this be measured? • And take into account 4LAKids quote o' th' week, from Larry Sand's op-ed in the Daily News: "It is important to note that rarely are children considered when … issues are debated. Children are left behind as incidental parties or annoyances in arguments between grown-ups." ¡Onward/Hasta adelante! -smf ____________________________________________ AFTERWARD: In the last few weeks it's become hard to pick up the paper and not read a about a calamity at a high school football game: the collapse and death of the Young Hollywood High player, the post-game shooting at Fairfax - and this week the post-game shooting murder of a young student at Long Beach Wilson. Also this week, in Richmond California, the Richmond High Oilers won their first homecoming game in nine years by defeating the cross-town rivals Kennedy Eagles, 22-17. A homecoming dance - and unspeakable tragedy - followed as a fifteen year old student was gang raped outside the dance. Last week was Red Ribbon Week. RED RIBBON WEEK is an alcohol, tobacco and other drug and violence prevention awareness campaign observed annually in October in the United States. Red ribbons are handed out to students - the chain link in festooned in red crêpe paper at elementary schools. Last week every student in LAUSD was supposed to get a red plastic bracelet along with the educational message about being drug and violence free. Richmond and Long Beach are not LA …but we have nothing to celebrate. Long Beach Wilson could the school we attend or teach at; Richmond High our neighborhood school. The dead teenager in Long Beach, the gang raped sophomore in Richmond are our classmates, girlfriends, sisters, students, daughters. The truth is we need to celebrate Red Ribbon Lifetimes . . . or we will be festooning caskets and grave markers every week, forever. L.A. UNIFIED TO ALLOW PARENTS TO INITIATE SCHOOL REFORMS UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENT'S SCHOOL-CONTROL RESOLUTION, LOW-PERFORMING CAMPUSES CAN BE FORCED TO UNDERGO MAJOR CHANGES IF A MAJORITY OF PARENTS DEMAND IT. By Howard Blume | LA Times October 28, 2009 -- For the first time in Los Angeles, parents will be able to initiate major reforms at low-performing individual schools, rather than waiting for the school district to make changes, under a plan unveiled Tuesday. This new parental power has emerged as part of a school-control resolution that allows for groups inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to take over campuses. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has included 12 underachieving schools and 18 new campuses in the process, but the parent option could add others to the list, especially in future years. Under Cortines' plan, a majority of parents at a school could trigger reforms at a local campus. Parents whose students are matriculating from one school to another also could take part. Parents, Cortines said, "have a right to be involved in the process." But the superintendent's plan doesn't go far enough for school board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, the primary author of the school-control resolution, which was approved in August. She supported allowing more parents the ability to trigger reforms. The parents of a preschooler, for example, should be able to sign the petition for a middle school or high school, she said. Her position aligns with that of Ben Austin, executive director of the Parent Revolution, a nonprofit closely affiliated with Green Dot Public Schools, which operates local charter schools. Austin has lobbied for the widest possible version of parent participation because, he said, improving a school can consume several years. The parent of a young child should have the right to set in motion changes to that child's future middle school, he said. Leading up to the meeting, Austin, Flores Aguilar and their allies thought their position had prevailed. But Cortines refused to go that far. In an interview last week, he said he didn't want the views of parents currently attending a school trumped by those of parents not enrolled, especially those who might be ill- informed. He stuck to that position Tuesday. "Those same parents . . . won't even go and visit the middle school," Cortines said. "What they're doing is making judgments based on rumor or what they've heard." Other complaints have come from the operators of charter schools, which are independently run but publicly funded. They contend that new restrictions in the reform resolution will limit their ability to manage academics and control costs, and they are threatening to pull out of the process entirely. Cortines also opened the door to the possibility of allowing a majority of a school's staff to set off reforms. The rules for opening up additional schools to sweeping reform are still being developed and debated, so they're unlikely to result in more schools joining this year's list of 30 campuses, officials said. Cortines will recommend reform proposals for those schools in February. L.A. SCHOOLS LEADER CONSIDERS SHORTENED SCHOOL YEAR TO BALANCE BUDGET, LEAVES TOWN by Howard Blume| LA Times LA Now blog October 29, 2009 | 11:39 am -- Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has asked his chief financial officer to study the possibility of shortening the school year to offset part of an expected shortfall of at least $500 million, The Times has learned. The strategy, if adopted for the 2010-11 school year, would run counter both to the direction of national reform efforts and to the wishes of Cortines, who agrees with research touting the benefits of an extended academic calendar. "You know I fought fiercely for a longer school year and a longer school day," Cortines said. At this week's school board meeting, Cortines said he had no alternative but to consider all options. He added that some strategies had to remain off the table. He’s unwilling, for example, to make class sizes larger in middle and high schools. Classes are too large already, he said. Nor would employee furlough days be sufficient to make up the dollar shortfall. Cortines also stipulated that he would not shorten the school year for overcrowded, year-round schools, which operate on overlapping schedules that reduce each student's school year by 17 days. Furlough days and shortening the school year would have to be negotiated with employee unions, said district spokeswoman Lydia Ramos. Cortines will review the internal analysis from Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly when he returns from a weeklong trip to China, which began today, Ramos said. MANY L.A. STUDENTS NOT MOVING OUT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES ALMOST 30% OF THOSE PLACED EARLY ON IN SUCH PROGRAMS IN L.A. UNIFIED WERE STILL IN THEM WHEN THEY STARTED HIGH SCHOOL, STUDY SAYS. THE SOONER STUDENTS MOVED OUT, THE MORE THEY EXCELLED. By Anna Gorman | LA Times 5:50 PM PDT, October 28, 2009 -- Nearly 30% of Los Angeles Unified School District students placed in English language learning classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they started high school, increasing their chances of dropping out, according to a new study released Wednesday. More than half of those students were born in the United States and three-quarters had been in the school district since first grade, according to the report by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at USC. The findings raise questions about the teaching in the district's English language classes, whether students are staying in the program too long and what more educators should do for students who start school unable to speak English fluently. "If you start LAUSD at kindergarten and are still in ELL classes at ninth grade, that's too long," said Wendy Chavira, assistant director of the policy institute. "There is something wrong with the curriculum if there are still a very large number of students being stuck in the system." Researchers tracked the data on 28,700 students from the time they started sixth grade in 1999 until graduation in 2005. They found that students who were moved to mainstream classes by the time they were in eighth grade were more likely than students who remained in English language classes to stay in school, take advanced placement courses in high school and pass the high school exit exam. Mary Campbell, who is in charge of English language learning programs at L.A. Unified, said students must learn English as well as the grade-level material to move into mainstream classes. That often takes longer than learning the language, she said. "We are aggressively looking at supporting these longtime English learners to ensure that they get the support needed to reclassify in a timely manner," she said. The vast majority of the students in the segregated language classes are not recent immigrants but rather U.S.-born youths, according to the study. Nearly 70% of all students ever placed in the English language learning program were born in the United States. Previous studies have shown that English language learners generally score lower on standardized tests than their English-only classmates for various reasons. Other studies have shown that students in English language classes are usually placed with less experienced teachers, focus on language skills rather than content and are segregated from students who speak English. "The United States has never learned what is the best way to teach English to English learners," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute. "That's really a shortcoming." The sooner students switch to regular classes the better, the new study showed. Students who moved out of English classes by third grade scored up to 40 points higher on standardized tests than those who stayed in the classes. If the students moved by fifth grade, they scored about 10 points higher than their peers. And in some cases, students who were in English learning programs and then moved out performed better than students in English-only classes. All students who speak a second language at home must take a test to see whether they should be placed into classes for English learners. Once they are enrolled, they must take another test to get out. But Pachon said the process to get in is easier than it is to get out. Though the study didn't determine why students were staying in English language programs for so long, researchers say schools may avoid moving English learners into mainstream classes to keep test scores high. Additional coverage and an update: http://bit.ly/3DA7RT ¿Qué Pasa? Are ELL Students Remaining in English Learning Classes Too Long? STUDY finds academic benefit for EL students who transition to mainstream PLENTY OF QUESTIONS BUT NO EASY ANSWERS IN WAKE OF GANG RAPE: Brutality of the incident at Richmond High is hard to fathom. By Sandy Banks | LA Ttmes columnist October 31, 2009 - The sense of horror seems to be fading at Richmond High -- the Northern California school that made news around the world this week after a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped outside a campus homecoming dance while a crowd of students watched but did nothing to intervene. Local school board members in this East Bay city near Oakland want to promote safety measures -- fences, lights, security cameras -- on the drawing board for years, now about to be delivered. Richmond High students want outsiders to stop calling them animals and savages. "We feel like they're blaming the school," an angry senior complained at a school board meeting I attended Wednesday night. "It wasn't nobody's fault," she said. "People shouldn't be pointing fingers." And school officials are making sure to emphasize the tragedies that didn't happen. The homecoming dance "was a success in terms of safety because nothing happened at the event," a campus police officer announced. "We have a safe environment at Richmond High." And I wondered if that made the students feel better, as I surveyed the secluded swath of campus where the sophomore girl was raped and beaten for two hours last Saturday night while the partygoers danced in the gym. Police said as many as 10 people participated in the attack while 20 others watched -- jeering, taking photos and messaging friends to join them. The sideshow went on until almost midnight, when police were called by a girl whose boyfriend had turned down the invitation to come have sex with "a drunk girl." Officers found the victim cowering under a bench, half-naked, intoxicated and semiconscious. The girl was hospitalized for four days. Five suspects face felony charges. I've thought about the theories offered by experts this week to explain the brutality of the attack and the onlookers' passivity. They blamed music and video games that glamorize violence; desensitized men who treat women like pieces of meat; the disengagement of young people in a world ruled by technology, where real life is what's on YouTube. Or the powerlessness these disenfranchised kids feel in their violent neighborhood and fractured families. All of it rang true to me. But it wasn't enough, so I headed for Richmond High and found students struggling to understand how their campus had become the latest example of urban depravity. Their theories are drawn from campus gossip and what their own lives in this working-class town have taught them. The troublemakers at Richmond are emulating what they see in popular culture. "A lot of them, they don't think they're going to be successful," said junior Olachi Obioma. "They've already been judged, so they go with that. They drink, they smoke, they pop pills. It's the 'bad boy' culture. That's how they see themselves." And the girls are saddled with similar pressures. "It's our mentality that's wrong," said junior Kami Baker. "Look at our pop culture. The way the girls dress, the way the guys use them for sex and the girls keep going back. . . . It's hard for some girls to rise above that." Kami is a friend of the girl who was raped. The last time she saw her, they were dancing together at homecoming. "She looked so happy, so pretty" in a sparkly purple dress, dangling earrings and silver heels. "People are saying it's her fault because she got drunk. But that could have been me. They beat her up and no one did anything to help her." Explain that, I asked the students I talked to. And their explanations were as good as the experts': The kids who watched were scared to tell, afraid that "snitching" would make them targets. Or they thought the girl was a willing participant; that it might be a gang initiation ritual. Guys get "jumped in" to gangs, girls get "sexed in," some said. Or they didn't intervene because they didn't know the girl and didn't feel compelled to help a stranger. On a big, racially mixed campus like Richmond, you stick with your own and mind your business. Or, they were simply so shocked their minds went blank. "Maybe they were just caught in the moment," suggested Olachi, who wore a "Stop Violence Against Women" button pinned to her backpack. She wasn't at the dance and didn't know the victim, but believes she would have tried to stop the attack. "I'm surprised that no one went and got a security guard," she said. "But maybe people didn't know what to do. Because we never thought this would happen. So we never learned about it." :: I thought about all those sexual harassment classes and date rape warnings and "no means no" slogans we offer up to our sons and daughters. While they are binge-drinking, hooking up and freak dancing. How, when confronted with such an obvious violation of humanity, could so many teenagers fall so short and feel so unashamed about it? The students I talked to after the fact at Richmond High all said they would have intervened. And yet, none of them denounced the kids who didn't. I sensed they couldn't reconcile the conflict between their ideals and their reality. And we can't solve all their problems with taller fences, brighter lights and tighter security. Kami Baker said she was friendly not just with the victim, but with one of the jailed suspects as well. "He was a genuinely nice guy," she said. She'd tutored him in English class for one semester, two years back. "He was quiet, kind of shy." The victim knew him too, she said. And when police found her stripped, beaten and violated, the boy was there. "I just don't get it," Kami said. Other stories, a picture of the site of the attack - as lovely a leafy area on a high school campus as ever there was. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • 16-YEAR-OLD-GIRL FATALLY SHOT AFTER HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAME IN LONG BEACH: by Cara Mia DiMassa | LA Times LAN.. http://bit.ly/2hp05F • NAUGHTY ACROSTIC IN GOVERNOR’S VETO MESSAGE: What are the odds? (A lesson in statistical analysis – I swear): B.. http://bit.ly/11psvn • "The Deal with the Devil(s)": SENIORITY SYSTEM IN LAUSD KEEPS THE GOOD TEACHERS OUT: By Larry Sand | Op-Ed in t.. http://bit.ly/2cg2Zg • SUMMER AT SCHOOL: "My decision to work for a school district this summer was, in part, a decision to perform wi.. http://bit.ly/3Jq9lJ • OSCAR DE LA HOYA CELEBRATES THE OFFICIAL GRAND OPENING OF OSCAR De LA HOYA ANIMO CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL: De La Hoy.. http://bit.ly/47svl3 • NEW LEGISLATION FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS COULD HELP LOCAL GROUPS QUEST FOR NONPROFIT MIDDLE SCHOOL: BY GARY WALKER |.. http://bit.ly/3tuqDz • LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT VISITING SCHOOLS IN CHINA: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer LA Daily News | This article fir.. http://bit.ly/LWMJA • H1N1 - PTA CALLS ON LAUSD TO EDUCATE AND INNOCULATE PREGNANT STUDENTS & STAFF: by smf for 4LAKids 28 Oct 2009 T.. http://bit.ly/15FZPs • H1N1 - THREE NEW SWINE FLU VACCINE CLINICS OPEN TODAY IN L.A. COUNTY: County plans to sponsor some public clini.. http://bit.ly/44o06G • L.A. UNIFIED TO ALLOW PARENTS TO INITIATE SCHOOL REFORMS: Under the superintendent's school-control resolution,.. http://bit.ly/4tYnv • CALIFORNIA RACE TO THE TOP: You Are Invited to a Meeting with State Leaders about California’s Application for .. http://bit.ly/2KWwv4 • LAUSD PLAN TO HAVE OUTSIDERS RUN 36 OF ITS SCHOOLS NEARS REALITY: Application for outside entities to operate s.. http://bit.ly/11CRTW • BETTER TRAINING COULD HELP FILL TECHNICAL JOBS: Tom Abate, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, Octob.. http://bit.ly/23Uy6 • CALIFORNIA STUDENTS SQUEEZED OUT OF COLLEGE: Even with new program, college is a less attainable goal for some... http://bit.ly/2V10qW • LAUSD: EXPLORE TEST TO ASSESS EDUCATION PATHS - or - Oh joy, another test!: the Daily Breeze | From staff repor.. http://bit.ly/89a7S • SCHOOLS PUTTING DANCE MOVES ON HOLD: "Footloose" revisited?: Contracts have helped tone down the hyper-sexed da.. http://bit.ly/Mds6E ALL THE NEWS THAT DIDN'T FIT: LAKidsNews EVENTS: Coming up next week... Wednesday Nov 04, 2009 South Region High School #12: Groundbreaking Ceremony Time: 10:00 a.m. Location: South Region High School #12 8800 S. San Pedro St. Los Angeles, CA 90003 * Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

Morbidity+Mortality: It's just a shot away

4LAKids: Sunday 25•Oct•2009 In This Issue: • PARENTS AT SAN FERNANDO MIDDLE SCHOOL SPLIT ON SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN • STIMULUS SAVED 6,000 Ed JOBS IN L.A., REPORT SAYS; WHIITE HOUSE SAYS CLASS SIZE EXPANSION AVERTED. smf: It was? • Student Recovery Day: LA UNIFIED TAKES ANTI-TRUANCY EFFORTS DOOR-TO-DOOR • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. ►PREGNANT WOMEN REPRESENT 6% OF CONFIRMED 2009 H1N1 INFLUENZA DEATHS IN THE UNITED STATES, WHILE ONLY ABOUT 1% OF THE GENERAL POPULATION IS PREGNANT. If you haven’t already, read the LA Times article and/or the letter to doctors from the AMA, the CDC , the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists about the danger of H1H1 to pregnant women. • http://xml.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-flu-pregnancy23-2009oct23,0,409451.story • http://www.ama-assn.org/assets/h1n1/mm/pregnant-colleague-letter.pdf We need to get out there, get real and out in front of this epidemic – and the first thing is to get out the word to pregnant women and girls. This is NOT THE TIME to be over careful or vaccination adverse! This flu epidemic is real; the danger to pregnant women is huge. The danger isn’t of getting the flu and feeling bad for a few days; the danger is of serious illness, complications and death. What doctors call Morbidity and Mortality. To be brutally honest about this: If you die of H1N1 because of a phobia, mistaken inoculation adversity or misplaced mission to protect your unborn child - or subscribe to the disproven myth that inoculations cause autism - your unborn child will die also. One thing our school district produces bumper crops of is pregnant teens. Pregnancy – not failing the CAHSEE or low test scores or adolescent ennui – is the leading cause of dropping out of school. I am asking the Superintendent, the Board of Ed and the Office of Student Health and Human Services to get the known pregnant population vaccinated THIS WEEK – and the word out and the vaccine available all adolescent girls ASAP. The flu shots are safe and they work. They are becoming available – and if you are a pregnant they are available NOW. [see following] ¡Onward relentlessly/ Adelante Implacablemente! - smf ►AN EMAIL FROM THE MAYOR: [Politicians have an endearing way of taking credit for the good hard work of others. This is a nationwide effort and the mayor correctly says ‘helped’ open the clinic – which is actually operated by the County …but this is a man who would show up for the photo op at the opening of a garage door!] Friday, 23 Oct 2009 4:15 PM Friends-- As part of an unprecedented nation-wide effort to get H1N1 vaccinations to all those who need it, we're making FREE vaccinations available across Los Angeles. Today I helped open the first free clinic, in the San Fernando Valley, and seven others will be operating throughout the city this weekend (October 24 thru October 25). We’re all in it together this flu season, and by encouraging priority groups to receive the vaccination as soon as possible, we'll minimize the impact of H1N1 on our communities. Priority groups for the H1N1 vaccine are: • Pregnant women • People living with or caring for infants under six months of age • Emergency medical services personnel and health care workers • People living with or caring for infants under six months of age • People aged 25 through 64 years with chronic medical conditions like heart or lung disease, asthma, diabetes or weakened immune systems. Find the locations and schedules of the free vaccination clinics here: http://www.mayor.lacity.org/MeettheMayor/TheBlog/index.htm#h1n1 Thank you, Antonio Villaraiogsa (sic) This message was sent to smfolsom@aol.com by: Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa 200 North Spring Street, Room 303 Los Angeles, CA 90012 213/978-0600 _________________________________ Here's the full list of free clinics in the city of Los Angeles OPEN THIS WEEKEND operated by the County, please check http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ for locations outside the City of LA or call 2-1-1 or 3-1-1 to confirm a date • Balboa Sports Complex - 17015 Burbank Boulevard, Encino 91316 • Chevy Chase Recreation Center - 4165 Chevy Chase Drive, Los Angeles 90039 • Granada Hills Recreation Center - 16730 Chatsworth Street, Granada Hills 91344 • Jackie Tatum/Harvard Recreation Center - 1535 W 62nd Street, Los Angeles 90047 • Lincoln Park Recreation Center - 3501 Valley Boulevard, Los Angeles 90031 • Oakwood Recreation Center - 767 California Avenue, Venice 90291 • Wilmington Recreation Center - 325 Neptune Avenue, Wilmington 90744 • Woodland Hills Recreation Center - 5858 Shoup Avenue, Woodland Hills 91367 •• MOST OPERATE 9am-5pm More dates and locations will be coming in November and December. New schedules are released every two weeks at http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/. For more information on H1N1 and how to prevent it and for a list of private providers with vaccine, visit http://www.flushotla.com or http://www.findaflushot.com PARENTS AT SAN FERNANDO MIDDLE SCHOOL SPLIT ON SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN Written by Alex Garcia, Dan Fernando Valley Sun Contributing Writer Wednesday, 21 October 2009 -- The ongoing meetings about the future of San Fernando Middle School [SFMS] under the School Choice Plan, which could mean converting the school and dozens of other campuses into independently run pilot or charter schools, continued this week, with parents divided on the idea. About 50 parents showed at the school for the meeting held Tuesday night. "I'd like for it [SFMS] to become a charter," said Veronica Rodriguez, whose son Daniel and daughter Denisse Cuellar attend the school. She said she favors this because that would mean changing many of the teachers, whom she said are not doing a good job, and would bring improvements to the school. But Catalina Martinez and Maria Elena Lemus are against the school going under charter control. "I would like it to continue under the LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District], but with some improvements," said Martinez, who has a daughter at SFMS. She said a previous experience with a charter school was not positive and left her with doubts about their efficiency. "One of my daughters attended a charter and when she transferred to San Fernando High School they didn't count many of her credits," said Martinez. Lemus said she had heard charter schools don't accept special education or English as a Second Language students and was concerned about this. "I want it [SFMS] to continue under the district, because it will be only way for us to have equality," she said. "We just have to find a plan B to improve the school under the current plan." In August, the LAUSD board approved 6-1 the School Choice Plan, which would allow non profit agencies to apply to run 250 new and underper forming LAUSD schools. Existing schools under the plan include those that have been in the program improvement status for more than three years, have had zero or negative growth in their Annual Performance Index [SFMS API went down three points in 2008- 2009 from 627 to 624] and where students have 21% or less proficiency in English and Math [SFMS is 20.5% proficient in Math and 24.1% proficient in English]. "If some kids would have gotten a few more points in math, we wouldn't be here," said SFMS principal Eduardo Solorzano during a meeting held Tuesday night at the school that was attended by some 50 parents. But he said, development of a new plan gives the school community an opportunity to identify what is working and what is not. However, he noted he would like to expand the current plan with implementation of "best practices" instead of opening the door to a charter or a pilot school. However, outside groups, including Project GRAD, have already expressed an interest in running the school. A letter of intent must be received by the LAUSD by November 15th and a plan must be presented to the district by January. Despite the future of the school being in play, many of the parents at the meeting did not seem to understand this. When parents split into different groups to express their wish list of improvements for the school, some of them mentioned they wanted more parent participation, better teachers and better traffic management around the campus. Yolie Flores Aguilar, the school board member who proposed the School Choice Plan, said in a previous interview that the plan responds to the frustration she's felt with the way the LAUSD has run schools. "My only interest is that all children have a good education," she noted, adding that competition is healthy and that agencies that take over schools will get a five-year commitment, but their progress will be reviewed annually and their contract can be rescinded at any time if things are not working. "When you create competition, it leverages change and creativity and the need to do things better," said Flores Aguilar. She also said charter schools selected to run LAUSD campuses would not be allowed to exclude special education or English as a Second Language students and would have to take children from their neighborhood first. Ben Austin, executive director of the Parent's Revolution, a campaign organized by several charter institutions and a newly formed group calling themselves the Los Angeles Parent's Union, is also in favor of the School Choice Plan. "We want to transform public education in Los Angeles because the status quo is broken," said Austin in a previous interview. He recognized that not all charter schools are good, but added public education needs to improve. "The real value of charter schools is that they promote competition. If LAUSD is running schools that are failing, charters give parents leverage and power to force the district to compete and run good schools." However, some parents likeAna de Jesus and Laura Baz, who are part of the Parent Community Advisory Committee for District 2, which SFMS is part of, are weary of charter and pilot schools. "They want to bring a plan they've implemented somewhere else, but they're not paying attention to our specific needs," said de Jesus, who attended this week's meeting at SFMS. "We want the schools to continue with the LAUSD and that they give us the opportunity to modify some things." "My kids all went to public schools and are now in college. Public schools do work, you just have to find a way to make them work," she said. Newly elected school board member Nury Martinez, who represents district two and who is a proponent of pilot schools, has required that parents and community members be involved in the school plan. Community members and parents will meet again to discuss the plan this Friday at San Fernando Middle School starting at 8:30 a.m. The next meeting will take place on November 4th, when different agencies, including charter schools, will make presentations to the parents. en español: Padres de San Fernando Middle School Indecisos Sobre Plan de Opción de Escuela Pública STIMULUS SAVED 6,000 Ed JOBS IN L.A., REPORT SAYS; WHIITE HOUSE SAYS CLASS SIZE EXPANSION AVERTED. smf: It was? ● "It also means that we were able to avert massive class [size] expansion," Melody Barnes of President's domestic policy council says. ● More than 250,000 full- and part-time jobs escaped budget cuts nationwide. A more complete accounting will be posted online next week. By Joe Markman | LA Times - Reporting from Washington October 20, 2009 -- Some 250,000 education jobs have been saved or created by the economic stimulus package, according to a White House report released Monday. The news previews what will be a more comprehensive accounting to be posted by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board [comprised of twelve Inspectors General from various federal agencies and Chairman Devaney] on its website next week. "There is a lot more work to be done, but we applaud those districts that have successfully used stimulus funding to stave off catastrophic layoffs and invest in critical reforms," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement. Of the $97.4 billion in education funding included in the stimulus bill, $67.6 billion has been spent. According to the report, more than 6,000 education jobs in Los Angeles were saved by stimulus funds. New York City was able to retain 4,000 positions, while 7% of the teaching corps in Scottsbluff, Neb. -- 18 people -- kept their jobs. "It also means that we were able to avert massive class [size] expansion," Melody Barnes, director of President Obama's domestic policy council, said at a news conference. The 250,000 number includes part-time and full-time positions. In Las Vegas, where 1,100 teaching jobs have been saved by the stimulus, the local tourism economy has been hit particularly hard -- leading to budget cuts totaling $250 million in the Clarke County School District, spokesman David Roddy said. "[The stimulus] was a tremendous benefit not only to the district but also to individuals who were facing loss of employment," Supt. Walt Rulffes wrote in a letter to the Nevada Legislature. * The Times and the White House need to be a little more clear: o by "L.A." do they mean LAUSD – the second largest individual school district in the nation? o ….or L.A. County – the Los Angeles County Office of Education is the largest regional educational agency in the nation – comprising 80 school districts …one of which (the problem child) is LAUSD. * And as for LAUSD, we seem to have saved jobs AND increased class sizes to among the largest in the nation – and I propose that '"the worst of both worlds" is NOT acceptable compromise! from http://whitehouse.gov: ● The public is invited to submit written statements to the Advisory Committee by any of the following methods: ●Send written statements to the PERAB’s electronic mailbox at PERAB@do.treas.gov; or ●Send paper statements in triplicate to Emanuel Pleitez, Designated Federal Officer, President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Office of the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, Room 1325A, Department of the Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20220 From http://Recovery.Org ● One of the core missions of the Recovery Board is to prevent fraud, waste, and mismanagement of Recovery funds. Recovery.gov gives you the ability to find Recovery projects in your own neighborhood and if you suspect fraudulent actions related to the project you can report those concerns in several ways: ● Submit a Complaint Form electronically http://www.recovery.gov/Contact/ReportFraud/Pages/fraudform.aspx ● Call the Recovery Board Fraud Hotline: 1-877-392-3375 (1-877-FWA-DESK) ● Fax the Recovery Board: 1-877-329-3922 (1-877-FAX-FWA2) ● Write the Recovery Board: Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board Attention: Hotline Operators P.O. Box 27545 Washington, D.C. 20038-7958 The Recovery Board is committed to helping ensure these funds are spent properly, but we cannot do it without your help. Additionally, the Recovery Act provides protections for certain individuals (whistleblowers) who make specific disclosures about uses of Recovery Act funds. Student Recovery Day: LA UNIFIED TAKES ANTI-TRUANCY EFFORTS DOOR-TO-DOOR SUPT. RAMON CORTINES AND OTHER TOP OFFICIALS VISIT THE HOMES OF SOME OF THE 20,000 STUDENTS WHO FAILED TO SHOW UP THIS YEAR. ABOUT A DOZEN TEENS BEGAN WORKING OUT PLANS TO RETURN TO SCHOOL. By Howard Blume | LA Times October 20, 2009 -- Los Angeles' top education official went door to door Monday to urge teens to return to school, netting about a dozen students with the effort and drawing attention to a growing problem. Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ramon C. Cortines was among 150 staffers and school board members who joined campus employees in the first-time, broad-based initiative, which targeted 10 truancy-plagued middle and high schools. This school year, about 20,000 of the district's 680,000 students have failed to show up as expected, officials said. Cortines and others who took part in Monday's friendly sweep emphasized that their main goal was to help students, but said another reason was this month's deadline for districts to provide final enrollment figures to the state. Those numbers, along with daily attendance figures, help determine annual funding allotments. A continued enrollment decline could mean displaced teachers or even layoffs in a district that already has endured cutbacks resulting in larger classes. On Monday morning, Cortines, accompanied by two counselors, knocked on the doors of about 10 households in a half-square-mile area north of John C. Fremont High in Florence. At a tan stucco house, the family he sought had moved, but the current resident was impressed when the superintendent introduced himself. "So, you the man, huh?" "I'm the man," Cortines replied, striding away as his companions hurried to catch up. At the next stop, a purple stucco house, a Fremont counselor spotted a pit bull behind the wrought-iron fence. Cortines tried in vain to telephone the family, then spied a teenager peeking out from the backyard. It was Jose, 19, who asked that his last name not be published. The young man said his mother was having financial trouble. "I'm trying to help her," he said. "She has a little store." The counselors and Cortines said they could work with the teen to arrange a plan for night school, adult school or a part-time schedule. The superintendent did not leave until Jose committed to an appointment to work out a school schedule. "I promise," said Jose, who is about a year short of the credits needed to graduate. He was Cortines' only catch, but officials later said that as a result of the sweep, at least 13 students returned to Fremont on Monday to work out plans for returning to school. In some cases, the families of those sought had moved. Other students, including Michael Velasquez, had graduated, but not from their original high school. Velasquez, who put on a fresh white T-shirt after the arrival of Cortines and his entourage, used the occasion to make an appointment with a Fremont counselor for help enrolling in a job-training program. Of 962 missing Fremont students, the school had resolved the cases of 599 before Monday, officials said. Parent activist Elisa Taub dismissed the effort as a public relations stunt but said she respects Cortines. Community organizer Manuel Criollo praised the symbolism, but said it runs contrary to day-to-day practices by the district that emphasize criminalizing truancy over providing needed social services. Cortines launched the truancy initiative at the suggestion of school board member Steve Zimmer, who had participated in a similar outreach effort as a teacher and counselor at John Marshall High in Los Feliz. Zimmer led one of the teams Monday and met with a 15-year-old girl whose story underscored the challenges. With a history of drug use and gang involvement, the girl had been out of school for almost three years and victimized by domestic violence and family disintegration. A judge recently told her she must choose between school and jail. After hours of meetings Monday involving district staff and her mother, the girl said she would give school another try. SCHOOL OFFICIALS HOLD FIRST PUBLIC MEETING TO REFORM SAN PEDRO HIGH AND GATHER IDEAS By Diana L. Chapman | http://www.theunderdogforkids.blogspot.com/ Friday, October 23, 2009 -- About 200 people converged on San Pedro High School this week in the first official “focus” meeting to help restore the beleaguered campus back to its glory days and remove it from the Los Angeles School district’s list of campuses that need urgent transformation. Otherwise, outside operators – charters or non-profits – could take over the school of 3,300 students. LAUSD Superintendent of Region 8, Linda Del Cueto, and Janette Stevens, the new principal sought after to refuel and restore the ailing campus, explained to those attending that this was the first of many meetings before the school must submit a transformation plan by Jan. 8. The next meeting will be Nov. 9 in San Pedro High School’s auditorium. While the evening became more of a fact gathering session – rather than learning new information about how to fix the troubled campus – it might have been a first in the Harbor Area community’s history where every principal from each elementary school and two local middle schools were in attendance as well as many high school staff members. Del Cueto urged all her principals in the area to attend as a strong display to support for the only public high school in the community. She assured the audience that she planned for all schools’ teachers and staff in the area to participate in sharing information to improve academics on a much larger scale. “We need to work together as a family,” Del Cueto urged the staff and those in attendance, which included parents, students and interested community members.“And it starts from pre-K. It starts at our feeder schools. We will bring teachers together at all levels to talk about instruction and support. “I know you are here because you care about San Pedro High.” The school currently has accreditation through 2010 and will improve as quickly as possible to keep out potential outside operators that might want to take over the Harbor Area campus. San Pedro High has suffered may woes, including a frequent turnover of top administrators, poor test scores, overcrowding and a dismal rating in its accreditation – that some educators compare to a D. The Los Angeles school board approved outside operators to come in and make a bid on 11 other ailing schools and 24 brand new campuses this past August – a first in the history of the school district. It means – should any other operators step forward, such as Green Dot charters – the LAUSD staff will have to compete against the other entity to keep running San Pedro High. The intent to provide a plan is due by Nov. 15 and a final plan is due Jan. 8. School board members will vote on which plan suits the school best in February 2010, guided by Los Angeles Superintendent Ramon Cortines. At last Monday’s meeting, school officials broke all the those attending into groups to provide questions and ideas toward a restructure. Several people complained, arguing that the debate should be held in the auditorium for all to hear. However, Del Cueto, in a later interview, said students revealed they would not participate in the auditorium’s cavernous setting – and preferred the classroom. School officials honored their requests. “The small group setting allowed for genuine input from SPHS students,” Del Cueto emailed. “More than one student reported they would have been reticent to participate in the auditorium. Interestingly, youngsters we would assume to be main stream and "with-it" revealed they are struggling as much the Latino and African-American students. It was a powerful lesson in not "judging a book by its cover." Stevens, who has only held the post since August, said she was thrilled with the number of people who came and that parents must be “integrally” part of the school’s renovation. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources PARENTS DESIGN L.A. PARENT INVOLVEMENT MODEL Thursday, October 22, 2009 7:56 AM By Ellen Noyes | The Children's Advocate -www.4Children.org| September-October 2009 Issue | Hot topics series en español Los Angeles parents have a new tool this fall to help them be more active and engaged in their children’s schools. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will be implementing a new model for involving parents in schools that specifically addresses the needs ●●smf: This story is interesting because the organizations described are invited but not regularly represented in LAUSD’s Parent Involvement Task Force ...but are writing articles instead. DOMINIC SHAMBRA, LAUSD INSIDER 1939-2009 Tuesday, October 20, 2009 2:39 PM by Howard Blume | L.A. Times October 19, 2009 | 7:44 pm - Dominic Shambra, a consummate school-district insider who sacrificed a distinguished career to push through what became the nation's most notorious high school construction project, died Monday at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. He had been suffering from congestive heart failure and other ailments. After a well-regarded career as a CALORIE LIMITS FOR SCHOOL LUNCHES ARE RECOMMENDED: An Institute of Medicine panel also urges lower sodium content under proposed guidelines for the National School Lunch Program, whose nutritional standards have not been updated since 1995. Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:42 AM By Mary MacVean | LA Times October 20, 2009 -- Children would get fewer French fries and more dark green vegetables in school cafeterias under recommendations being issued today by an Institute of Medicine panel. In addition, for the first time in the National School Lunch Program, the committee called for calorie limits on meals in an effort to curb obesity. The lunch recommendations SCHOOL DAY FOR OBAMA Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:42 AM By Helene Cooper | NY Times Online photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President Obama asked several children what books they were reading. October 19, 2009 , 1:56 pm -- President Obama popped in on third and fourth-graders at a Silver Spring, Md. elementary school Monday, to tout the benefits of reading for youngsters, just as they were having lunch. The First Reader stopped by the Teachers' & Public Employees' Retirement Funds: CALIFORNIA LAUNCHING FRAUD SUIT AGAINST MAJOR BANK Tuesday, October 20, 2009 2:05 AM Reporting by Jim Christie | editing by Carol Bishopric of Reuters SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office said on Monday it would unveil a lawsuit against a major bank for committing fraud against the state's Calpers and Calstrs retirement systems, two of the nation's largest pension funds. The lawsuit will seek to recover nearly $200 million in GRIEF COUNSELORS AT HOLLYWOOD HIGH SCHOOL AFTER FOOTBALL PLAYERS DEATH Tuesday, October 20, 2009 2:01 AM LA Daily News Wire Services 10/19/2009 -- Grief counselors will be at Hollywood High School on Monday to comfort students distraught over the death of a ninth-grade football player who collapsed during a game and died, a school district official said. Spencer Juarez, 13, had just carried the ball and was jogging to the sideline when he collapsed with about two minutes left in the freshman- STUDENT RECOVERY DAY: Top L.A. school official hits streets to find dropouts + Free Pass for Dropouts Tuesday, October 20, 2009 1:48 AM by Howard Blume | LA Times Online/ LA Now blog Photo by Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times October 19, 2009 | 3:36 pm When Michael Velasquez, 18, learned that the city's top education official was at the door, he decided he should put on his white T-shirt. L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines (standing next to Velasquez above) was taking part in a friendly sweep of students expected in NATIONAL ASSESSMENT GOVERNING BOARD HOLDING HEARINGS ON NAEP TESTING FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES AND ENGLISH LANAGAGE LEARNERS TODAY: Forums scheduled Oct. 19 in Los Angeles, and Nov. 9 in Washington, D.C. Monday, October 19, 2009 12:20 PM NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Stephaan Harris - (202) 357-7504 Stephaan.Harris@ed.gov WASHINGTON—The National Assessment Governing Board will hold public hearings in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. to obtain comment on expert panel recommendations on uniform national rules for testing of students with disabilities (SD) and English language learners (ELL) on the National ●●smf: Although this federal hearing about Special Ed and ELL Programs was held at LAUSD Beaudry, parents were neither invited nor informed. LAUSD SCHOOLS FACING BIG CHOICES IN REFORM: Charter option is not the only alternative Monday, October 19, 2009 5:35 AM By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News Updated: 10/19/2009 -- The Los Angeles Unified District is just weeks away from launching its deepest reform effort to date - allowing nonprofits and other outsiders to run 36 new and underperforming schools. As the Nov. 15 deadline for the first phase of bidding approaches, targeted campuses are asking themselves a big question: Do we let others THE NEWS THAT DIDN’T FIT FROM OCT 25th EVENTS: Coming up next week... *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

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4LAKids: Sunday 18•Oct•2009 In This Issue: • LAUSD’S TRUANCY PROBLEM • Student Recovery Day: LAUSD OFFICIALS TO HIT THE STREETS MONDAY IN SEARCH OF DROPOUT STUDENTS • UTLA ADVISED TO SUE TO BLOCK POTENTIAL HANDOVER OF NEW SCHOOLS TO CHARTER OPERATORS + WILL UTLA SUE? • CORTINES STANDS BY CONTROVERSIAL DEAL TO USE LAID-OFF TEACHERS AS SUBSTITUTES • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. NEWS ITEM: The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the ‘magical’ 10,000 point threshold for the twenty-fifth time in its history on Wednesday, going up. On Friday it crossed it for the twenty-sixth time, going the other way. _____________________ LAST WEEK I wrote of my mother in the hospital. She has improved and gone home. And like the Dow Jones has fallen back and returned. Doctors say reassuring things about vital signs being stable and, electrolyte levels being right …but the blood pressure is worrisome. Brows furrow. Nurse Rita – lovely Rita with her Heidi Klum accent and chartreuse scrubs - tries a different cuff and gets a better result. I don’t want a better blood pressure cuff or a better test score - I want my mother to be better. More tests. “We’ll keep her another night for observation.” Thank you readers for your best wishes; they are appreciated. This is not at all what I want, to be sitting in a corner of the ER writing about this. I want to write about the good and bad of public education. I want to write about a big bright new beautiful tomorrow; of success and triumph and positive outcomes. But denial is the longest river and sometimes the Circle of Life circles back. THANK YOU SUPERINTENDENT CORTINES for coming to our PTA Pancake Breakfast and Leader’s Training Saturday morning. Thank you for listening to the parents – and thank you parents for being leaders and being trained. Both the superintendent and I especially thank the parents who came forward and said things are going right at their schools. We don’t need to hear how we or the board of ed are doing right; we need to hear how the right things are happening at schools. When it’s true/when they are. ¡Onward/Hasta Adelante! -smf LAUSD’S TRUANCY PROBLEM By Boardmember Tamar Galatzan, from her constituent e-newsletter October 15, 2009 -- Should you want to produce numbers to show that the District has a truancy problem, good luck finding them. In recent weeks, I have learned that those figures have either never been maintained or are simply unavailable. But despite the absence of actual data, we know that LAUSD does have problems with truancy. How many of us have driven past high schools and middle schools in the San Fernando Valley and seen small groups of students hanging out while their peers are attending class? Truancy not only costs the District money (again, we don't know much), but it often leads to more serious criminal behavior. On October 20th, I am conducting a hearing in the Committee of the Whole to discuss effective ways of dealing with truancy. I have asked representatives from Verdugo Hills High School, which is regarded by Los Angeles School Police as a pioneer in this effort, to speak, as well as officials in the Los Angeles School Police. With the district in the midst of a major initiative to achieve a one hundred percent graduation rate, now is the time to attack truancy with a smart program that focuses on intervention, but is backed up by law enforcement efforts. ••smf’s 2¢: LAUSD, like all major urban school districts, has a truancy problem – no doubt about it – and better and no worse than other major school districts. The data that Ms. Galatzan can’t find is collected by the District and reported to the California Department of Education; it is available online here. It doesn’t take luck to find it, it takes Google. Truancy and Dropouts are two sides of the same coin, the young people that Ms. Galatzan describes as a law enforcement problem (she is a career prosecutor) ARE in violation of California’s Mandatory Education Law, which requires minors to attend school until they graduate or reach 18. That law says that any student who is absent from (or late to) class without an excuse more than three times in a year is a “habitual truant” – a strict standard in terms of tardiness that may need revisiting. However a more enlightened approach to this problem than rounding up truants in sweeps (the “Tardy Sweep”, where kids are rounded up for NOT being in class and then KEPT FROM class is a 4LAKids pet peeve …is this Dickensian, Kafkaesque or Orwellian justice?) - or hauling truants and their parents before a judge and fining them - is demonstrated below in the story about Student Recovery Day – which I understand Boardmember Galatzan is participating in. CDE/DataQuest: Los Angeles Unified Expulsion, Suspension, and Truancy Information for 2008-09 (other years available) Student Recovery Day: LAUSD OFFICIALS TO HIT THE STREETS MONDAY IN SEARCH OF DROPOUT STUDENTS by smf for 4LAKids 16Oct -- In what may well become an annual event on this coming Monday, Oct 19 Superintendent Ramon Cortines will lead teams of LAUSD school administrators, local and district staff and school counselors as they fan out across the District and scour the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles in coordinated teams in an effort to recover as many students as possible who are no longer attending school. If the student is not enrolled in school, help via support services will be offered to get that young person back on track towards graduation and a diploma. While a minor not attending school is technically a crime, the emphasis will be on the carrot of education and a better future rather than the stick of a citation and court date. Driven by an urgent need and commitment to recover as many students as possible, Superintendent Ramon Cortines and School Board Member Steven Zimmer initiated “Student Recovery Day” to recover students who are not enrolled in school. Student Recovery Day is based on a similar program in the Houston, Texas school district - a program that has been very successful in convincing students to return to the classroom– and ultimately turning dropouts into graduates. The initial rollout of the Student Recovery Day program with Members of the Board of Education, Superintendent Cortines, and more than 100 School administrators, local and district staff with will be at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley and Fairfax High School, Wilson High School and Fremont High School in Los Angeles. Other Student Recovery Day targeted high school sites include: Monroe, Los Angeles, Jefferson, Huntington Park and Banning High Schools. Schools were selected based upon a high number of students on potential dropout lists. According to a District memo to staff, each year, LAUSD has over 20,000 students appear on its potential dropout lists. · Students on these lists are in grades 7-12, and include students that left middle school and never made it to the high school they were expected to attend. · The lists also include students that left or were withdrawn from school and never enrolled in any other school. The Potential Dropout Lists are distributed to middle schools and high schools three times per year and typically the Diploma Project Counselors (DPC) and Pupil Services and Attendance Counselors (PSAC) take the lead in recovering our students. In order to clear the lists, school staff must locate the students to determine if they are enrolled in school either within the District or elsewhere (another School District, another state, adult school, community college, etc.). Often times, these students’ families are highly mobile and difficult to locate. Once located, if the student is not enrolled in school, Diploma Project Counselors and Pupil Services and Attendance Counselors work with the student and family to support the student to earn a diploma. Various pathways and options are offered to the family including returning to the comprehensive high school, continuation school, community day school, adult education, community college, or any combination of the above. UTLA ADVISED TO SUE TO BLOCK POTENTIAL HANDOVER OF NEW SCHOOLS TO CHARTER OPERATORS + WILL UTLA SUE? ►UTLA ADVISED TO SUE TO BLOCK POTENTIAL HANDOVER OF NEW SCHOOLS TO CHARTER OPERATORS by Howard Blume | LA Times/LA Now blog October 16, 2009 | 6:00 am -- Attorneys advising the Los Angeles teachers union have recommended filing a lawsuit to block the potential handover of newly constructed campuses to charter schools, The Times has learned. Fifty new schools are scheduled to open over the next four years, and charter schools could bid to operate them under a resolution passed in August by the Los Angeles Board of Education. The policy, authored by board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, also applies to persistently low-performing existing schools. Most charter schools are non-union, so an influx of charter schools could weaken United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union in the district. The legal advice is contained in a Sept. 30 memo, obtained through confidential sources, from the Los Angeles-based firm Trygstad, Schwab & Trygstad to union President A.J. Duffy. The memo lists grounds for litigation, including alleged violations of the state Education Code, of rules regulating taxpayer-funded school-construction dollars and of the collective-bargaining agreement between the union and the school district. The union contract, for example, stipulates that currently employed district teachers are entitled to teaching jobs at new schools built to relieve overcrowding. In other words, when students leave an overcrowded school for a new campus, their teachers are allowed to follow them. Charter schools, in contrast, typically control their own teacher recruiting and hiring. The lawyers urged swift action. “If UTLA wishes to challenge the legality of the resolution,” the memo advised, “litigation should be initiated probably no later than November of this year.…Unless the litigation is pursued early, the court could deny equitable relief on the basis that plaintiffs unreasonably delayed.” A confidential source with a different employee union confirmed that there have been discussions among district unions about the best time to file suit and about who would take part. In a Wednesday interview, L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines acknowledged that there would be issues to work through involving the provisions of union contracts. Even as the teachers union prepares for litigation, its officials are urging school faculties to participate in the bidding process for the 12 existing schools that Cortines singled out for action this year. Not just charter operators, but internal groups, including teachers, can submit proposals. The affected campuses include Garfield, Lincoln, Jefferson, Gardena and San Pedro high schools. On this front, however, the union is struggling with internal dissension that could hinder a grass-roots faculty effort. Members of the union’s Board of Directors have, for now, delayed Duffy’s attempt to expand the number of quasi-independent “pilot schools.” The pilot school model is officially a union-sanctioned reform, but the union’s board has raised concerns about approving more than the 10 small pilots already in operation. The pilot model also is well-regarded by L.A. school board President Monica Garcia and Cortines, who said he "felt sorry for Duffy" over the internal union resistance. A delay could give charter schools an edge, given that “letters of intent” for reform proposals are due by mid-November. ►WILL UTLA SUE TO STOP TURN OVER OF NEW L.A. SCHOOLS TO CHARTERS? EdWeek Online | District dossier by Lesli Maxwell Oct 16 - The Los Angeles Times has snagged an internal memo from lawyers who advise the United Teachers Los Angeles that urges the union to sue the L.A. Unified school district to block Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines from handing over newly built schools to charter operators. The Los Angeles school board in August adopted a controversial new policy that will allow charter operators and other outside groups to compete to operate some 50 new schools that are slated to open over the next four years. Chronically underperforming district schools will also be opened up to outside operators. Supt. Cortines and his team have been working ever since to hammer out the details of how the competitive process will work. Union lawyers say the policy is on shaky legal ground for several reasons, including its alleged violation of the current contract between the district and UTLA. UTLA's president, A.J. Duffy, was threatening legal action two months ago, but since the new policy was adopted, he's also been encouraging groups of teachers to devise their own takeover plans for new and low-performing schools to submit for consideration by the district. According to The Times, however, not all of the union's leaders are fully on board with that idea. The situation is likely to stay very interesting in the coming weeks as the first deadline to enter into the competition to take over operations at a dozen existing schools, including several high schools, approaches next month. CORTINES STANDS BY CONTROVERSIAL DEAL TO USE LAID-OFF TEACHERS AS SUBSTITUTES by Howard Blume | La Times Online/LA Now Blog October 15, 2009 | 11:47 am updated 5:50 pm The Los Angeles schools superintendent says he opposes revoking an agreement that has imperiled health benefits for more than 1,000 veteran substitute teachers while costing hundreds of them regular work. In an interview, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he stands by a deal that was designed to help recently laid-off full-time teachers by giving them preference for available substitute jobs over veteran subs with more seniority. “This was about how could you re-employ, in some form, as many of the teachers as possible that had received pink slips,” Cortines said in the interview Wednesday. "I had said months earlier I would do everything possible to employ them. The teachers union wanted me to hire them all back, and I could not guarantee that we had the money to do that. This was the second best I could do.” On July 1, in the midst of a budget crisis, the Los Angeles Unified School District laid off about 2,000 teachers, but then quickly signed up about 1,800 of them who wanted to work as substitutes. On average, the L.A. district, the nation’s second-largest, uses about 2,200 substitutes a day. Substitutes have to work 100 days a year and at least one day a month to maintain health benefits. Cortines objected to characterizations that he’d entered into a secret deal with A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the district’s teachers union. He noted that plans to use laid-off teachers as substitutes were discussed publicly. But the decision to override seniority did not emerge for two months, when the district provided a copy of the one-year agreement in response to a request from The Times. In addition, the union did not include representatives of the substitutes in the negotiations -- a violation of internal union rules. Last week, under pressure from rank-and-file members, the union’s governing body voted overwhelmingly to withdraw from the agreement. Duffy said he would try to honor the decision by resuming negotiations with the school district. Cortines said he had yet to hear from Duffy over the matter. He added that he was not inclined to change operating procedures nearly four months into the school year, which began for some schools in July. He also said union members were unfairly singling out Duffy for blame. He said Duffy’s leadership team was fully involved in the negotiations that led to the agreement. [Updated at 5:50 p.m.: Union officials have forwarded to The Times a copy of a letter they said they sent to Cortines on Wednesday requesting the reopening of negotiations over the use of substitute teachers.] Elected leaders of the substitutes vowed to accelerate their activism on the issue. “We have to create a sea change in the attitude of the [school] board members who dictate policy to the superintendent,” Dave Peters said in an e-mail to fellow substitutes. Duffy “executed this without lawful authority and his scandalous behavior in this matter calls for his immediate impeachment.” Duffy has apologized for failing to follow internal union policy, but said he has done nothing improper. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources SAN DIEGO BATTLE A PREVIEW ON U.S. DEBATE ON EDUCATION Sunday, October 18, 2009 8:09 AM San Diego Superintendent spreads the gospel of 'value-added' teacher evaluations -- In Tenn. and N.C. Terry Grier adopted and expanded a statistical method of tracking student progress. Union resistance scuttled more modest efforts in San Diego, mirroring a brewing national debate. By Jason Felch and Jason Song | LA Times October 18, 2009 - When Terry Grier was hired to run the San Diego NOT A GOOD DAY FOR HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL: Hollywood High Player Dies, Fairfax Fight Sunday, October 18, 2009 7:46 AM Hollywood High School football player dies after collapsing during a game [Updated] -by Eric Sondheimer, LA Times Online October 17, 2009 | 5:44 pm A football player from Hollywood High School's freshman-sophomore team who collapsed during a game Friday evening died this afternoon at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, according to Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Ellen Morgan. UTLA: ABSENT FROM REFORM - L.A. Unified is changing, but a UTLA split could cause the union to miss out on opportunities to be part of the transformation. - Saturday, October 17, 2009 5:41 AM Editorial from the LA Times October 17, 2009 -- It's easy to see why United Teachers Los Angeles doesn't like the new Public School Choice policy at L.A. Unified, which allows outside groups to apply to take over about 250 new or underperforming schools. Those groups are likely to include a large number of charter school operators that would hire their own teachers rather than sign a contract CORTINES STANDS BY CONTROVERSIAL DEAL TO USE LAID-OFF TEACHERS AS SUBSTITUTES Saturday, October 17, 2009 5:39 AM by Howard Blume | La Times Online/LA Now Blog October 15, 2009 | 11:47 am updated 5:50 pm The Los Angeles schools superintendent says he opposes revoking an agreement that has imperiled health benefits for more than 1,000 veteran substitute teachers while costing hundreds of them regular work. In an interview, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he stands by a deal that was designed to help recently Independent Monitor: PROVISIONS OF PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE RESOLUTION VIOLATE CONSENT DECREE Friday, October 16, 2009 5:23 PM WALKING FOR SUCCESS: Promoting College Education and Scholarship Wednesday, October 14, 2009 8:22 PM en español: Caminata por el Éxito Written by Alex Garcia, San Fernando Valley Sun Contributing Writer Wednesday, 14 October 2009 -- Ernesto Morales still remembers the knock on the door from Project GRAD visitors during the fall of his 9th grade year at San Fernando Middle School. "They sat down with my guardians and thoroughly explained to them the importance of going to college and the SLUGGISH RESULTS SEEN IN NATIONAL MATH SCORES + CALIFORNIA SCORES AMONG THE LOWEST + SUPERINTENDENT O'CONNELL'S COMMENTS - NY Times: "Student achievement grew faster before No Child Left Behind, when states were dominant in education policy, than over the years since, when the federal law has become a powerful force in classrooms" Wednesday, October 14, 2009 7:16 PM SLUGGISH RESULTS SEEN IN NATIONAL MATH SCORES By SAM DILLON | New York Times October 15, 2009 -- The latest results on the most important nationwide math test show that student achievement grew faster during the years before the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, when states were dominant in education policy, than over the years since, when the federal law has become a powerful force in NEW YORK SLASHES EDUCATION+HEALTH BUDGET $2.5 BILLION: Gov. Paterson's word for proposed cuts : 'pain' Wednesday, October 14, 2009 7:15 PM …but the recession is over. By Kenneth Lovett | NY Daily News Albany Bureau Chief Groll/AP -- Gov. Paterson will propose $2.5 billion budget cuts Thursday - mostly in health and education - to close a mushrooming deficit the controller says could balloon to a $4.1 billion. Wednesday, October 14th 2009, 4:12 PM -- ALBANY - Get ready for more pain in the wallet. Gov. Paterson will DEAR RICHARD RIORDAN: An open letter to the former L.A. mayor on making parenting education part of public school reform. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 7:14 PM By Esther A. Jantzen | Blowback/Op-Ed in the LA Times October 15, 2009 -- Mayor Richard Riordan, your disappointment in the progress of educational reform in the Los Angeles Unified School District, after all you've done as mayor and secretary of education under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was palpable in your Oct. 12 Times Op-Ed article, "Course outline for the LAUSD." This lack of progress Blog review: THE BROAD REPORT Wednesday, October 14, 2009 12:11 PM by smf Sharon Higgins aka “The Perimeter Primate” writes a blog, The BROAD REPORT: A Clearinghouse About Billionaire Eli Broad's Efforts To Dismantle Public Education. Ms. Higgins, Occupation: Mother, former critical care R.N., former Parent Coordinator, wife of criminal defense attorney and Commander in U.S.N.R. (Retired), off-and-on ceramic artist, Neighborhood Watch Block Captain - lives in PRINCIPAL RESIGNS FROM GARDENA HIGH CITING A LACK OF UNITY ON CAMPUS Wednesday, October 14, 2009 11:09 AM by Melissa Pamer Staff Writer | Daily Breeze Tuesday, 10/13/2009 -- Just two weeks after Gardena High School found itself on a list of 12 troubled Los Angeles Unified campuses that could be taken over by outside operators, its principal has quit, citing a lack of unity on campus. Kevin Kennedy, who has been at the school less than two years, announced Friday he was taking an administrative USING FEDERAL FUNDS TO MAKE UP FOR STATE CUTS (THIS YEAR): LAUSD makes up $140M budget cut with stimulus funds Wednesday, October 14, 2009 8:41 AM By Connie Llanos Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group/Daily News ►from another story: The Department of Education's inspector general reports that some states are using stimulus dollars to replace money they've cut from their education budget — despite instructions to the contrary. When the Department of Education began releasing stimulus funds last April, it told states the money was UCLA's LAB SCHOOL EXPANSION IS POSTPONED: Tough economic times delay the university's effort to replicate its Westwood educational program in lower-income areas. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 6:46 AM Lab School Principal Jim Kennedy said he was discouraged by the lack of a commitment to continue the planning and fundraising needed for the project to proceed once the economy eases. "It doesn't appear to be a strong enough priority to survive the current economic difficulties," he said. (Christina House / For The Times / October 9, 2009) By Carla Rivera | LA Times October 12, 2009 -- In a GIRL, 16. SHOT WHILE WALKING NEAR HOLLYWOOD SCHOOL: Police say the student at Helen Bernstein High apparently was caught in the crossfire of two rival gangs and wounded in the hip. She was taken to a hospital in good condition. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 6:45 AM By Robert Lopez | LA Times October 14, 2009 -- A 16-year-old girl was shot in the hip Tuesday afternoon within two blocks of Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood, where classes had just ended for the day, authorities said. The student was taken to a hospital, where she was listed in good condition, said Officer Bruce Borihanh of the Los Angeles Police Department. Police suspect that the My Stanford researcher is better than your Stanford researcher - or- SCHOLARS SPAR OVER RESEARCH METHODS USED TO EVALUATE CHARTERS Tuesday, October 13, 2009 6:21 PM By Debra Viadero | EdWeek Published Online: October 8, 2009 Updated: October 13, 2009 Published in Print: October 14, 2009 The authors of a recent national study that found students in regular public schools outperforming their charter school peers are rebutting criticism that their research suffered from a “serious mathematical mistake” that negatively SCHWARZENEGGER OKs SCHOOL BILL LINKED TO STIMULUS FUNDS Tuesday, October 13, 2009 5:18 PM By The Associated Press from EdWeek October 12, 2009 - Sacramento, Calif. -- California is removing a legal ban on using the results of student achievement tests to evaluate teachers, under a bill signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill lifts a barrier that prevented California from applying for $4.5 billion under the federal Race to the Top program. Schwarzenegger says more ONLY SOME ISSUES ARE FOR PARENTS, MAYOR BLOOMBERG SAYS. "It does not make sense for parents to be involved in larger issues like overcrowding, because those issues take years to resolve." Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:53 PM By Julie Shapiro | Downtown Express - The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan Mayor Bloomberg at the New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion under construction near Lower Manhattan’s Staten Island ferry terminal last month. Parents do not need a role in decisions like new school sites or school zoning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Downtown Express Friday. Bloomberg said parents need only be involved in SOUND BYTE: The "Golden Age" of American Education Tuesday, October 13, 2009 1:13 PM an interview with Tom Loveless, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies of the Brookings Institution from The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5 FM, Public Radio in DC smf: Last Saturday, in a brief encounter with UTLA Prez A.J. Duffy, we mutually agreed that the “good old days of LAUSD” weren’t; Duffy from his educator perspective (he attended New York public schools, joining LAUSD in ‘74) I from my SMART CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND Tuesday, October 13, 2009 12:09 PM by Tom Loveless, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies & Michael J. Petrilli, Vice President for National Programs and Policy, The Thomas B. Fordham Institute | The New York Times (picked up from the Brookings Institution website) August 28, 2009 — As American children head back to school, the parents of the most academically gifted students may feel a new optimism: according to a recent study, the GOVERNOR SIGNS SB 19 (SIMITIAN): Education Data Bill Ensures Access to Federal Funds Tuesday, October 13, 2009 6:48 AM California Chronicle | California Political Desk October 13, 2009 - SACRAMENTO – Sunday Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law Senate Bill 19, by State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), which ensures California´s eligibility to compete for $4.5 billion in federal school funding. The bill puts to rest a controversy Simitian describes as "a tempest in a teapot" over California´s eligibility Dumb adult tricks: IT’S A FORK, IT’S A SPOON, IT’S A …WEAPON? Monday, October 12, 2009 1:15 PM By IAN URBINA | New York Times Mustafah Abdulaziz for The New York Times -- Zachary Christie with his mother, Debbie, his father, Curtis, and the Cub Scout utensil that got him suspended from school. October 12, 2009 -- NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing The news that didn’t fit from Oct 18 EVENTS: Coming up next week... • Tuesday Oct 20, 2009 Juanita Tate Elementary School (aka South Region Elementary School #6): Groundbreaking Ceremony Time: 10:00 a.m. Location: South Region Elementary School #6 123 W. 59th St. Los Angeles, CA 90003 • Wednesday Oct 21, 2009 South LA Area New High School #3: Groundbreaking Ceremony Time: 1:00 p.m. Location: South LA Area New High School #3 825 W. 60th St. Los Angeles, CA 90044 • Thursday Oct 22, 2009 William R. Anton Elementary School (aka Central Region ES #19 and EEC): Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony Time: 10:00 a.m. Location: William R. Anton Elementary School 831 N. Bonnie Beach Pl. Los Angeles, CA 90063 • Friday Oct 23, 2009 Marshall High School Track & Field and Clinic: Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony Time: 5:00 p.m. Location: Marshall High School 3939 Tracy St. Los Angeles, CA 90027 *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

Running onward.

4LAKids: Sunday 11•Oct•2009 In This Issue: • THE UNEDUCATED AMERICAN • TIME FOR SCHWARZENEGGER THE ACTION FIGURE TO EMERGE ON EDUCATION • THE LAUSD OPENS ITS DOORS: The Times says the application process for outside operators to take over new or low-performing schools gets high marks... • EdWeek: LOS ANGELES UNIFIED’S GIANT CONSTRUCTION PROJECT LOSES LEADER • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. • Thought o' th' week: Insurance is not Health Care. MY MOTHER'S IN THE HOSPITAL. It's not a huge big deal, but she's eighty-seven - so it is. I am sitting in a sad fluorescent-lit room. The walls are Navajo beige, the color temperature of the light decidedly green. We don't paint classrooms that shade anymore - or light them this way. It's a cardiac care unit - you'd think at a hospital like Cedars ("Named one of America's Best Hospitals") they'd warm up the color temp and spring for the daylight tubes. You'd think they'd figure people who look better feel better and people who feel better are better. Or maybe the thinking is if we all look bilious the truly bilious won't look so bad. It doesn't work that way …except for the bean counters in procurement. There's a color-coded Pain Management Chart on the wall - with progressively unhappy happy faces providing the Pain Rubric for visual learners: • Green = no pain. • Washed out green = mild pain. • Blue = moderate pain • Purple = severe pain • The spectrum continues through Pink (very severe) and Red (worst possible pain). The fluorescent cast paints everyone with the mild pain paintbrush -- the symptoms of which (for verbal learners) is "no humor/serious/flat". We all know that feeling. Solzhenitsyn used the metaphor of a Cancer Ward to write about the failings of the Soviet Union. Maybe this small unhappy room in Beverly Hills Adjacent can stand in for Urban Public Education? I am helpless in my visitor badge. The staff seems less than helpful - their activities centered on some other center. This is my mother; she is old and sick. She and I would like to go home. This must be how newcomer parents to LAUSD feel - new not just to this country but to this culture and this language (descolorido = dolor leve verde). New to where democracy trumps respect. They bring us their children - their most precious possessions - as we rush about …a lot of activity centered on other centers. Surely we must know what we're doing. Surely. IN THE TIME BEFORE SERRANO V. PRIEST AND PROPOSITION 13 the established forces and the progressives debated educational theory and practice separated by little more than the distinction between tweed and polyester - everyone dusted in the same chalk. Phonics v. Whole Language, New v. Old Math, Semantics v. Grammar. In those days California spent the fourth-or-fifth-most in the nation per pupil - and the outcomes were seen as the best in the nation. California was the envy of the world, The California Master Plan for Education was The Plan for the Future v.2.0 and beyond. Now we have the politicians involved and the debate is over management theory and business models; the outcomes are measured in short-term goals: the election cycle, the news cycle and Annual Yearly Progress. It's 'cut-the-budget' and leverage what's left. Test test test. We are data driven (not information-driven or student-outcome-driven) --preparing 100% of our kids for colleges that don't have space or the funding and a workforce that doesn't have the jobs. No Child Left Alone demands that all kids be above average. When Garrison Keilor says it it's funny, when the United States Department of Education requires it it's frightening. In no other country or field to we measure success with the ruler of failure; nowhere else but in the U.S.ofA. do they quantify and count dropouts. "Graduates" (a positive outcome) should be the goal, not the double negative "eliminating dropouts". It isn't semantics, it's Rovian-Orwelian Newspeak. It's a mind set …and the minds are set in concrete. Or maybe in the shifting sands of the political landscape. You choose the metaphor; I'm just sitting here writing in the corner - somewhere between denial and helplessness. CHIEF BRATTON WAS QUOTED INTERESTINGLY ABOUT LA POLITICAL CULTURE LAST WEEK: "This city is almost a city that doesn’t work in so many respects and it’s frustrating. The New York minute – the reason that phrase is so appropriate for New York, things get done.” The chief said that culture can grind Los Angeles city government to a halt. “East Coast, it’s much more in your face, bloody your nose and then go out and have a drink. Here it’s basically, don’t have it out, hold a grudge and try to undermine each other at every turn. You know, life is too short, and get it over with, instead of this lingering payback." http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/10/08/lapd-chief-bratton-blasts-las-political-culture/ IS IT JUST ME …or has anyone noted that the way David Nahai was forced-out/bought-out of his job as General Manager of the DWP (it doesn't matter how you feel about him) - forced to resign and replaced by a Deputy-Mayor-in-Waiting (and previous holder of the job) -- has parallels with the way the current LAUSD Superintendent came to his position? Right down to the mayor's claim that the DWP Commissioners/School Board and not he were the actual decision makers? Even the payout/payoff scheme seems familiar. But maybe it's just me in this small green-lit room, with my mind and my number two pencil running on. ¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf ●● smf adds: There were two unqualified construction and instruction triumphs for public education in LA last week: The official opening of the Young Oak Kim Academy and the official opening of three new schools at the RFK-12/Ambassador Hotel site. [see stories linked below] As former local district superintendent Richard Alonzo, educational godfather of both projects said of the first …and just as true of the second: "It didn't take a resolution for choice to make this happen …that choice was already here and made in this community". THE UNEDUCATED AMERICAN By Paul Krugman | Op-Ed Columnist | New York Times October 9, 2009 -- If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education. But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered. Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board. About that erosion: there has been a flurry of reporting recently about threats to the dominance of America’s elite universities. What hasn’t been reported to the same extent, at least as far as I’ve seen, is our relative decline in more mundane measures. America, which used to take the lead in educating its young, has been gradually falling behind other advanced countries. Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies. Even without the effects of the current crisis, there would be every reason to expect us to fall further in these rankings, if only because we make it so hard for those with limited financial means to stay in school. In America, with its weak social safety net and limited student aid, students are far more likely than their counterparts in, say, France to hold part-time jobs while still attending classes. Not surprisingly, given the financial pressures, young Americans are also less likely to stay in school and more likely to become full-time workers instead. But the crisis has placed huge additional stress on our creaking educational system. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States economy lost 273,000 jobs last month. Of those lost jobs, 29,000 were in state and local education, bringing the total losses in that category over the past five months to 143,000. That may not sound like much, but education is one of those areas that should, and normally does, keep growing even during a recession. Markets may be troubled, but that’s no reason to stop teaching our children. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no mystery about what’s going on: education is mainly the responsibility of state and local governments, which are in dire fiscal straits. Adequate federal aid could have made a big difference. But while some aid has been provided, it has made up only a fraction of the shortfall. In part, that’s because back in February centrist senators insisted on stripping much of that aid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the stimulus bill. As a result, education is on the chopping block. And laid-off teachers are only part of the story. Even more important is the way that we’re shutting off opportunities. For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on the plight of California’s community college students. For generations, talented students from less affluent families have used those colleges as a stepping stone to the state’s public universities. But in the face of the state’s budget crisis those universities have been forced to slam the door on this year’s potential transfer students. One result, almost surely, will be lifetime damage to many students’ prospects — and a large, gratuitous waste of human potential. So what should be done? First of all, Congress needs to undo the sins of February, and approve another big round of aid to state governments. We don’t have to call it a stimulus, but it would be a very effective way to create or save thousands of jobs. And it would, at the same time, be an investment in our future. Beyond that, we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process. ►Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is a Nobel laureate in Economics. TIME FOR SCHWARZENEGGER THE ACTION FIGURE TO EMERGE ON EDUCATION By John Affeldt in the Huffington Post October 9, 2009 - When the state that educates 1 in 8 American children is failing miserably at that task, America should care. When that state is also the 8th largest economy in the world, we should be up in arms. It's not just California's future that is tied to the quality of the state's education system; it's the nation's. Unfortunately serious progress on the education front may be tossed overboard in the next few days if Governor Schwarzenegger, absent a water deal this weekend, follows through with his threat to veto all bills. In laying the foundation for a long overdue overhaul of California's archaic and highly dysfunctional school funding system, Assembly Bill 8 (AB 8) by Assembly Education Committee Chair Julia Brownley is among the most important of the threatened measures. A 2007 state-requested set of studies from scholars across the ideological spectrum agreed that California's public school funding system is irrational, inequitable, and hopelessly convoluted. District revenue allocations are not based on what it costs to educate students to California's content standards, but rather on out-dated formulas largely set in the 1970's that now send widely varying amounts of money to different districts of similar size and demographics. The Governor's own Committee on Education Excellence echoed those same conclusions in a report released last year: "Research...shows that California's current K through 12 education finance system is the most complex in the nation but yields little benefit. Core funding is based on anachronistic formulas, neither tied to the needs of individual students nor to intended academic outcomes." The report concludes: "Our current system is not equitable; it is not efficient; and it is not sufficient for students who face the greatest challenges." AB 8 takes the first big step in reworking school funding in California. It requires that a bipartisan governmental working group propose a new funding structure to the Legislature by December 2010 that, among other things, would make the system equitable, rational, and based on the costs of educating students. In a legislature that can agree on little when it comes to money, the bill passed with wide bipartisan support--79-0 in the Assembly and 31-6 in the Senate. A broad coalition of business, good government, parent, student, and civil rights groups have urged the Governor to sign the bill. Best of all, AB 8 won't cost Californians a penny. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has generously offered to accept a proposal to finance the costs of the working group. Hopefully, the Governor will help cement his legacy on education by signing the bill. What could be easier than enacting a bold, no-cost bill with broad support across the spectrum, that builds off your own Committee's recommendations, and that passes the difficult implementation hurdle on to your successor? Yet, there is cause for concern Schwarzenegger may veto AB 8 and not just because of his play for a water deal. Word is that at least some advisors are pooh-poohing the bill as "just another study," even though, in creating a concrete, bipartisan framework for legislative action it is obviously so much more. Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger has listened before to advisors urging him to avoid the "cost pressures" of making an honest assessment of the costs of educating California's students. ("Cost pressures" is government-speak for "if we have to admit how much that costs, there will be pressure for us to raise revenues.") When he took office in 2003, Schwarzenegger removed the seven Gray Davis appointees to a 13-member Quality Education Commission that was tasked with doing just that. He never filled the seven slots and the Commission never convened. When the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury derided "the phantom commission" and called for the appointments, Schwarzenegger instead created his less-ambitious and differently-missioned Committee on Education Excellence. After 2007's ambitious set of studies were published, Schwarzenegger vowed that 2008 would be "the Year of Education." But that year came and went with no action to implement any major reforms. Lately, his education legacy has only grown bleaker. The Governor has overseen unprecedented cuts to California education funding, totaling a shocking $2,000 per student over the past two years. For a state that the respected weekly Education Week already ranks 46th in the nation in per pupil spending, it won't be surprising if we've now dropped to 50th. The Governor rode into office promising to be an education governor. And initially he was. In 2004, he settled the Williams v. California lawsuit, guaranteeing to all California students--for the first time--access to basic educational resources like sufficient textbooks, safe clean school facilities, and qualified teachers. He supported a $200 million expansion of high school counselors in 2006 only to see that program now decimated by cuts and funding flexibility. His current efforts are focused on pursuing "Race to the Top" federal stimulus funds, and he has called a special legislative session to do so. But these funds (at most, $750 million) represent a drop in the bucket of California's education budget--and there's no guarantee California will even be among the handful of states awarded them. Instead, Schwarzenegger should be focusing his leadership on laying the groundwork for school finance reform in California. Indeed, it is times like these, when money is scarce, that offer the best opportunities to decide how limited resources can be spent more wisely and to plan ahead for how additional funds can be allocated most efficiently when they become available. To be sure, AB 8 by itself won't solve the problem of California's irrational, inadequate, unequal, and unstable system of school finance. That will require bold legislators to enact the recommendations that come out of this working group a year from now. But the bill will set up a meaningful way to finally jumpstart this process by requiring state policy makers to design and propose a school finance system that is based on simple, transparent funding formulas and that at long last funds education based on what it actually costs to educate students. As Paul Krugman's piece in today's New York Times reminds [previous article] us, our national and state governments, including California's, are failing to invest adequately in education--and they are doing so at our future economic peril. To be the governor who started California on the road to a responsible school funding system? Now that's a legacy worthy of an action hero. ►John Affeldt is Managing Attorney at Public Advocates, a non-profit civil rights law firm THE LAUSD OPENS ITS DOORS: The Times says the application process for outside operators to take over new or low-performing schools gets high marks... ...FOR TRANSPARENCY AND FAIRNESS LA Times Editorial October 11, 2009 -- Check out the Los Angeles Unified School District's website and you can track its encouraging progress on the new policy allowing charter operators and other outside organizations to submit competing proposals to run certain schools. When the policy was approved in August, district leaders vowed a transparent and objective process, and so far they're making good on that vow, posting updates on the website. Given L.A. Unified's history of broken promises and political motives, we're pleasantly surprised. The latest outline of the application process was posted this month, and though it's still in draft form, parents and the organizations that hope to operate schools should be pleased. It requires applicants to attend district meetings in the schools' neighborhoods and reach out to parents. It also describes an exacting set of standards each organization must meet. Applicants must give preference to the students in each school's attendance area, so they're not skimming more-proficient students from other neighborhoods. Their applications must cover not only specific plans for curriculum, instructional materials and teacher training, but school culture, discipline and data systems. Considering the daunting requirements and January deadline for applicants that want to start running schools in 2010, the first round of competing organizations probably will consist of mostly established charter school operators and perhaps United Teachers Los Angeles, which opposed the new policy but has responded to it with the game intention of proposing teacher-run schools. But the program will be rolled out over several years and include perhaps 250 new and underperforming schools, giving community-based groups a chance to design their own proposals in later rounds. The only objectionable part of the draft process is something Supt. Ramon C. Cortines cannot control. As passed by the school board, the policy requires advisory votes by parents, staff and, in the case of high schools, students. These groups have valuable ideas to voice, but there are real disadvantages to formal votes. If one group disagrees with another, there will be a winning faction and a losing one; that's a bad way for new management to start. Votes also can put pressure on the district to approve an operator that might have done a better marketing job but that offers an inferior educational plan. The draft needs at least one addition before it should be considered complete: accountability. Placing a failing school under new management doesn't guarantee success. This is a worthy experiment to see whether outside operators can pick up the pace of improvement in L.A.'s public schools. Cortines must include an equally detailed and objective yardstick to measure whether these new operators are succeeding, and if not, take the schools away from them. ●● smf's 2¢: True communications is a two way process. For Transparency and Accountability to happen the two way part is an absolute requirement. • The posting of the draft process, evolving as it it, is one side of the story, from the North side of the 24yh floor at Beaudry – the superintendent's office. • While we hope that the board – which occupies the South side of 24 - is buying in, they are notorious tweakers and micromanagers. They are responsive to public opinion , special; interests and other political forces in play here (all at odds) and they have the final say. • The Times correctly indentifies that 'the policy requires advisory votes by parents, staff and, in the case of high schools, students.' The Times calls this 'objectionable' – another word that describes democracy along with awkward and cumbersome and Churchill's famous "..the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Luckily for the Times, nobody is better at ignoring advice than the Board of Education. • This Resolution will ultimately be decided in the courts. Or by the California Dept of Education who could well rule that it violates the policies, guidelines and processes laid out in its Accountability Workbook – the memorandum of understanding between California and the federal government for implementing NCLB. CDE Accountability Workbook EdWeek: LOS ANGELES UNIFIED’S GIANT CONSTRUCTION PROJECT LOSES LEADER from the District Dossier @ Education Week ONLINE | Posted by Lesli Maxwell on October 5, 2009 10:05 AM 10/5 -- Los Angeles Unified has been in the midst of the largest school building project in the country, managing a $20 billion construction program that has, to date, built 80 new schools in the sprawling metropolis. Last week, the man who many credit with keeping the mammoth effort running cost-effectively and on-time, abruptly resigned. The departure of Guy Mehula, who before joining LAUSD oversaw major construction projects for the U.S. Navy, has caused some folks in Los Angeles, including those responsible for making sure that voter-approved bond money is spent responsibly, to predict that the district's massive public works project will fall apart. That's because Ramon C. Cortines, the superintendent of LAUSD, apparently decided to take the quasi-independent construction division, and bring it back under the direct authority of his office and the school board. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Constance L. Rice, a high profile civil rights lawyer who sits on the city's School Construction Bond Oversight Committee, warned that Cortines' move threatens the entire school construction effort. She points to the district's disastrous handling of the Belmont Learning Complex, a high school campus that the district spent $160 million to build, on top of an oil field, only to have California environmental regulators declare it unsafe for children. In the wake of the Belmont debacle, then-superintendent Roy Romer hired Mehula and made the facilities division an independent entity. Rice argues that there's no good reason for educators to oversee construction projects and uses pretty harsh words to make her case. "It is time to consider creating an independent construction authority for building schools. Doctors don't build hospitals, and lawyers don't build courthouses. Why should educators who can barely manage the mission of education build schools?" What do you think? Do most school districts have the capacity to manage massive construction projects effectively, efficiently, and free of typical district politics? • email Leslii Maxwell: lmaxwell@epe.org HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources RFK SITE TO BECOME SCHOOLS + smf comments: By Tony Castro, Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group (Daily News) Oct.. THE LAUSD OPENS ITS DOORS: The Times says the application process for outside operators to take over new or low.. SUPERINTENDENT CORTINES RESPONDS TO SAN PEDRO HIGH MATH TEACHER'S COMPLAINTS ABOUT CALLING THE SCHOOL A FAILURE.. STUDY FINDS HIGH RATE OF IMPRISONMENT AMONG DROPOUTS + PRESS RELEASE FROM THE ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS NETWORK: By S.. AFT ANNOUNCES FIRST RECIPIENTS OF INNOVATION FUND: By Stephen Sawchuk | Education Week | Published Online: Octo.. OUTCRY AGAINST VIOLENCE: Beating Death of Student in Chicago Spurs Attention to a Nationwide Problem. Secretary Duncan accused.. FEDERAL ‘INNOVATION’ KILLS LOCAL CONTROL OF SCHOOLS: By Ben Boychuk | OpEd in The Daily News Ben Boychuk is a f.. 10/9 - SUPERINTENDENT’S WEEKLY UPDATE ON PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE: Appendix: Public School Choice Process Develop.. LAUSD RESPONDS: Re "LAUSD Schools Need More Arts and Music," (Comment, Oct. 2):: Letters to the Daily News | 9 .. ONE COURAGEOUS MATH TEACHER: WE NEEDED THAT: Random Thoughts By Diana L. Chapman CityWatch Vol 7 Issue 83 Oct.. UNION REJECTS DEAL GIVING LAID-OFF TEACHERS PREFERENCE OVER VETERAN SUBSTITUTES: by Howard Blume | LA Times/LA .. YOUNG OAK KIM ACADEMY: LAUSD school relies on treating boys and girls differently + smf remarks at school's ded.. Congratulations re: Schools: It’s All Politics Ma’ Dear: Dan Basalone writes Diana L. Chapman re: Schools: It’s.. The news that didn't fit from Oct 11 EVENTS: Coming up next week... Monday Oct 12, 2009 Juanita Tate Elementary School (aka South Region Elementary School #6): Pre-Construction Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: 61st Street Elementary School 6020 S. Figueroa St. Los Angeles, CA 90003 Wednesday Oct 14, 2009 South Los Angeles Area New High School #3: Pre-Construction Community Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Muir Middle School - Library 5929 S. Vermont Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90044 *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

A crisis of competence

4LAKids: Sunday 4•October•09 Ten-Four In This Issue: • LA SCHOOLS CONSTRUCTION CHIEF RESIGNS + LA UNIFIED TAKES HAMMER TO ITS BUILDING UNIT + LAUSD'S BUILDING PROBLEM + OVERSIGHT PANEL CALLS FOR RETURN • AN EDUCATION PROBLEM LOOMS: In a time of layoffs, the state hopes to inspire a new generation of educators • STUDY CRITIQUES SCHOOLS OVER SUBJECTIVE GRADING: An education expert calls for greater consistency in evaluating students' work. • SCHOOLS: IT’S ALL POLITICS MA’ DEAR • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • 4 LAKids on Twitter • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. LAST MONDAY'S ANNOUNCEMENT THAT GUY MEHULA, the LAUSD Chief Facilities Executive, had unexpectedly resigned is extremely bad news for the building and modernization program and for the entirety of LAUSD. Contrary to widely held opinion, the building program isn't the only thing that LAUSD does well. But it is the most visible - especially among those that only involve adults! Connie Rice's Op-Ed on Tuesday - and the LA Times Wednesday editorial follow up (both following) say it all. This is a news story of which I am a part as a member of the Bond Oversight Committee (BOC) - and I am going to not go off and speculate about what really went on and who-and-what precipitated this crisis …but a crisis it is. Ms Rice at Wednesday's extraordinary meeting of the oversight committee reminded us all that the previous regimes at LAUSD "Couldn't build an outhouse out of Legos" …and inferred that the current iteration at Beaudry could-and-would do no better. That's a conclusion to which I am fully prepared to make the two-inch leap -- my ability and willingness to jump magnified exponentially by current goings-on by the Board of Education and City Hall The BOC representatives of the Building and Contracting Community and the Building Trades expressed a similar lack of confidence in this change of direction. Today's Times has an editorial on the economy "Take stock - then buy bonds" - maintaining that the most prudent investment strategy in this uncertain market is bonds. Since the reinvention of the LAUSD Facilities Service Division (FSD) as a quasi-independent agency under Mehula and his predecessor Jim McConnell LAUSD bonds have been highly rated and considered among the safest. LAUSD bonds - series BB, K, R and Y - based on the confidence of the market makers and the competence of the FSD leadership - and supported by an incredible track record of success - are the gild-edged standard, sought after by investors. Mehula and McConnell before him were the program's best salesmen. Now with Mehula gone and the program seemingly driven by different priorities future sales may be negatively impacted. Gentle readers - I am not saying this to warn investors off of LAUSD bonds - I am saying this to ask the powers-that-be to be, whomever and wherever they are (or think they are) - to be very, very careful. (And of course, it says in the tiny type, this message is neither investment advice, nor a solicitation to buy or sell securities.) ● "Take stock - then buy bonds" by Joe Queenan | LA Times (published online as "401(k) Reality Check") http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-queenan4-2009oct04,0,7087143.story WEDNESDAY EVENING'S "HEARING" OF THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON URBAN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE (“Power to the Parents: The role of parents as agents of change in California’s public schools,”) was more about Senator Romero and her Bill (SB 742) to force the Superintendent of Public Instruction (who's job she's a candidate for) to publish a list of the ten worst schools in the state. • Senator Romero's committee hearing had exactly one senator in attendance ...one wonders if the committee rules state that a quorum shall be 100% of the senators present? • The database of all test scores is published at The California Dept of Ed http://star.cde.ca.gov/ and EdData: http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us The info can be downloaded to an Excel spreadsheet or database program; any column can be sorted by any criteria one wishes. (It doesn't much more transparent than that) Senator Romeo's shock+horror that this information - that apparently parents and/or the senator needs - is being 'hidden' seems a little theatrical. Or political. Plus we don't need to know what the worst schools are doing and punish the failure. We need to know what the best ones are doing … and not as much reward the wonderfulness as replicate it. On that note, the parents who testified from PTA's. the Migrant Schools Program, special ed, charter schools and independent parent education, empowerment and advocacy groups - including the LA Parent Union - described their best practices and their lessons learned. And those best practices are: • Engaging and Involving Parents in their Children's Education. • Creating a Welcoming Environment for Parents at the School. • And Training and Educating Parents and Educators to Work Together to Improve Student Achievement …rather than raise money. That won't come from Sacramento or Washington or 333 South Beaudry or the eight minidistrict offices. That will come when the iron gates are unlocked and the signs stop saying "Register with the Principal" and threatening fines and imprisonment …and start saying "Welcome Parents". And mean it. ¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf CDE Data Downloads: Research File Instructions, Formats, Layouts, and Usage LA SCHOOLS CONSTRUCTION CHIEF RESIGNS + LA UNIFIED TAKES HAMMER TO ITS BUILDING UNIT + LAUSD'S BUILDING PROBLEM + OVERSIGHT PANEL CALLS FOR RETURN ►L.A. SCHOOLS CONSTRUCTION CHIEF RESIGNS GUY MEHULA, 56, WHO HAD BEEN WITH THE PROGRAM SINCE 2002, QUIT AFTER AN APPARENT POWER STRUGGLE WITH DISTRICT LEADERSHIP. JAMES SOHN IS NAMED INTERIM FACILITIES CHIEF. By Seema Mehta | LA Times September 29, 2009 - Guy Mehula, the highly regarded head of the Los Angeles Unified School District's massive school construction program, has resigned after an apparent power struggle with district leadership. In a brief letter to subordinates Monday, Mehula gave no hint of discord, painting his departure as an opportunity to search for new challenges. "The work that we have done together and the investments we have made in our schools, community, and economy are significant," he wrote. But critics say Mehula's resignation is fallout from a growing rift between his facilities services division and district headquarters, prompted by policy changes made by Supt. Ramon C. Cortines that threaten to dismantle the award-winning division. "There's an old saying: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,' " said Thomas A. Rubin, a consultant to the district's bond oversight committee, which is overseeing expenditure of more than $20 billion in voter-approved school construction and modernization funds. "This ain't broke. It's not perfect, but it is almost without any doubt whatsoever the best thing the district has done in decades." For many years, the facilities division had been at the center of significant turmoil, cost overruns and other problems, most notably the construction of the Belmont Learning Complex atop an oil field. The project ended up taking 15 years and costing more than $400 million. About a decade ago, after the Belmont furor, there was a push to create a quasi-independent facilities division that was insulated from district politics and composed of professional construction managers instead of district insiders. Mehula, 56, joined the district in 2002 after a long career in construction, including 25 years in the Navy, where he oversaw construction projects throughout the Pacific. As chief facilities executive, he earned $244,201 annually. Attempts to reach him Monday were unsuccessful. Cortines praised Mehula's tenure at the district, during which 80 new schools were built. The superintendent named James Sohn as interim chief facilities executive. "Because of Guy Mehula's leadership, thousands of our students attend new schools. As a result, most LAUSD students go to school during the traditional September-June academic year while a declining number remain on the year-round calendar," Cortines said. Cortines noted that Mehula had tried to resign twice in the last month but said he had refused to accept. The superintendent said he did so after finding the latest resignation letter in his mailbox Saturday, but said the two men had worked well together and he had hoped Mehula would stay. But critics said that several policy changes by Cortines contributed to Mehula's departure, including no longer allowing the division to act as a quasi-independent agency with its own in-house attorneys and procurement department. They also said recent moves, such as a resistance to offering salaries competitive with the private sector, would jeopardize the department's ability to attract qualified professionals. "The history of the construction program . . . mandated that any successful school construction program would have to be independent of the district's inefficient, notoriously torpid bureaucracy," Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who serves on the bond oversight committee, said Monday. "If you go back to the days of allowing an amateur board to micromanage in the professional management of the construction program, you're going back to the kind of mistakes that produced the Belmont fiasco." Cortines said that such charges were false and that he has a duty as the district's leader to ensure that voter-approved bonds are spent carefully. "Voters gave [the bond money] to us, and people in L.A. are struggling economically," he said. "I have a responsibility to see we use the money wisely." _________________ ►L.A. UNIFIED TAKES HAMMER TO ITS BUILDING UNIT: THE LOSS OF THE HEAD OF THE LAUSD'S CONSTRUCTION DIVISION COULD BE THE BEGINNING OF WASTE, COST OVERRUNS, POLITICAL CONTRACTS AND WORSE. Opinion by Constance L. Rice • Constance L. Rice is a civil rights attorney and a member of the School Construction Bond Oversight Committee. September 29, 2009 - The construction unit of the Los Angeles Unified School District has successfully and cost-effectively built 80 new schools and won scores of awards. So how has Supt. Ray Cortines rewarded this efficient unit? By driving out its superb leadership. Guy Mehula, the talented head of the construction division, resigned Monday after LAUSD leaders made clear their intention of dragging Mehula's quasi-independent team back under the tight control of the district. Taking away the unit's autonomy would be a huge mistake. The district has tried micromanaging the construction of schools, and it failed miserably. If you need convincing, just think about the disastrous cost overruns and construction errors of the Belmont Learning Complex. For those who don't remember the horrific details, the district began construction at Belmont (or the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, as it was finally called) without required environmental reviews or professional managers, ultimately building a $160-million high school that the state declared unusable for children. A scathing audit of the debacle concluded that the project had violated environmental and public safety laws, and that the uninformed district had "tolerated a culture remarkably indifferent" to standards or accountability. The audit referred several of its findings to the district attorney for criminal investigation. With a pressing need for new schools, then-Supt. Roy Romer and a newly elected board of education were determined to avoid more Belmonts, so they established a facilities division that was independent, expertly run and free of the district's torpid bureaucracy. The new unit was staffed by construc- tion professionals and experienced Navy engineers who were insulated from political and union pressures. Schools were built by carefully selected contractors who were closely monitored by an expert staff of auditors and managers. The new division, charged with managing a $20-billion construction effort, quickly established a system of value-based contracting that permitted necessary -- but not political -- changes to contracts. And Romer was true to his word: The school board set policy and acquired land for schools, but otherwise stayed out of the way. Now Cortines has rescinded key provisions that helped shield the facilities division from unwarranted interference. He announced the removal of the unit's specially assigned and quasi-independent lawyers and limited many new employees to 10 months of work and pay per year-- something few competent construction professionals would agree to. Cortines and the board also want to set salary limits that are not competitive. Mehula resigned because these and other proposals would end the independence that has made the school construction unit a success. Cortines' actions come as the construction program is also facing other threats. Some school board members, in actions reminiscent of the group that brought us Belmont, have started pushing for expensive and wasteful changes to building contracts. They have tried to use bond funds for things that are prohibited by the bond measure. And they have increasingly questioned contract awards and dismissed the judgment of facilities professionals. Most discouraging, I have heard two school board members suggest that the facilities division needs to "look more like Los Angeles." Although diversity is important, it cannot be allowed to trump the expertise needed to manage a massive school construction program. With Mehula's resignation, bondholders, taxpayers and contractors should be very worried. If his expert management team leaves, the successful phase of school construction is almost certain to end -- and bond money will once again be wasted. It is time to consider creating an independent construction authority for building schools. Doctors don't build hospitals, and lawyers don't build courthouses. Why should educators who can barely manage the mission of education build schools? _________________ ►LAUSD'S BUILDING PROBLEM - IF THE SCHOOL BOARD RETURNS TO MICROMANAGING ITS BUILDING PROGRAM AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF ITS CONSTRUCTION CHIEF, IT CAN ONLY BE BAD NEWS FOR STUDENTS AND THE CITY. LA Times Editorial September 30, 2009 -- The Los Angeles Unified School District does few things efficiently and competently. The big exception has been its construction effort of the last several years, guided by Guy Mehula. The facilities unit has built 80 schools and done most of the jobs well, on time and within budget. It's not a coincidence that Mehula's division has operated with an unusual amount of independence and freedom from school board politics and central office bureaucracy. Mehula's resignation on Monday, and the loss of a measure of that independence, are discouraging signs not only for the future of school construction but for the district as a whole. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines may have felt compelled to act after a 2008 audit revealed that many of the consultants working for the facilities division were paid much more than district staff. Some of these consultants were also found to be underqualified for their jobs and had overstepped their authority by making decisions about the hiring and pay of district workers. These are serious concerns, though the audit also said that some of the problems already had been addressed. But Cortines must make sure that he isn't being penny-wise and pound-foolish if he restricts consultant pay and moves more of that work under the district, as he reportedly intends to do. There is no money to be gained for classrooms this way; bond funding can be used only for construction, refurbishment and certain equipment. What's more, it proved worthwhile, under Mehula, to pay for top people who get the job done. History has shown that botched construction projects can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and deprive students in crowded schools of badly needed new campuses. The bungled Belmont Learning Complex, which helped lead to the creation of the more independent construction team, was the subject of a scathing audit that found the district had shown little regard for safety, law or accountability. It's not reassuring to think of a return to district oversight. It is unclear how Cortines will shield the $20-billion construction effort from the political pressures that already plague other parts of the district. This page has criticized the district for handing the new Mendez Learning Center in East L.A. to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools without community input or public airing. Cortines told The Times that he was pressured into doing so by school board President Monica Garcia, a close ally of the mayor. What else will board members demand in the way of special favors on facilities? L.A. Unified is seldom at its best when it micromanages -- a lesson worth remembering. _________________ ►OVERSIGHT PANEL CALLS FOR RETURN OF SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION LEADER by Howard Blume - LA Times October 1, 2009 | 11:05 am -- The panel that oversees school construction in Los Angeles is poised to pass a resolution asking for the return of the official who heads the nation’s largest school building effort and for a reversal of decisions that apparently led to his departure. The Bond Oversight Committee reached its decision by consensus at a Wednesday special session and will formally vote on the resolution at its regular October meeting, said chair David Crippens. The hastily called special meeting was in response to the weekend resignation of Guy Mehula, chief facilities executive of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Mehula has managed the $20-billion construction and modernization program that is paid for by local and state voter-approved bonds. The construction program was set up to be independent of the school system bureaucracy, both to professionalize its operation and to insulate its work from both internal and external political pressure. Mehula and members of the appointed oversight committee were concerned that this independence has been threatened by recent decisions by L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. These decisions include a consolidation of legal services and communications under more direct district control. Cortines also had resisted paying higher wages to senior managers in a time of economic crisis; Mehula and his supporters believed the higher salaries, which are funded by bond dollars, are needed to attract the most qualified professionals. “We want Guy back and to reverse the decisions that have been made,” Crippens said in an interview. “We have major challenges ahead. There has to be confidence in the program. We want this program to have continuity, not ups and down. This is not anti the superintendent; this is pro the program.” Cortines, who answered questions from committee members on Wednesday, pledged that the program would continue to be as independent as necessary. In a later interview he added that he knew it was vital to insulate the construction effort from political interference. He said he worked consistently to do just that. And he said he believed that he and Mehula had been working amicably to resolve disagreements. Cortines added that he, too, wanted Mehula to remain, but had concluded that Mehula wanted to take advantage of a district-wide early-retirement incentive that was offered as part of a package of budget-cutting strategies. Oversight committee member Connie Rice strongly contested that interpretation, attributing Mehula’s departure solely to concerns about the program’s future. Mehula has declined comment. AN EDUCATION PROBLEM LOOMS: In a time of layoffs, the state hopes to inspire a new generation of educators THE CALIFORNIA FIX An education problem looms In a time of layoffs, the state hopes to inspire a new generation of educators By Seema Mehta | LA Times Part of "The California Fix" series October 4, 2009 Quantcast As thousands of laid off California teachers sit out the school year, educators are worried about the long-term effect of losing so many teachers. Some instructors are considering leaving the state or even the profession, and if history is any indication, fewer young people will pursue careers in teaching. "The pipeline issue is one of the most significant challenges that we're dealing with, with the layoff situation or the pink-slipping," said Margaret Gaston, executive director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit focused on strengthening California's teacher workforce. Faced with severe budget cuts, school districts last spring issued more than 27,000 pink slips. Although many of those teachers were eventually rehired by school districts, thousands are still out of work, existing on a combination of unemployment benefits, their savings, spouses' wages and substitute teaching income when possible. Heather Hottinger was one day shy of becoming a permanent teacher when she was laid off from her job at Vintage Magnet Elementary in North Hills in July. Since then, the new mother has applied for every teaching position she hears of, only to find herself in competition with scores of others. To make ends meet, the 32-year-old is seeking substitute teaching assignments in Los Angeles and Temple City schools but has only worked three days this school year. She and her husband are considering a move to Texas, which has more teaching openings and where other relatives moved after earning credentials in California. "All I want is my classroom. This is what I wanted to do my whole life, and I keep getting pushed away," said Hottinger, who is among 2,143 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers, counselors and administrators who are no longer employed full-time. "Did I go into the wrong field? I definitely have second thoughts." The state is facing a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers reach retirement age and fewer young people are expected to enter the field. Nearly 55,000 teachers could retire over the next seven years, according to WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit research and education agency. In addition, the layoffs are having a ripple effect on the next generation of teachers: Past economic downturns in California have produced fewer teachers. In the years after the dot-com bust, the number of students enrolled in teacher preparation programs declined 13% and the number of new teaching credentials dropped 17%, according to the Santa Cruz teachers center. "We are confident that California once again will recover out of this economic slump, and it will be reflected in the hiring practices of schools and districts," Gaston said. "We want to make sure there is, one, an adequate pool of teachers from which principals can choose candidates that match the job openings, and, two, in that pool we have teachers who are training or prepared to take those challenging assignments in shortage areas." Concerns about the next generation of teachers have prompted statewide and national recruitment efforts. The Obama administration has requested $30 million for a national campaign that focuses on young adults and mid-career professionals and on such high-need areas as science and math. In addition to reaching out to potential teachers, the U.S. Department of Education hopes to improve training programs. President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan to hold events in the fall highlighting the importance of teaching to the nation's future. "It's a noble profession. In many other countries, children do aspire to be teachers, and they are regarded as some of the most important people in society," said John White, the education department spokesman. "That's what we need to do, so that we not only replace the teachers who are retiring but bring the most talented people to the field. . . . We need them to aspire to be the next generation of teachers." The California Teacher Corps was formed earlier this year, with the goal of placing 100,000 new teachers into classrooms over the next decade. The organization focuses on recruiting professionals who are changing careers. "There are people who had considered teaching who now are a little bit frightened off by it," said Catherine Kearney, president of the nonprofit. "One of things we can do is be proactive and talk more and plan more for what's in our future. The future is really here now." Kate Robertson, 24, thought she was the future. Then she was laid off after her first year. "After I finished the credential program, I started to hear that it's really hard to find a job. Why didn't anyone tell me this?" she said. She was considering a combination of substitute teaching and working as a waitress to get by until she got a new job at Larchmont Charter in August. The school will find out later this month if it needs to cut more positions. "I don't think I would have chosen another route. I might have, had I known it would have been such a struggle." Many teachers said they will weather this storm because they cannot imagine any other career. Jennifer Galvin, 45, decided she wanted to be a teacher in second grade. Her father had just died, and her teacher helped her deal with her grief and uncertainty. "She was just so warm and open. I was very, very, very shy," she said. "She would give me hugs, she was patient with me, she let me be myself and she let me know that I was safe." Galvin taught in the Bay Area for 15 years, but moved to Folsom to be closer to her family. She made the four-hour commute to her old district for two years, but it was exhausting, so she found a job closer to home. As a new teacher with little seniority, she has been pink-slipped each of her three years in the Folsom-Cordova Unified School District. The first two times, she got a phone call asking her to return days before schools were to open. So in August, as Galvin has done every summer for the last 18 years, she bought supplies -- folders, pencils, hand sanitizer, crayons -- for every child in her classroom. The phone never rang, and the supplies are boxed in her garage. "I thought I would be a teacher forever. I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't get called back soon," she said. "I don't wake up not thinking about it, and I don't go to bed not thinking about it." STUDY CRITIQUES SCHOOLS OVER SUBJECTIVE GRADING: An education expert calls for greater consistency in evaluating students' work. By Valerie Strauss from The Washington Post | republished in the LA Times Oct 4, 2009 September 16, 2009 --Washington -- If you have ever rolled your eyes when your child says a teacher's grade was unfair, you might want to think again. Your child might be right. Douglas Reeves, an expert on grading systems, conducted an experiment with more than 10,000 educators that he says proves just how subjective grades can be. Reeves asked teachers and administrators in the United States, Australia, Canada and South America to determine a final semester grade for a student who received the following grades for assignments, in this order: C, C, MA (Missing Assignment), D, C, B, MA, MA, B, A. The educators gave the student final semester grades from A to F, Reeves said. Why? Because, he said, teachers use different criteria for grading. Some average letter grades. Others consider effort (which in this case seemed to be picking up toward the end) and attendance. "If you went to a Redskins game -- the thing society takes really, really seriously -- and one official says a goal was scored and another official says no goal and a third official scratches his head, there would be hell to pay," said Reeves, founder of the Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado company that provides professional development services, research and solutions to educators and others. "But for some reason, we let grades be all over the map." The consequences, say Reeves and other experts on grading systems, are more than just a few unhappy students. Reeves said ineffective grading can lead to widespread student failure. Grading regimes that work, he said, offer accurate, precise and timely feedback that is aimed at helping students improve -- not penalizing them -- and is only one type of response. "You don't give grades to adjudicate a result. You give it to kids . . . to help them get better," he said. Grades have long been a source of controversy in school systems across the country. Most use a system in which 90% and above is an A, 80% is a B, and so on. Reeves supports wholesale change, such as the overhaul undertaken in the past few years in the Grand Island public schools in Nebraska. These schools changed the grading system in part to make sure that students taking the same classes got the same scores. Some of the changes: * Setting learning targets and linking grades to the achievement of those targets. * Giving grades based solely on achievement and separately reporting attendance, effort and participation. * Grading only individual achievement, not group work. * Giving scores only to certain assignments and choosing carefully which scores should be included in the final grade. * Making sure students understand how their grades are being determined. The first step toward change, Reeves said, is eliminating "dumb errors." Giving kids no credit for not turning in work or flunking them in some other way defeats the purpose, he said. A better result would be to force them to do the work, before school, during recess or after school. SCHOOLS: IT’S ALL POLITICS MA’ DEAR By Diana L. Chapman from CityWatch- An Insider's Look at City Hall The Los Angeles school district last week placed San Pedro High School – my son’s campus -- on the list of 12 campuses that can now be taken over by outside operators for failure to improve. Since Ryan goes there, I quickly assessed the real meaning, and as usual, it comes down to this: “It’s all politics ma’ dear.” Putting that into perspective, I don’t believe for a second that San Pedro High School is one of the worst in the district. It’s not the best either and has definite issues, not all caused by the school. For example, it’s overcrowded (a problem the district created) and has more than ten percent of its students drop out (a problem society created.) Some of the staff, however, have become entrenched and are not engaging their students. We are on the third principal in less than six years. An enthusiastic Jeanette Stevens – the new principal who accepted the post in August – had little idea that the school would be placed on the nicely-named: “focus list,” along with Gardena, Garfield, Maywood, Lincoln and Jefferson high schools. The LAUSD school board, this fall, opened the door to allow non-profits to go after 12 underperforming schools – and 24 brand new schools – while competing against Los Angeles Unified’s own staff, a competition the board believes will prompt improvement amid its most ailing campuses. Without using the words, the focus list seems like a hit list of campuses that failed its students with low test scores and more than 21 percent of its students unable to cope proficiently with English or math. That district’s action can possibly trigger a bidding process – so to speak -- for outside operators – charters and non-profits – to take a shot at running any of the schools on the list. Stevens and her crews can also compete which is exactly what the principal plans to do – and win. I have a theory about why this has happened to our school of 3,375 students. But first, let me start with Richard Wagoner, a caring, San Pedro High math teacher, who charges the district’s mathematical equation remains incorrect and that he was demoralized when his phone rang off the hook with friends “wanting to know how I could work at such a lousy school.” He disputes, for instance, that while the API (Academic Performance Index) went down last year, the school has increased by 40 points the year prior and maintains overall one of the highest math scores in the district that can compete with other nearby district high schools, including Torrance. “Yet in interviews you continue to give the impression that we are a failure,” Wagoner wrote LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines. “Whether this is by design, statements out of context, or accident, the facts are so easily obtained and so obviously opposed to this impression. Unfortunately, perception is reality, and you are hurting us by continuing to spread this perception.” Here’s what I think in a nutshell and I know not everyone will agree: San Pedro was classified this way to force the staff to work closer with the new principal – as relations between the staff and top executive year’s past were: frozen, locked up, stale-mated, going nowhere, burned up, lambasted. The former principal, on his way out, left a scathing letter behind that the staff refused change. That may be so, and now the ball is in the hands of our new principal, who should I say has her hands full. Whatever plan offered by outside agencies, Stevens and her crew will have to beat out other proposals that come forward – if any. Cortines and the school board have the final say on who will run the school. Stevens, known for remarkable team-building skills, nurturing of students, and bringing her staff together, crusades that she already has an excellent staff in place and that they are teaching. The students are willing to learn and what the school needs to discover is a fresh approach in the “the art of teaching.” “Clearly, we’ve got to make it better for the kids and keep their interest,” she explained adding that “we are going to win that contract or whatever it is.” Many things piled on top of each other making it difficult to manage San Pedro High. For example, it has about 1,375 students more than it was built to handle. The leadership became a revolving door and then came the real slam: the school received about a D rating during the accreditation process. But Teresa Feldman, whose child attends Hollywood High School, said she sees the most recent action as a way for the district to transfer the blame. “I love how SP High School's administration is being put on notice to clean up their act, when the real problem stems from the District's policies that lead to serious overcrowding,” Feldman emailed. “You can't cram all of these students onto campuses and expect anything but warehousing to take place. No adult would be able to function in the working world under these conditions, but the District assumes these children will not only function, but thrive. I hold out hope for the new principal in her endeavors, but overcrowding is a tough obstacle to overcome.” She added that as soon as the district opened Bernstein High School near to Hollywood High – and 1,000 students transferred to the new school – Hollywood had the highest “jump in API scores in the district this year.” I also had three emails – at least two anonymous -- suggesting San Pedro High dump the district and become a charter. That did surprise me. Starting up a charter means a process. Teachers have to be re-interviewed to keep their jobs and the outside operator has to decide whether it wants to become an independent charter – one that operates under its own policies with its own school board – or a dependent charter. A dependent charter keeps LAUSD as its school board and also continues the staff benefits. When my husband heard the news about San Pedro, let’s say he wasn’t thrilled. I, on the other hand, have faith in the new principal and still believe this most recent action was done for one reason -- to give the district a way to break the ongoing stalemate. Only time will tell us who gets to say checkmate. ●Diana L. Chapman was a journalist for 15 years with the Daily Breeze and the San Diego Union. She can be reached at hartchap@cox.net or visit her blog www.theunderdogforkids.blogspot.com ●●smf's 2¢: It must have something to do with Mayor Tony's hint-hint/nudge-nudge/say-no-more unconstitutional takeover of the School District, but CityWatch - An Insider's Look at City Hall never used to cover LAUSD …and now they do! HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources LANGDON'S PARENTS PRAISED AS KEY TO SCHOOL'S SUCCESS: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer LA Daily News Parents sor.. High Schools - LAUSD WARNS COACHES ON HAZING: An e-mail sent today urges them to counsel their athletes against.. 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Brownley: LEGISLATIVE YEAR ENDS WITH EDUCATION SUCCESSES: “Unfortunately, right now [the governor] is holding m.. Heard on the radio: PUBLIC SCHOOL PARENT INVOLVEMENT GROWS: Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC Sept. 30, 2009 | A South.. Letters to the Editor: LAUSD’S KINGDOM: letters to the Daily News Re "LAUSD board cuts back on public input" (E.. 4LAKids: SPECIAL ISSUE: LAUSD Construction Program ReOrg Update: SPECIAL BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEETING –Wednesday Sept 30 WILL BE TELEVISED LIVE on KLCS Channel 58 @.. SPECIAL BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEETING – 2:30PM – Wednesday Sept 30: It may all come down to this. An LAUSD B.. Cortines Memo: RETIREMENT OF GUY MEHULA “…has decided to take advantage of the Classified Early Retirement Ince.. State of the State: K-12 EDUCATION: Op-Ed by David Plank | The Daily Californian – the newspaper of the Univer.. CAL STATE STUDENTS, IT'S TIME TO STAND UP: Budget cuts are taking away the right to an inexpensive public educa.. L.A. HIGH SCHOOL OPENS FOR BUDDING ARTS ENTHUSIASTS: By Susan Abram, Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group/Daily Ne.. TEXAS EDUCATION BOARD’S FUND MANAGEMENT FACES SCRUTINY – or – Where is Molly Ivens when we need her?: The Texas.. Cortines: APPOINTMENT OF JAMES SOHN AS INTERIM CHIEF FACILITIES EXECUTIVE: Update: James Sohn has been appointe.. LETTER TO SUPT. CORTINES FROM BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CHAIR DAVID CRIPPINS RE: RECENT ACTIONS TO REORGANIZE AN.. A MESSAGE FROM LAUSD CHIEF FACILITIES EXECUTIVE GUY MEHULA: Joseph '”Guy” Mehula has resigned as CEO of the LAU.. The news that didn't fit from October 4th EVENTS: Coming up next week... *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600 • Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ • Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school. • Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it! • Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child. • If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE. • If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE. • If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.