 | | 4LAKids: Memorial Day, May 29, 2006 |  | | | In This Issue: | | • | WHY SUPE SELECTION IS LIKE JUDGING A DOG SHOW | | | • | BRIDGING DIFFERENCES: A Dialogue Between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch | | | • | TEACHERS' UNION ASKS FOR ONE-TIME PAY RAISE | | | • | WANTED: EXPERIENCED TEACHERS � Let districts and principals, not the union, decide where teachers teach. | | | • | EXIT EXAM LEGAL SAGA NOT OVER YET | | | • | Tuesday May 29 | 1PM | PARENT POWER: A National Perspective on Parents and School Participation | | | • | What can YOU do? | |
Featured Links: | | | | When I was a senior in high school I was the cadet first sergeant of the Hollywood High School Jr. ROTC. I came to that position not without ambivalence. It was 1966, there was a war going on in Viet Nam that I was opposed to on principle � a war I which my fellow cadets and I would be subject to serve when we left high school. Numbers would be drawn, some would go and not return. In '66 the war was still a small distant thing � two years from being what it would become.
Jr. ROTC drew an interesting mix � the gung-ho, the young Republicans, the kids who (like me) wanted to avoid PE ...the kids the PE teachers wanted none of. In '66 there was really no PE at HHS � the gym was being rebuilt, the field was a mess of construction equipment; busloads of students were transported to Poinsettia Park once a day to hang out for an hour before being bused back. An hour hanging out in a park in Hollywood in the '60's sounds like deliberately putting adolescents in harm's way � but those times � the 'Golden Age of Public Education in California' � were different times.
Hollywood High actually had a rifle range and ROTC had a competitive marksmanship team. I was not and am not much of an athlete, but I'm farsighted and a pretty good shot.
The US Army sergeant who was in charge of the HHS Jr. ROTC was a lifer � a 29� year veteran, six-months-and-counting to retirement. He showed up for the ROTC class period every morning � but otherwise played a lot of golf. His commanding officer was a disillusioned Special Forces captain, an 'advisor' who burned out in 'Nam. He told us Graham Greene-ish stories of military police duty in the red light district of Saigon: When night fell the area became a Viet Cong stronghold � GI's out after curfew were routinely kidnapped and ransomed back in the morning. Sarge and the Captain were poster children for avoiding military service and as such served the peace effort well.
HHS ROTC also had a ceremonial honor guard � raising and lowering the flag in the morning and afternoon, presenting the colors at assemblies and at off-campus events. As the cadet first sergeant and the guy who ran the office when Sarge was away I had the choice of these assignments �if it got one out of class, I was on it!
Four or five times that year our army-surplus-boy-scout duty got serious. The Viet Nam War was beginning to take its toll on regular military honor guards � the ceremonial casket bearers who officiate at the funerals-with-full-military honors that every active and retired American serviceman is entitled to. Occasionally our ROTC honor guard would be called out of school to fire the final salute for a veteran at some Hollywood cemetery. These were usually the funerals of World War I veterans � servicemen who had served in a popular war long ago.
We would be issued our three blank rounds and the always locked-away firing pins from our WWII surplus rifles � and we would act out the coda to the final act of military service long ago. It was sobering and always dramatic: Seven riflemen, boys actually, firing three volleys that were incredibly loud � shattering the quiet graveside service attended by the elderly survivors. The shots always flushed all the birds from the trees; which would swoop and turn in a startled flock. The sorrowful poignant finality of "Taps" counterpoint as the shots still echoed.
On Memorial Day one remembers. The three volleys of seven shots. Taps. Twenty-one shots; twenty-one notes. The birds. The sky so blue it hurts. The theatrical folding of the flag; the tight fabric triangle presented to the widow or next of kin.
At seventeen I said the words to a seventy-something year old widow in veiled in black: "With the gratitude of a grateful nation." I meant it then and I mean it now.
They are words we never want to hear or say; but always better heard and said at the rightful end of a life well lived than one ended too soon. - smf
WHY SUPE SELECTION IS LIKE JUDGING A DOG SHOW
by Bob Sipchen, Los Angeles Times
May 29, 2006 � By the end of this column I will have selected the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Because I believe that the children, parents, teachers and citizens of Los Angeles are entitled to transparency in such deliberations, I invite you to join me as I work my way toward a decision.
Let's start in a classroom at North Hollywood High School, where, in a scene reminiscent of "Blackboard Jungle," 28 young toughs have school board President Marlene Canter backed up against a projector screen.
These aren't physical toughs. They're intellectual toughs. But if I were Canter, I'd take the sneering, tattooed kind any day.
The board president is here as part of the district's sappy (or cynical) effort to make us all feel included in the most important choice any L.A. public body will make this decade: Who should replace departing Supt. Roy Romer?
As news cameras zoom and pan, the students in Tom Dunn's Advanced Placement U.S. history class take turns reading short passages from a district survey seeking the public's views on qualifications for the next superintendent. The students then click numbers on remote-control devices, ranking from 1 to 5 the importance of possible "skills, attributes, experiences, and accomplishments."
After each selection, a bar chart appears on the screen tallying the students' responses in 10 seconds flat (they don't think parents are important; they do think the next supe should watch where money goes).
Good teaching moment. Squishy management tool. Only the discussion afterward offers insight.
At one point, for instance, Canter fends off a student's polite question about why North Hollywood's campus is dirty by noting (accurately, from what I've seen) that it's one of the cleanest and safest campuses in the district.
The unanimous argh! says plenty.
So do the implications of a student's question about why classrooms don't have anything as high tech as the very cool clicker gadgets handed out by Canter and the five or six district staffers she has in tow.
But it's another student who nails what I've been thinking. Hiring the supe is the board's job, he notes. So shouldn't its members already have a pretty good sense of the qualifications?
The survey, Canter later assures me, is not the sop I'm making it out to be. It's democracy. And, she adds, not inaccurately, if the board were to act without public input, I'd slam it for that.
Headhunter Edward Hamilton, whom the district brought in to muscle through the selection, also tries hard to make me appreciate the process. In addition to the survey, he says, he will line up interviews with an unspecified number of "opinion leaders" selected for their diversity of viewpoints (Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald would not be able to pry the names or number from Hamilton � I can't, anyway).
After these elites and the hoi polloi have had their say, the board will ruminate upon what it has learned, write a job description (why do I hear the words "must work well with people") and send it to several thousand potential candidates and folks who are likely to know good candidates.
The board members, meanwhile, have been fretting out another list of seven to nine people to put on a selection committee.
(I can only imagine the contortions in those closed door listing sessions, as board members debate whether Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, a law enforcement Latino, counts as a twofer; whether they should flatter cocky teachers union President A.J. Duffy by putting him on the interview list because, well, the union has been known to pay for board members' campaigns. And � whoa, Nelly! � shouldn't the mayor be on some list?)
Once selected, the selection committee (think a precisely calculated PC balance that includes a governor, a poverty-type, Henry Cisneros and the like) will sort through the applicant pool and name a handful of finalists. The board will choose the next supe from this pool. Unless they pick someone else.
It's like judging a dog show, Hamilton says. Winnowing will leave the board with a rarefied selection of different breeds (say, a Great Dane, a chow chow and a Chihuahua), each of which possesses a distinct mix of top-notch qualities. The board then selects Best of Show.
Hamilton is the guy who helped the district find Romer (Sheepdog? Collie?). Canter is sharp and well-meaning. I don't doubt these two when they say this is the way most big districts do things.
But non-educrats will see all that "process" as touchy-feely dithering by managers who've had too much contact with excessively empowered human resource departments.
Mr. Dunn and his AP students could sort through the array of viewpoints and come up with a pointed job description by Friday: "Candidate must have the rare leadership skills to make petty adults stop their self-absorbed squabbling and do whatever it takes to measurably improve every school in the district every day."
As a parent whose kids have put in a combined total of 32 years in L.A. Unified schools so far, I don't need a survey or a hush-hush interview with Eli Broad (just guessing) to understand the job or the sort of person who could do it.
I've listened to lots of people, including board members, who say it's critically important that the next superintendent be of a certain ethnicity, be an educator and/or be a district insider. I'm with those who think otherwise.
Brilliant people, including Ray Cortines, interim superintendent before Romer, say that there are highly qualified big city supes out there who could do the job.
I think he could do the job again (he says he's too old) but I worry that with mayoral takeover looming and Romer's successes on a fragile course, the district at this moment is a bigger beast than the toughest education careerist from, say, Boston or Philly, could tackle with success.
I keep hearing that longtime district survivors Bob Collins and Dan Isaacs are angling for the job. The names of former insiders and semi-insiders also come up, including Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) and Maria Casillas, of the respected Families in Schools.
Alas, I had to disqualify them all because of a formula I call the LAUSD IQ paradox: Anyone who has seen the superintendent's job close up and still wants it, by definition, can't be smart enough to handle it.
As proof, I offer you school district executive Kathi Littmann, who knows she's not ready for the job, in part because she's fought grueling battles to build schools in the district, witnessed firsthand the relative ease with which things get done in reality � i.e. the private sector � and because she recently completed a 10-month stint in the Broad Academy's intensely competitive program for prospective superintendents.
Littmann defines L.A. Unified as "Kafka-complex" and offers this description of the ideal candidate: "Someone without a life."
It was with all this "input" in mind that I finally convened my ad hoc winnowing committee of district parents � a lawyer, an architect, a member of the school district clerical union, a guy whose job description none of us can figure out, and a nurse-turned-stay-at-home mom (my wife) � at Villa Sombrero in Highland Park. By the second round of margaritas we had our choices.
Bob Hertzberg, who ran against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with a proposal to break up the district, came close to making the cut. But he lacks the national stature, the gravitas, to call in rhetorical air strikes the next time Duffy floats a 14% pay increase in contract negotiations, as he's doing now.
I thought about hiring Donald Trump, who has the "rock star" stature many argue is now required to resist political bullying. But Romer's weekly cable show is hammy enough. L.A. doesn't need the Donald cooking up some new ego-showcase � much as I love the idea of him shouting "you're fired" to the next bureaucrat who rationalizes why bad teachers shouldn't be.
That left only three people in America who could possibly succeed at this nearly impossible assignment.
Condoleezza Rice is perfect. But the anti-Bush Westsiders would throw a tantrum, even though none of them have enrolled a child in public school since the '60s, when people of color first materialized on their campuses.
Bill Clinton could charismatize the district into excellence. But Valley conservatives would have hissy fits about that intern stuff. And Chelsea went to private schools, they'd scream.
So I've selected Colin Powell, a closet centrist of impeccable integrity (I trust that he believed in those WMD slides) to take charge of the school district.
I'll leave it to the board to finalize Powell's salary, benefits and vacation. To facilitate a quick transition, he can live rent-free in the mayor's vacant Mount Washington home.
Antonio didn't return my call on this. But I have no doubt that he, with his concern for education, fully supports the plan.
_______________
� Bob Sipchen's column, School Me, appears weekly in the LA Times.
BRIDGING DIFFERENCES: A Dialogue Between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch
By Deborah Meier & Diane Ravitch, from Edweek
May 24, 2006- In the course of the last 30 years, the two of us have been at odds on any number of issues�on our judgments about progressive education, on the relative importance of curriculum content (what students are taught) vs. habits of mind (how students come to know what they are taught), and most recently in our views of the risks involved in nationalizing aspects of education policy.
Meeting recently to prepare for a debate on the federal No Child Left Behind Act, however, we found ourselves agreeing about the mess that has been generated by local and state testing. Both of us agreed that the public needs far better information about both inputs and outcomes, without which the public is woefully uninformed and too easily manipulated. As we discussed what the next policy steps should be, Diane preferred a national response, and Deborah preferred a local one.
As we talked further, we were surprised to discover that we shared a similar reaction to many of the things that are happening in education today, especially in our nation's urban school districts. Recent trends and events seem to be confirming our mutual fears and jeopardizing our common hopes about what schooling might accomplish for the nation's children. We might, we agreed, be getting the worst of both our perspectives.
Unlike Deborah, Diane has long supported an explicit, prescribed curriculum, one that would consume about half the school day, on which national examinations would be based. Diane believes in the value of a common, knowledge-based curriculum, such as the Core Knowledge curriculum, that ensures that all children study history, literature, mathematics, science, art, music, and foreign language; such a curriculum, she thinks, would support rather than undermine teachers' work. Deborah, while strongly agreeing on the need for a broad liberal arts curriculum, doubts that anyone can ensure what children will really understand and usefully make sense of, even through the best imposed curriculum, especially if it is designed by people who are far from the actual school communities and classrooms.
Yet both of us are appalled by the relentless "test prep" activities that have displaced good instruction in far too many urban classrooms, and that narrow the curriculum to nothing but math and reading. We are furthermore distressed by unwarranted claims from many cities and states about "historic gains" that are based on dumbed-down tests, even occasionally on downright dishonest scoring by purposeful exclusion of low-scoring students.
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[Following are Deborah Meier & Diane Ravitch's consensus conclusions, distilled by 4LAKids from the original article.]
� WHAT UNITES US ABOVE ALL IS OUR CONVICTION THAT LOW-INCOME CHILDREN WHO LIVE IN URBAN CENTERS ARE GETTING THE WORST OF BOTH OF OUR APPROACHES.
� THE ENDS OF EDUCATION�ITS PURPOSES, AND THE TRADE-OFFS THAT REAL LIFE REQUIRES�MUST BE OPENLY DEBATED AND CONTINUOUSLY RE-EXAMINED. YOUNG PEOPLE NEED TO SEE THEMSELVES AS NOVICE MEMBERS OF A SERIOUS, INTELLECTUALLY PURPOSEFUL COMMUNITY.
� THE SO-CALLED REFORMS OF THE DAY ARE TOO OFTEN A PERVERSE DISTORTION�ONE MIGHT SAY AN "EVIL TWIN"�OF THE DIFFERENT IDEAS THAT EACH OF US HAS ADVOCATED.
____________________________________________________
[The article concludes:] Our differences helped us consider ways to rethink our ideas and find places where those holding different views might compromise, and perhaps learn to live under one umbrella. What we hope to model is the idea of democratic engagement, the notion that citizens need to think about and debate their beliefs and values with others who do not necessarily share all of them. We want the issues connected to schooling to be a matter for discussion among all people who care.
We don't have it in our power to solve the problems that confront American education�not those that take place within the schoolhouse, much less those that have a direct impact on children's ability to learn, such as their unequal access to health care, housing, and myriad other life necessities. But we hope that we have it in our power to provoke the thinking that must precede, accompany, and follow any attempt to reform�perhaps, even better, to transform�our schools.
►Deborah Meier has spent four decades working in and writing about public schools. She was the founder of a network of small public elementary and secondary schools in New York City and Boston, including the Central Park East schools in East Harlem. She currently is a senior scholar and adjunct professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education.
►Diane Ravitch is an education historian and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush. She was appointed by the Clinton administration to serve two terms on the National Assessment Governing Board, which supervises the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Now a research professor of education at NYU, she is a senior fellow at both the Brookings Institution, in Washington, and the Hoover Institution, in Stanford, Calif.
� 2006 Editorial Projects in Education
TEACHERS' UNION ASKS FOR ONE-TIME PAY RAISE
from NBC4.tv + City News Service
May 23, 2006 � LOS ANGELES � The union representing about 48,000 Los Angeles teachers and other school district employees is asking for a one-time 14 percent raise for its members, it was reported Tuesday.
Teacher salaries average $56,652 in the Los Angeles Unified School District and, if granted, the raises would be the biggest year-over-year gain in recent times, the Daily News reported.
Some LAUSD officials have charged that United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy is trying to exploit the political situation posed by union-friendly Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's push for control of the schools.
While the union opposes the mayor's planned takeover of the school district, Duffy told the newspaper that "the district would be misinterpreting the motive of UTLA if they thought we were asking for 14 percent simply because we had leverage with the mayoral takeover."
Marlene Canter, president of the school board, told the Daily News she would be "very disappointed if the takeover conversation became used as leverage in our bargaining process."
Political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of USC told the Daily News the union's strategy of asking for more than it is likely to get was sound.
"If they win, they get an incredible pay increase. If they lose, I presume they still get a nice pay increase," she said.
WANTED: EXPERIENCED TEACHERS � Let districts and principals, not the union, decide where teachers teach.
EDITORIAL from the Los Angeles Times
May 26, 2006 � It's teacher contract time again, and the first proposal from the Los Angeles teachers union is full of the pie-in-the-sky demands typical of early stage negotiations. This year, with the mayor vying for control of the district, the school board has more reason than ever to show it puts student needs before teacher demands.
It would be wonderful, funding permitting (which it won't), to reduce class size to 27 students and to give hardworking teachers a 14% raise, to name two of the union's demands. But whatever gains United Teachers Los Angeles makes in these areas must be accompanied by more accountability and flexibility by teachers. And nothing would be more helpful than scrapping the provision that allows teachers to pick the campuses where they'll work based on seniority.
No one blames teachers for craving jobs at schools where there are no gangs or lunchtime fights and where students come from enriched home lives prepared to achieve. But the result is a concentration of experienced, higher-paid teachers at middle-class schools, while low-paid beginners who are still learning the tricks of classroom pedagogy teach the students who are poor and still learning English.
This isn't always bad. New teachers often have creativity and energy, and principals don't always want the more experienced teachers that seniority forces them to "hire." But decisions about where teachers teach should be made by district managers, in consultation with principals, based on where teachers are most needed. Some classes at hard-to-staff L.A. schools � mostly math, science and special ed � are still taught all year by substitute teachers who have no expertise and often no credential.
Yet there has been no real will to end this state of affairs. The district and union have agreed on one-time bonuses for teachers who join low-performing schools, but these aren't nearly enough. The district has to have the kind of authority that's taken for granted in most of the work world: the ability to assign employees to jobs that match their skills and contribute to the overall success of the operation.
Such authority must be used wisely, of course. There is no benefit to having bitter, unhappy teachers in low-performing schools. But more teachers might be willing to serve in these schools if the district could control personnel assignments and offer incentives.
Boston and New York schools � both under mayoral control � have won concessions from their teachers on the seniority rule. Rather than trying to ward off mayoral control with a $20,000-a-month image consultant, the L.A. school board would be better off showing that it can break through the inertia and bring about change that will improve the education of the poorest students. Let the negotiations begin.
EXIT EXAM LEGAL SAGA NOT OVER YET
� Test is law, though attorneys want appeals court to expedite case, now set for July hearing
by Jill Tucker, Staff Writer, Oakland Tribune | Inside Bay Area
Mat 26, 2006 � Oakland � For sure, without a doubt, no question about it, the exit exam is a graduation requirement this year. Probably anyway. At least maybe.
The state Court of Appeal � now overseeing the Valenzuela lawsuit fighting the diploma requirement � set a schedule Thursday pushing any decision on the case well into July.
That meant the exit exam requirement would be the law of the land through graduation season this year � per the California Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday to reinstate it.
The Supreme Court decision came less than two weeks after an Alameda County Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction suspending the graduation requirement, agreeing with plaintiffs who saidtheir constitutional rights were violated because they had not been taught the material.
With the appellate court schedule set for oral arguments July 25, it seemed high school seniors could be sure Thursday that they needed to pass the exit exam to get a diploma. Period.
But it is apparently not over until the fat lady sings "Pomp and Circumstance."
In a flurry of legal filings, attorneys for the plaintiffs asked the Court of Appeal late Thursday to schedule an immediate hearing on one aspect of the case critical to suspending the exit exam.
In short, when the Supreme Court ruling said that even if students' constitutional rights were violated, the justices were not convinced that suspending the graduation requirement was the proper "remedy."
Lead plaintiff attorney Arturo Gonzalez of Morrison & Foerster said he believes it is the only remedy available to the class of 2006. Anything else � remedial instruction, summer school, etc. � would be "too little, too late."
"It's too late for the class of 2006," he said, adding that the students have already been denied the education required to pass and that any fix to the system is overdue. "If you want to start with eighth-graders, fine."
Gonzalez said he wants to argue that point before the appellate court and get a ruling on the remedy question before the class of 2006 graduates.
As of 5 p.m. Thursday, there was no word from the Court of Appeal on his request. Gonzalez said he hopes the court will respond today.
In the meantime, state education officials were pleased with the legal schedule set earlier Thursday.
"We're glad that the court has set a schedule that is expedited but gives enough time for a thorough briefing and understanding of the issues," said Hilary McLean, state Department of Education spokeswoman. "Our view is we're very happy and prepared to discuss this issue before the court."
The exit exam graduation requirement was passed by the Legislature in 1999. The class of 2004 � initially the first group required to pass to graduate � started taking the test in 2001. In 2003, the state Board of Education decided to delay implementation until 2006, saying there were concerns not all students had been adequately prepared.
As of February, an estimated 47,000 seniors still had not passed the exam, which tests on ninth-grade math and 10th-grade English/language arts.
Gonzalez filed the so-called Valenzuela lawsuit in February on behalf of 10 plaintiffs who said they were not taught the material on the test.
Of the original 10 plaintiffs, three have passed the exam � including two students who this week learned they passed in March. Another two students withdrew from the case voluntarily, and one disabled student received a waiver granted to special education students this year only.
There also is a second lawsuit, which failed in Superior Court, pending before the California Supreme Court. That lawsuit questioned whether the state followed the law in studying alternatives to the exam in a timely manner.
Tuesday May 29 | 1PM | PARENT POWER: A National Perspective on Parents and School Participation
� A Special Meeting of the LAUSD Board of Education/Committee of the Whole exclusively focusing on the role, impact and perspective of parents on the governance of urban school districts.
4LAKids salutes the Board and Superintendent Romer in bringing together parent representatives from New York, Chicago and Detroit � and a representative of the Mayor of San Francisco � together with parent representatives from across the board in LAUSD for an open discussion and dialog on the impact of differing levels of mayoral involvement in the governance of major urban school districts. We encourage all parents and stakeholders to attend!
Presenters will include:
� Carmen Colon, President of the Association of NYC Education Councils, New York City
� Ismael Vargas, Assistant Director, Parents for a Responsible Education (PURE) Chicago
� Hydra Mendoza, Education Advisor to Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco
� Shanta Driver, National Co-Chair, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) Detroit
� Bill Ring, Chair LAUSD Parent Collaborative
� Betty Glenn, Chair LAUSD District Title I Advisory Committee (DAC).
� Olga Gonzalez & Maria Morter, Member & 1st Vice Chair, LAUSD District English Language Learners Advisory Committee (DLAC)
� David Wyles, Co-Chair LAUSD Community Advisory Committee (CAC)
� Carla Vega, 1st Vice-Chair Special Education Multicultural Advisory Committee (SEMAC)
� Scott Folsom, President, Los Angeles Tenth District PTA/PTSA
� Linda Ross, President, Thirty-first District PTA/PTSA
� Rita Caldera, Assistant Superintendent, LAUSD Parent Community Services Branch
� There will be time for public comment and Board Member comments and questions �
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES
SPECIAL COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE
1:00 p.m., Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
333 South Beaudry Avenue - Board Room
Broadcast live on KLCS � Channel 58 � check your cable operator for the channel in your area
________________________________________
� SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213.633.7493
____________________________________________________
� LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213.633.7616
What can YOU do?
►CONTACT YOUR ASSEMBLYPERSON AND STATE SENATOR Tell them what you think about their wasting their time, effort and the taxpayer's money on the mayor's attempt at takeover or makeover � an effort that is patently unconstitutional and will never survive a court challenge. Their time, the mayor's time, the board of education's time � all of our time, thinking and hard work - is better spent working together rather than at odds to continue and support the very real efforts at reform already begun. Their time is better spent helping LAUSD find a new superintendent, guaranteeing an improved funding stream for all California schools and helping kids in the classroom, on the playground; during, before and after school.
� LAUSD ASSEMBLY DELEGATION
Assemblymember.Richman@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Montanez@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Levine@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Pavley@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Koretz@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Frommer@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Liu@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Goldberg@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Nunez@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Bass@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Ridley-Thomas@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Chu@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.DeLaTorre@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Richman@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Horton@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Lieu@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Karnette@assembly.ca.gov
Assemblymember.Oropeza@assembly.ca.gov
� LAUSD SENATE DELEGATION
Senator.Alarcon@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Scott@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Cedillo@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Kuehl@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Romero@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Vincent@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Murray@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Lowenthal@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Bowen@senate.ca.gov
Senator.Escutia@senate.ca.gov
� TO DETERMINE WHO YOUR ASSEMBLYPERSON & SENATOR IS & GET THEIR ADDRESS PHONE & FAX NUMBERS:
http://192.234.213.69/smapsearch/framepage.asp
� E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Marlene.Canter@lausd.net � 213-241-6387
- office vacant - � 213-241-6180
Julie.Korenstein@lausd.net � 213-241-6388
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net � 213-241-6382
Mike.Lansing@lausd.net � 213-241-6385
Jon.Lauritzen@lausd.net � 213-241-6386
David.Tokofsky@lausd.net � 213-241-6383
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think!
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.
� Vote.
| |  | | Scott Folsom is a parent and parent leader in LAUSD. He is President of Los Angeles 10th District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. He serves on various school district advisory and policy committees and is a PTA officer and/or governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is also the elected Youth & Education boardmember on the Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council.
� 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 SUBCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you. | | | | | |
