Help PTA Defeat AB 1381

CALIFORNIA STATE PTA LEGISLATION ACTION ALERT URGENT!!!!

_________________________________________

DATE: AUGUST 28, 2006

URGENT!!!!

Help to defeat AB 1381 (Nunez): Los Angeles Unified School District Mayoral Takeover


AB 1381 will be heard in the Assembly Education Committee on Tuesday, August 29th.

Today, August 28th, AB 1381 cleared the Senate and your help is now needed to defeat this bill that could have far reaching implications for the entire state. Enactment of this legislation would set a precedent for similar efforts to shift decision-making away from locally elected school boards with no guarantee our children will benefit.

The California State PTA has several areas of Concerns:

Equity Issues for All Students--The partnership schools created by this legislation and directly controlled by the mayor would affect only about 5% of the district’s schools, leaving behind more than 700,000 students who would not receive the additional support and supplemental programs.


Meaningful Parent Involvement--The bill as amended does include a role for parents in several areas; however, the method of involvement and the process for selection of parent representatives is not clear.


School District Governance--AB 1381 creates a governance structure that would provide for a school district to be governed by four separate entities: the school board, the mayor, the superintendent (whose appointment must be ratified by the mayor) and the council of mayors (committee made up of representatives from the 26 other cities that are within Los Angeles Unified School District). This type of governance structure would create unclear jumbled lines of authority and accountability. Parents and voters would be further removed from a point of contact with the school district, the elected school board and the communities served.


Constitutionality--This legislation seeks to bypass the California Constitutional directive in Article IX, Section 6 that mandates that no part of a school system may be transferred “directly or indirectly” outside the system. Based on a recent analysis by the Legislative Council she concluded that AB 1381 in its present form is unconstitutional.


Please take a moment today to phone or e-mail the legislators below urging a NO vote on AB1381.

Members of the Assembly Education Committee:


Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg (Chair) fax (916) 319-2145 assemblymember.goldberg@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Mark Wyland (Vice-Chair) fax (916) 319-2174 assemblymember.Wyland@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Juan Arambula fax (916) 319-2131 assemblymember.Arambula@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Joe Coto fax (916) 319-2123 assemblymember.Coto@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Loni Hancock fax (916) 319-2114 assemblymember.Hancock@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Robert Huff fax (916) 319-2160

assemblymember.Huff@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Carol Liu fax (916) 319-2144 assemblymember.Liu@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Gene Mullin fax (916) 319-2119
assemblymember.Mullin@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Fran Pavley fax (916) 319-2141

assemblymember.Mullin@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Keith Richman fax (916) 319-2138 assemblymember.Richman@assembly.ca.gov

Assemblymember Tom Umberg fax (916) 319-2169 assemblymember.Umberg@assembly.ca.gov


************************************************************************************************************

If you would like to be added to our "Legislation email alert list," please send your name and email address to PTAadvocacy@aol.com.

You need not be a PTA Member.

Pluto voted off the Council of Planets

4LAKids: Sunday, August 27, 2006 In This Issue: • LAUSD BILL CALLED UNCONSTITUTIONAL: State legislative counsel repeats opinion after text amendment • THE POWER AGENDA: Why Does City Hall Deny the Truth About Mayor V’s School Plan? • LET L.A. VOTERS MAKE THE CALL + L.A. MAYOR SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON HIS CITY'S PROBLEMS • THE STRUGGLE FOR EDUCATION • The occaisional rant: AN INFORMATION CHALLENGE • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • READING TO KIDS: Read to some kids the second Saturday morning each month. Make a difference. Change some lives (including your own!). • The Blueprint for Effective School Reform: MAKING SCHOOLS WORK — Get the Book @ Amazon.com! • THE BEST RESOURCE ON CALIFORNIA SCHOOL FUNDING ON THE WEB: The Sacramento Bee's series • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. from AroundTheCapitol.com: "Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambitious bid to assume control of the troubled Los Angeles Unified School District abruptly stalled in the state Senate on Thursday, sparking accusations that the legislation was being held hostage to extract concessions from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a powerful supporter," writes Michael Gardner in the Daily Breeze. Slowing down the flow of bills at the end of session to extract concessions? Shocking! "Senate leader Don Perata, an Oakland Democrat who made the call, insisted there was 'nothing sinister' behind his decision to adjourn just minutes before the measure was to come up for a vote." "However, a frustrated Sen. Gloria Romero said the legislation became entangled in a feud between Perata and Nunez, D-Los Angeles, over the fate of more than 100 Senate bills languishing on the Assembly floor." "'It's a hostage bill to make sure that 115 bills are OK,' said Romero, D-Los Angeles, who has worked tirelessly for the legislation for months." ►smf opines that reports elsewhere contend the votes simply weren't there Thursday — or that the delay is to allow the bill (which the Leg Counsel still says is still unconstitutional) to be actually read by the Senators. Maybe it was the bell like clarity of my message on late night talk radio ...or the (over)wealming sea of yellow T-shirts at City Hall Thursday AM? • One suspects there is ongoing rewriting amongst the reading, arm twisting, and fear and loathing. • Will the severability clause endure? • A promise of a referendum on District breakup in 2012? • If a referendum's good then, wouldn't it be better now? • Will the Republicans cave and drink to Kool Aid? It's so hot here in the kitchen and there's a happy face on the icy pitcher! Monday (Admission Day) will present a newly amended and unread bill, a new compromise, newer and stranger bedfellows …but who will admit what? And Pluto? Toon Town anthropomorphism gone awry: The barking pet dog of a talking mouse. Forgotten and cast aside like so many schoolchildren, parents, voters and taxpayers. Of course the textbook publishers will clean up the mess of the demoted planet …think of all the obsolete science texts! —smf The newest graphic representation of the lines of accountability under AB 1381 LAUSD BILL CALLED UNCONSTITUTIONAL: State legislative counsel repeats opinion after text amendment by Harrison Sheppard, Staff Writer, LA Daily News 8/22/2006 - SACRAMENTO - On the eve of a key vote on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school-takeover plan, a new state legal opinion issued Monday reaffirmed that the proposal appears to be unconstitutional even after it was amended to address legal concerns. The opinion from state Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine echoes a review she issued earlier this summer finding that the Legislature does not have the legal authority to give a mayor control over a school district. ___________________________________________ CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION • EDUCATION Article 9 • § 6 • ¶ 3: “No school or college or any other part of the Public School System shall be, directly or indirectly, transferred from the Public School System or placed under the jurisdiction of any authority other than one included within the Public School System.” ______________________________________________ "I think it's pretty clear that the current language is unconstitutional," said Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, an opponent of the bill who requested the new opinion. "But I think further than that, it makes the argument as to why any language will be unconstitutional. I think that's the hurdle the mayor has to deal with." After Boyer-Vine's office issued that earlier opinion on July 17, Villaraigosa and bill author Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, D-Los Angeles, amended the bill to address concerns raised by her and by the city's legislative analyst. Those amendments included giving the county superintendent of education authority to approve Villaraigosa's proposal for a new mayor-controlled community partnership to directly oversee the lowest-performing schools. The idea behind that amendment was to allow existing educational agencies to have the ultimate authority, similar to a concept used in the law allowing charter schools, which successfully withstood constitutional doubts. Runner had requested that the Legislative Counsel's Office review the new language. The opinion she issued Monday, signed by deputy counsel Gerardo Partida, was nearly identical to the previous document. The opinion notes that no court has addressed the question, but case law and a reading of the state constitution lead to the conclusion that the constitution "would be construed by a court to prohibit the Legislature from transferring by statute authority or control over educational functions currently performed by a school district to the mayor of a charter city." But Villaraigosa and his allies remain undeterred. Thomas Saenz, the mayor's legal counsel, noted that the legislative counsel's review is just one opinion, and that the office has been wrong on other bills in the past. The Legislature is free to ignore that opinion and allow the courts to decide the matter, he said. "It is our view that even without the county superintendent provision, with due respect, the opinion is wrong and the law would be upheld," Saenz said. "We added the county superintendent piece just as an additional protection against a legal challenge." The opinion was issued as Villaraigosa returned to Sacramento again to try to round up votes for his proposal, which is expected to come to a Senate floor vote this week. Los Angeles Unified School District board President Marlene Canter also returned to Sacramento, her 13th trip, to lobby against the bill. "Whenever it goes on the Senate floor, my hope is that it moves as quickly as possible," Villaraigosa said. "I imagine there will be a vigorous debate." Canter said in speaking to legislators one of the common concerns was about the constitutionality of the bill. She also thinks the effort will interfere with progress the district has made in improving test scores and other academic measures. "The last thing you want is a mess," Canter said. "And this has the potential of being one. And that's not what the kids of L.A. need. I continue to think that there are better ways to go about doing this." AB 1381 - The actual bill, as amended (Warning: Subject to Change!) THE POWER AGENDA: Why Does City Hall Deny the Truth About Mayor V’s School Plan? written by David Zahniser | LA Weekly Wednesday, 23 August 2006 ― This isn't about power, declared Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a few days before the state Senate was set to vote on legislation that would put him at the top of the organizational chart of the Los Angeles Unified School District. But if it isn’t, why can’t the mayor and his allies stop bringing it up? For weeks, Villaraigosa deftly wielded his political talents, driving his public-school steamroller ever closer to the office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican who promised to sign the bill to overhaul L.A. Unified sight unseen. Using a hefty arsenal of carrots and sticks, Villaraigosa got a reluctant Los Angeles City Council to fall in line, dangling before them the possibility of a third term in office. And in L.A. Unified’s southeast cities, he enticed recalcitrant mayors with the promise of their greater influence over the school district, from veto power over hiring decisions to site selection for new schools. Yet as he edged closer to victory, Villaraigosa and his allies worked strenuously to downplay the behind-the-scenes horse trading and arm twisting. He pointedly brought up the P-word a week ago, telling the Senate Appropriations Committee that power had nothing to do with his desire to select the next superintendent — and run as many as 50 low-performing schools. Villaraigosa’s close ally, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, raised the issue as well, telling the committee minutes earlier that the mayor had many things in mind for the school district, but certainly not power. Not that. Performing a victory lap a day later, Villaraigosa mentioned power yet again — arguing that it played no role in his public-education campaign, an apparatus funded by more than $1 million in contributions from Republican allies like Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio, an executive at Univision, the Spanish-language station that broadcasts a weekly chat with Villaraigosa titled A Su Lado, or On Your Side in English. “No matter what you hear, this bill is not about mayoral control, power or politics,” Villaraigosa told reporters at City Hall. “It’s about creating better schools for our kids.” Yet officials at L.A. Unified — and even a couple of emboldened Democratic legislators — seemed to stray from the script crafted for them by Núñez and Senate President Don Perata, not to mention Schwarzenegger, who is running for reelection and received a pass for an entire summer from the most powerful Democrat in Southern California. Senator Deborah Ortiz blew the whistle the loudest, telling a filled-to-capacity chamber in Sacramento that she had misgivings about the bill but had been instructed by the Democratic leadership to vote for it anyway. Ortiz bluntly called Villaraigosa’s bill an experiment, saying it creates a new bureaucracy, offers no suggestions on how to improve education and could be struck down in court. The Sacramento Democrat even hinted at the possibility that she could be punished if she votes no on the bill, known as Assembly Bill 1381. “I understand you’re speaker of the Assembly, and that it’s a very important bill,” Ortiz advised Núñez. “I have some very important bills that I hope you will have an equally open mind about, as I move through the last two weeks of my career. But I have to be honest with you, I’m not convinced this is the solution. I’m prepared to vote for this, but there is a lot at risk.” Senator Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, couldn’t avoid the topic either, but tried to put a friendly face on Villaraigosa’s push for increased mayoral oversight. “In the final analysis, this bill is about power and control,” said Murray, as he name-dropped his roommate experiences with Villaraigosa. “But power not for power’s sake, but power in terms of moving your program along.” On its face, the mayor’s skillful use of power represents a desire for control. Villaraigosa has left little to chance in his battle with L.A. Unified, which may explain why he chartered three private buses to deliver parents and children to his own education town hall/rally for A.B. 1381 in Lincoln Heights. The moment it looked like U.S. Representative Maxine Waters was unhappy with his school campaign, Villaraigosa hustled over to South L.A., hitting six African-American churches on a single Sunday in an effort to corral his base. Villaraigosa spent much of the past week trying to swap one P-word for another, telling reporters and policymakers alike that the L.A. Unified bill is about partnership, not power. Partnership, after all, has a warm, cuddly sound to it. But a bid for power? That just sounds crass. Even Villaraigosa’s efforts at teamwork didn’t sound all that collaborative. Only two weeks ago, Villaraigosa in-house counsel Thomas Saenz said that the mayor planned to team up with parents, community leaders and principals to improve 50 low-performing schools. Villaraigosa plans to do that, however, by personally selecting each of the parents, teachers and community representatives who will serve on the eight-member committees responsible for such improvements. So is that partnership? Or power? L.A. Unified Superintendent Roy Romer, no stranger to hardball politics himself, made the cardinal mistake of calling the game for what it was, telling lawmakers publicly that he viewed passage of the bill as a done deal. Senator Dean Florez, D-Shafter, took umbrage at such an accusation — especially after Romer compared the bill to the Legislature’s disastrous attempt at electrical deregulation during the 1990s. “I wasn’t sure Governor Romer was here to convince us or insult us,” Florez huffed. Romer offered an array of warnings about the bill, saying it could be a precursor to breakup, since different sections of L.A. Unified could be offered a chance to make their own hiring decisions. But Romer sounded like King Lear in Sacramento, railing over the district’s political misfortune as lawmakers looked away. Reality briefly intruded on Villaraigosa’s march to Sacramento, forcing him to turn from his school campaign to an annoying municipal matter — a strike by the 7,500-member Engineers and Architects Union. The EAA supported the mayor during the 2005 election, spending $110,000 on radio advertisements and other campaign expenses, only to turn on him viciously once Villaraigosa refused to give them the same salary package as workers at the Department of Water and Power. Yet despite all the hype surrounding Villaraigosa’s decision to cross a picket line, it was hard to view the EAA strike as serious drama. This was no MTA walkout, with bus drivers crippling the city’s ability to serve its citizens. These were building inspectors, city planners, tech-support workers and public-relations people. Sure they’re important. But will the voters rise up when a second-story home addition can’t get through plan check? Not likely. Even as the mayor outmaneuvered the EAA, another seasoned pol flexed his considerable political clout. Former mayor Richard Riordan, a backer of Villaraigosa’s plan for L.A. Unified, worked behind the scenes to rewrite portions of the bill, worrying that a judge will strike down the provisions that give the mayor more power while preserving the language that strengthens the hand of the teachers union. Villaraigosa spokeswoman Janelle Erickson pooh-poohed such efforts, offering a lulu to the Los Angeles Times. “We need to shift the focus away from legislative maneuvering and put it back in the classroom,” she told the newspaper. The thing is, Villaraigosa’s bill is the naked result of legislative maneuvering, from a closed-door deal with the teachers union to billionaire Eli Broad’s telephone calls to Núñez last spring. That’s because Núñez and Villaraigosa insisted from the beginning that the neutering of the seven-member school board had to be decided in Sacramento — not Los Angeles, where voters spent the past century electing that board. But then, letting the voters make such an important decision would have meant giving up — how else to say it? — power. ►Does the multi billion dollar budget of LAUSD attract power hungry politicians? The Full Disclosure Network special Video News Blog (12 min) LET L.A. VOTERS MAKE THE CALL + L.A. MAYOR SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON HIS CITY'S PROBLEMS ►LET L.A. VOTERS MAKE THE CALL San Francisco Chronicle Editorial – Monday, August 21, 2006 – Both Sacramento and Washington are running roughshod over a basic principle of the educational system in the United States: our schools are supposed to be administered by locally elected school boards. Sacramento is about to revamp the way the Los Angeles Unified School District is run. With three-quarters-of-a million students, it is by far the state's largest school district. Legislators are moving to approve a complicated -- and we think misguided -- plan to give Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other mayors partial control over the vast district. Under Villaraigosa's plan, which the former Assembly speaker is peddling to his old pals in the statehouse, L.A. Unified would be partially run by the school board and partly by a "council of mayors" -- consisting of Villaraigosa and his counterparts from 26 other cities within the district. This is the kind of decision that shouldn't be made in the clubby atmosphere of Sacramento, where most legislators have no direct stake in the quality of L.A. schools. The decision on how best to run a school district should be made by local voters. But Los Angeles voters will not be given an opportunity to weigh in on the issue -- probably because there is at least an even chance they'll reject it. Speaker Fabian Núñez has already signed off on Villaraigosa's plan. Some suspect Núñez's enthusiasm is partly linked to his desire to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2010, when Villaraigosa is expected to run for governor. Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he'll approve Villaraigosa's school power grab -- even before he has seen the arrangement being cooked up in Sacramento. It's probably no accident that Villaraigosa has yet to endorse Phil Angelides, his party's candidate for governor. Villaraigosa needs Schwarzenegger's signature on this plan. What makes this "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" strategem hard to fathom is that even as Villaraigosa trashes the Los Angeles schools, they have made measurable progress under the leadership of Superintendent Roy Romer. As a revealing Los Angeles Times article noted last week, Villaraigosa has "focused on data that present the district in the worst possible way, almost entirely discounting that the school system is improving faster academically than many other school districts and compared to California as a whole." Why should those of us up north even care if some of our political leaders muck up a school system that can and must do more, but for the first time in years appears to be on the right track? The answer is twofold. Because L.A. Unified serves so many of California's young people, including a significant percentage just learning English and/or from low-income homes, their success or failure in school will have a profound impact on the future of the state. Also, if legislators can muscle through a reorganization of the Los Angeles schools, there will be nothing to stop them from doing the same thing to any other school district anywhere else in the state. ________________________________ ►L.A. MAYOR SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON HIS CITY'S PROBLEMS Editorial by Jim Boren | The Fresno Bee Sunday, August 20, 2006 — There are many ways that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa can improve the education of Los Angeles children, but allowing him to take over the school system isn't one of them. The battle in Sacramento to give the mayor control of the Los Angeles Unified School District is more about political power than a well-crafted strategy that would turn around a struggling district. The suggestion that L.A. Unified will magically get better if the mayor has control over it is just plain fantasy. What politicians don't seem to understand — or prefer to ignore — is that it takes hard work to improve a school system, especially one as big as L.A. Unified with large numbers of impoverished neighborhoods. But Villaraigosa wants us to believe that he has some secret plan that no one else has thought of. Some of us watching from the sidelines wonder — apparently naively — why the mayor doesn't fix all that ails the city of Los Angeles before he takes on the L.A. schools. But then this may be more about Villaraigosa making a public relations splash in the schools to beef up his résumé to run for governor in four years. OK, mayor, you want to help the schools? Do what you were elected to do: Solve the major problems facing Los Angeles. It's no coincidence that school test scores follow the poverty line. It's that way in every city in America. Here are some ideas So here's a strategy for Villaraigosa if he's really serious about enhancing the quality of education in L.A. Unified: Improve the poorest areas of Los Angeles. If he looks closely, he'll undoubtedly find that the low-achieving schools are in neighborhoods with high unemployment and low economic opportunity. Create jobs and give families the advantages of those living in more prosperous neighborhoods, and test scores will rise accordingly. Solve the crime problem, especially the rampant use of drugs among young people, and control the street gangs that abound in Los Angeles. Find a way to give every family in Los Angeles access to decent medical care so that all children can go to school healthy and give their best when they are in class. Create affordable housing across sprawling Los Angeles. What is more basic than being able to live in a safe neighborhood where children can go outdoors without fear of being a victim of violence? Solve the homeless problem. Thousands of homeless children in Los Angeles don't even attend school and those who do have bigger problems than getting their homework done. In Fresno, this is an old story. Mayor Alan Autry, a Republican, has been trying to run the school system ever since he was elected mayor in 2000. He even went to the Legislature for that power, but was shot down by most of the same Democrats who now are ready to give Villaraigosa power over Los Angeles schools. But Autry, like Villaraigosa, didn't have any creative ideas to fix the schools beyond the platitudes that the L.A. mayor is offering: using the bully pulpit of the office to force reform; create public-private partnerships with the schools; hire a superintendent committed to making the schools better. In Fresno, there's begun to be a turn-around in the schools, but not because of Autry's obsession to run them. He belatedly joined a movement that has elected reform candidates to the school board and they have put Fresno Unified on the right track. Back good candidates Villaraigosa could do the same thing — essentially taking over L.A. Unified by getting his candidates elected to office. But that takes work, and it appears to be much easier for the former Assembly speaker and his Sacramento pals to ram a bill through the Legislature giving him power over the schools. This bill, however, is an odd piece of legislation. The latest news stories say it would also give some power to the other cities in the sprawling district, although Villaraigosa would have the most. There would be a weighted vote by a "council of mayors" on selecting a superintendent, and a bunch of other convoluted language. The district is going to have to hire more attorneys just to figure out how to interpret the provisions in the Villaraigosa takeover legislation. But while the mayor is on his power grab, he may not realize the big political risk down the road. If he doesn't make Los Angeles' campuses blue-ribbon schools with his bully-pulpit reforms, he's going to be considered a huge failure. Then he not only will preside over a city that doesn't work, but also be in charge of a school system that's failing. Seems like it would make much more sense for Villaraigosa to work on city problems, which is the job description for a mayor. That not only would improve the quality of life in L.A., it would help make the schools better. ▲Jim Boren is The Fresno Bee's editorial page editor. At the Senate Education Committee hearing a Senator from Fresno tried unsuccessfully to amend Fresno Unified School District into AB 1381! THE STRUGGLE FOR EDUCATION By Selene Rivera, Eastern Group Publications Staff Writer (Northeast & Eastside Sun, etc.) August 21, 2006 — A survey conducted by United Students at Garfield and Roosevelt high schools in the fall of 2005 revealed that 77 percent of students want to go to college, but only one out of 10 students realizes their dream. As part of an effort to decrease this alarming statistic and to empower students, most of them low income minorities, an East Los Angeles organization, InnerCity Struggle, ICS, last weekend presented the fourth annual “Educational Justice Week,” an event in which students from Garfield and Roosevelt high schools participated. Starting on June 28 and culminating August 11, the Justice Week workshops and events traveled from campus to campus. Students at each of the events had the opportunity to get informed about the A-G courses/curriculum (15 preparation classes required to enter a college or a university) through workshops, college fairs at which information about 15 colleges and universities was distributed, and an opportunity for students to set up appointments with their local school counselors to talk about their educational future. Organizers hope that this event “will raise students awareness on what classes they need to take in order to graduate and go on to a 4-year university,” stated ICS director, Luis Sanchez. Garfield High School is one of the biggest schools in the nation with more than 4,800 students but only 62 percent of its courses are “A-G curriculum courses.” Only 65 percent of these classes are available at Roosevelt High School, according to the event’s organizers. “I didn’t know I had to take these classes, but I think I will take advantage of the fair and inform myself about the things I can do to get the classes… I hope it’s not too late,” said Garfield High student Maria Hernandez. But ICS didn’t just limit their efforts to providing information during Justice Week activities, the organization also surveyed about 1,800 students on the A-G courses. “The data will be presented to the Los Angeles Unified School District and elected officials to demonstrate the need for courses and learning support for the successful implementation of the A-G college preparation curriculum,” said Sanchez. As the music played and students gathered information, several different students speakers addressed the education crisis and what students need to do to continue their education. Many of the students at the event said they would like to see more of these events taking place at their schools, since many admitted they didn’t know much about the A- G courses, or the process to getting into to college. According to Sanchez, only 16 percent of Garfield’s 9th graders complete high school four years later having satisfied the A-G requirements. Due to the high student drop-out rate and the need for more college preparatory courses at high schools in Los Angeles, LAUSD approved a resolution more than a year ago to require all students to complete the A-G curriculum starting in 2008. The occaisional rant: AN INFORMATION CHALLENGE Are you tired of The Mayor's Plan and AB 1381? Join the club. The other day I was trying to think of what I'd be doing during August – a supposed-to-be-uneventful month in LAUSD – if I wasn't so engaged in the mayor's jihad. His word, not mine. Vacation doesn't work; my daughter is at a year 'round school. Cleaning off my desk – or out the garage - would be good but the overachiever in me doesn't find that a worthy goal – and the procrastinator within seconded the motion. Then I remembered something I had kvetched to a school board member about – a response to a well meant "What could we do now to make it better for parents?" The LAUSD Switchboard! If you've ever called (213)241-1000 and tried to get information or connected when you weren't already positive who you wanted to talk to or what office to ask you know where I'm going: VMH! I decided to call a rather prominent department head in an office I know the name of but didn't have the direct dial phone number for. (If you're a district employee and want to replicate this experiment call 241-1000 and ask to be connected to yourself – or better still describe what you do but don't use your name or title. If you're a board member it's no fair pressing the "push X for board members now.") One enters Voice Mail Hell (VMH) almost immediately – and pressing the button for LAUSD information leads one through several levels of button pressing and exposes one to all kinds of options for information – and information itself (all employee-centric) until one is eventually admitted to the queue to speak to an information operator. I was encouraged to seek help on the internet – but let's get real: How many LAUSD parents have access to the internet? My call was important to them, there was the omnipresent unusual volume of calls, operators were busy helping other people. I was thanked for my patience – obviously the prerecorded voice didn't know me well! The horrible music on hold ("Romer's Theme") entertained me - interrupted by regular periodic reminders of how important my call was, and I was helped in only nineteen minutes. The number given me was the correct one …but the person I needed to speak to was not available. He hasn't returned my call yet. Here's my point: I'm an insider. I normally get connected by calling people who know people who have the numbers and information I need. But the average parent who calls into LAUSD doesn't know the system. They probably don't know the name of the person or the department they want. They may not speak English well. And they are probably calling about something important to the most important person in their life: Their child. It may well be something they feel uncomfortable discussing with the school office staff or the principal – maybe they want to discuss the staff or principal. And the telephone system itself becomes a firewall between the system and the parent. LAUSD does have an online database of names and phone numbers available to the internet connected – if they have an 'Inside LAUSD' account! In other words: If they're an employee! This may come as news: The school district is not there to serve or even help the employees – it's there to serve children, their parents and families. It can start by doing a much better job at answering the phones. And LAUSD can learn something from the City of LA here – their 311 service is pretty good, pretty efficient, pretty friendly. It's also pretty blocked from most school site and district phones — that's something else that needs fixing! - smf Download the whole LAUSD Phonebook updated last Friday - Offices but no names - how good is that? EVENTS: Coming up next week... Monday Aug 28 ADMISSION DAY Some LAUSD offices and schools closed Tuesday Aug 29 – 10:30 AM PARENT RALLY & PRESS CONFERENCE AGAINST AB 1381 City Hall Thursday Aug 31 – 9AM SPECIAL AUGMENTED FACILITIES COMMITTEE MEETING LAUSD Board Room – 333 Beaudry Ave. Thursday Aug 31 6PM SOUTH REGION HIGH SCHOOL #13: PRE-DESIGN MEETING Join us at this meeting where we will: * Introduce the Project Architect to the community * Provide overview of the school facilities, including: number of classrooms, library, lunch area, etc. * Review LAUSD design principles * Receive community input on school design Drew Middle School 8511 Compton Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90001 *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • 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 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? ►CONTACT YOUR ASSEMBLYPERSON AND STATE SENATOR [link below to find them]. 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 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 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. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? 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.

4LAKids: Special - MARCH ON CITY HALL!

4LAKids: Special MARCH ON CITY HALL! In This Issue: • PARENTS (& Others) MARCH ON CITY HALL: Thursday August 24th - 9AM - BE THERE 4LAKids! • NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARD ASSOCIATION: GALLUP POLL DELIVERS STRONG MESSAGE ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC'S DISTASTE FOR MAYORAL TAKEOVER • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • READING TO KIDS: Read to some kids the second Saturday morning each month. Make a difference. Change some lives (including your own!). • The Blueprint for Effective School Reform: MAKING SCHOOLS WORK — Get the Book @ Amazon.com! • THE BEST RESOURCE ON CALIFORNIA SCHOOL FUNDING ON THE WEB: The Sacramento Bee's series • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. PARENTS (& Others) MARCH ON CITY HALL: Thursday August 24th - 9AM - BE THERE 4LAKids! Parents, Taxpayers, Community Members, Teachers, Concerned Citizens, Concerned Non-Citizens & Students Who Are Not In School: JOIN OUR MARCH TO SAVE OUR SCHOOLS! NO MAYORAL TAKEOVER! WE ARE MARCHING THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 2006 FROM PERSHING SQUARE TO CITY HALL CALLING ALL CONCERNED TAXPAYERS!!!! YES, PARENTS ARE TAXPAYERS, TOO !! YES, PARENTS ARE VOTERS, TOO!! ...AND YES, KIDS MATTER!! ASSEMBLING AT 9:00 A.M.AT PERSHING SQUARE NEAR THE RED LINE STATION AIN'T NO STOPPING US NOW! WE'RE ON THE MOVE!" STOP AB 1381 FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL: DR. PRINCESS SYKES - (323) 610-9651 ROSALIA (310) 261-2260 HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT OUR CITY STREETS LOOK LIKE JUST LESS THAN A MILE FROM CITY HALL? IS THIS WHAT OUR SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE? MR. MAYOR, CLEAN UP OUR CITY BEFORE YOU TRY TO TAKE OVER OUR SCHOOL DISTRICT!!!!!!!!! SUPPORT OUR SCHOOLS: BE THERE! If you need transportation buses will leave Audubon Middle School Century Park Elementary School and the Parent Community Services Branch on Cesar Chavez at 8:30 AM! Bus Info: 213.241-6382 Map NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARD ASSOCIATION: GALLUP POLL DELIVERS STRONG MESSAGE ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC'S DISTASTE FOR MAYORAL TAKEOVER This just in: Press Release from nsba.org Alexandria, Va. – August 22 – Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, said that the 38th annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward Public Schools released today delivers a strong message about the importance of local communities and local governance. In a commentary invited and published by PDK as part of this year’s poll, Bryant noted that the poll continues to reflect “that the closer the public is to its schools, the higher it rates them. Interestingly, we see that a majority of the public prefers that local school boards have the greatest influence over what is taught in the public schools. School boards need to set local high academic goals that reflect state and national standards and also incorporate the needs and desires of their local communities. “Further,” Bryant said in her commentary, “the poll shows the public’s distaste emerge for mayoral interference as nearly 70 percent of the public opposes having a mayor take over the public schools even as an answer to turning around low-performing schools. This public sentiment aligns closely with a recent policy adoption by our governing body that strongly opposed mayoral takeovers. Instead, mayors should work on other factors that impact academics such as crime, housing costs, and health care.” She also noted that pre-school comes to the forefront this year, as a majority of respondents say that they would be willing to pay more taxes for funding preschool programs for children from low-income or poverty-level households. This is a dramatic increase over past years’ numbers and emphasizes the value the public puts on early childhood education. Bryant noted that “The public continues to see funding as the biggest problem for public schools, which remains a concern for all of us as Congress backs away from its promise to fully fund programs that can make a difference for children who desperately need help.” This reinforces the results of NSBA’s own poll of 1,200 likely voters in which 70 percent of respondents said that Congress should restore funding for No Child Left Behind and special education programs in next year’s budget to the authorized levels. To read the details of this year’s PDK/Gallup Poll, please visit http://www.pdkintl.org. • The National School Boards Association is a national federation of state school boards associations that represent more than 95,000 school board members who govern the nation’s public schools. The organization’s mission is to foster excellence and equity in public elementary and secondary education throughout the United States through local school board leadership. FROM THE REPORT: 1) FINDINGS: a) While 58% still prefer that the local school board make decisions as to what is taught in local schools, that percentage is down from 68% in 1980. b) The shift has been in the direction of the state level, where the percentage has grown from 15% to 26%. c) The percentage saying the federal government should have the greatest influence has gone up from 9% to 14%. d) Contracting out the operation of entire public school systems is now approved by 24% of respondents, down from 31% in 2002. e) Having the mayor take over control of schools with a large number of low-performing students is favored by only 29%. CONCLUSION: The public's preference is that the local school board make decisions about what the schools teach. Of those favoring decisions at the state or federal level, two-thirds opt for the state. True to its preference for change through the existing school system, the public opposes contracting with private firms for the operation of schools and having mayors take over schools with large numbers of low-performing students. What can YOU do? BE THERE AND MARCH 4LAKids! Bring Water. Wear Sunscreen. Wear a Hat. Be Right and Righteous! ►CONTACT YOUR ASSEMBLYPERSON AND STATE SENATOR [link below to find them]. 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 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 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. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? 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.

Inoculating against the poison pill

4LAKids: Sunday, August 13, 2006 In This Issue: • LOS ANGELES COUNCIL OKS MAYOR'S IDEA FOR SCHOOLS: Panel members vote 15 to 0 to back Villaraigosa's plan to get some control over the district. • NEW HARVARD STUDIES ON MAYORAL LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION: "Mayoral Control Has Not Lived Up To Optimistic Projections" • WRONG SCHOOL BILL, RIGHT IDEA: Let's get real mayoral control of LAUSD • WHERE NAY IS RARELY HEARD: Is the Boston School Committee working for you? • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources TAKEOVER WHAT? | TUTORING+NCLB | FLUFFY DUFFY • EVENTS: Coming up next week... • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • READING TO KIDS: Read to some kids the second Saturday morning each month. Make a difference. Change some lives (including your own!). • The Blueprint for Effective School Reform: MAKING SCHOOLS WORK — Get the Book @ Amazon.com! • THE BEST RESOURCE ON CALIFORNIA SCHOOL FUNDING ON THE WEB: The Sacramento Bee's series • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. There are some that say that Friday's unanimous City Council vote to support the Mayor's plan to take over LAUSD was a quid pro quo for his support of their Proposition R on the November Ballot to add a third term to the Council's two term limit. Prop R (described elsewhere as "the heinous measure that will ask voters to reward the incompetence and arrogance of the current LA City Council by extending their term limits") was also not fully vetted through public discussion or the normal processes for a City Charter change – but at least they're putting it on the ballot! I'm not an admirer of conspiracy theories – and when I do I like a little more of the John LeCarré and a little less of the tommy gun in the violin case. But here's my thinking: The council wanted to be sure there would be no liability for the city in the Mayor's governance of LAUSD. And the Mayor's legal team got them what they wanted – it's there in the amendments: Should something go wrong, through misfortune or malfeasance – should the Council of Mayors or Hizzoner himself make a mistake or misbehave (at this point in time none of the potential Council of Mayors are under indictment, on trial or awaiting sentencing – though this has not always been the case) the School District is left with the bill. The legislative term of art for this is the City and the Council of Mayors have been "inoculated" against claims. From anything. Whatsoever. Council of Mayors goes to Cancun with the textbook money? LAUSD is holding the bag! Except in federal court. No matter how far afield of the state constitution they wander the legislature can't protect the city there. So here's what the City Council needs to worry about now: • Liability under the federal Voting Rights Act, compromised by AB 1381. • Federal liability in ongoing and continuing LAUSD non-compliance with No Child Left Behind. • Federal liability in ongoing and continuing LAUSD non-compliance with Title One. • Liability in ongoing and continuing LAUSD pension and benefits underfunding. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo – no fan of the Council's shenanigans on Prop R – never weighed in on AB 1381 as amended – quite wisely saying that he could have no opinion on a bill that constantly changes. Plus this way he doesn't get any on him. And I guess the City Council wasn't listening when an assistant city attorney told them "such a case might well end up before the U.S. Supreme Court because of its novelty and public importance." But then Rocky himself warned 'em that Prop R would draw a court challenge. Of course there's also an inoculation against the City having to pay litigation costs in any lawsuits. Unless they lose. THIS PAST WEEK HAS BEEN VERY INTERESTING FOR ME GOING BACKWARDS: FRIDAY I went to testify at the City Council about local and state PTA's – and most parents' – objection to AB 1381. I said that 60,000 card carrying PTA members in LAUSD officially oppose it. The one million members statewide oppose it. And good grief, even more non-PTA parents oppose it. And after I spoke Bill Rosendahl, a city councilman from the Westside said he was going to support AB 1381 because – and I quote "parents in his district are forming PTAs and taking back their schools." Somehow parent involvement proves the need for mayoral control? And Chief Parks, councilman from the Central City said he realized that that the council needed to do things like study mayoral control in Boston and New York – but he voted for AB 1381 too. First you do your homework, and then you take the test. Other councilpeople said good things. Padilla. LaBonge. Garcetti. Perry. Reyes. Councilwoman Hahn introduced her son – he'd signed up to be a math teacher in LAUSD that very day. Good - we need math teachers. And then the City Council drank the Kool Aid. THURSDAY I was at a great event in Nickerson Gardens. Office Depot was giving away back to school backpacks and school supplies to disadvantaged kids. This is a great public partnership – Office Depot and Kids in Need, PTA and about a dozen other agencies and the City of LA. The Mayor was there doing what mayors are supposed to do in supporting kids and education. There is actually a photograph of him and me with big silly smiles. Children played in the sunshine and squirmed and fidgeted in folding chairs and were rewarded with backpacks. There are crayons to bring their dreams to life. Pencils to write the story that will be our story. Erasers to make good the mistakes we will make. AND THE DAY BEFORE THAT the State Department brought a dozen educators from Asia on a US tour to my PTA office and medical/dental/vision clinic to learn how we do things here. Chinese, Vietnamese, Pilipino, Cambodian, Thai, Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian educators who were here in LA to find out how we educate our kids and engage parents in the process. Think about that a second. They are studying us. Their test scores are higher. Their graduation and dropout rates are better. But they don't educate all their kids. They don't engage parents. And generally their kids all speak the same language. But they are here because they want to teach all their kids. Like us. OK, like us only better. And that's what we are trying to do too! There is a book about the global economy that says The World is Flat – that markets and clients and manufacturers and consumers are all on the same playing field together. We are all in it together. And in Asia they want to teach all their kids just like we want to teach ours. And that's a good thing. - smf LOS ANGELES COUNCIL OKS MAYOR'S IDEA FOR SCHOOLS: Panel members vote 15 to 0 to back Villaraigosa's plan to get some control over the district. HW WILL LOBBY LEGISLATORS AT HEARINGS NEXT WEEK By Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writer August 12, 2006 —Voting on a matter in which it has no real say but a decided political stake, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday unanimously endorsed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to gain some control over the city's public schools. Though it was a symbolic victory, Villaraigosa treated it as a significant milestone after months of lobbying the council to support a bill in the Legislature that would give him a measure of power over the Los Angeles Unified School District. The 15-0 vote allows Villaraigosa to go to Sacramento next week with the full support of the council and most of the city's largest business and labor organizations — and thereby demonstrate the breadth of his support to lawmakers who might have not strong feelings on the matter. Hearings on the bill will begin Monday in the state Senate's Appropriations Committee. The measure must clear the Legislature before its Aug. 31 recess or Villaraigosa will have to begin the process again. Getting the bill through Sacramento has already been an uphill battle for the mayor — and would have been even more difficult had he failed to sell even his own City Council on the plan. At a Friday afternoon news conference shortly after the council action, Villaraigosa said it had been "a long time" since he had worked so hard for a vote. "But I also know that the vote that is going to make or break this legislation is going to happen in Sacramento," he said. The political calculation for the council was simple: Either back a popular mayor who has made improving the schools his legacy project or support a school district that many of them have squabbled with, particularly over the siting of new facilities. The bill "is not perfect but nothing we do is perfect, and if we wait for the perfect solution we'll lose another couple of generations of children," Councilman Bernard C. Parks said toward the end of the council's nearly 3 1/2 -hour discussion. School board President Marlene Canter addressed the council before the vote. "I don't have any notes; I don't have any speech. I'm going to talk to you from my heart," said Canter, who praised the mayor for having a passion for the issues of schools. But, she said, ultimately the bill would only increase the district bureaucracy and give no clear line of authority to the school board, superintendent or the mayor. And she hinted that politics, not policy, was driving the matter. "I know this is a difficult political conversation; I know it is in Sacramento as well," Canter said. "There isn't one legislator I've spoken with that says it isn't flawed." The vote Friday was never really in doubt after two council panels voted unanimously Wednesday to support the bill. Even council members who have consistently voiced doubts about the plan came around to it. "I think it is a symbolic step that we're taking today to give more impetus to the mayor's effort," said Councilman Jan Perry, choosing her words carefully. "I think it's a plan with very lofty goals and there's a long road ahead, and with goodwill we may be able to get there." Other council members who had expressed doubts in the past were Alex Padilla and Janice Hahn. Padilla will probably win election to the state Senate in November but would not begin his term until January. In particular, he has pushed the council to scrutinize the bill in recent weeks, realizing that Villaraigosa had to listen because he couldn't risk the council's taking a stand against the legislation. Padilla and several other council members aired concerns Friday. Among other things, they said that the bill as it stands might violate the state Constitution, that it could make the city liable if someone sued the school district and that it would forbid school board members from hiring their own employees. "With all the room for improvements in the bill, I'm still willing to give it a chance," Padilla said after the vote. Councilman Jose Huizar said the vote to support the bill should not have been surprising, given the politics and substantive issues involved. "If there is not a role for the City Council in the bill, practically speaking the council will be more involved in education by default, because if it passes, the mayor will also be involved," said Huizar, a supporter of the mayor and a former Los Angeles Unified board president. He added: "I decided to go for the bill for two reasons. First, the new structure will be much better; it's a disastrous system now and has been for decades. Two, next time I vote for mayor, I will consider his accountability for the performance of the LAUSD." ►smf notes: "If there is not a role for the City Council in the bill, practically speaking the council will be more involved in education by default, because if it passes, the mayor will also be involved." This from a man on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University? If someone can discern the logic in that convoluted thinking I'm ready. NEW HARVARD STUDIES ON MAYORAL LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION: "Mayoral Control Has Not Lived Up To Optimistic Projections" NEW HARVARD STUDIES ON MAYORAL LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION "While we recognize the potential for increased mayoral involvement in public schooling, we have some concerns about it, especially in its most dramatic iteration — mayoral takeovers of school districts. "Mayoral takeovers in major U.S. cities have been occurring since 1991, when Boston jettisoned its elected school board in favor of a new board appointed exclusively by the mayor. Other cities followed: Chicago in 1995, Cleveland in 1998, Detroit in 1999, and New York City in 2002. "With fifteen years of history to draw on, some conclusions now can be made about whether this takeover movement has fully lived up to the optimistic predictions of its proponents — predictions that are now being echoed in Los Angeles. "IN OUR VIEW, THE ANSWER IS CLEAR: IT HAS NOT." — The Editors of the HARVARD EDUCATIONAL REVIEW – based on five studies Mayoral Takeovers in Education: A Recipe for Progress or Peril? published in the Summer 2006 issue The commentary above refers to the article, MAYORAL LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION: CURRENT TRENDS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS. (The full article – and other articles are available by paid subscription.) Check your library. MAYORS AND PUBLIC EDUCATION: THE CASE FOR GREATER INVOLVEMENT Michael D. Usdan Michael D. Usdan notes that while mayoral involvement in education is often advanced as a way to make school systems less political by diminishing the sometimes fractious politics of school boards, mayors themselves may be tempted to politicize the schools in self-serving ways. THE MATURING MAYORAL ROLE IN EDUCATION Michael W. Kirst and Fritz Edelstein In “The Maturing Mayoral Role in Education,” Michael W. Kirst and Fritz Edelstein describe how mayoral involvement in public education was transformed from an emblem of municipal corruption at the turn of the twentieth century to the hallmark of a new view of the mayoralty in the 1990s that focuses on municipal agency efficiency and problem-solving. Looking at mayoral engagement in education today, the authors delineate a basic typology of different levels of mayoral involvement in education, arguing that mayors must accurately assess their local context and their own capacity if they are to succeed in making a positive impact in education. THE POLITICAL DYNAMICS OF MAYORAL ENGAGEMENT IN PUBLIC EDUCATION Kenneth K. Wong Kenneth K. Wong builds on this basic framework in “The Political Dynamics of Mayoral Engagement in Public Education.” Wong examines the political and economic factors of cities that have compelled mayors to get more involved in education and discusses the specific ways mayors have spent their political capital in exercising such leadership. Wong argues that mayors have unique skill sets that can be brought to bear in the service of school systems, such as the ability to mobilize public support for education, strengthen school accountability, increase the managerial capacity of school districts, and manage intergovernmental relations. GETTING HOLD OF DISTRICT FINANCES: A MAKE-OR-BREAK ISSUE FOR MAYORAL INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION Paul T. Hill In “Getting Hold of District Finances: A Make-or Break Issue for Mayoral Involvement in Education,” Paul T. Hill calls attention to a little-studied but critical aspect of school system reform: the nontransparent and sometimes illogical ways school districts allocate funds and personnel, especially teachers. Drawing on a series of studies produced by his Center for Reinventing Public Education, Hill asserts that mayors who seek to reform their schools need to untangle the tendrils of school district accounting practices, and he warns that mayors who attempt large-scale school reform without first attempting to understand their district’s financial and personnel practices do so at their peril. USING MAYORAL INVOLVEMENT IN DISTRICT REFORM TO SUPPORT INSTRUCTIONAL CHANGE Warren Simmons, Ellen Foley, and Marla Ucelli Finally, Warren Simmons, Ellen Foley, and Marla Ucelli explore mayors’ capacity to foster school-level improvement in “Using Mayoral Involvement in District Reform to Support Instructional Change.” These authors contend that so far, mayoral efforts to reform public education have fostered shorttermchanges to school districts but have largely failed to spur more meaningful changes at the school and classroom levels. They offer several strategies mayors can use to deepen their impact on teaching and learning, such as creating portfolios of schools and replicating attributes of successful school districts in their own reform efforts. ▲4LAKids will make these articles available when and if they become available. MAYORAL LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION: Current Trends and Future Directions (excerpt) WRONG SCHOOL BILL, RIGHT IDEA: Let's get real mayoral control of LAUSD Opinion by William G. Ouchi, from the Los Angeles Times August 8, 2006 - The legislature is expected to vote soon on AB 1381, the bill that is meant to grant accountability for and control over the Los Angeles Unified School District to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. This proposal will have very harmful effects on the education of the children of Los Angeles. The effect of this bill has not been explained clearly, nor has there been consideration of any alternative bills to achieve the same goals. Before it's too late, let's do both. The idea behind the bill is that mayoral accountability for L.A. Unified will produce better management and better student performance. The superintendent is now under the control of an elected school board whose members are largely unknown to the public. Because these board members are anonymous, the argument goes, they cannot be held accountable by the public. Many voters can identify City Council members or county supervisors because their responsibilities are broad and touch many aspects of voters' lives. With single-purpose boards, though, it's different. Can you name members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, the Franchise Tax Board or the LAUSD board? If you don't know who they are, how are you holding them accountable? Without clear accountability, no one will make hard decisions, and the children will be the losers. This is a strong criticism of the system, and it points out real flaws. Mayoral accountability is proposed as the remedy because everyone knows who the mayor is, and the public can hold the mayor accountable for school performance. That's what is happening in New York City, Chicago and Boston, where voters know to blame Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor Richard Daley or Mayor Thomas Menino if the schools fail. The mayor has no easy outs, no excuses and no one else to blame in those cities. Although it has not been established that mayoral accountability always works to improve the schools, the argument is a reasonable one. Does AB 1381 provide for clear mayoral accountability? Not really. The problem is that L.A. Unified serves the children not only of the city of Los Angeles but also those of 26 other cities and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Under the bill, the LAUSD and its superintendent will be governed by the existing school board plus a new committee made up of the mayors of the district's 27 cities and the five members of the Board of Supervisors. If things go badly, will the public be able to turn its wrath on the mayor of L.A. or on any other mayor? Not likely, because we'll have a difficult time finding our mayor in that crowd of 32 committee members and seven school board members. What about mayoral control over the district in this legislation? Proponents claim that Villaraigosa would control the LAUSD because each mayor would have votes in proportion to the number of students he or she represents. Because Villaraigosa would have about 80% of the students, so the argument goes, he'd control 80% of the votes. If the committee of mayors decides policy by a majority vote, or even a super-majority two-thirds vote, the mayor of Los Angeles will always win and the other 26 mayors and the five county supervisors might as well stay at home. Except that no court of law is likely to permit this to happen because the citizens who are represented by those other mayors and the supervisors would be disenfranchised where the LAUSD is concerned. If this bill passes, it will probably be mired in legal challenges for years, leaving the district without any clear-cut governance at all. If our Legislature is serious about wanting to create mayoral accountability and control, here's a suggestion. Pass a bill that does two things: Give the mayor of Los Angeles total authority over L.A. Unified and permit any of the other 26 municipalities and the unincorporated areas that are entirely or partly in the district to pull out of it with a majority vote of their electorates. Voters should not be passive about AB 1381. Mayoral accountability might be the right thing for L.A. Unified, and Villaraigosa might be the right mayor to wield this power, but this bill would neither give him that power nor enable the public to hold him accountable for the performance of our schools. What it would do is leave us with even less accountability and more ambiguous control over the schools than we have today. ________________ WILLIAM G. OUCHI, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, is the author of "Making Schools Work." ▲smf opines: Read Bill Ouchi's seminal book "Making Schools Work" – about empowering principals and decentralizing school districts; it is some of the best thinking about radical school reform. I agree with Ouchi's conclusion (AB 1381 is bad) but on neither of his two bits of thinking here: • The mayor has too many other issues on his plate to give enough focus to LAUSD. • And I'm not alone in thinking that breakup of LAUSD would balkanize public education in LA and guarantee the socio-economic polarization between have-and-have-not/achieving-and-under-achieving communities and their good and bad schools. The Impact of Organization on the Performance of Nine School Systems: Lessons for California by William G. Ouchi, Bruce S. Cooper, and Lydia G. Segal WHERE NAY IS RARELY HEARD: Is the Boston School Committee working for you? ___________________________________________ THE LA TIMES HAS WAXED POETIC ABOUT THE 'BOSTON EXPERIENCE' (Not to be confused with the 'Texas Miracle' that brought us NCLB!) OVER THE LAST WEEK – HERE'S WHAT THE BOSTON PRESS IS SAYING IS GOING – AND NOT GOING – ON! ___________________________________________ By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe Staff Writer October 9, 2005 ― On a sleepy summer evening, Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant asked the School Committee to approve a change in the way the district's lottery system assigns children to schools. The board had been briefed on the plan before. Payzant spoke for 12 minutes, interrupted only when Committeewoman Marchelle Raynor raised a question. ''Other questions?" asked chairwoman Elizabeth Reilinger. There were none. The committee approved the change, 5 to 0. It was the third unanimous vote that evening. And, according to records, it was the 96th straight unanimous vote the School Committee had taken since March 2004, when one member voted ''nay" on the school budget. Boston replaced its elected School Committee in 1992 with a board appointed by the mayor, saying it would end the tumult and fractiousness that had characterized the school board. But if the old committee was almost a comic sideshow, the appointed one appears to operate at times with the singlemindedness of the old Soviet Politburo. ''It's all a rubber stamp. They're just rubber stamps," said Peggy Wiesenberg, a Boston Latin School parent and member of the Citywide Parents Council, after a July meeting. And while the appointed board has certainly brought about efficiency, it has also created one of the least visible parts of city government, critics contend. Many parents do not know the members on the committee. Only two parents regularly attend the board meetings, and one is the mother of a student representative to the board. Of seven board members, two have listed home phone numbers. Members did not have public e-mail addresses until June. ''I don't know that anybody knows who they are," said Tess Pope, head of the parent council at the James W. Hennigan Elementary School. ''You know what it's like to me? It's like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain." For years, the school board has also resisted televising its meetings on local cable. Councilor John Tobin, chairman of the council's education committee, has tried to persuade the School Committee to allow the broadcast, which is done in about 60 percent of the state's school systems, according to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. ''I don't understand what the reluctance is. It's customer service," Tobin said. ''Clearly people are looking for more transparency and more accessibility in their public officials, whether they're elected or appointed." Tobin said jokingly that the meetings are so predictable, down to who attends and where they sit, he could ''walk in with a blindfold and tap people in their chairs." In an interview with the Globe, Reilinger defended how the appointed board operates, and said there is no attempt to shut out the public. She said she is considering televising the meetings, which she describes as a little cut and dried sometimes. Votes are often unanimous, she said, because the committee sometimes takes three to six weeks to consider Payzant's recommendations and listen to community input. ''The School Committee is not a rubber stamp, but we're also not there to entertain people," Reilinger said. Mayor Thomas M. Menino also defended the board's performance, saying the panel sets broad education policy for students systemwide, rather than catering to special interests or the wishes of individual constituents, as the elected board did. He and others say the smoothness of the board's working relationship with Payzant has created unusual stability for the system, and will help attract top talent when the committee hires a new superintendent next year. Board members, who are appointed for four-year terms and receive $7,500 stipends, also set curriculum requirements, and oversee programs such as special education, technical-vocational education, and bilingual education. Before 1992, the elected board micromanaged the day-to-day operations of schools, frequently ran the school system into debt, and drove superintendents out of the system, observers say. Members engaged in petty arguments, hurling insults at one another. The members also arrived late and left early, getting up from their chairs mid-meeting to chat with other members, according to minutes from the 1980s. And in at least one case, a committee member threatened to punch the superintendent. ''When you're talking about public education, it can't be 'The Gong Show,' " Menino said. There is little nostalgia for those days. Councilor at Large Maura Hennigan, who is also running for mayor, has suggested a return to an elected school board, but so far the issue has not caught fire. Still, there is some frustration with the way the appointed board does its work. During the two-hour meetings, Payzant dominates, sometimes talking for 30 minutes at a time. Two committee members -- Angel Amy Moreno, a university professor, and Alfreda J. Harris, the longest-serving on the board -- rarely speak. Sometimes it is Jewel Cash Jr., the student representative and a junior at Boston Latin Academy, who asks the toughest questions. Other members politely ask questions but rarely disagree. They may delay a vote and request the school system staff provide more information on a topic, but almost always follow Payzant's recommendations, whether it's breaking up high schools into smaller schools, adding more kindergarten classes or closing down schools. In 2004, there was one ''nay" vote out of 70 ''action" votes. (That excludes procedural votes, such as voting to adjourn a meeting.) All 51 action votes so far in 2005 have been unanimous. ''Too often they just get reports from staff, which, not surprisingly, can be self-serving," said John Mudd, senior project director at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, who attends each meeting. ''There needs to be opportunities for more openness for the public to express their opinion and for the School Committee members to ask questions and debate among themselves. Things often feel as though either decisions have already been made before they come to the meeting or an extraordinary deference to the proposals of the superintendent." Members of the public are given three minutes to speak on topics during designated periods at each meeting. That limit is a sore point for Wiesenberg, the Boston Latin parent, who is often shut down for exceeding her time. ''You get three minutes and then you're gaveled down," Wiesenberg said. ''So where are people going? To their city councilors. Because the School Committee has not asked hard questions, you have the education committee of the City Council as the bulwark of democracy. That's ironic." Helen Dajer, who was appointed this year, said she would support more open debate on the board. ''When things get presented at the meeting it's almost as though it's 'Here it is for your information,' " Dajer said. ''It doesn't seem to be the right forum for a real active discussion. . . .The good thing is people don't talk to each other behind anybody's back. But the bad thing is no one talks to each other about anything." HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources TAKEOVER WHAT? | TUTORING+NCLB | FLUFFY DUFFY ►MAYORAL TAKEOVER: IF IT'S GOOD FOR THE SCHOOLS, WHY NOT THE CITY? Editorial from LA Daily News August 6, 2006 — MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA is taking his pitch for school reform to the people all across Los Angeles, painting a disturbing picture of a bloated bureaucracy in dire straits and failing an entire generation of Angelenos. He talks about the second-largest government agency of its kind that should be among the most respected in the world but somehow can't seem to even accomplish its most basic responsibilities with its multibillion-dollar budget. He decries the disconnect between the agency's officials and constituents, describing a bureaucracy that has become so remote from the people it serves that it can't hope to turn around without outside intervention. Which is, of course, where he comes in a take-charge mayor who will get things fixed, hold people accountable and empower ordinary folks to play important roles. But wait a minute: Is Villaraigosa talking about the Los Angeles Unified School District or the city he heads? Villaraigosa's assessment of the LAUSD and its current state of abject failure is right on target. But what he doesn't see or perhaps doesn't want to acknowledge is that the same things are true of City Hall. If the LAUSD's problems can be defined by its 50 percent or so dropout rate and low achievement, the city's can be calculated in the flight out of town of the middle class and the good-paying jobs that supported them. So if a take-charge mayor holding people accountable is good enough for the schools, it should be good enough for the city. The school district is run by a group of extremely well-paid people who seem to be primarily interested in preserving the bureaucracy and squashing diversity and creativity. The city, by comparison, is run by a group of extremely well-paid people who also seem to be engaged in keeping their place in the power structure and not rocking the boat. The LAUSD board of education members are virtually anointed by public-employee unions or the mayor or one of the various political power brokers in the city. Their meetings are designed to squelch public comment, not encourage it. The Los Angeles City Council is put into place by more or less the same interests, paid handsomely and granted much bigger staffs. And hard as it may be to believe, the council has decided to refuse to listen to the public at all. Mayor Villaraigosa is right. The bureaucracy is broken both in the schools and at City Hall. And while he needs new state legislation to fix the schools, the new city charter gives him all the tools he needs to put the bureaucracy and the City Council in their places. So he can start fixing the city. ▲A week ago Thursday DN Editor Ron Kaye was the moderator at AV's Takeover Town Hall/Love Fest at Valley College. Three days later this? Ouch! ►TUTORING PART OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND FALLS SHORT By Ledyard King, USA Today (Gannett News Service) August 5, 2006 — WASHINGTON — More than four of five students eligible for extra tutoring under the No Child Left Behind Law are not getting the required help, though school districts are starting to do a better job of offering those services, a new government report has found. The Bush administration has criticized states for not being more aggressive in providing what are called "supplemental educational services," even threatening to withhold money. The law calls for school districts to offer such help to students at high-poverty schools who have not made adequate academic progress for three consecutive years. The report issued by the Government Accountability Office on Friday indicated that only 19% of eligible students nationwide received extra tutoring in the 2004-05 school year, up from 12% the year before. About one in five school districts, most of them rural, didn't offer students any services even though they were required to do so, according to the GAO, Congress' watchdog arm. The GAO report found that most districts have improved their efforts to contact parents and make them aware of the services, and that many offer help on or near campus. But students often don't take advantage of the help because families aren't notified in time, the report found. The report also said school districts impose "burdensome" requirements on tutoring providers that limit marketing to students and use of school facilities. Transportation to off-campus tutors might also be an issue for low-income students, particularly in rural areas, said Anna Weselak, National PTA president. But "the bigger issue is there are services available for children who aren't receiving them," she said. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has often talked about the tutoring help as a crucial tool to boost perennially low-performing schools. Last month, the department expanded a pilot program that gives select school districts the ability to offer the free tutoring after just two years of poor test scores. ► A NOT-SO-FLUFFY DUFFY by Janine Kahn | LATimes | SchoolMe! Aug 12, 2006 — Just a few weeks ago, Los Angeles school district board members saw UTLA's charmingly cocky president A.J. Duffy as an ally in opposition to the mayor's power grab. Now at least some must be befuddled as to why he seems so eager to carry State Senator Gloria Romero's water, most recently by hitting the district with a blustering letter demanding information about how it has been financing its anti-takeover siege. The Aug. 3 missive to lame duck superintendent Roy Romer accuses LAUSD of "requiring teachers to disseminate information stating the district's position on the takeover bill," and supposedly compromising their "individual rights" in the process. Duffy hits Romer with a slew of questions, demanding to know: • How much the district is paying lobbyists like Darry Sragow • How much of the public's funds have gone into meetings and travel expenses in connection with consultants and lobbyists hired to fight the mayor's bill. • How much the LAUSD has spent on efforts to urge parents, teachers and the public at large to advocate a legislative vote against the bill. (Duffy is particularly eager to know how the district paid for the yellow "LAUSD Parent" and "People, Not Politics" shirts folks were wearing to anti-takeover gatherings and other public meetings.) • Which staff members, if any, have been assigned to work on the anti-takeover campaign, and what it cost the district to cover their hours. • How much was spent on school busses used to transport LAUSD members to the July 27 public meeting. • How much it cost to develop, print and distribute anti-takeover flyers and "Parent Alert" letters. These are all good questions. Teachers who oppose the deal their president cut with the mayor may also want to ask how much money the union has spent for Duffy's trips to Sacramento and why this letter, as grandiloquent as it is redundant (the mayor's team was already browbeating the district for the information) was necessary. 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. EVENTS: Coming up next week... WORLD STAGE JAZZ FESTIVAL Sunday, August 13, 2006 12 noon - 7:00 pm Leimert Park Village Special Event Parking Lot at the corner of 43rd Street and Degnan Free admission and parking. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: MEETS AT TEN AM WEDNESDAY MORNING AUGUST 16th AT JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL 1319 E 41ST ST LOS ANGELES, CA 90011 http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213.633.7493 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213.633.7616 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? ►CONTACT YOUR ASSEMBLYPERSON AND STATE SENATOR [link below to find them]. 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 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 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. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? 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.