In This Issue:  | | • | The Way to San José: THE EDSOURCE FORUM | | | • | SCHOOL LEADERSHIP'S UNFINISHED AGENDA: Integrating Individual and Organizational Development | | | • | SOLUTIONS SOUGHT FOR LAUSD BLACK EDUCATIONAL CRISIS | | | • | HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources | | | • | EVENTS: Coming up next week... | | | • | What can YOU do? | |
Featured Links: | | | | An EdWeek Article, "School Leadership's Unfinished Agenda", reprinted below concludes: "Learning is not workshops and courses and strategic retreats. It is not school improvement plans or individual leadership development. These are inputs. Rather, learning is developing the organization, day after day, within the culture."
• Developing the organization
• Day after day
• Within the culture
That is why charter schools and i-Division experiments offer little big picture benefit — they are outside the culture. That is why previous flavors of reform, "Learning Walks" and LEARN, School based Management, AVID, etc., didn't work. We didn't stick with 'em, we didn't do the day-to-day; as bullets they weren’t magic enough and so we reloaded and fired again. Firing away with different bullets at different targets.
The LAUSD reform programs halfheartedly attempted and prematurely terminated fill bookshelves ….directly opposite the stacks of studies-not-studied.
Strangely we stick with "PD Tuesdays" a program that offers little benefit. Maybe because it seems harmless enough …in spite of the fact that it takes half a day of classroom instruction from the school week.
The good news is that we are sticking with Small Learning Communities, a program imposed by the central office but designed individually at each schoolsite. Hard work all around, slow going, and now starting to bear fruit. Kids are writing "My teachers know who I am." That it took so long makes it no less magic.
The community-demanded, outside-the-culture, imposed-from-without-and-above reform that is having a harder time is the A-G Graduation Requirement. Again hard to do because it requires a new mind set ("All kids CAN do this!") and a lot of hard work in master scheduling, programming and creating curriculum. A-G is really hard to do on the cheap, especially if one is hiring new science and math teachers to meet the requirement and laying off new science and math teachers to fit the budget. The timeline is slipping and the sure sign that progress isn't happening is that new studies are underway rather than implementation.
¡Onward/Hasta adelante! -smf
The Way to San José: THE EDSOURCE FORUM
a 4LAKids report by smf
►A WONDERFUL THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM: We're riding in the shuttle between the San José airport and rent-a-car pickup with a teacher and two students from Pasadena High School; they are headed to a debate competition. The conversation in the little bus is electric, about homework, school, literature. Moby Dick is not popular … but besides for that one couldn't help but feel enthusiastic about Public Education When It Works. One of the students described how he did his AP Lit reading hiding in the janitor's closet at his job being a movie usher - even slacking is not what it used to be! I'm sure the level of debate - and certainly the enthusiasm - at that competition will be superior to the adult cogitation and rubber-chcken-or-salmon at the EdSource forum ("BIG VISION AND HARD FACTS: WHAT CAN WE DO NOW?") we're headed to …but we go there anyway.
The title of the forum may have misled. The topics were really:
• What are they doing in Massachusetts? Is that a good thing?
• What are they doing in Florida?
• How is California working to catch up with Florida?
• A Snapshot of Now …and Tealeaves of Later.
• A Couple of Provocative Mid-range (but not long-range) Plans for the Future.
WHAT TO DO NOW waits expectantly for the Governor's May 15th revision of the proposed budget -The May Revise - which waits for the tax collection numbers from April 15, all pending the action and inaction from the legislature and the governor and the will and whim of the six republicans who will ultimately decide as the Sacramento summer heads up and the July 1 budget deadline recedes in the rear view mirror.
To quote Rick Simpson, the closest thing to an authority on the California Budget Process we have: "To call the current system a system is the first mistake." Even to call it a "process" stretches the language beyond its elasticity.
►THE FORUM BEGAN with greetings and a short rehash/no-new-news of the Program Improvement Districts' "corrective actions" ("Do not call them "sanctions!") being directed from Sacramento. (When 4LAKids does it's Dictionary of EduSpeak it's going to be hard not to define SANCTIONS [sank-shuns n.] 1. Corrective actions directed from Sacramento.)
►The first real presentation was: WHEN BOLD STEPS ARE NEEDED: What Does it Really Take to Turn Around Schools?" presented by Mass Insight, an independent non-profit engaged in school reform in Massachusetts. Mass Insights is data-driven, business-model-focused on chronically underperforming schools – essentially an outside takeover facilitator of public schools, clustering or massing them with outside turn-around partners - driving change from outside the system. It's a mergers-and-acquisitions/leveraged takeover mini-district of charter schools business model - with charts and graphs and test scores being presented as outcomes. Very little mention was made of students, none of parents.
The Mass Insight plan was refuted by San Diego County Superintendent Randy Ward - himself an expert on takeovers having been the appointed receiver in state takeovers and turn around of the Oakland and Compton school districts for fiscal mismanagement. Moss is not a fan of outside agents taking over schools - but rather of holding the folks in charge accountable. Not punishment and reward accountability, but true two-way accountability.
"The Achievement Gap," he pointed out, "is not a policy issue - it's a moral imperative."First we must give a damn about these kids."
Then we must follow through and follow up on reforms already begun and avoid the four-letter alphabet soup acronyms and fixes du jour. "Teacher's unions can be a part of the solution," he said in response to a question, "but union contracts cannot and must not hurt children as they protect adults."
►NEXT ON THE AGENDA WAS A BRIEF TOUR OF FLORIDA'S EDUCATION DATABASE, a storehouse of data running from preschool to post graduate education - a P-20 rather than a K-12 model.
Florida has three things going for its Ed database.
1. Florida has a single Board of Ed and Dept of Ed that covers preschool through the state universities, not a preschool program, a K-12 Program and three separate programs and governance for Community Colleges, CSU's and UC's as in California.
2. It has had its Ed database in place since 1988.
3. The Florida state database is the core for the statewide employment, business and commerce database system — students and outcomes can be tracked from preschool through postgraduate and into the workforce.
Florida's system is powerful and can and does generate data to track and measure performance, students, progress, etc. longitudinally and latitudinally; in real time (or close to it) and over time. California is far behind the curve and because of the lack of articulation in the education system and between state programs will not be as powerful.
Progress is being made however and with partners IBM and Microsoft engaged the fits-and-starts approach that started out years ago as separate mandated/funded efforts to track migrant students, then (voluntarily/unfunded) to track API performance, then track all students enrollment and finally (inadequately funded) K-12 student progress and attendance development of a comprehensive database is underway. NCLB's un(der)funded mandate for dropout and AYP progress reporting notwithstanding the current budget shortfall will inevitably impact development of the Cal Ed database - and because the preschool and three post-high-school programs are not aligned/articulated completion is a way off.
The current model as envisioned does not incorporate financial information (nor does FL) nor does it project integrating business, commercial and employment data. Florida has a state of the art Ed Database c. 1988; California has a hodgepodge, high hopes, no money, undecided political will and an incomplete plan. Stay tuned.
To discuss this state of affairs in the Silicon Valley requires a whole new alloy of irony.
►NEXT UP WAS A REPORT FROM CHIEF LEGISLATIVE ANALYST ELIZABETH HILL. Ms. Hill is a respected non-partisan legislative insider; her analysis of the governor's proposed budget goes beyond analysis and proposes other less catastrophic solutions. As she is retiring after about thirty years on the job her opinion has the added weight of institutional memory in the term limited Capitol; her words on her farewell tour need to be heard and acted upon.
First Hill presented a snapshot as of Friday (tax day +3) of the budget situation: Personal income tax revenue appears to be slightly ahead of projections, corporate and sales taxes seem to be below. The governor's $14.4 budget deficit forecast is undoubtedly optimistic - the number on May 15 will be closer to $16 billion.
And as one looks at the question as whether it is better to pay for Education Now or Incarceration Later: The federal court ordered/governor's proposed/legislature approved $7 billion investment in prison healthcare infrastructure passed in the past few weeks amounts to a $600,000. per prisoner investment in prisons.
Priorities anyone?
Hill's counter to the governor's budget proposes to leave the Prop 98 funding guarantee to public education intact (or at least at '07-08 levels), deferring Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA), maintaining ongoing and mandated programs, consolidating some categorical programs and eliminating others - including the Year Around School subsidy that LAUSD is the premier recipient of. Year 'round education is a dinosaur whose time has passed; LAUSD will be done with it by 2012 as we build ourselves out of that quagmire.
Her proposal reduces the governor's $4.8 billion cuts to education to $800 million - not a happy state of affairs - and perhaps still not an acceptable one - but a least one that doesn't bankrupt school districts up and down the state.
Her plan returns California to the full Prop 98 spending guarantees including all programs and allowing for growth and COLAs by 2012, as does the governor's - without forcing school districts to bear a $4 billion hit beginning in July. Her consolidation of Categoricals merits further consideration, that is touched upon in more (but still superficial depth) in the following 4LAKids on the next agenda item.
And Ms Hill echoed what everyone allowed near a microphone said Friday: Until a long term strategy of state revenue collection, spending and budgeting can be come up with – a system designed in the 1970s for an entirely different California – the entire state economy and state government will continue to outperform the nation in boom years and underperform it in it bust years.
►THE MAIN EVENT (are you ready to rumble?) was a presentation by The Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity of the UC Law School on REFORMING CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOL FINANCE.
Earl Warren? Race, ethnicity and diversity, UC? How could we go wrong?
Let me count the ways. Follow the money: Think tank studies are funded by someone, this one by the Gates Foundation. The Berkeley School of Law is not the School of Education. The only mention of race, ethnicity or diversity is on the title page. Think tank studies are authored by someone, this one by Alan Bersin, Michael Kirst and Godwyn Liu. Bersin is the governor's former Secretary for Education. As John Mocker (the "Father of Proposition 98") said: "The authors are two lawyers and a college professor." To which Liu feigned objection, he is a lawyer and a college professor!
The Bersin Plan (and Bersin wasn't there to defend it) seems premised on a quote of his: "A lean budget gives lawmakers and the Education Coalition the chance to hammer out a school finance plan that's ready to go when new money fills the coffers."
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt! This is the tired "Crisis and Opportunity are two faces of the Same Challenge" shibboleth. (It's Passover, allow me the Hebrew!)
The challenge/opportunity of lean budget years for education have come repeatedly for the legislature, the governor, the Ed Coalition and the school children of the state in boom+bust/bubble+burst cycles. This is my high school senior daughter's third "worst case" Ed budget challenge – Sacramento has yet to rise to it!
The presentation by Kirst and Liu began harmlessly, describing historical forces, legislation, court decisions and ballot initiatives that shape CA Ed finance. It described the centralized funding paradigm driven by the foregoing. Stating the obvious: we don't spend enough, the system is compliance rather than outcome driven and unnecessarily complex. The system was created in the 1970's for another CA… sound familiar?
Categorical programs address needs but create bureaucracy; bureaucracy is self perpetuating, inflexible, costly - not holistic. CA lags behind other states is spending and we get less bang for our fewer bucks.
Spending is pretty much equitable up and down the state, though the cost of delivering the product (!) differs regionally.
The plan presents its basic premises: Revenue allocation should be guided by student needs. Revenue allocations (a new way of saying spending) should be adjusted for regional differences.
And Categoricals should be broken down into only two block grants: Special Education and Targeted Funding, essentially for low income and English language learners.
The system should be simple and understandable by legislators, school officials and the public. (When have lawyers and college professors ever simplified anything?).
Reforms should apply to new spending without reducing current allocation.
Here the lawyers and college professors take over, creating an algebraic formula, based on Base Funding ($B), Special Ed ($S), Targeted funding ($T), Regional cost adjustment (R) and a Hold Harmless clause (HH). (There actually in an official guideline for PTA Leaders: NEVER AGREE TO A HOLD HARMLESS CLAUSE!)
Here's the formula to establish District Revenue per ADA (They kept ADA!):
ADA = HH [ R x ($B+$S+$T) ]
OK, the students and the parents and the school officials can understand that, but for the slow learners in the legislature they created the metaphor of the Three Layer Cake:
• There's the base, everyone gets that.
• There's the second layer: Special Ed, that's allocated per Special Ed child.
• And there's the Targeted funding, that's -uh- the frosting.
And the hold harmless says that no one gets less than they got before. It's simple, it's rational, and it’s equitable.
With other rules it gets even more equitable! The plan establishes that "85% of English language learners are low income" - and continues (in print) that it's "unclear that low income EL kids need more"…so they don't get both. I think that says that it must cost the same to educate a poor child as a poor child that doesn't speak the language, a leap into preposterousness of Carollian proportion.
John Mockler rebutted the plan and he was civil if not exactly respectful: "Before you begin to undertake reform you need to begin to tell the truth."
Mockler didn't let the irony of Earl Warren connection pass unobserved - but conceded that the plan, once you get beyond the poor public policy and social justice concerns, offers a bold start that needs much work. The plan, he said, completely ignores the plight of foster children and offers them no help - and reminded all that funding needs to follow policy, not the other way around.
He argued that focused categorical programs address specific identified needs - and that block grants distribute funding. He also pointed out that despite the Hold Harmless (which he called "hiding the ball") LAUSD categorical funding is reduced 10%. The plan's charts cite example "large districts", but miss the really big urban ones like San José, LA, San Diego, etc.)
Rick Simpson, who has been the Education Chief of staff for generations of speakers of the assembly - and a contributor-to if not the true author-of every meaningful piece of education legislation for twenty years - warned everyone to be wary of any reform that doesn't change or identify new funding sources; what is proposed here is elaborate redistribution of not enough money among too many schoolchildren. And he added, "The only accurate generalization you can make about categorical funding in education is that you can't make accurate generalizations about categorical funding in education.
SCHOOL LEADERSHIP'S UNFINISHED AGENDA: Integrating Individual and Organizational Development
By Michael Fullan | Education Week
April 9, 2008 - In their aptly named book on organizational management, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton write about HARD FACTS, DANGEROUS HALF-TRUTHS, AND TOTAL NONSENSE. A hard fact is something for which there is solid evidence. A dangerous half-truth is when this fact is superficially applied. And total nonsense is often the outcome of not knowing the difference.
We can gain insight about the current state of school leadership by applying this organizational thinking to two of education’s hard facts: The principal is crucial to school success, and professional learning communities are more effective than individual professionals working in isolation. In doing so, we should remember that the danger in the half-truth is not just that it is incomplete or misleading, but that its proponents are unaware that it is not true.
Let’s begin with the first hard fact. Principals do make a difference in school improvement and student achievement. As my colleague Kenneth Leithwood has concluded from his research, in impact on student learning, the principal is second only to the teacher. This is why policymakers have decreed that we must produce school principals who have the qualities known to make a difference.
In the best cases, this push for high-quality principals has led to the development of rigorous programs designed to produce candidates who promise to make a significant difference in school improvement. The hard fact is that this is a step in the right direction. The half-truth is the assumption that it will be sufficient to make a decided difference. In other words, these high-quality individual-development programs are not in themselves a bad idea, but they are incomplete. They represent one part of a whole—individual, but not organizational, development. They give policymakers a false sense that they are actually solving a problem.
Consider examples of some of the best of these programs. The recent McKinsey & Co. report on "How the World's Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top" cites three such principal-development programs, in Boston, Chicago, and Singapore. Boston, for example, develops new principals by focusing on a fellowship program that includes three days a week of apprenticeship and two days a week in classes, supported by mentors and coaches and clustered in learning networks. Similar programs have been established through new leadership academies in New York City and several other districts.
Whole countries have established high-quality “qualifications” programs for new school principals. The Scottish Qualification for Headship program, which recently received rave reviews in an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report, is a good case in point. It takes two to three years to complete, through courses, experiential learning, mentoring, and coaching. Similarly, in England, the National College of School Leadership has developed a qualifications program that is mandatory for all school heads.
So what’s the half-truth? It is that individual leaders, no matter how great, can carry the day. They can’t. It may be possible for this or that heroic leader to change the organization for a time, but it won’t happen in numbers. The culture of the organization is too powerful for one or even many individuals to overcome. (Incidentally, although this may seem like a backhanded compliment, the greatest contribution of good qualifications programs may be in avoiding bad leaders.)
Everybody knows that the culture of the organization is crucial, and that purposeful, collaborative organizations are more effective (a hard fact). Therefore, the reasoning goes, we should implement “professional learning communities” everywhere (a dangerous half-truth). My colleagues and I, as well as other researchers elsewhere, have found that professional learning communities are being implemented superficially. They give the educators involved a false sense of progress, while the deeper cultural changes required for school improvement are not being tackled.
In my most recent book, The Six Secrets of Change (Jossey-Bass, 2008), one of the secrets to successful change I identify is that “learning is the work.” It is a maxim precisely about the need to address day-to-day cultural change. Learning is not workshops and courses and strategic retreats. It is not school improvement plans or individual leadership development. These are inputs. Rather, learning is developing the organization, day after day, within the culture.
There is much more to organizational development than I can address in this brief essay. It is about openness of practice, precision, creativity, wise and continuous use of data, learning from each other inside and outside the organization, and linking into the big picture. This is turning out to be much harder than anyone thought, and the presence of half-truths in action serves only to give the semblance of progress, dangerously taking the pressure off the need to focus on the deeper changes required. In short, changing cultures is the hard fact that remains elusive. An even harder fact is sustaining a learning culture once it is implemented.
Learning is not workshops and courses and strategic retreats. It is not school improvement plans or individual leadership development. These are inputs. Rather, learning is developing the organization, day after day, within the culture.
We can draw two conclusions from this kind of analysis. The first is that, within both individual-development and organizational-development pursuits we should push for quality implementation.
The second and more powerful conclusion, however, is that we should never do one without the other; that is, we should not have leadership-development programs for individuals in the absence of parallel strategies focusing on changing the culture of school systems. It will take the combined efforts of both components. Individual and organizational development must go hand in hand.
As an early example of this integration, I offer our work in York Region District School Board, a large, multicultural urban district just north of Toronto. York Region consists of some 160 elementary and 30 secondary schools. District leaders there started with organizational development, and then reinforced it with systematic individual development. Concentrating first on the former, the district established a literacy collaborative framework, worked with school teams, and went about its business of identifying and sharing effective practices. Learning networks also have been established, whereby schools learn from each other. York is, in other words, working directly on changing the culture of its schools and the district itself. Organization development means system development as well.
As York began to identify the particular leadership qualities associated with success, district leaders turned their attention to individual development, by creating a “leadership-development framework.” The leadership-development requirement applies to all future and current principals. There are three dimensions: roles, competencies, and learning activities. The roles are: (1) emergent leaders (those preparing to become principals), (2) first-time administrators, and (3) experienced assistant principals and principals.
Competencies fall into four domains: setting direction and sustaining the vision, building relationships, leading and managing instruction, and further developing the organization. For each domain, the knowledge, skills, and subcompetencies required are spelled out.
The third, crosscutting dimension concerns the learning activities and experiences people will need in order to obtain the competencies.
The daily concentration on effective teaching and learning practices meshes with the individual development requirements. And with so much mutual reinforcement, the culture of the district gets changed, through the combined efforts of individual leaders and collaborative learning communities that support, stimulate, and add to each other.
Even strong, national school systems benefit from viewing change through this individual and organizational lens. Finland, for example, which has been the top performer in literacy, math, and science among the 32 OECD countries, has strong teachers and school principals. But unless it fosters daily learning among educators (good teachers working with other good teachers get even better) and pays explicit attention to individual leadership development, even Finland’s overall system will weaken. A recent OECD review observed that 60 percent of Finland’s school principals will retire in the next few years, and recommended that the country “develop a clear national strategy for leadership and succession.”
In short, efforts to reform school systems are doomed unless educators can combine and integrate individual and organization development, focusing on mutually reinforcing content and strategies. This is demanding and unending work. The best guideline for doing it well is to work explicitly on both elements, and on their integration. And, as you do so, worry about whether you may be engaged in a half-truth.
Whole or full truths are hard to come by in the school improvement business. Unless we combine and integrate these two important aspects of leadership development within a single strategy, we will never progress. It is easier to do one without the other, but that is ultimately self-defeating. The promise is that, if we work on both components in tandem, we may get the significant breakthroughs in system transformation that we have been seeking.
• Michael Fullan is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and serves as a special adviser on education to the premier of Ontario (www.michaelfullan.ca).
SOLUTIONS SOUGHT FOR LAUSD BLACK EDUCATIONAL CRISIS
By Kenneth Miller Los Angeles Sentinel | New America Media
Apr 14, 2008 - Los Angeles Unified School District board president Monica Garcia was on the hot seat at the second in a series of public forums hosted by local organizations Community Call to Action & Accountability and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Los Angeles at Bethel AME Church this week.
Garcia, just 20 months into her job as board president, took a stand from her seat and delivered a series of lobs and volleys at the LAUSD while addressing the inadequacies that plague the second largest school district in the nation, with close to one million students.
“This is a school district that went from seventh in spending to 47th in spending and large over crowded year-around schools are getting worse not better,” Garcia bellowed to the audience of less than 50 individuals.
While small in number the forum packed a heavy punch in its quest to bring about solutions that will increase educational opportunities for African American students from grades kindergarten through 12th grade.
Garcia, who is just the third Latino hired in 155 years on the board, is no stranger to many of the concerns affecting Blacks and other minority students, having been raised and educated in the bowels of East Los Angeles.
However, while she managed to survive the culture and the education system by attending and graduating from University of California, Berkley, she insisted that those same standards that were implemented 25 years ago just would not work for students today.
“Seventy-seven percent of the children today are from low income families and success for some is at the expense of the majority,” she said.
Garcia said that,”As an organization the LAUSD has fallen short,” and then blasted the situation as “educational malpractice.” “This is a crisis,” she stated.
She was not alone in her assessment of the LAUSD, which has come under a siege of criticism in recent months from not just parents and community leaders, but Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Villaraigosa’s zeal and pledge to overhaul the LAUSD led him to form a school partnership program in which he appointed former San Diego school reformer Angela Bass to oversee a half dozen of the lowest performing schools.
On this chilly night, Bass was just in attendance as a concerned observer, but also found her opinion requested on the panel by moderator Eric Lee, SCLC-LA president.
“We say a lot of things, but don’t mean what we say,” said Bass.
She quickly pointed two schools that she oversees such as Markham and Gompers in South Los Angeles which not only lack an adequate supply of pencils and learning instruments, but the teachers who are often hired during a probationary period transfer out after just two years.
Bass challenged that, the curriculum is not rigorous enough in math science and social studies.”
She said at one school the kids asked questions and then at another the kids were told what to do.
Another participant of the panel was Carson Mayor Pro Tem Mike Gipson, but on this night he was a concerned parent and representing United Teachers Los Angeles as a staff member of the powerful teachers union.
Davis told of his high achieving son who attends an LAUSD school in Carson, but is disturbed because his son does not meet the criteria to be bused to one of the district’s excellent magnet schools.
Howard Ranson, an adult school teacher for the LAUSD has been one of the district’s shining stars. Ranson graduates 90 percent of his students and instead of addressing the abundance of shortcomings the district has, he desires to find a way to make his students achieve at a higher rate.
Ranson is the exception and not the norm for the LAUSD, which will be hit with even more severe budget cuts that will surely add to their woes.
Lee equated the issue of education with the issue of civil rights years ago.
“We must break the cycle of poverty and crime.”
Lee contends that one of the primary major concerns is that schools in urban communities are underfunded and are assigned teachers with less experience than schools in suburban communities and beach city schools.
How schools allocate the financial resources that are afforded them was also at issue. Should schools in high gang infested regions be allowed to spend more on safety than educational supplies?
He shared a personal experience that while visiting Crenshaw High School and then taking a visit to Pacific Palisades High School, Palisades had new computers, while Crenshaw was in a holding pattern on receiving books.
It is a dilemma that has no clear cut answers, but as he suggested, his organization’s goal is to first educate (the community about the concerns), organize (then to do something about them), mobilize (community leaders and organizations as a show of force) and agitate (the infrastructure of LAUSD) to change it.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
• S-CHIP - PRESIDENT IS REBUFFED ON PROGRAM FOR CHILDRENS HEALTHCARE
• PRIMARY LURES THOSE TOO YOUNG TO VOTE
• STUDENTS JOIN EFFORTS TO FIGHT SCHOOL CUTS
• OTHER STATES WOO CALIFORNIA TEACHERS AMID WAVE OF PINK SLIPS
• HUNDREDS IN SAN DIEGO JOIN MARCH TO PROTEST EDUCATION CUTS
• PARENTS SIGNAL LAWSUIT AGAINST L.A. SCHOOLS AFTER BREWER REJECTS PLEAS
• SCHWARZENEGGER’S BROKEN PROMISES ON HIGHER EDUCATION
• L.A. TEACHERS UNION TARGETS PACT ON CHARTERS
• The Class Trip to DC: TOP SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BUSINESS & GOVERNMENT LEADERS GO TO DC
• Arnold to teachers: "YOU WON'T BE BACK!"
• EDUCATION BEATS INCARCERATION
• INSIGHTS GAINED INTO ARTS AND SMARTS
• PROMISES MADE, PROMISES BROKEN
• SAN PEDRO TEACHERS ON THE RUN: Sharing classrooms
• L.A. UNIFIED PARENTS RALLY AGAINST GOVERNOR'S PROPOSED BUDGET
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Tuesday Apr 22, 2008
South Region Elementary School #11: CEQA Scoping and Meet-the-Architect Design Meeting
6:00 p.m.
Loren Miller Elementary School - Auditorium
830 W. 77th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90044
Wednesday Apr 23, 2008
Central Region Elementary School #18: Groundbreaking Ceremony
Ceremony starts at 1:00 p.m.
Central Region Elementary School #18
260 E. 31st St.
Los Angeles, CA 90011
Wednesday Apr 23, 2008
Central Los Angeles High School #9: Construction Update Meeting
6:00 p.m.
Castelar Elementary School - Auditorium
840 Yale Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Wednesday Apr 23, 2008
South Region Elementary School #10: Presentation of Recommended Preferred Site
6:00 p.m.
Menlo Elementary School - Auditorium
4156 Menlo Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90037
Wednesday Apr 23, 2008
Valley Region Elementary School #13: Meet-the-Architect and Schematic Design Meeting
6:30 p.m.
Panorama High School Auditorium
8015 Van Nuys Blvd
Panorama City, CA 91402
Thursday Apr 24, 2008
Fries Elementary School Addition: Open House
5:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Fries Avenue Elementary School
Auditorium
1301 Fries Ave.
Wilmington, CA 90744
Thursday Apr 24, 2008
Central Region Elementary School #14: Project Update Meeting
6:00 p.m.
Rosemont Avenue Elementary School - Auditorium
421 N. Rosemont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Thursday Apr 24, 2008
South Region High School #9: CEQA Scoping Meeting
6:00 p.m.
Bryson Elementary School - Auditorium
4470 Missouri Ave.
South Gate, CA 90280
FRIDAY APRIL 25. FLUNK THE BUDGET FRIDAY!
Visit, call, write, e-mail, or fax you state legislators on the one day a week they're in town — assemblyperson and senator. Bring a friend, show them a picture of your child - leave them some artwork for their refrigerator! Tell them how the governor's proposed budget cuts effect your child and your neighborhood school.
If you don't have a child remember that they are ALL our children. THEY don't vote, YOU represent THEM!
And don't be afraid to remind your representatives of that fact!
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-893-6800
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Marlene.Canter@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Julie.Korenstein@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• Register.
• Vote.
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