Right Size me. Do Over III.

4LAKids: Sunday, March 29, 2009 In This Issue: • LAUSD POWER STRUGGLE SURFACES + CONSULTANTS FOR LAUSD CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM SCRUTINIZED + BIG BUCKS FOR LAUSD CONSULTANTS + SPIN CONTROL • FOLLOW OBAMA'S LEAD: INVEST IN TEACHERS—with federal stimulus money available, now is the time for LAUSD to be creating jobs, not firing educators • CUTS, BUT FROM WHERE? + TAMAR LAYS OUT GRIM BUDGET SCENARIO • HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources • EVENTS: Coming up next week... THE URBAN SCHOOL GARDEN & THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING ABOUT THE BUDGET • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • FLUNK THE BUDGET, NOT OUR CHILDREN Website • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. The "Power Struggle" described in the Daily News article below is part and parcel of the have/have not friction between the Facilities Services Division – which is flush with capital because of the voters and taxpayers support LAUSD's construction and modernization efforts — and the Education & Operations side of the house – which is spectacularly under funded from Sacramento. This conflict is evidenced by the 'Why can't we use bond dollars to pay teachers?' argument, the second most asked question after 'Whatever happened to the lottery money?' • Public Education gets the lottery money, but over the years Sacramento has taken away far more money than the lottery provides. If Prop 1C passes in May ALL the lottery money will go from education, Sacramento promises to make it up. • The State Constitution, the bond language (aka: the law) from BB to Q and sound fiscal policy ('You don't pay annual salaries from thirty-year borrowing') FORBID bond funds from paying teachers salaries or raises. Last week UTLA President A.J. Duffy suggested halting the construction program for two years to "save money" …a proposition about as removed from reality as Dancing with the Stars. This "power struggle" obscures the real one and takes the public attention away from the true issue: Next Tuesday – if the plan goes as planned – The Board of Ed will vote and LAUSD will slash its budget far deeper than necessary to comply with a decade's old and half forgotten plan to right size the district. "Right size", gentle reader, is a PR/Orwellian/Karl Rovian euphemism for "downsize", couched as rhetorical reform. No body ever "right sized" up. (Though encouraging our young people to "right size me" at McDonalds would be a good thing!) It's an expression used by slash-and-burn arbitrageurs, mergers-and-acquisitions pirates and corporate raiders. Yes, 'downtown bureaucrats' will go, but so will bright promising young teachers, principals and instructional reformers – fired or sent lower in the food chain as the lemons (including some DTBs just described) bump the good apples in the seniority boogie. Remember Little Feat? "Old folks boogie, boogie if you will – as the mind makes promises the body can't fill." It's like that. Last week I was accused of drinking the institutional Kool-Aid for my failure to support what's going on here and my questioning of educational and fiscal priorities. For asking that the federal stimulus package be used to save jobs like it's supposed to. The lemonade to come will not just be sour but bitter also. ___________________ Remember "Back to the Future"? And "Peabody's Improbable History"? …the cartoon series in which a time-traveling dog and his pet boy, Sherman – using Peabody's "Wayback Machine" – would go back in time and wound up making events come out "right", i.e., the way they're depicted in history books. The do-over (in golf, the "mulligan") is even older than that. A chance to go back and do it over again …and get it right this time. Few are those of us who did it "my way" with no regrets. Ramon Cortines, when he was Chancellor of the New York City Schools in 1993-95 attempted to decentralize and right size the NYC system into local districts and the experiment was a disaster. In fairness to Cortines made more so because of his infamous clash of wills with Mayor Giuliani. Giuliani inherited Cortines from the predecessor he defeated in getting elected – Cortines was not 'the mayor's man"! Cortines had his chance to do it over again when he was LAUSD Interim Superintendent in 1999-2000 – replacing Ruben Zacharias – who was not 'Mayor Riordan's man'. Cortines created and left in place his 1999 Cortines Plan to decentralize LAUSD to 11 local districts (the High School Cluster Plan then in place was probably even less central). When Roy Romer was selected as permanent superintendent (while Romer was not 'Riordan's man' he certainly was his choice) Roy had no interest in Cortines' plan, using it only as a hub-and-spokes framework for central control and ignoring the rest of it – seemingly once-and-for-all. When James Hahn became mayor he left LAUSD alone and focused on running the City of LA. Mayor Villaraigosa came onto the scene intent on taking over and running the LA school district like other big city mayors in other places do. (Those mayors also get to run their cities; the LA city charter really doesn't give the mayor all that much power.) Villaraigosa went mano e mano with Romer. He beat Romer at California Politics but ultimately lost in court – and returned to Riordan's stratagem of electing -'buying-and-paying-for' if you will – a sympathetic school board. (The LA City Charter, which forbids partisan politics, in so doing gives rise to a strange hybrid of partisanship.) As the handwriting on the wall became obvious Romer bowed out – and the threatened school board appointed their own man: Admiral Brewer. Push came to shove, Villaraigosa pushed out board majority – and in due course the board shoved out Brewer. Cortines returned – not the prodigal son but a prodigal something – after a stint in Washington, in private industry, as an advisor to Villaraigosa and deputy to Brewer — and proceeded to take his decade-and-more old plan off the shelf, dust it off and give it another go. A third chance to get it right, to get it right-sized. As you read the forgoing interpretation of history you may note that it isn't about education or children, it's all about power and politics. It's about laying out the org/flow/Gantt charts and the theoretic design of a complex bureaucracy. The words 'student', 'teacher', 'parent', 'child' or 'education' did not appear. What this history also misses is that an awful lot happened in the decade between Cortines I and Cortines II. Time changes things. Reform changes things. Progress changes things. A decade changes things. The Kindergarteners of 1999 are now in high school. Class size reduction to 20:1 in K-3. Full Day Kindergarten. Open Court. No Child Left Behind. AYP and API. 76 new schools and 59 addition projects. Declining enrollment. Small Learning Communities. Small Schools. A-G. The Belmont LC opened as the Roybal LC – who woulda thunk it? LAUSD schools/students won 5 national Academic Decathlons. Grad rates have improved, dropout rates have declined. Chanda Smith earned her high school diploma. The district traded in its funky old HQ in an converted junior high school at 450 N. Grand for a funky old converted bank building at 333 S. Beaudry. The cuts continue in state funding. Laptop carts. Smart boards. Blackboards, green in '99 are now white. Busing is almost a thing of the past, as are year 'round calendars. No more junk food and soda sold on campus. Children's obesity, type 2 (adult onset) diabetes and asthma and dental disease are epidemic in our student population. LAUSD has a nationally recognized Arts and Music Program. Accomplishments have been accomplished. New challenges have developed. Ten years of stuff has happened. And the Economic Crisis has happened. Global, National, California, School District; Main Street and Wall Street and your street. And your local school. More change is soon to come. Two new board members who campaigned in agreement with their opponents to 'blow up' the local districts are about take office and be bound by a budget of their predecessors' making. A number of local district superintendents are opting for retirement. The general consensus is that the number of Cortines' local districts will go from the original eleven to the current eight to three. And new Boards of Education tend to want their own superintendent. And I return to the argument that the Federal Stimulus legislation is intended to create new jobs and sustain existing ones. Read what David Tokofsky had to say about this in his LA Times Op-Ed reprinted below. I yet haven't seen the widely leaked IG's report on the Facilities Division but I know that they have shovel ready jobs to put workers to work modernizing and rebuilding some tired old schools. And I also know that the program will not be hiring promising young pink-slipped teachers to build and modernize those schools. The Board of Ed and Superintendent Cortines were there week before last at Miguel Contreras LC when President Obama and Ethan Lopez had their talk about schools and teachers and the President's commitment to save teachers' jobs. Hopefully they were paying attention. ¡Onward/Hasta adelante! -smf LAUSD POWER STRUGGLE SURFACES + CONSULTANTS FOR LAUSD CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM SCRUTINIZED + BIG BUCKS FOR LAUSD CONSULTANTS + SPIN CONTROL ►LAUSD POWER STRUGGLE SURFACES by George B. Sanchez Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group | Daily News/Daily Breeze March 28, 2009 -- This week's leak of an internal audit has exposed deep divisions between the Los Angeles Board of Education and its advisory committee that oversees a $27 billion school construction program. The power struggle, in the words of the committee's chairwoman, is over the future of the massive building program and hundreds of millions of dollars in private contracts. "The audit is being used for a broader attack on facilities," said Connie Rice, a prominent civil rights lawyer and chair of the bond oversight committee. "This is a power struggle." Superintendent Ramon Cortines is scheduled Monday to release an audit of the district's Facilities Division by Los Angeles Unified School District Inspector General Jerry Thornton. While the audit should answer concerns about the district's use of high-paid construction consultants, even Cortines' attempt to clear the air has been questioned. "In attempting to remove the audit from the politics and tension between the board and oversight committee, Cortines added a new layer of politics to this," said Scott Folsom, oversight committee co-chair. There's a history of disagreement between the board and the committee over decision-making and spending. The committee has pushed for higher wages for district construction employees, which Cortines and the board have disregarded. Oversight committee members say their advisory role is meant to allow the school board to focus on education, but board members believe it is their job to play a role in construction decisions as well. "As a board, we have a responsibility to make sure all division and departments are complying with regulations and are ethical and transparent," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, who is also chair of the facilities committee. "To not address that would be irresponsible and derelict on our part." The bond oversight committee was created when voters approved the first of five bond measures totaling $27billion. "The board doesn't know how to let go," Folsom said. "The board doesn't know how to defer." District sources familiar with Thornton's report said auditors found that $186 million was paid to 1,277 consultants in 2006-07, averaging $145,652 per person. When the audit was completed, Cortines asked facilities director Guy Mehula to respond. After a meeting between Mehula and Thornton, Cortines recruited Bill Siart, former chairman and chief executive officer of First Interstate Bancorp and founder of ExED, a nonprofit agency that supports charter schools. "Bill Siart is known as someone who knows education financing," explained Caprice Young, a public education reformer who works with the international education group Knowledge Universe. "He knows how to build schools. He knows how to run them." But Siart's arrival concerns Folsom. The charter community has been at odds with the facilities department over charter school construction as well as granting charter operators space on district property. Siart's input, Folsom said, could be seen as a conflict of interest. For a construction project of this magnitude, the district must hire high-priced consultants and the board must not micromanage, Rice said. Construction must be left to construction experts, not education policymakers or district staff, she continued. "If the school district can't deliver books or make their students proficient in math, how can you expect them to build a school?" ___________________________ ►CONSULTANTS FOR LAUSD CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM SCRUTINIZED Such contractors cost taxpayers 70% more than if district employees had been hired for the work, audit finds. And some lacked proper qualifications and overstepped their authority. By Howard Blume | from the Los Angeles Times March 27, 2009 – Consultants working for the Los Angeles Unified School District's school construction program cost taxpayers 70% more than if district employees had been used to do the same work, according to a draft internal audit obtained Thursday by The Times. The audit also found that some consultants lacked required qualifications for their duties, and that those contractors have been improperly supervising and evaluating district employees as well as other consultants. "The report suggests that we have to have a reorganization to develop a plan for the next 10 years," said district Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. "We need both regular employees and consultants, and we've got to monitor that more closely." He said Chief Facilities Executive Guy Mehula has his "full faith" and has done "an outstanding job" managing what has grown to be a $20.1-billion school construction and modernization effort. The confidential December audit has been the source of internal debate within the country's second-largest school system. Top officials in the facilities division have contested some findings, prompting Cortines to seek an independent review by former banking executive William E.B. Siart, who oversees ExED, which assists charter schools with financing and business operations. Among the auditors' conclusions: • Using district employees, where possible, instead of consultants could have saved $77 million in the period from July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007. • Consultants lacking the required minimum qualifications were hired or promoted. • Eighty-four percent of consultants had been employed at the district for more than two years and 16% more than five years. • One consultant, who was supervised by an outside company he used to work for, billed the district at $189 an hour for full-time work, even though he spent only one week a month in Los Angeles. • Consultants overstepped their proper roles, making decisions about the hiring and compensation of district employees. Some consultants also controlled the payments of district funds to other consultants working for the same firm. In some cases, they even signed time sheets for payments to their own firm. One of the consulting firms, TBI Associates -- the subject of a series of Times articles in 2007 that examined alleged time-card fraud involving the locally based company -- is not singled out in the audit and has denied wrongdoing. A yearlong criminal investigation into the fraud case is ongoing, according to the L.A. County district attorney's office. The findings should not be used to dismantle a system that fundamentally works, said civil rights attorney Connie Rice, a member of the appointed committee that oversees school bond spending. "For this kind of construction program, it makes sense to use consultants because the top-level people you need are not going to work for the district." She also defended the higher salaries, saying that they were needed to attract top talent and that the wages were still less than those for comparable jobs in the private sector. The result, she said, is a program that has probably saved hundreds of millions of dollars and resulted in high quality and reasonably rapid school construction. In the audited year, the facilities division employed 1,277 consultants at $186 million. That number had dropped to 882 consultants by September 2008. Auditors said the facilities staff has addressed some of the oversight problems. ______________________ ►BIG BUCKS FOR LAUSD CONSULTANTS By George B. Sánchez, Staff Writer. LA NEWSPAPER GROUP/DAILY NEWS 03/26/2009 - An audit detailing Los Angeles Unified's reliance on costly outside consultants to build schools has raised such concern for Superintendent Ramon Cortines that he called in a former bank executive to review the findings. Cortines asked Bill Siart, former chairman and CEO of First Interstate Bank Corp., to look at the audit, prepared by Inspector General Jerry Thornton, and a defense of the building program by construction chief Guy Mehula. Siart was not paid for his work. Cortines did not detail the scope or conclusions of his review, but said he would release it Monday. According to district sources, the audit found that $186 million was paid to 1,277 outside consultants in 2006-07, averaging $145,653 per person that year. The audit's findings mirrored an earlier analysis by the Daily News that found the district spent $182 million on 849 consultants - about $215,000 each - in the 2007-08 year. While the audit was completed late last month, Cortines said it contained "unsubstantiated" findings and asked Thornton and Mehula to work out their differences. "I am on top of this," Cortines said. "I have concerns with the report and its content." School board members are only now getting copies of the audit, which Cortines said he would explain to them on Tuesday. The inspector general, the district's internal watchdog, said he would not release the report to the media until late next week. "I think the board members and superintendent should discuss this and determine if action should be taken," Thornton said. He would not elaborate. Board President Mónica García declined to comment Wednesday. Tamar Galatzan has a copy of the audit, according to her staff, but has not read it and would not comment. Other board members did not respond to phone calls. While the audit details past spending, union officials said it raises questions about the district's current use of outside consultants amid massive cost-cutting and layoff threats. "If this is what they were doing in '06-07, what were they doing in '07-08 and '08-09?" said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. Duffy has not read the report. The district faces a crushing deficit of $718 million over the next 18 months and the specter of mass layoffs, larger class sizes and the elimination of many popular programs. The teachers union and other labor representatives have called for the district to halt consultant contracts and use that money for teachers and staff, among other demands. District officials defend the practice, saying consultant contracts ebb and flow with the various stages of construction and have said district wages don't measure up to industry standards. They add that special consultants are particularly needed to efficiently carry out the nearly $20 billion school construction program. The Facilities Services Division is in charge of the district's construction program, which has been called the largest public construction program in the country. The building program has continued apace despite enrollment falling in recent years. District officials say that enrollment fluctuates over the years and they must prepare for anticipated growth in the coming decades. Last year, consultants constituted nearly 20 percent of the division and accounted for 35 percent of all employee costs. The majority of consultants have been used within two of the division's seven departments: New Construction and Existing Facilities, according to district records. The district's use of outside consultants has come under fire for years. "For almost 10 years, we`ve been telling the district that it's a waste of money to use contractors and not district employees," said Connie Moreno, a representative for the California School Employees Association. "We`ve seen Facilities Division management take work away from district employees and give it to their contractors." In contrast to consultant wages, the average employee of the facilities division earned about $99,000 in 2007-08, according to district records. Teamsters local 572 is in arbitration over alleged illegal subcontracting as a result of the district`s use of contractors and outside consultants. ___________________________________________ smf: SPIN CONTROL: • I have not seen the audit or a draft of the audit. I have not seen Mr, Mehula’s response or a draft of Mr. Mehula’s response. I have not seen Mr. Siart’s review of the audit or a draft of Mr. Siart’s review; this article is the first I have heard of Mr. Siart’s review. • I am a member of the Bond Oversight Committee which is charged by the State Constitution, the actual language of the bonds from BB through Q, and our charter with the Board of Education with review and oversight of school construction bond expenditures. One would think the BOC would be in this loop …unless there are allegations of BOC mal-or-misfeasance. • The Inspector General, according to his charter and the District org chart , reports to the Board of Education – not the superintendent. • The superintendent will release his response – the Siart report – next Monday – and the IG will release his report later in the week? What’s with that? • Not to over define the definitions but there is a difference between Consultants and Outside Professional Contractors. Mr Siart is a consultant, albeit unpaid. It is my understanding that the subjects of the IG’s report are almost entirely professional contractors. These are my opinions, not necessarily those of anyone else. - smf ►Extra Credit Homework: Google Bill Siart. He was a candidate for Superintendent in 1999 when Cortines was Interim Superintendent and Romer was hired. As Chairman of the Board of ExEd he is a champion-of and advocate-for Charter Schools. The charter school community is currently in a dispute with the Facilities Services Division (FSD) over whether bond funds can be used to build charter schools without FSD and Division of the State Architect (DSA) oversight and inspection – outside the seismic safety of the Field Act. In 2006 Siart wrote OpEd saying that the mayor should have chartering authority – contrary to the state constitution and LAUSD v. Villaraigosa – in which the courts held that city government has no authority in public education. FOLLOW OBAMA'S LEAD: INVEST IN TEACHERS—with federal stimulus money available, now is the time for LAUSD to be creating jobs, not firing educators By David Tokofsky | Opinion from the Los Angeles Times March 26, 2009 -- My fifth-grade daughter, Rebecca, came home the other day with the news that her dedicated, talented teacher had received a pink slip. Ms. Stanco's notice that she might be laid off -- a Xeroxed form letter with her name filled in at the top -- arrived just two weeks after the team of kids she coached brought home the gold medal from the Los Angeles County Science Olympiad. I know from experience how she feels. In 1992, during another of California's fiscal crises, I received a pink slip shortly after winning the California Teacher of the Year award. Like my daughter's teacher, I also had put in countless hours of my own time to coach a team of students. That team became the first in the Los Angeles Unified School District to win the national Academic Decathlon. This year 9,000 "precautionary" pink slips went out to teachers and other school district employees --cafeteria workers, truck drivers and others who make a difference in our kids' lives -- to warn them they may not be hired back next year. Whether or not the layoffs happen, the notices are likely to cause some of the LAUSD's best and brightest young teachers to leave the profession. It's all the sadder because this time the pink slips were sent out at the very same time President Obama came to town to deliver a message of hope. His plan to stimulate the economy includes education funding, and the LAUSD could receive more than $1 billion from the package. Now is the time for Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to think about creating jobs and improving education. Instead, he wants to slash, not because he has to, one has to suspect, but because it's a way of accomplishing his vision of a decentralized district. The money is intended as a stimulus, not as a hedge against future needs. It needs to be spent quickly, and it needs to be spent saving jobs. As 26 members of Congress wrote in a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state education officials, the money is intended in part "to minimize or avoid harmful cuts to education programs and services" and "to keep teachers in the classroom." The stated goals of the legislation are job retention, job creation and targeted investment in education. Federal stimulus funds will not give local school districts the long-term financial stability they need and deserve. But they will give schools the opportunity to plan how to transform themselves to better meet the 21st century needs of children without the immediate threat of economic collapse. One thing the board should do is ask people in Los Angeles to support our schools. Local voters have shown themselves willing to support the building of facilities. We need to go back and ask them to support programs for our children: the arts, enrichment, field trips, science and technology skills. My two daughters are the same age as Obama's daughters. As a parent of school-aged kids, I am glad the president is speaking out for reinvestment in America, especially in education. As Obama said last week at the town hall meeting here, we need to be catching up so that we can one day surpass India and China in teaching math and science. We are not going to do that by laying off thousands of employees and radically restructuring the school district in some utopian, decentralized way. We should not forget that we have a president who is committed to schools and the hopes of our most needy. As I discovered when I was a member of the school board, the challenge is to fire people up, not fire them. The president has chosen to lead. The LAUSD and others would do well to follow. • David Tokofsky is a consultant with Associated Administrators Los Angeles and a former member of the LAUSD Board of Education. The letter 26 members of Congress wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state education officials. CUTS, BUT FROM WHERE? + TAMAR LAYS OUT GRIM BUDGET SCENARIO from LAUSD Board Member Tamar Galatzan's Board District 3 e-newsletter __________________________________ WHERE ARE THE CUTS? According to Galatzan & Superintendent Cortines: 15% OF LAUSD’S TOTAL BUDGET NEEDS TO BE CUT • 1,600 positions to be cut at Beaudry • Reduced maintenance at schools • Only core content support for schools • Reduce facility leases • Class size increase of 24 to 1 in K-3 _________________________________ By Board Member Tamar Galatzan March 26, 2009 - The question of how best to cut the budget understandably preoccupies the entire LAUSD community: board members, parents, teachers, administrators, and the executive staff at Beaudry. My inbox, and that of my colleagues, is running at or above capacity as constituent groups express their strongly-held views, usually in support of a program or position that they insist must not be eliminated. As I have previously noted, in some cases, these messages provide the first indication to Board members that particular cuts are being seriously considered. In that sense, they double as a public service, keeping us informed on what might be proposed at the highest levels. But it must also be said that rarely do those seeking to save a particular program offer a concrete alternative for reductions of similar magnitude. At best, they suggest that we cut "waste" or the "bureaucracy", without specifying which waste, or what bureaucrats. These are easy -- but ill-defined -- targets. I am strongly in favor of constituent groups fighting for programs that they regarded as critical to the education of LAUSD students. Their passion provides the strongest possible evidence that we live in a community where people care deeply about the fate of our neighborhood schools. Yet LAUSD is faced with the reality of having to close a $700 million deficit in a short amount of time. Wrenching decisions are being made daily, if not hourly. It would behoove all those who contact us about the fate of a beloved program or employee to go further and offer meaningful suggestions about where else we might reduce the budget. Some of you have already sent specific suggestions about staffing levels, scheduling, and contracting, and I have discussed all of these ideas with the Superintendent and his staff. I guarantee I will take these ideas seriously, and I know the Superintendent will, as well. -Tamar TAMAR LAYS OUT GRIM BUDGET SCENARIO They nervously waited for the meeting to start, hoping that the news wouldn’t be worse than receiving a “reduction in force” letter the week before. A special meeting regarding LAUSD’s budget brought together around 70 parents and teachers from schools in Sherman Oaks and Studio City at Riverside Drive Elementary School on Monday evening. Earlier that day, Tamar had been on the phone with Superintendent Ray Cortines, getting the most up-to-date budget information available to disseminate. Her office has been inundated with concerned calls and emails about the budget. “We already cut $400 million from the ‘08-‘09 budget and now we are facing $700 to $800 million in cuts in the next 16 months as a best case scenario,” Tamar told the group. Tamar also addressed the most upto- day information about federal stimulus funds for education, including money specifically designated for Special Education, technology and competitive grants. Some parents wondered why construction bond funds can’t be used for education. Tamar explained that bond language is very specific about what it can be used for. Parents expressed frustration and said that they feel helpless and want to know what they can do to help. Tamar noted that there is a special election on May 19 that could further impact the state’s budget. She encouraged everyone to be informed and vote. While the Board is trying to spare impacts to the classroom, with Local Districts and downtown Beaudry facing 30 to 50 percent cuts in staff, many teachers may be bumped out by administrators who have seniority and union options to return to the classroom. One way the District is trying to cushion the blow is by offering an early retirement incentive that 2,100 teachers have already accepted. Further, Superintendent Cortines is supportive of Tamar’s goal of supporting non-Title 1 schools (schools with a student population of less than 40 percent free or reduced lunch which receive less funding) and will be giving $30 per student next year. Victor Palomares, a kindergarten teacher stood up and spoke, “When I was a little boy, my father passed away and school was my safe haven.I know that I will be laid off, but I want us to work to provide a safe haven for our students.” Palomares, who holds two degrees, and a masters in multicultural education, has taught for eight years. The School Board is tentatively scheduled to vote on a budget on March 31. __________________________________ ●● smf's 2¢: IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE GRIM, IT COULD BE HOPEFUL. Why does the Superintendent continue to budget based on the projected state budget (which is iffy at best - based on faulty assumptions and relying upon all the May 19th ballot measures passing) and refuses to consider the Federal Stimulus Package - which is coming and is the down payment on a federal commitment to public education? Every other major school district in the nation has incorporated the Stimulus in their planning. Not LAUSD. Why does he continue to propose to lay off employees when the federal funds are meant to - and can - • SAVE those jobs? • SAVE the eliminated programs? • And SAVE the 20:1 Class size in K-3, Arts Programs, etc.? Why does he continue to pursue his 1999 Plan to Decentralize to the Local Districts (his 1993 Plan to Decentralize to Local Districts failed in NYC when he was chancellor there) and his 100 Day "Plan of Action" - written by outside consultants? And why does the board go along? HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources ►MONTEBELLO COUNCILMAN ACCUSED OF FRAUD, BREACH OF CONTRACT IN LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD RACE Saturday, March 28, 2009 7:21 PM By Amanda Baumfeld, Staff Writer | San Gabriel Valley Tribune 03/28/2009 07:05:25 AM PDT -- MONTEBELLO - A lawsuit filed against Burnside & Associates accuses Councilman Robert Urteaga of fraud and breach of contract for his work on a political campaign, officials said. Benjamin Austin claims the political consulting firm misrepresented him in his race for Los Angeles Unified School Board by…. ►CALIFORNIA’S “BIG FIVE”* ON FIXING THE STATE BUDGET: A partial transcript of remarks make by Gov. Schwarzenegger and four other California officials during a recent visit to The TimesSaturday, March 28, 2009 6:15 PM Posted in LA Times.com March 27, 2009 Making their pitch for the six measures on the May 19 special election ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and four state lawmakers visited The Times Tuesday. With the governor were Assembly Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, both Democrats; Assembly GOP Caucus leader Mike Villines of Clovis; and…. ►WHAT BERNIE MADOFF CAN TEACH US ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY IN EDUCATION Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11:38 AM BERNIE’S LESSON PLAN: The most compelling evidence for something's being wrong is often hidden in plain view. For misrepresentation to work at a large scale, people’s desires and, even more so, their fears need to be played to. If you want to forestall the day of reckoning, make sure you are in charge of both generating and then interpreting your own metrics.... ►A MESSAGE FROM THE CCSS CALIFORNIA TEACHER OF THE YEAR Wednesday, March 25, 2009 9:00 AM from Leticia (Martha) Infante NATIONAL BOARD CERTIFIED TEACHER/GIFTED AND TALENTED EDUCATION COORDINATOR CALIFORNIA COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER OF THE YEAR 2009 LOS ANGELES ACADEMY MIDDLE SCHOOL Dear Superintendent Cortines and LAUSD Board Members, In the next week, you will be voting on important budget decisions that I am sure have taken their toll on..... ►FORWARDING OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL: an open letter to the Superintendent and the Board of Education Tuesday, March 24, 2009 5:31 PM "It has been suggested that the state has some ability to intercept Stabilization Fund dollars,” the letter from Congress says. “It does not.” Subject: Reading other people's mail Date: 3/24/2009 7:05:06 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time From: smf To:ramon.cortines@lausd.net,marguerite.lamotte@lausd.net, monica.garcia@lausd.net, tamar.galatzan@lausd.net, marlene.canter@lausd.net, .... ►DON’T DIVERT SCHOOL FUNDS, CONGRESSIONAL DEMS WARN Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:21 AM "It has been suggested that the state has some ability to intercept Stabilization Fund dollars," the letter from twenty-six California Members of Congress says. "It does not." The latest on California politics and government March 23, 2009 Don't divert school funds, congressional Dems warn Congressional Democrats are telling state leaders to keep their hands off federal stimulus funds... ►SURGE IN HIGHLAND PARK VIOLENCE TERRIFIES STUDENTS Sunday, March 22, 2009 5:40 PM Steve Lopez: Reading, writing, and diving to the floor when gunshots are heard are all part of the routine for second-graders. Steve Lopez | LA Times Columnist March 22, 2009 - Gina Amodeo shouted "Pancake!" and her second-grade students knew exactly what to do. They immediately dropped to the floor and flattened out, minimizing the chance of getting shot. It was only a drill, but.... ►SOME SCHOOLS ARE CUTTING BACK ON HOMEWORK Sunday, March 22, 2009 5:36 PM When is homework just busywork? Weighing stress against learning, some districts are cutting back on academic work outside the classroom. By Seema Mehta | LA Times March 22, 2009 - Rachel Bennett, 12, loves playing soccer, spending time with her grandparents and making jewelry with beads. But since she entered a magnet middle school in the fall -- and began receiving two to four hours of... The news that doesn’t fit from March 29 EVENTS: Coming up next week... THE URBAN SCHOOL GARDEN & THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING ABOUT THE BUDGET ►THE URBAN SCHOOL GARDEN Michelle Obama has planted a vegetable garden at the White House. Maria Shiver has planted an urban garden on the grounds of the State Capitol. Chef Alice Waters has planted an urban school garden at a middle school in Berkeley with the Edible Garden Project. Seeds have been planted. President Obama & Co(ngress) has provided federal funding for projects that are "shovel ready" …and who are more ready, hungry and eager than the 700,000 schoolchildren in 900 schools throughout LAUSD? Join Mudd Baron, LAUSD's own School Gardener-in-Chief and smf at North Hollywood High for session of information, advocacy and activism. Plant. Nurture. Harvest: the paradigm is the metaphor. 2pm Sunday March 29 (today) North Hollywood HS Agriculture Area 5231 Colfax Ave No Hollywood, CA 91601 ►Tuesday March 31, 2009 1:00 p.m. Special Board Meeting - Budget Boardroom 333 S. Beaudry Brodcast Live on KLCS - Channel 58 Order of Business http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/lausd/board/secretary/3-31-09spbdBudgetAgenda.pdf Meeting Materials Bd Reports http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/lausd/board/secretary/3-31-09spbdBudgetPublic.pdf Meeting Materials http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/lausd/board/secretary/3-31-09FinalImpactStatement.pdf *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 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. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is immediate past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. He is a Community Concerns Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on various school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. • 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.

My name is Ethan.

4LAKids: Sunday, March 22, 2009 In This Issue: • L.A. 3rd GRADER BASKS IN THE GLOW OF A PRESIDENTIAL MOMENT: At town hall meeting Ethan Lopez asks President Obama a question about teacher layoffs • TAFT WELCOMES RETURNING STAFF AFTER HAZING PROBE • Compromising past promises / Compromising the future: NEW BUDGET RULES LOOSEN UP SCHOOL FUNDING • THE MYTH OF THE "POWERFUL" TEACHERS UNION • 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: • FLUNK THE BUDGET, NOT OUR CHILDREN Website • PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website • 4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved! • 4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. "Hi, my name is Ethan. President Obama, our school is in big trouble because of budget cuts . . . 25 of our teachers have been fired . . . to get pink slips." From the top of the page in The Times and on the YouTube video third-grader Ethan faces the President of the United States of America: 8 years old, unsmiling, deathly serious in his white shirt and striped tie, microphone in hand, speaking his truth to power. Immediately below Ethan's story is another story: "Real Transparency Will Be Tricky with Stimulus Funding". Welcome to the conundrum. President Obama promised Ethan that he was doing everything he could to protect teacher's jobs and modernize schools. Modernization isn't Ethan's problem; he attends one of LAUSD's modern new schools. L.A. schools have infrastructure; it's structure they lack. All the new and modernized schools in the world won't help Ethan or his classmates if they don't have teachers. 27 of the 43 teachers at Ethan's school, 63%, have been sent pink slips. And despite the fact that President Obama is doing everything he can to protect those teacher's jobs it doesn't seem like the powers that be at LAUSD are doing their part. Every other major urban school district in the nation has made plans to spend their anticipated stimulus funds to save jobs. Not LAUSD. On the contrary, District budgeteers seem intent on "Rightsizing" first – following Superintendent Cortines' Plan of a decade ago – the first time he was here – and holding the stimulus in reserve. Cortines argues that class size really doesn't really matter unless you can reduce it to about 17:1. 25:1 in Kindergarten? Is that what rightsizing is? This brings us to the transparency piece. LAUSD may be many things, but none of them are transparent or communicative. School board members complain that they are not informed. Principals and teachers wonder what's going on. A letter is sent home in backpacks and that's 'communicating with parents'. Communication happens when all sides are actively engaged in the dialog …or 'dialogue' for traditionalists and English majors. It doesn't matter how it's spelled, it isn't here. • Last week memos announced that an entire category of employees will be eliminated: Assistant Principal/Elementary Instructional Specialist. A school-based (as opposed to central or local district office) position created by Cortines himself back in the day: "a distinguished group of educators selected to serve as trailblazers as we embark on a journey to dramatically improve achievement for every student in the District and to change the culture within our schools". A few days later there was an announcement the jobs would be saved. Followed by a budget worksheet implying that the category will be preserved but the employees might have to go. Budgeteers and bean counters hide behind terms like FTE (Full Time Equivalents). Teachers and staff are not fractional assets – they are flesh and bone folks with families and jobs and hopes and dreams. Sometimes one longs for the transparency of the Bush-Cheney White House. • A Friday afternoon briefing planned for LA area congressional staff on how LAUSD intends to spend the stimulus was abruptly canceled as unnecessary. Briefing congress is unnecessary‽ How transparent is that? The Teachable Moment/Accounting 101: ►If you anticipate income and you know how much it is and when you will get it, you budget it. The federal budget stimulus is that sort of asset. ►Another rule says you don't budget money when you don't know how much it will be and/or when and/or if you will get it. Hypothetical Rich Uncle Gene or Aunt Jackie might leave you money in their will … but again they might not. They could change their mind, they might outlive you. The federal budget stimulus is not that sort of asset. But current thinking in LAUSD seems to be looking at it that way. • "We don't know how much it will be." • "We don't know when we will get it." • "It's only one time money." This is somewhere between sticking one's head in the sand and balderdash. While we don't know how much $ will be coming in to the decimal point, we do know to a reasonable certainty the minimum; while we don't know the exact instant the electronic cash transfer will take place we do know the window. Unless the superintendent rejects the funds like the governor of South Carolina that $ IS coming in – probably with a greater certainty and sooner than the state budget money. The state budget – which all current LAUSD budget assumptions are based upon – is subject to the whim of the governor's May Budget Revise, the caprice of the legislature and the will of the electorate re: the May 19 ballot measures. That budget, lest we forget, has a foundation in a quicksand of already disproved revenue projections; whether or not it was based on good will or good governance is a purely rhetorical discussion. [see: NEW BUDGET RULES...] On Monday there was a meeting at the White House with of the Council of Great City Schools – a coalition of 67 of the nation's largest urban public school systems. At the roundtable discussion urban educators peppered Education Secretary Duncan and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the president, with questions about the stimulus plan, which includes about $100 billion in new education funding. While the superintendents and school trustees met at the White House, staff met and compared notes on how they intended to spend the federal stimulus. Every district save one had a plan in place. Cincinnati had a plan, Fresno had a plan. At a board meeting last week Boardmember Canter was making an appeal for non-Title I schools – whose parents pay the most taxes and get the least return. Making her point that non-Title I schools are not just a Westside or West Valley phenomenon she said she'd looked it up and every board member has at least one non-Title I school their district. To which Board President Monica Garcia said: "I do?" Gentle readers, nobody needs or benefits from the current level of frustration or dismal employee morale over the dire fiscal situation of LAUSD. We are not alone; every school district in California is threatened by the state budget crisis. Every school district in the nation faces the global economic meltdown. In the next year school districts will go bankrupt and fall under FCMAT monitored state receivership. That is inevitable. No one benefits from parents being uninformed or board members being under informed. No lesson is learned by the pink slip in the registered mail. No progress is made by any of us being kept in the dark/left on the sidelines/kicked to the curb. No child is educated by the sniping and rancor – or by my hyperbole and metaphor. The District needs to set aside the Cortines Plan of 1999 and the 100 Day Plan written by the consultants 81 days ago. Both are based on other times and other realities. We need to turn on the lights and take a good hard look at where we are and far we are from where we need to be. We must remember that the enemy is ignorance. The solution is not money and the solution is not data. The solution is information, the destination is knowledge and the pathway is hard work. ¡Onward/Hasta adelante! – smf More than you ever wanted to know about FCMAT: The Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team. L.A. 3rd GRADER BASKS IN THE GLOW OF A PRESIDENTIAL MOMENT: At town hall meeting Ethan Lopez asks President Obama a question about teacher layoffs ETHAN LOPEZ, 8, IS SPOTLIGHTED BY THE MEDIA AND CHEERED BY HIS CLASSMATES FOR BEING SELECTED BY OBAMA TO ASK THE FINAL QUESTION AT A TOWN HALL MEETING. By Seema Mehta | LA Times March 21, 2009 — Ethan Lopez became an instant celebrity at his Los Angeles elementary school Friday, the day after President Obama selected the 8-year-old to ask the final question at a town hall meeting. Media crews filmed the boy and his family while the school principal and teachers gushed over his question about teacher layoffs, and classmates cheered. The moment was not lost on the third-grader. "I felt very excited," he said. "I never talked to the president of the United States before. And then we got to meet him!" It was perhaps the most moving few minutes at Obama's session in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. After taking questions from several adults, the president announced he had time for one final question and said it should come from a young person. As many people throughout the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex gymnasium frantically waved their arms -- some entirely too old to qualify -- Obama chose Ethan, dressed smartly in a crisp, white shirt and striped tie. "You look good in that tie," Obama said. The small boy stood up and said, "Hi, my name is Ethan. President Obama, our school is in big trouble because our budget cuts . . . 25 of our teachers already have [received] pink slips." He then handed the president a folder full of letters written by his classmates at Frank del Olmo Elementary School in Koreatown. Obama told Ethan that he was doing everything he could to protect teachers' jobs and modernize schools, citing the economic-stimulus package. "I want you to get a first-class education," he said. After the town hall ended, Ethan and his mother, Myrna, were whisked backstage, where they met the president and shook his hand. "It was the experience of a lifetime," Myrna Lopez said. She said her son showed interest in the campaign last year. He voted for Obama in an online Nickelodeon poll and accompanied his mother to the voting booth. But she was stunned that her normally timid son stood up and asked the president a question in front of several hundred people. "I was surprised because he's very shy," she said. "I was very impressed." Television crews descended on the school Friday morning, and Ethan's classmates relived the moment on video. It was a heady dose of attention for a school where more than 90% of the students receive free- or reduced-price lunches, an indicator of poverty, and nearly two-thirds are learning English as a second language. This month, the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is grappling with a nearly $700-million shortfall over the next 18 months, notified 9,000 employees, including 5,500 teachers, that they could be laid off. At Del Olmo Elementary, 27 of the school's 43 teachers have been given notices that they could be terminated. If the layoffs are finalized, carefully created relationships among the school's teachers and the community will be harmed, Principal Eugene Hernandez said. He was proud that Ethan tried to call attention to the matter. "For a child to get up in front of the massive audience and to ask a question, I think that's very brave," he said. "It made me feel very proud -- we want our kids to have good self-esteem and feel confident. . . . He was not afraid to speak his mind and ask a curious question. That was good." Photos and video of Ethan Lopez speaking truth to power. TAFT WELCOMES RETURNING STAFF AFTER HAZING PROBE LAUSD: SIX AT SCHOOL HAD BEEN REASSIGNED WHILE ALLEGATIONS INVESTIGATED By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | Los Angeles Newspaper Group/Daily News A welcome back assembly was held for six teachers and administrators at Taft High School on Friday after the group spent weeks off-campus during a district investigation of alleged student hazing. Taft's principal, assistant principal, dean, two teachers and the campus police officer returned to work Thursday and were greeted Friday by a crowd of excited teachers, students and parents who were glad to see them back on campus. "The investigation is over," said Principal Sharon Thomas. "We've been cleared, and we are all very happy to be back to work with our students and their education, which is where we should be." LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said he could not elaborate on the details of the investigation because state law prohibits him from discussing personnel matters. The district's chief also emphasized that the incident had made employees more aware of the "procedures and requirements for reporting either the suspicion of or actual issues that involve the health and welfare of young people," he said in a written statement Thursday. District officials declined to identify by name the employees who were reassigned last month, but other district sources have told the Daily News they were Thomas, Dean Barbara Haskin, Assistant Principal Marc Strassner, volleyball coach Arman Mercado, teacher Lisa McKeon and campus police officer Malcolm Norrington. Four male students were also suspended last month for the alleged hazing incident involving the boys volleyball team. Some students said the incident involved a sex toy. During the time that the teachers and administrators were gone, staff and students from Taft hosted several protests in an effort to return them to the school. Doug Lasken, an English teacher and debate coach at Taft for the last 10 years, said the school was in a "mood of celebration" Friday. "We knew there was no cover-up and no neglect," Lasken said. "This was just a procedural matter. Nothing you would call wrongdoing. ... We are just so glad to have them back." [In a separate case] LAUSD officials also reassigned three administrators at Porter Middle School last month after they allegedly used a student in an unauthorized drug sting. District officials said the administrators are still reassigned to a nonschool site while the Los Angeles Police Department continues its investigation. Compromising past promises / Compromising the future: NEW BUDGET RULES LOOSEN UP SCHOOL FUNDING By Laurel Rosenhall and Robert Faturechi | The Sacramento Bee Originally Published: Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009 Summer school. Art and music. Classes for gifted children. Buying textbooks. Training math and English teachers. Tutoring students for the high school exit exam. For decades, a large portion of California's school funding has been strictly designated for such categories. Not any more. In the budget deal crafted last week, the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger combined many of the pots of money known as "categoricals." The result is that for the next five years, principals and district administrators will have more spending flexibility than they've had in recent history. It's a move education reformers have been pushing for years, saying a bit more freedom with the checkbook would help schools meet their students' needs. The new state budget cuts about $2.4 billion from schools this year and changes the payment terms of another $5 billion. The reductions get even deeper next year, when schools will face an additional cut of $400 million. About $1 billion of the cuts will be taken out of categorical funding – which makes up one-third of the money California spends on education and funds more than 60 individual education programs. Categorical funding became popular in the 1960s as politicians tried to help disadvantaged children by spending money specifically on them and ensuring the additional cash didn't wind up in teachers' paychecks, according to a new report by UC Berkeley's law school. As categoricals proliferated over time, however, they created a bureaucratic web of obligations for educators, who couldn't target funds where they were needed most. Money for buying new technology couldn't be used to buy books for a library. Money for checking kids' teeth couldn't be spent on counseling. Money for training principals couldn't be used to train a teacher. "Principals said they spent a God-awful amount of their time filling out compliance forms," said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley education professor who surveyed principals for a recent study. "They've got to keep receipts, keep billing information. … Principals become mini-bureaucrats rather than working with teachers and being in classrooms." The findings led him to recommend – in the massive "Getting Down to Facts" report Schwarzenegger released with fanfare in March 2007 – that the state consolidate categorical funding. And that is just what the new plan does. It collapses 42 categorical programs into one block of money, and trims it by about 15 percent, or $1 billion. Schools can now use that money for any purpose. "They could do less on school safety and more on career tech," said Jennifer Kuhn, director of K-12 education with the Legislative Analyst's Office. "They can do less counseling and have smaller class sizes. They can do less adult ed and more K-12 ed." Or, she said, they can skip spending on those programs and give teachers a raise. __________________________________________ COMPROMISING PAST PROMISES/COMPROMISING THE FUTURE: Under the "Budget Compromise" reached in Sacramento on Feb 19, Schools can now use money from these categorical programs for any purpose: • Summer school/supplemental instruction • Regional Occupational Centers and Programs • High school counseling • Specialized secondary programs • Immediate intervention/underperforming and high achieving/improving schools programs • Gifted and talented education (GATE) • Mathematics and reading professional development • Principal training program • American Indian Early Childhood Education Program • California Indian education centers • Adult education • Education technology • Deferred maintenance • Instructional materials • Community day schools program • Bilingual teacher training program • National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification Incentive Program • California School Age Families Education Program • California High School Exit Exam • Center for Civic Education • Teacher dismissal apportionments • Charter schools • School safety • Class size reduction, grade nine • International baccalaureate diploma program • California Association of Student Councils • Pupil Retention Block Grant • Teacher Credentialing Block Grant • Professional Development Block Grant • Targeted Instructional Improvement Block Grants • Library Improvement Block Grant • School Safety Consolidated Competitive Grant • Physical Education Block Grant • Arts and Music Block Grant • County Office of Education Williams Audits • Certificated Staff Mentoring Program • Oral Health Assessments • Commission on Teacher Credentialing Schools must continue to pay for these programs with categorical funding: • Child Development • Child Nutrition • Economic Impact Aid • Special Education • Home-to-School Transportation • After School Education & Safety • Class Size Reduction, kindergarten – third grade • Quality Education Investment Act __________________________________________ The plan has the potential to revolutionize school funding in California, said Michael Kirst, a Stanford education professor and former state Board of Education president. But it doesn't do away with categorical funding altogether. About 20 categorical programs remain intact, including some of the biggest – special education and K-3 class-size reduction. Because the restrictions on many of the biggest categorical programs have not been eased, the new flexibility won't help cash-strapped districts very much, said David Gordon, Sacramento County's superintendent of schools. The changes might have been more useful during a time of surplus, he said. But without money, flexibility is of little use. "To me it's more like, 'Do you cut your arm off or your hand off?' " Gordon said. "We have a bare-bones program already going in. That basic core – the reading, the math and so on – is something you can't trade off." Other educators said the eased restrictions will give them some welcome wiggle room. Patrick Godwin, superintendent of Folsom Cordova Unified, expects the relaxed rules will allow his district to avoid painful staff cuts. "The district here already had a strong music and arts program," Godwin said. "So we'll be able to use those monies to keep more counselors or keep more electives in the high schools." THE MYTH OF THE "POWERFUL" TEACHERS UNION by David Macaray | Counterpoint Blog There’s a myth circulating out there that not only threatens to ruin the reputation of America’s school teachers, but has the potential to side-track any realistic hopes of education reform. It’s the assertion that “powerful” teachers’ unions are responsible for the decline of public education in the United States in general, and California in particular. Propagators of this myth claim that the reason test scores of American children have sunk so low in recent years is because our public school teachers are too incompetent and lazy to provide adequate instruction. Moreover, because the teachers’ unions are so domineering and evil—because their leaders will do anything to maintain union hegemony, including not allowing demonstrably inferior teachers to be fired—school administrators are powerless to act. You hear these charges everywhere. Arianna Huffington, the late-to-the-party liberal and celebrity blogger, has been echoing such claims for years. For Huffington to be riffing on the state of public education is, in itself, remarkable, given that she lives in Brentwood, her daughters attend prestigious private schools, and the closest she’s ever come to an inner-city school was the day she accidentally drove by one, causing her to hastily lock the doors and windows of her Prius and speed away. On Friday, March 13, comedian and uber-liberal Bill Maher joined the attack on his HBO show. In one of his signature tirades, Maher, a California resident, railed against the “powerful” California teachers’ union, accusing it of contributing to the crisis in public education by not allowing the school district to remove incompetent teachers. Maher came armed with statistics. He noted with dismay that the U.S. ranked 35th in the world in math, 29th in science, and that barely 50% of California’s public school pupils manage to graduate from high school. He blamed the teachers for this. Although every teacher in the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District), has a college degree and a teaching credential and managed to survive the scrutiny of a lengthy probationary period, Maher piously maintained that these teachers were unqualified to run a classroom. Granted, Maher is a professional comic trolling for laughs, and not a “social scientist” dispensing wisdom, so we shouldn’t be looking to this man for enlightenment. Still, considering his liberal creds (from the environment to civil liberties to corporate mischief to drug law reform), it was demoralizing to hear someone this hip say something so stupid and simplistic. Maher made a huge deal of the fact that, because of the union’s protective shield, less than 1% of California’s tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. Although this ratio clearly outraged him (he appeared visibly upset by it), had he taken five minutes to research the subject, he’d have realized that this figure represents the national average—with or without unions. In Georgia, where 92.5% of the teachers are non-union, only 0.5% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. In South Carolina, where 100% of the teachers are non-union, it’s 0.32%. And in North Carolina, where 97.7% are non-union, a miniscule .03% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired—the exact same percentage as California. An even more startling comparison: In California, with its “powerful” teachers’ union, school administrators fire, on average, 6.91% of its probationary teachers. In non-union North Carolina, that figure is only 1.38%. California is actually tougher on prospective candidates. So, despite Maher’s display of civic pride and self-righteous indignation (“We need to bust this union,” he declared), he was utterly mistaken. The statistics not only don’t support his argument, they contradict it. Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, California’s public school system was routinely ranked among the nation’s finest. You can look it up. More significantly, the teachers in those classrooms were union members. The same teachers who were winning those awards for excellence belonged to the “powerful” teachers’ union. Let that sink in a moment: Good schools, good teachers, big union. Which raises the question: Has anything else changed in California (and the rest of the country, for that matter) in the last 40 years to lead one to believe there might be causes other than labor unions to explain the drop in graduation rates? Have there been any significant changes in, say, cultural attitudes or demographics? For openers, how about the disintegration of the American family and the decline in parental supervision/involvement? Being a good student requires discipline, application and, perhaps, a certain level of respect for authority. Have we witnessed any “breakdowns” in these areas over the last 40 years? Or how about the rise in urban poverty? Or the hollowing-out of the middle-class (the average worker hasn’t received a pay increase, in real dollars, since 1973)? Or the assimilation of non-English-speaking immigrants? Or the decrease in per capita funding on California public education? Or the chaos created by school boards arbitrarily mandating wholesale changes in “educational ideology” every two years (LAUSD has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants)? Ask any teacher, child psychologist, sociologist, or real estate agent, and they’ll tell you the same thing: As a general rule, good schools are found in good neighborhoods, and bad schools are found in bad neighborhoods. Simple as that. Moreover, people know this “formula” to be true. Not only is the promise of good schools one reason why people with kids buy homes in good neighborhoods, it’s not uncommon for parents in California to lie about their home addresses in order to get their children assigned to better schools. An experiment: Try moving those “good” teachers from decent school districts—where the kids show up each day, on time, prepared, bright-eyed and attentive, having completed their homework, having eaten a nutritious breakfast, etc.—to one of those South Central LA shit-holes, where crime is rampant, neighborhoods are ravaged, families are in crisis, and 40% of the students live in foster care. See if these “good” teachers, by virtue of their innate “classroom abilities,” are able to improve the test scores of these stunted, overmatched and underprivileged kids. See if these “good” teachers can do what a generation of parents themselves, and society itself, can’t seem to do; see if the graduation rates in these depressed communities rise significantly. And, as part of that same experiment, move the “incompetent” teachers to these healthy, self-sustaining districts and see if the students in these schools don’t continue to score significantly higher, even with the “bad” teachers now running the show. Fact: Oregon has a good public school system. So do South Dakota, Vermont, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine and Washington, among others. Is that because the folks living in these states are exceptionally bright? Is it because their teachers are extraordinarily talented? Or is it because these school districts are stable, relatively homogeneous, and don’t face a fraction of the challenges facing California? For the record, the teachers in these aforementioned good schools are overwhelmingly unionized. Oregon and Washington teachers are 100% unionized; Wisconsin is 98%; Connecticut is 98%; etc. Also, comparing the scores of American students in foreign countries is a bit misleading. The United States was not only the first nation in the world to offer free public education, it was the first to make it compulsory. In the U.S., by law, you must attend school until at least age 16 (some states have even higher age requirements). That means our national average is going to incorporate test scores of every kid from every background in every neighborhood in the country. In India (where I once lived and worked), great emphasis is placed on education; accordingly, India has a decent school system, one that scores well. But school attendance is not mandatory. Indeed, India has 400 million people who are illiterate. One wonders what their national test scores would be if those many millions who can’t read or write were factored in. Fact: Teachers can be fired. Who honestly believes a teachers’ union—whether in California, Oregon or Connecticut—has the authority to insist that management keep unqualified teachers? Since when does a labor union dictate to management? Since when does the hired help tell the bosses what to do? The accusation is absurd on its face. Fact: During the first two years of employment, any teacher in the LAUSD can be fired for any reason, with no recourse to union representation and no access to the grievance procedure. Two full years. If the district doesn’t like you for any reason, they fire you. No union. No grievance. Nothing. Could any arrangement be more favorable to management? Yet, the myth persists, the myth of the Unqualified Teacher. Instead of identifying the real problems facing California’s schools (daunting as they may be), and trying to solve them, people stubbornly insist that thousands of our teachers—every one of them college-educated, credentialed, and having survived two years of scrutiny—need to be fired. Let’s be clear; no one is suggesting that all teachers are “excellent.” Obviously, you’re going to find marginal workers in any profession. But, realistically, how many “bad” teachers could there be? Surely, America’s colleges, universities, and credentialing system can’t be so hideously flawed that we no longer trust their output—that our teachers aren’t worth a damn. Moreover, if it’s the unions who are protecting them, why does South Carolina—where 100% of the teachers are non-union—fire only one-third of one-percent of them? Fact: The fault for unqualified teachers remaining on the payroll lies entirely with the school administrators. These overpaid, $120,000 a year, gutless bureaucrats want us to believe that we live in a world turned upside down. A world where, fantastically, the bosses answer to the employees. Arguably, the problems facing America’s public schools are staggering. But because politicians are essentially spineless—fearful of doing or saying anything that would risk antagonizing their “base”—they refuse to address the real issues. Instead, they play little mind-games with the voters. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s where we stand. And if television personalities like Arianna Huffington and Bill Maher honestly believe all this anti-union propaganda being circulated, they’re more gullible than we thought. ● David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright (“Borneo Bob,” “Larva Boy”) and writer, was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net _____________ ●● smf's 2¢: The forgoing, lest one misses the point, is a rant. 'Tirade' is the writer's own word. His insensitive language and characterization of schools in South Central demean his own argument. 4LAKids would never rant …except as follows: The author in his championship of teacher's unions takes the Union (as opposed to the Company) line, re administrators: "These overpaid, $120,000 a year, gutless bureaucrats……" C'mon, "administrators" are principals; there are so few principals out there that didn't come from the ranks of teachers the number isn't worth mentioning. In unionized school districts in unionized states (read "California") these administrators are universally former teachers/teacher's union members - they are craftspeople in the same trade, practitioners of the same art; brothers and sisters in solidarity with the mission: educating young people. There are good ones and bad ones and indifferent ones and ones who define excellent. Joseph Wambaugh in one of his early police novels has a character say that a 'real' policeman cannot trust any other policeman who rises above the rank of sergeant; one supposes that means a 'real teacher' can't trust anyone above the 'rank' of chapter chair. That may explain why so few teachers turn out and vote in the union leadership elections – even though conventional wisdom and data show union members are more likely to vote in national elections - and the union polling takes place at their schoolsites. The artificial 'us v. them' hierarchy gets in the way and gives teachers' unions a bad name. There is little room and no time for labor v. management in public education; it must be education v. ignorance or the battle is lost. There are many, board members even, in LAUSD that believe that UTLA Contract is the governing document of the District, miraculously found in Moses' back pocket when he descended from Sinai. It is not. There are many in LAUSD who believe that the District is run from UTLA HQ at Wilshire and Berendo – or that important things happen at District HQ at Beaudry and Third – or from eight local district HQs or 900 principals' offices. For the most part all are wrong on all counts. The only important things that happen happen between the ears of 700,000 students prompted and guided and coaxed by 48,000 classroom teachers. All the rest is support, paperwork and administrivia – petty politics and adults-acting-like adults – and I mean that in a disparaging way. Do teachers unions have too much power? Perhaps. Do teachers unions try to exercise (the political science word is 'project') more power than thy have? Undoubtedly. Look at how successful the teachers unions in California were at preserving education funding in the current state budget. And are politicians essentially spineless? The writer - like this one - can't be wrong all of the time! HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources REAL TRANSPARENCY WILL BE TRICKY WITH STIMULUS SPENDING: Following the money will be the hard part Saturday, March 21, 2009 2:42 PM Obama says he wants the public to know exactly where the stimulus aid is going. But watchdogs complain that the White House disclosure guidelines have loopholes. By Paul West | The Baltimore Sun | From the Los Angeles Times March 21, 2009 — Reporting from Washington — Barack Obama says unprecedented transparency will be a hallmark of his presidency. But following the money in the stimulus... Literacy study: ONE IN SEVEN U.S. ADULTS ARE UNABLE TO READ THIS STORY Saturday, March 21, 2009 1:39 PM By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's side effects listed on a pill bottle. Though many communities are making strides to tackle... U P D A T E D: CALLING THE IRONY POLICE: A letter from Superintendent Cortines dated Feb 7th, 2000 Wednesday, March 18, 2009 3:23 PM “I wish you the best of luck as you embark on this most exciting initiative.” 3pm - 18 March: The Superintendent rescinded his proposal to eliminate the APEIS's this morning according to knowledgeable sources. A Victory well won! Now let's save arts and gifted and PE and bilingual ed and the futures of 700,000 special gifted artistic wonderful kids! - smf Last week Superintendent... Crunching Dumb Data: THE 100 WORST PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN AMERICA Monday, March 16, 2009 5:05 PM from http://www.neighborhoodscout.com ●●smf's 2¢ — It's dumb data, but at least none of the 100 are in Southern California - let alone LAUSD! …and the equally suspect 100 Best follow! (19 in SoCal, 1 in LAUSD) NeighborhoodScout® is one of those Real Estate Listing Services that attempt to show Where the Livin' is Easiest, Best, Safest, Whitest, etc. ... CENTRAL REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #14 IN ECHO PARK: The adults push and shove …and the children + the voters + the taxpayers + the school (and $16 million) are potentially left behind. Monday, March 16, 2009 2:21 PM by smf for 4LAKids Much has been made about Central Region Elementary School #14 — which was conceived and designed to relieve overcrowding and gets kids off the bus, out of multitrack year 'round calendars and into schools in their neighborhood. The process at CRES#14 was not all that... PINK SLIPS FOR ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS: Putting a name and a face and a school and 679 students on the bottom line Monday, March 16, 2009 9:26 AM Pam Tronson writes: Dear fellow elementary school parents, This week, all of the... LIVE FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: The Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles, the governing body of the Los Angeles Unified School District Monday, March 16, 2009 12:11 AM From the meeting of March 10th,2009 — following testimony from parents who were ushered in and out of the room one by one to speak to the lack of parent involvement in budget and reduction in force (layoff) discussions. Note: The board, by policy, does not respond directly to public comment transcribed from KLCS – the cast, in order of appearance... The news that didn't fit from March 22. EVENTS: Coming up next week... • Tuesday Mar 24, 2009 South Region Elementary School #12: Pre-Demolition Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Miramonte Elementary School - Auditorium 1400 E. 68th St. Los Angeles, CA 90001 • Wednesday Mar 25, 2009 Valley Region Enadia Way ES Reopening: Open House Time: 10:00 a.m. Location: Enadia Way Elementary School 22944 Enadia Way West Hills, CA 91307 • Wednesday Mar 25, 2009 South Region Elementary School #11: Pre-Demolition Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Loren Miller Elementary School 830 W. 77th St. Los Angeles, CA 90044 • Thursday Mar 26, 2009 South Region Elementary School #3 and South Region Middle School #2 Construction Update Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Martha Escutia Primary Center 6401 Bear Ave. Bell, CA 90201 • Thursday Mar 26, 2009 South Region High School #4: Construction Update Meeting Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: Dominguez Elementary School - Multipurpose Room 21250 S. Santa Fe Ave. Carson, CA 90810 *Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________ • SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: http://www.laschools.org/bond/ Phone: 213-241-5183 ____________________________________________________ • LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR: http://www.laschools.org/happenings/ Phone: 213-893-6800 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383 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. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is immediate past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. He is a Community Concerns Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on various school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. • 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. 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