In This Issue:  | | • | RIVALS VIE FOR JOB AS CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS CHIEF AT STATE PTA CONVENTION DEBATE | | | • | COURT ACTION UPHOLDS MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR WINDFALL FOR LOS ANGELES UNIFIED + COUNCILMAN KREKORIAN REQUESTS EXEMPTION FROM LAUSD FROM DWP HIKES | | | • | CALIFORNIA TAKES NEW TACK IN BID FOR US SCHOOL FUNDING + U P D A T E | | | • | EL CAMINO REAL MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOLS :: LAUSD Schools Triumph At U.S. Academic Decathlon | | | • | 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: | | | | "Let us have no more croaking as to what cannot be done. Let us see what can be done ...and above all see that it is done."- Alice McClellan Birney
Mr. Birney sat down one day in 1895 with her new friend Mrs. Hearst and imagined change in the lives of children. Not THEIR children, ALL children. They wanted, among other things, free kindergarten in public schools.
They became the change on Feb 17, 1897 when they convened the first Congress of Mothers in Washington D.C. The congress became congresses – the California Congress of Mothers and Children's Study Circles convened in 1899 in Los Angeles. In time organization they founded became PTA and universal free kindergarten and many of the other things Birney and Hearst imagined came to be. Child Labor Laws. A juvenile justice system, School Nurses.
Change happened.
The California State PTA – formally the California Congress of Parents, Teachers, Students and Parents – held its 111th annual congress/convention in Sacramento last week.
The PTA Convention featured all the trappings of any annual convention. Keynote speakers and motivational speeches and heartstring-pulling tales of challenges overcome. There was dissent and discord, debate and harmony. There were funny moments and funny hats – and a rally at the capitol steps. The “Hot for Teachers” video [http://bit.ly/dlAPzP] – produced by the Wonderland Ave. School PTA in Laurel Canyon – was universally popular. There were a couple of thousand California Parents pulled-together-and-pulling-together for kids.
Among the speakers: State Superintendent of Jack O'Connell, CA Teacher of the Year Kelly Kovacic, Foster Child/Abducted Teen turned Civil Rights Attorney Carissa Phelps, Author Julianna Baggott /aka/ N.E. Bode, Sacramento insiders John Mockler and Rick Simpson, a debate between the leading candidates for O'Connell's job – and a rabble-rousing speech of rare passion and well told truths by Sacramento Superintendent Carlos García. New resolutions were added to the PTA playbooks – and the PTA rank-and-file - nearly one million at the grassroots - emerged newly resolved: The only test that truly matters is the one which measures what's best for kids.
Birney and Hearst's first congress was like the proverbial pebble dropped into metaphorical still water: The ripples are still spreading outward: School lunch programs. Polio immunization. Seat belt and car seat legislation. Television ratings.
The challenges today to not just our children but all children are School Funding - and the croaking that nothing can be done because the economy is rough, revenues are down and the will in Sacramento is nonexistent. Rather than raise taxes on oil companies or corporations who transfer property in stock swaps our elected representatives propose that we eliminate arts and music education and add more and more kids to overcrowded classrooms. I guess big oil and the supermarket chains and the megamalls – profitable businesses all - need the money more than our kids need a school nurse or a counselor or a desk or a book.
The challenges later will be something else; there are never shortages of challenges in good times or bad. There will never be a shortage of parents-as-advocates for their children – only a shortage of vision by those who could facilitate change but instead - as Mrs. Birney said – only croak.
If you look at the words and fail to see the “u” in “change: …or the “u” in “PTA” – maybe you should work to fix the deficit. (Variations of the statement “Never trust a man who can only spell a word one way” are attributed to Jefferson, Jackson and Twain ...good company!)
Gentle readers: Let us see what can be done, And above all see that it is done, For kids.
¡Onward! - smf
RIVALS VIE FOR JOB AS CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS CHIEF AT STATE PTA CONVENTION DEBATE
By Lesli A. Maxwell | Ed Week | Vol. 29, Issue 31
Published Online: April 30, 2010 -- Three Democrats—state Sen. Gloria Romero, assemblyman Tom Torlakson, and retired superintendent Larry Aceves—are emerging as the front-runners in a field of 12 candidates vying to become the next schools chief in California.
But the campaign for state superintendent of public instruction, officially a nonpartisan office, is just as much a three-way fight entangling the teachers’ unions, an education reform group backed by billionaires, and the organization that represents school administrators.
Each group has a stake in a contest that showcases contentious issues such as how the state will fix hundreds of chronically underperforming school; how—or if— California will move to tie teachers’ evaluations, pay, and job security to how well their students perform; and whether the state will free up, or restrict, charter schools and other forms of school choice.
With a total of 12 candidates for the chief’s position, none of the three leading candidates is expected to emerge with enough votes to win the post outright in the June 8 primary, which will mean a November runoff between the top two vote-getters. Jack O’Connell, the current state superintendent, must leave the post after serving two four-year terms because of term limits.
Mr. Aceves, Mr. Torlakson, and Ms. Romero, along with author, business owner, and educator Diane Lenning, all are scheduled to take part in a candidates forum today in Sacramento, co-sponsored by the state PTA and the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund.
The current contest touches on a range of education issues being debated nationally, as the Obama administration funnels billions of dollars to states and school districts that agree to its priorities for educational improvement. Central to its agenda: adopting more rigorous academic standards and assessments, improving student-data systems, producing more effective teachers and principals, and turning around low-performing schools.
Range of Issues
So far, the campaign rhetoric appears to reflect both national themes and statewide issues, such as California’s continuing budget crisis.
“This is going to be a referendum on how we move forward when it comes to reforming public education,” said Ms. Romero, a Los Angeles-area lawmaker who chairs the education committee in the Senate and whose candidacy is supported by EdVoice, a Sacramento-based advocacy group that is backed by major education philanthropists such as Eli Broad and the family of the late Gap Inc. founder, Donald Fisher.
“This is about the forces of the status quo versus the forces of change,” she said.
Mr. Torlakson, who was a science and mathematics teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area before running for public office, has the backing of both of the statewide teachers’ unions, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. He has made California’s continuing wave of K-12 budget cuts a key campaign theme.
“Teachers are doing a fantastic job, but they are not being given the resources they need to do their jobs,” Mr. Torlakson said. “I had more resources in the 1970s when I was teaching at a Title I school.”
Mr. Aceves, who was superintendent in three California school districts, casts the race as offering a choice of two career politicians beholden to the groups that are backing them and a veteran educator who will stay above the political fray.
“Given all that our schools are facing, we really need someone who understands how things work in districts,” said Mr. Aceves, who was recruited to run a year ago by the 15,000-member Association of California School Administrators. “What we have to do is work really, really hard, but we can’t just blow everything up and start over, either.”
Bidding for Attention
Even those three candidates, who are considered most viable and have attracted the most financial backing, will find it challenging to draw attention to their campaigns and their issues.
The run-up to the June 8 balloting is dominated by the Republican primary for governor. The two leading candidates in that race, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, are spending tens of millions of dollars to keep their television advertisements running in California’s expensive media markets.
Still, for those voters who do their homework, the three leading candidates for schools chief offer distinct choices. Sen. Romero, a professor of psychology on leave from California State University, Los Angeles, has cast herself as the champion of reforms backed by President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
She supports opening more charter schools and favors other programs offering choice, including the option for parents to transfer their children to other districts if they are enrolled in low-performing schools. Ms. Romero also has been an aggressive advocate for the state to overhaul its education laws and policies to compete in the $4 billion federal Race to the Top grant contest. She authored legislation late last year that now allows parents to force districts to intervene in their children’s low-performing schools, a measure that was hotly opposed by the teachers’ unions and other education groups.
Those stances won Ms. Romero critical support from EdVoice, which has contributed several thousand dollars to her campaign. Individuals who serve on EdVoice’s board have made the maximum allowable contributions to the state senator’s campaign, said Bill Lucia, the chief executive officer of EdVoice. The family of the late Mr. Fisher has collectively given Ms. Romero more than $50,000, campaign-finance records filed with the California secretary of state’s office show.
Assemblyman Torlakson was the author of CTA-backed legislation four years ago that set aside money for a state program to intervene in low-performing schools. He was also an architect of a 1998 bond measure that raised billions of dollars for school facilities.
Mr. Torlakson argues that until California reverses its pattern of funding cuts for K-12, no one can expect achievement, especially among students in poverty, to improve on any scale.
Mr. Torlakson, who coached high school athletes in cross country and track in addition to working as a classroom teacher, also is skeptical that charter schools offer a viable solution to lagging student achievement in low-income communities.
“We have such mixed results from charters,” he said. “They are an important part of our education system’s spectrum of choices, but they are not a panacea. I think our focus has really got to be on fortifying our neighborhood schools and making them the best they can be.”
The 120,000-member California Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, was the first of the two statewide teachers’ unions to endorse Mr. Torlakson. The CFT has already put close to $13,000 into his campaign, and the union’s political action committee, spent $132,000 on a mailer promoting the candidate, according to campaign finance reports.
The California Teachers Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, has also spent just under $13,000 on Mr. Torlakson’s campaign, but union officials declined to disclose how much they might spend on the race through independent expenditures by their political action committee. Mike Myslinski, a spokesman for the 325,000-member union, said that “this race is critical to California teachers, and we anticipate using a number of strategies to support Tom.” Both unions can provide an army of precinct walkers on the assemblyman’s behalf.
David A. Sanchez, the president of the CTA, which has endorsed Mr. Torlakson for the job, puts it this way: “Tom Torlakson is a former classroom teacher who believes in the due process rights of all teachers. And he believes that all students are entitled to the best possible education that the state can provide for them.”
Mr. Aceves, the veteran district-level chief, sees himself as a state chief who would be able to bring together players in California’s education community, even on issues that remain fraught with discord, such as crafting new teacher-evaluation systems.
With a far lower statewide profile than the two legislators, he won a big boost this week when the state’s largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, endorsed him.
“My concern is that my opponents are on one side of the table or the other,” Mr. Aceves said. “If either side was going to be able to solve all of our problems, I wouldn’t be in this race.”
The state school administrators’ group recruited Mr. Aceves to run specifically as an alternative to the other two front-runners and through its independent expenditure committee has already spent more than $250,000 on the campaign. Mr. Aceves served as the ACSA’s president eight years ago.
To Bob Wells, the executive director of the ACSA, neither Mr. Torlakson nor Ms. Romero can lay legitimate claim to defending resources for K-12.
“Education has lost $18 billion over the last two years and both of them voted for the state budgets that made those cuts,” said Mr. Wells. “We take great exception to them voting for decimating school programs and then applying for the job to lead that same system.”
COURT ACTION UPHOLDS MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR WINDFALL FOR LOS ANGELES UNIFIED + COUNCILMAN KREKORIAN REQUESTS EXEMPTION FROM LAUSD FROM DWP HIKES
THE MONEY WILL COME FROM A SUIT OVER INCREASING PROPERTY TAXES IN REDEVELOPMENT ZONES. THE EXACT AMOUNT REMAINS UNKNOWN.
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
May 1, 2010 | A long-running legal battle over local property taxes has ended in a court decision that will mean a multimillion-dollar windfall for the Los Angeles Unified School District. But estimates of the amount vary dramatically — from about $20 million in the near term to $1.14 billion in years to come.
"It's very significant," said John Walsh, assistant general counsel for L.A. Unified. "It's a source of revenue and we can use it for schools."
He estimated a gain of $600 million to $1.14 billion over the next 40 years and "multimillions" in reimbursements going back to about 1994.
An opposing attorney with Los Angeles County declined to estimate future revenues but said reimbursements to the district should go back just three years.
"Is it going to be somewhat costly for the county? Certainly, in a time when every nickel counts," said Thomas Tyrrell, principal deputy county counsel.
The legal case centered on how to divide the increasing property taxes in redevelopment zones. Cities and counties create these zones to revive areas defined as blighted. The proceeds of rising property taxes are divided according to a complex formula. L.A. Unified argued that the county and other agencies were shortchanging schools.
A trial judge had sided with the county, but the state Court of Appeal favored L.A. Unified. That decision stood when the state Supreme Court declined this week to review the case.
The issue has a long history. In the late 1990s, then-school board member David Tokofsky championed it locally after he learned about the matter during a board meeting of the state school boards association. The district filed the case in 2007, the same year Tokofsky left office.
No funds are likely to arrive before the new budget year begins on July 1, Walsh said.
Tyrrell said that, under the court-determined formula, the state will claim about 43% of L.A. Unified's additional money. Including this year and past years, he estimated the county could owe about $20 million in reimbursements to the district.
Other entities, including the city of Los Angeles, will owe smaller amounts. Specific dollar figures must still be determined through negotiations or in court.
Tyrrell estimated that legal fees for the county alone amounted to about $1 million.
"I understand that schools are facing tremendous pressures, and so are we," Tyrrell said. "The consequences are that we're going to compete with one another when these issues come up. It's a zero-sum game."
______________________________________
►COUNCILMAN KREKORIAN REQUESTS EXEMPTION FROM LAUSD FROM DWP HIKES
● COUNCILMAN SEEKS EXEMPTION FROM DWP RATE HIKE FOR L.A. UNIFIED
David Zahniser and Jason Song | LA Times LA Now blog
April 30, 2010 | 7:22 pm -- Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian on Friday called on the
Department of Water and Power to exempt the Los Angeles Unified School District from having to pay an upcoming 4.8% electric rate hike.
Krekorian, who represents part of the east San Fernando Valley, said the increase would only add to the financial crisis at the district, which is facing a $640-million shortfall.
The councilman, a former Burbank school board member, was unsure of the precise cost to L.A. Unified of the pending rate hike but warned that any increase would drain resources from classrooms.
“A million [dollars] that they pay in electrical rates is a million they can’t pay for supplies and athletic equipment and music instruction,” said Krekorian, who voted against the DWP rate increase, which goes into effect July 1.
Councilwoman Jan Perry voiced concerns about Krekorian’s request, saying an exemption for the school district would invite requests from other institutional ratepayers, such as hospitals, homeless shelters, community colleges and county government.
“I think it will open a Pandora’s box,” said Perry, who heads the council’s Energy and Environment Committee.
Krekorian offered his proposal a few days after the school board voted to seek a separate rate for its sprawling educational system. Before that vote, school board member Tamar Galatzan complained that city officials were ignoring the district’s request for rate relief.
To cope with its budget shortfall, the district is pursuing a $100-per-parcel property tax hike on the June 8 ballot. Property owners are also covering the cost of a $19.5-billion school construction and modernization program, whose proceeds can't fund other services. Voters approved four consecutive property tax increases over a 12-year period to pay for that construction program.
_______________________________
● KREKORIAN: DWP SHOULD EXEMPT LAUSD FROM RATE HIKES
By Christina Villacorte | City News Service from Daily Breeze
04/30/2010 -- The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power should exempt the city's cash-strapped school district from an increase in electricity bills starting July 1, Councilman Paul Krekorian said Friday.
He filed a motion urging the City Council to request that the utility give the Los Angeles Unified School District a break from the rate hike. He noted the district is already $650 million in the red and has issued layoff notices to 5,200 employees.
"When there's an increase in electricity charges, that eats into the limited amount in discretionary funds that any school district has left after paying its teachers and its staff," Krekorian said.
"That means that for every million dollars more that LAUSD has to pay to the DWP, it's a million dollars less in supplies, after-school programming, music instruction, textbooks and so forth," Krekorian said. "It's a direct hit to education in the classroom to increase the rates on LAUSD."
DWP spokesman Joseph Ramallo said, "We certainly will review the motion filed by the council member and respond to it as it is considered by the council and council committees."
DWP will increase electricity rates by six-tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour - or about 4.8 percent - starting July 1.
The utility originally called for a rate hike of 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour, to be phased in over a year. The plan - which the council blocked - would have raised certain commercial customers' rates by up to 33 percent.
LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said a 2.7 cents-per-kilowatt-hour rate hike would raise the school district's annual utility budget by $11.6 million.
"This will have a significant impact on the students and teachers of LAUSD," he said in a letter to the council last month. "The budget crisis has already forced us to reduce central and school site staff - including teachers - and to reduce programs and classroom resources to levels not seen in decades."
In a separate letter, Cortines wrote that the rate hike "could not come at a worse time for LAUSD - we are struggling to find enough funds just to be able to provide the resources, both teachers and programming, needed to properly educate our students, our collective future."
CALIFORNIA TAKES NEW TACK IN BID FOR US SCHOOL FUNDING + U P D A T E
THE STATE, WHICH LOST OUT IN THE FIRST ROUND OF THE RACE TO THE TOP GRANT COMPETITION, WILL HAVE THREE LARGE DISTRICTS APPLY: L.A., LONG BEACH AND FRESNO.
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
April 28, 2010 -- California has a new strategy to win a high-profile federal grant for school reform: Three large districts, including Los Angeles Unified, will apply for those competitive dollars.
The state lost out in the first round of competition for a share of the $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants, held in March. Its application was opposed by about three-fourths of the state's teacher unions, and about half of the school districts also refused to sign on.
In the last few weeks, state leaders have been lobbied by federal officials who have argued that California should not back away from applying for the second round of funding. The Obama administration has made Race to the Top a major initiative aimed at pressuring school districts to adopt many of its favored reforms.
The state was a day or two away from giving up on applying, but Bonnie Reiss, who recently became the governor's education secretary, pushed for the new approach. She also suggested that California hire a consulting firm that earned high marks for helping other states with their applications. Foundations stepped forward to provide the funding.
Another nudge came from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who called Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and implored him not to pull out. Duncan, officials said, told the governor that the state's new strategy would receive due consideration.
It would be "disheartening" if California didn't try again, said Deputy Education Secretary Anthony Miller. He insisted the continued push for reforms that would accompany a new application would be "good for students" whether "you get a Race to the Top dollar or not."
The state's plan would still reach large numbers of students. L.A. Unified alone has 11% of the state's enrollment and more than fives times as many students as Delaware, one of the first-round winners. The Long Beach and Fresno unified school districts would also be included in the application under the new plan.
"We've got to go for it," said L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, citing an ongoing budget crisis that could result in hundreds of layoffs, program cutbacks and increased class sizes.
Union participation could be crucial for California, which was marked down in the first round for not drawing more support from labor unions and school districts. But some union leaders have said that the amount of money is not large enough — California stands to win as much as $700 million — and that some of the proposed reforms are problematic. They've faulted a federal emphasis on promoting charter schools and on linking teacher evaluations to student test scores.
"We need to find a way the bargaining units could be a part of this," Cortines said. "We'd craft it in such a way that they'd feel comfortable."
A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, was noncommittal in an interview but earlier expressed opposition to linking teachers' reviews to their students' standardized test results.
In the first round, California ranked 27th in a competition that included 40 states and the District of Columbia. Only two states ultimately prevailed, Delaware and Tennessee, and several backed away from reapplying, judging their prospects to be hopeless.
"Many states were starting to say, ‘We made a lot of really tough decisions and didn't get much credit for strides we made,'" said Hilary McLean, communications director for the California Department of Education. "There is real money at stake. God knows we need it, but can we realistically get over the hurdles? … Is it an exercise in futility?"
California's plan relies on putting forward L.A. Unified as a model and laboratory for reform, along with the Long Beach and Fresno districts. A notable absence on that list is San Diego Unified, the state's second-largest district, which shunned participation in round one.
Long Beach is frequently cited for its leading-edge improvements. Cortines characterized L.A. Unified as a district on the rise, citing its teacher effectiveness task force, efforts to put schools in charge of their own budgets and an initiative to disclose more academic data to the public while also using it to guide teaching as never before.
U P D A T E:
L.A. UNIFIED AND FIVE OTHER DISTRICTS WILL VIE WITH STATE FOR FEDERAL REFORM GRANT
Howard Blume | LA Times
April 30, 2010 | 7:00 pm -- Six school districts will work with the state to craft another try at winning a high-profile federal school-reform grant, officials announced Friday. The names of the three largest districts, including L.A. Unified, had been disclosed in an article this week in The Times. Long Beach Unified and Fresno Unified also were taking part.
But officials revealed Friday that three other districts wanted to be involved as well: San Francisco Unified and two Fresno-area districts: Clovis Unified and Sanger Unified.
California fell short during the first round of competition for a share of the $4.35-billion Race to the Top grants, and the state was a day or two away from giving up on reapplying for the second round. Officials had nearly concluded that the effort was hopeless.
But U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger not to give up. And the state developed a new strategy: A few districts would pursue reforms more specific and more aggressive than in the original state submission.
The approach is a calculated gamble because federal evaluators rewarded plans that reached as many students in a state as possible. The two winning states — Tennessee and Delaware — scored high marks for doing so.
Still, the six California districts serve more than 1 million students, officials said, more students than in the state of Tennessee and a greater number than the entire population of Delaware.
These six districts are pursuing the sort of reforms advocated by the federal government, said Bonnie Reiss, education secretary for Schwarzenegger.
Their efforts include using data systems that track the progress of individual students and linking teacher evaluations to multiple measures of student performance.
It’s not too late for other districts to join in, Reiss added. They would then qualify themselves for a share of up to $700 million that California could win.
States must turn in their applications by June 1. Kansas, Indiana, Vermont and Alaska have decided not to apply. Texas spurned the competition from the start.
EL CAMINO REAL MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOLS :: LAUSD Schools Triumph At U.S. Academic Decathlon
from CBS2.com
Apr 30, 2010 10:54 am US/Pacific -- LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― Marshall High School has won the 2010 U.S. Academic Decathlon Online competition, making the Los Angeles Unified School District a double winner this year, it was announced Friday.
Marshall won the online version of the competition just days after El Camino Real High School's decathletes won the 2010 U.S. Academic Decathlon championship in Omaha, Nebraska.
"I want to congratulate the team and coach from Marshall High School on this prestigious win," LAUSD Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said. "This championship gives the district two victories in student learning and achievement, and is a strong testament to the quality of education LAUSD has to offer. Bravo to all."
"Today's technology allows more students to be a part of this exciting competition," said Cliff Ker, coordinator of the LAUSD Academic Decathlon.
"Because of the tough economic times many school districts face across the country, the online competition gives students and school districts unable to send teams to the actual academic decathlon an opportunity to participate and compete online."
Marshall High School's academic decathlon team won the 2010 LAUSD Academic Decathlon and earned second-place honors in this year's California Academic Decathlon competition.
● EL CAMINO REAL HIGH SCHOOL WINS 2010 U.S. ACADEMIC DECATHLON. LAUSD Wins its 11th National Title: LAUSD News Rele... http://bit.ly/aFlIEZ
● EL CAMINO REAL HIGH SCHOOL IN WOODLAND HILLS WINS NATIONAL ACADEMIC DECATHLON: Kate Linthicum | LA Times LA Now bl... http://bit.ly/a7gOI3
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
RIVALS VIE FOR JOB AS CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS CHIEF AT STATE PTA CONVENTION DEBATE: By Lesli A. Maxwell | Ed Week | ... http://bit.ly/bJgyUG
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COUNCILMAN REQUESTS EXEMPTION FROM LAUSD FROM DWP HIKES: COUNCILMAN SEEKS EXEMPTION FROM DWP RATE HIKE FOR L.A.... http://bit.ly/bo9DSn
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• SAVE SCHOOL LIBRARIES: A poem addressed to the honorable Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles
by Carole Koneff | Library Aide – Third Street Elementary
April 23, 2010
Dear Elected School Board
sitting there today
I wish I was standing in front of you
because I have something to say.
I want to save the libraries;
I want to save the books
I want to preserve a basic need
so children can sit in nooks.
I plead on behalf of Andrew;
I plead on behalf of Kate
Who come in the library every day,
as soon as they’re through the gate!
I plead on behalf of Felix;
I plead on behalf of Reese
Who like to come in and pick up a book
in a place of sanctuary and peace!
I beg on behalf of Ella;
I beg on behalf of Mack
Who fell in love with Bill Peet
and now do not look back.
I beg on behalf of Kinder,
I read to them every week
They’re always happy to see me
and always anxious to speak.
I beg on behalf of teachers
who need to get in the door
When looking for something for STULL day
that shows a little bit more.
I implore on behalf of parents,
busy with car pools and life
Knowing their kids can get books at school
helps a bit with the strife!
I plead on behalf of “Shiloh”;
I plead on behalf of “Holes”
Books about mushrooms or dolphins,
presidents, artists or moles
I plead on behalf of “Despereaux”;
I plead on behalf of “Hoot”
I plead on behalf of the library aides
about to be given the boot!
You need to let us stay open;
you need to let someone care
So that when they come in at recess,
the books will still be there!
If the doors do not remain open,
if the doors are forced to be locked
Then millions of hungry brain cells
from life-changing words will be blocked!
I hope that you all get the message;
I hope that you will see the light
And allow us to do what we do best;
we’ll never give up the fight.
Libraries are REALLY IMPORTANT,
libraries shape students’ lives.
Access to books in a nice quiet place
and just about everyone thrives.
Don’t tell me about “extra” money
don’t tell me there was a choice
Library aides work really hard
but nobody gave us a voice
Don’t abandon the libraries,
don’t allow them to wither and die
Dear School Board who “hold all the cards”
please hear my desperate cry!
“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.” -- Barack Obama --
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
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• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT.
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