In This Issue:  | | • | STUDY SHOWS TEENS BENEFIT FROM LATER SCHOOL DAY + DELAYED SCHOOL START TIME ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVEMENTS IN ADOLESCENT BEHAVIORS + More | | | • | LOW-ACHIEVING FREMONT HIGH REOPENS; MOST OF ITS TEACHERS ARE NEW + a message from Mónica + smf’s 2¢ [updated] | | | • | MARGARET SPELLINGS, ARNE DUNCAN – WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? | | | • | CALIFORNIA’S SCHOOL NURSE CRISIS: Thousands of schools lack a campus health worker. With budget cuts threatening existing programs parents need to act | | | • | 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: | | | | Two challenges were issued from two different sources last Friday - challenges that made me stop and think.
While I may not have really learned the lesson about not running with scissors in kindergarten, I still look both ways when crossing the street. And I did learn to share. Two out of three, not bad for an old guy.
THE FIRST CHALLENGE I share with you is a writing prompt issued by a principal to parents and teachers at their school: "What does my ideal school look like?"
THE SECOND was a short terse e-mail - short enough to be a tweet - from a 4LAKids reader: "I don't understand why it has to be all so difficult to run a school well."
Thank you both for both. The first challenges our imaginations. What if? Things not as they are; but as we would have them be.
The second breaks our hearts. The reality of Reality as a cold slap in the face.
It's not easy — but the truth is that none of this needs to be this difficult. If we permit ourselves to dream the first we can follow our dreams on the high road past the second.
There is no/will be no 'easy button'. No magic bullets, no quick fixes, no short cuts. But hard work is not the same as drama and angst; sturm und drang.
There are 680,000 challenges in LAUSD, nine million challenges in California. Nine million opportunities. Nine million reasons to speak up.
The hard work doesn't have to be this hard. Learning should be fun.
¡Dreaming onward/Sueño en adelante! - smf
STUDY SHOWS TEENS BENEFIT FROM LATER SCHOOL DAY + DELAYED SCHOOL START TIME ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVEMENTS IN ADOLESCENT BEHAVIORS + More
STUDY SHOWS TEENS BENEFIT FROM LATER SCHOOL DAY
By Lindsey Tanner– Associated Press
July 5, 2010 — CHICAGO (AP) — Giving teens 30 extra minutes to start their school day leads to more alertness in class, better moods, less tardiness, and even healthier breakfasts, a small study found.
"The results were stunning. There's no other word to use," said Patricia Moss, academic dean at the Rhode Island boarding school where the study was done. "We didn't think we'd get that much bang for the buck."
The results appear in July's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The results mirror those at a few schools that have delayed starting times more than half an hour.
Researchers say there's a reason why even 30 minutes can make a big difference. Teens tend to be in their deepest sleep around dawn — when they typically need to arise for school. Interrupting that sleep can leave them groggy, especially since they also tend to have trouble falling asleep before 11 p.m.
"There's biological science to this that I think provides compelling evidence as to why this makes sense," said Brown University sleep researcher Dr. Judith Owens, the study's lead author and a pediatrician at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, R.I.
An Archives editorial said the study adds to "a growing body of evidence that changing the start time for high schools is good for adolescents."
The fact that the study was in the exclusive setting of St. George's School in Middletown, R.I., doesn't necessarily weaken the results. Owens acknowledged that there might be more hurdles to overcome at poorer, public schools, including busing schedules, parents' work hours and daycare for younger siblings. While these issues have killed many proposals elsewhere, some public high schools including those in Minneapolis and West Des Moines have adopted later starting times.
Mel Riddile, an associate director at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, favors later class times for teens but said most districts oppose it.
"It's about adult convenience, it's not about learning," he said. "With budget cuts, it's going to make it more difficult to get this done."
Many parents and teachers at St. George's were opposed but reluctantly agreed to the study after a presentation by Owens, whose daughter was a junior there.
Overall, 201 high school students completed sleep habit surveys before and after the nine-week experiment last year. The results were so impressive that the school made the change permanent, Moss said.
Starting times were shifted from 8 to 8:30. All class times were cut 5 to 10 minutes to avoid a longer school day that would interfere with after-school activities. Moss said improvements in student alertness made up for that lost instruction time.
The portion of students reporting at least eight hours of sleep on school nights jumped from about 16 percent to almost 55 percent. Reports of daytime sleepiness dropped substantially, from 49 percent to 20 percent.
First-period tardies fell by almost half, students reported feeling less depressed or irritated during the day, health center rest visits dropped substantially; and the number of hot breakfasts served more than doubled. Moss said the healthier breakfast probably aided classtime alertness.
Recent graduate Garrett Sider, 18, used the extra time for sleep. He noticed kids took part more often in morning classes with the later start time.
"It was a positive thing for the entire school," he said.
The study was designed to look at changes in sleep habits and behavior and didn't examine academic performance. It also lacked a control group of students who didn't experience a change in school start times — another limitation. Still, the researchers said the results show delaying school starting times is worthwhile.
____________________________________
DELAYED SCHOOL START TIME ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVEMENTS IN ADOLESCENT BEHAVIORS
JAMA Press Advisory
A short delay in school start time appears to be associated with significant improvements in adolescent alertness, mood and health, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
"Beginning at the onset of puberty, adolescents develop as much as a two-hour sleep-wake phase delay (later sleep onset and wake times) relative to sleep-wake cycles in middle childhood," the authors write as background to the study. The study also notes that, "adolescent sleep needs do not decrease dramatically, and optimal sleep amounts remain about nine to 9 1/4 hours per night."
Judith A. Owens, M.D., M.P.H., of the Hasbro Children's Hospital, Providence, and colleagues, studied 201 students in grades 9 through 12 attending an independent high school in Rhode Island. For the purposes of the study, class start time was delayed 30 minutes, from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Additionally, students were required to complete the online retrospective Sleep Habits Survey before and after the change in school start time.
According to the study, after the delayed start time, "students reported significantly more satisfaction with sleep and experienced improved motivation. Daytime sleepiness, fatigue and depressed mood were all reduced. Most health-related variables, including Health Center visits for fatigue-related complaints, and class attendance also improved." The later start was also associated with a significant increase in sleep duration on school nights of 45 minutes as well as a reduction in weekend oversleep (the difference between school day and non-school day wake times).
The percentage of students getting less than seven hours of sleep decreased by 79.4 percent, and those reporting at least eight hours of sleep increased from 16.4 percent to 54.7 percent. Additionally, the percentage of students rating themselves as at least somewhat unhappy or depressed decreased significantly (from 65.8 percent to 45.1 percent), as well as the percentage who felt annoyed or irritated throughout the day (from 84 percent to 62.6 percent). In terms of health consequences, significantly more students self-reported visiting the Health Center for fatigue-related symptoms before the delayed start time (15.3 percent versus 4.6 percent).
The study also found that after the delayed start, "students rated themselves as less depressed and more motivated to participate in a variety of activities and were less likely to seek medical attention for fatigue-related concerns in conjunction with the change in start times." Additionally, "despite the initial considerable resistance voiced by the faculty and athletic coaches to instituting the start time delay and the original intentions of the school administration to return to the 8 a.m. start time after the trial period, students and faculty overwhelmingly voted to retain the 8:30 a.m. start for the spring term."
Editorial: SCHOOL START TIME AND SLEEPY TEENS
"Given that Owens et al report similar findings to the earliest research, there is a growing body of evidence that changing start time for high schools is good for adolescents. So, the follow-up question is: 'Why aren't more schools changing to a later time?'" writes Kyla Wahlstrom, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, in an accompanying editorial. "The answer to that is actually very complicated…The time that a school starts is felt to be sacrosanct by those who have come to rely on it as a predictable part of their day and life."
"The role of data and factual information in discussing and advocating for changing school start times is key…when the first findings emerged in 1997, the question remaining at that time concerned the effect of the later start time on academic outcomes. Longitudinal research has since found several significant academic effects, such as decreasing the dropout rate, but a direct correlation between later start time and academic achievement on normed tests has not been substantiated."
"In the end, having comprehensive information and impartial presentation of what is known, and not assumed, is needed to really begin the local dialogue," Dr. Wahlstrom concludes. "The community at large is, after all, the final arbiter, as all must truly live with the consequences. Our teenagers need and deserve our best informed thinking about all of this; having the facts in hand is the best place to start."
Online:Archives: http://www.archpediatrics.com
_________________________
Advice for Parents: NEW INFORMATION ABOUT ADOLESCENT SLEEP
From the Archives of Pediatric Medicine
July 2010 - Sleep affects how you think, how you feel, and how healthy you are. Adolescents need as much sleep each night as they did when they were children, but many adolescents do not get enough sleep. An ideal amount of sleep for an adolescent is about 9 hours each night.
BIOLOGIC CHANGES LEADING TO SLEEP CHANGES
About the time that puberty starts, adolescents develop a 2-hour sleep-wake "phase delay." This means that if your child usually went to bed at 8 PM and woke up at 6 AM, then during adolescence he or she may feel more awake in the evening so that he or she does not feel like he or she has to go to bed until around 10 PM. Since most adolescents still have to get up early each morning for school, this delay in bedtime may lead to your adolescent getting less sleep each night than he or she did as a child.
ACTIVITIES LEADING TO SLEEP CHANGES
Homework, sports, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs can all lead to decreased sleep for adolescents since they may cause adolescents to stay up even later at night to get everything done.
LESS SLEEP CAN LEAD TO HEALTH AND SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Large numbers of research studies of adolescent sleep have shown that typical adolescents are chronically not getting enough sleep and tired in a way that impacts their health.
Health problems from chronically not getting enough sleep include changes in mood, attention, memory, behavior control, and enjoyment of life. Lack of sleep is also likely to impact how adolescents learn and may lead to lower grades in school. Other health concerns resulting from being tired include:
* Increased risk of driving accidents because of being sleepy
* Decreased exercise leading to a higher risk for weight gain and obesity
* Increased use of stimulants
CHANGING SCHOOL SCHEDULES LEADS TO CHANGING SLEEP SCHEDULES
One way in which sleep schedules may be changed to help adolescents get more sleep is by allowing more opportunities to sleep later into the morning. A study in this month's Archives looked at changing a school start time from 8 AM to 8:30 AM; this change led to adolescents reporting more satisfaction with sleep, improved motivation, and better class attendance. This change also resulted in adolescents reporting decreased sleepiness, tiredness, and depressed mood.
HOW CAN YOU HELP YOUR ADOLESCENT GET BETTER SLEEP?
* Help your adolescent have a quiet bedroom. Turn off the television, cell phone, computer, and game machines.
* Limit the amount of caffeine, including caffeinated sodas, coffee, tea, chocolate, and energy drinks. These can cause you to stay up later and have trouble falling asleep.
* Encourage exercise. Getting enough exercise not only helps you stay fit but can help you fall asleep better and sleep more deeply.
* Teach your adolescent that your bed is the place you sleep, not the place to work on the computer, text friends, or worry about school.
* Wind down before bed for at least 30 minutes—read, listen to music, or take a bath or shower.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Stanford Sleep Clinic
http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/adolescent.html
INFORM YOURSELF
To find this and other Advice for Patients articles, go to the Advice for Patients link on the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine Web site at http://www.archpediatrics.com.
Source: Stanford Sleep Clinic.
Megan A. Moreno, MD, MSEd, MPH, Writer; Fred Furtner, Illustrator; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH, Editor
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2010;164(7):684.
LOW-ACHIEVING FREMONT HIGH REOPENS; MOST OF ITS TEACHERS ARE NEW + a message from Mónica + smf’s 2¢ [updated]
LOW-ACHIEVING FREMONT HIGH REOPENS; MOST OF ITS TEACHERS ARE NEW + a message from Mónica + smf’s 2¢ [updated]
by Howard Blume - LA Times LA Now Blog[July 6, 2010 | 4:31 pm :: updated July 7 from LA Times print edition]
Fremont High's grand experiment begins
The L.A. Unified campus reopens with a mostly new staff as the district attempts to address the campus' historically dismal academic results. But the approach has its critics.
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
July 7, 2010 - A revamped Fremont High, which opened its school year Tuesday with a majority of new teachers, has become a local test case for a controversial school makeover approach being tried around the country.
Last December, Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines announced that he would personally oversee sweeping reforms at Fremont. The most striking was his edict that all staff members — including teachers, counselors, custodians and cafeteria workers — had to reapply for their jobs at the persistently low-performing South Los Angeles campus.
Among the disturbing data that led to his decision: Fewer than 2% of students tested as proficient in the math course they took last year.
Nearly half of the teaching staff has returned, said Principal Rafael Balderas. Of those not coming back, about 70% had refused to interview for their former jobs. The rest, about 33, tried to come back but were turned down. Displaced teachers are entitled to jobs at other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Balderas said he retained many of the "best and the brightest" and was able to fill slots as needed with equally talented educators from among 600 applicants.
The Obama administration, in its initiative to "turn around" the worst schools in the country, has endorsed replacing a school's staff, among other harsh strategies, but acclaim is far from universal.
If anything, Cortines should have gone farther, said Tom Vander Ark, who headed the education division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and currently runs a company that assists with school start-ups.
"Close and replace is the best option," he said. "There's only one thing wrong with the large, struggling high schools of Los Angeles — and that's everything."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pressured Cortines and the school board this month to shut down many more schools and reopen them with new staffs or as independently run charter schools.
But education historian Diane Ravitch, an advisor to Cortines when he headed New York's schools, called the approach wrongheaded.
"There is zero support in research or practice for this mindless, punitive scheme to demean teachers," said Ravitch. "Improve schools. Don't fire teachers without individual evaluations."
L.A. teachers union officials said that the district mismanaged Fremont as it went through eight administrators in 12 years, and that genuine efforts by teachers to improve the school were unsupported and finally discarded.
Former Fremont teachers also point to small gains in test scores and graduation rates. In an earlier reform, they note, the school was divided into 12 academies, some of which outperformed the school as a whole. That success, they said, could have been built upon.
Most of the teachers in one such academy, the Humanitas program, have left, including lead teacher Stephen DeMarco, whose absence was mourned by students waiting outside for school to start. (Tuesday was the official first day of the school year because the 4,500-student campus operates on a year-round schedule.)
"The Humanitas teachers supported us," said senior Alex Giron. "Now that we're seniors, we need them more than ever."
Because of budget cuts and seniority rules, Fremont had to fill the vast majority of vacancies with teachers displaced from other district schools. French teacher Marianne Gomis said she came to Fremont even though she would have preferred to stay at her smaller, higher-performing school but is grateful to have a job.
New York City is cited frequently for the success of its restructured schools, but Ravitch and others have noted that the new schools frequently had built-in advantages, such as smaller classes and fewer disabled students and English learners.
In Chicago, mixed results came of a similar experiment with high schools under then-Supt. Arne Duncan, the current U.S. Education secretary.
The graduation rate at restructured schools was 51.3%, compared with a rate of 44.4% among similar students elsewhere, said W. David Stevens, senior research analyst with the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. But test scores — the ultimate basis for the moves at Fremont — were indistinguishable from other schools'.
A closer look reveals examples of both failure and progress, Stevens said. Successful turnarounds stood out for their inspired administrators, teacher involvement, emotional and academic support of students, and strong community relationships.
The possibility of a new Fremont that could far surpass the old was enough to bring back health teacher Jake Sanchez, who started the day with a pep talk to a room of freshmen decked out in the newly required uniforms.
"You can go this way or that way," he said, comparing dropping out and graduating. The best a dropout can hope to earn is "$10 an hour for your back .... You can make a lot of money with your brain."
Fremont, he said later, "lost a lot of good, experienced, strong teachers. But this isn't a personal thing. It's about these kids getting an adequate education. I don't think it was happening quick enough."
_____________________________
Other stories:
FIRST DAY FOR SOUTH L's RESTRUCTURED FRENONT HIGH
89.3 KPCC | http://bit.ly/dy2HUs
July 6, 2010 -- The Los Angeles Unified School District followed through today on its pledge to make big changes at one of its lowest performing schools. ...
FREMONT HIGH REOPENS ITS DOORS AFTER MASSIVE REFORM EFFORT | http://bit.ly/cC0Bhs
Los Angeles Daily News - Connie Llanos – July 7, 2010
Employing a controversial reform model never used at a Los Angeles Unified school, all staff members at the 4500-student campus – except the newly appointed ...
_
●●smf’s 2¢: Board President Monica Garcia issued a press release Tuesday hailing the Fremont restructuring as "Reform the LA Way". see http://bit.ly/aLyKHR
If Reform the LA Way is taking “Low-Achieving Fremont High” and restructuring it by laying off 52% of the staff and repackaging it as “The New Fremont” – while still leaving the school on the-Three-Track/Fast-Track-to-Failure Year Round Calendar I fear we are being served up something akin to “New Coke”.
Reformulated Reconstituted Restructured Fremont was announced last December at a press event for Arne Duncan, served up as a present for the Secretary of Ed in No Child Left Behind holiday gift wrap.
And if, as Monica claims: ‘At the New Fremont every student, parent teacher and community organization matters’ …they certainly didn’t matter and weren’t involved in the restructuring or decision making process .
We have more flavors of school reform in LA than they have at Baskin-Robbins. Charter schools; dependent, independent; stand-alone and CMO run. Partnership schools. Pilot schools. I-design schools. Public School Choice schools. Thin contract and Fat contract. Small Learning Communities and Small Schools. We have Green Dot @ Locke – which is none-and-all of the above. Now Reconstituted/Restructured schools. Other than Magnet Schools and Schools for Advanced Study is there any evidence of success?
MARGARET SPELLINGS, ARNE DUNCAN – WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Joseph A. Palermo in the Huffington Post
July 7, 2010 12:40 PM | In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch, who was a devotee of No Child Left Behind-type policies when she served as Assistant Secretary of Education under Poppy Bush, shows that the data is in and the corporate educational "reforms" that have been rammed through for the past twenty years have amounted to nothing more than the downsizing and shredding of what was once a thriving public education system in this country.
"Our schools will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market. Markets have winners and losers. Choice may lead to better outcomes or to worse outcomes... Our schools cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools. Continuing on this path will debilitate public education in urban districts and give the illusion of improvement... Our schools will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises. Schools are not businesses; they are a public good." (p. 227)
This last point -- that "schools are not businesses; they are a public good" -- is what President Barack Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, (like Margaret Spellings before him) fails to understand. Secretary Duncan has used his $4.3 billion in "Race to the Top" cash as a cudgel with which to beat down teachers (and especially their unions), denigrate what they do in the classroom based on quantitative data of dubious value, and to promote "market" policies of coerced privatization that debase the teaching profession -- all in the name of "improving" public schools. No wonder Secretary Duncan was persona non grata at the recent convention of the nation's most important gathering of educators. (What a brilliant move it is to alienate public school teachers, a central pillar of the Democratic base, right before the 2010 midterm elections! Genius, I tell you! Genius!)
Ravitch notes that Secretary Duncan appointed Joanne S. Weiss, "a partner and chief operating officer of the NewSchools Venture Fund" to "design and manage the Race to the Top." Weiss, according to Ravitch, is "an education entrepreneur who had previously led several education businesses that sold products and services to schools and colleges." (p. 218) So like George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind," the Obama Administration has decided to turn over its hallmark educational policy to union busting profiteers?
At a time when state governments across the country, especially California, are using the budget crisis brought on by the economic meltdown as an excuse to roll back public education and beat up teachers and their unions, the Democratic administration in Washington is throwing its weight behind the privatizers and MBAs, joining the chorus of teacher bashing that seems to have come out of nowhere. Arne Duncan has never taught a class in his life and has thus far shown an arrogant disregard for professional teachers who have decades of hands-on experience inside the classroom. The "moderate" Republican governor of California, (whose budget eliminates welfare in the state), has also endorsed a bill by a troglodyte Republican in the State Legislature that would urge school districts to lay off, rehire, transfer, and assign teachers with no regard to seniority or collective bargaining contracts. In effect, it would make Wal-Mart workers out of professional educators.
Nobody in power seems to be listening to what teachers have to say about how best to improve public education. The Administration is telling teachers that all those envelopes they licked, and all those doors they knocked on, and all those phone calls they made to help elect Obama in 2008 were nothing but a goddamned waste of time.
And this raises a more fundamental point: Arne Duncan and other privatizers of public education don't know the difference between being a "teacher" and being an "instructor"; nor do they understand the difference between a "class" and a room full of students. They want to reduce professional educators to mere instructors, where all subjects, including arts, humanities, and science, are standardized and homogenized and handed to children as if instructing them on the techniques of CPR. The classroom is then reduced to an irreverent gaggle "instructed" on how to take a standardized test by Wal-Mart workers scared to death about losing their jobs. That's a long way from John Dewey! "Memorization, regurgitation - vegetation," would be an apt slogan.
"There are many examples of healthy competition in schools," Ravitch writes, "[b]ut the competition among schools to get higher [test] scores is of a different nature; in the current climate, it is sure to cause teachers to spend more time preparing students for state tests, not on thoughtful writing, critical reading, scientific experiments, or historical study. Nor should we expect schools to vie with one another for students, as businesses vie for customers, advertising their wares and marketing their services. For schools to learn from one another, they must readily share information about their successes and failures, as medical professionals do, rather than act as rivals in a struggle for survival." (p. 228)
The closing of schools and lay offs of teachers in the communities surrounding California's capital city have been devastating and demoralizing to educators. The brutal budget cuts have made it more difficult year after year for teachers to do their jobs. Budget cuts are followed by more budget cuts. Teachers are told each September that they're just going to have to make do with less, which means larger class sizes, cuts to music, art, literature, physical education, lack of supplies, low morale. And then useless politicians from both parties lecture teachers blaming them for all of society's failings to properly fund public schools. This cycle must be broken. Diane Ravitch has done educators a favor by honestly appraising the terrible consequences of policies she once championed. If we have to wait twenty years for Arne Duncan to see the light, it will be too late.
*Joseph A. Palermo is Associate Professor, American History, California State University, Sacramento. Bachelor's degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz; Master's degree in History from San Jose State University; Master's degree and Doctorate in American History from Cornell University. Expertise includes political history, presidential politics, presidential war powers, social movements of the 20th century, social movements of the 1960s, civil rights, and the history of American foreign policy. He has written two books on Robert F. Kennedy: In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Columbia University Press, 2001); and Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism (Pearson Longman, 2008). Professor Palermo has also written articles for anthologies on the life of Father Daniel Berrigan in The Human Tradition in America Since 1945 (Scholarly Resources Press, 2003); and on the Watergate scandal in Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon (CQ Press, 2004).
CALIFORNIA’S SCHOOL NURSE CRISIS: Thousands of schools lack a campus health worker. With budget cuts threatening existing programs parents need to act
Op-Ed by Kathy Hundemer | LA Times
May 28, 2010 | Can you imagine one adult taking care of 2,100 children?
In California, that is what we ask of our roughly 3,000 credentialed school nurses who serve the state's 6.3 million public schoolchildren, some of whom have debilitating physical conditions that demand specialized healthcare. Our students with epilepsy who may need Diastat administered during a seizure are only one of the examples. However, the controversy surrounding who should be allowed to administer the drug to students in an emergency — the subject of Steve Lopez's May 26 column, "Down the Capitol rabbit hole" — illustrates the crisis that our students and our schools face with respect to providing care to our most fragile children.
To be honest, even within the nursing community there are divided opinions on whether it is appropriate for Diastat to be given by trained but unlicensed personnel such as teachers, health aides and secretaries. The true concern is the slow erosion of safe and appropriate care that is provided during the school day to students who have health needs. There is no requirement in California for a school or even a school district to employ a school nurse. On any given day, there are about 7,000 schools throughout the state where a nurse is not present, and about half of California's school districts have no nurses at all. California ranks behind 40 other states in the school nurse-to-student ratio.
This situation is unacceptable. School nurses are often the only source of care for disadvantaged children, and by intervening early, they can prevent easily treatable health conditions from becoming major problems requiring costly treatments. School nurses meet the needs of about 678,000 children with multiple and severe disabilities currently enrolled in California's public schools. They are also on the front line for communicable disease control; don't forget it was a school nurse in New York who encountered the first cases of H1N1 influenza last spring. Her knowledge of disease patterns and assessment of the situation led to the beginning of a nationwide control and prevention strategy aimed at the new virus.
We are all aware of the budget mess that the state and our educational institutions face. Our most vulnerable students are being put at risk because health services in the schools are often among the first services to be considered for reduction when money gets tight.
The charge to our community is to contact your school district administrators, local school boards and legislators and advocate for the healthcare services that our children deserve. Remember, healthy children learn better.
* Kathy Hundemer, a credentialed school nurse, is government relations chair of the California School Nurses Organization.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
Chuck Close: “THE PROBLEM WITH THE ARTS IN AMERICA IS HOW UNIMPORTANT IT SEEMS TO BE IN OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.”
Chuck Close is one of the most-recognized artists of our era, best known for his large-scale portraits of friends, fellow artists and often himself.
◄”FRANK” by Chuck Close –Minneapolis Institute of Fine Art
The following is from a PBS News Hour interview with chuck Close, broadcast July 6, 2010 | http://to.pbs.org/cjVRLp
CHUCK CLOSE: I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.
I went -- I grew up in a town that was a mill town, very poor, Appalachian-like, except it was in the state of Washington. And we had, as a guarantee right from kindergarten through high school, art and music every day of the week.
Today, that is considered to be far less important than the three R's. And there's teaching for testing. And, for those of us who are -- especially for those of us who are learning-disabled or for those of us who learn differently, there was never -- we had a chance to feel special.
Every child should have a chance to feel special.
I'm a product of open enrollment. I went to a junior college that took every taxpayer's son and daughter. And if I hadn't had that, and hadn't had exposure to art and music and something that I could excel at, and something I could feel good about -- I always said, if I hadn't gone to Yale, I could have gone to jail.
And it was a tossup. It could have gone either way.
Read or view the entire interview at http://to.pbs.org/cjVRLp
______________________
Deja vu 2.0: INCOMPETENT TEACHERS ‘BEING RECYCLED’ IN THE UK: from BBC World News online | http://bit.ly/c8NuJ3 S... http://bit.ly/dxNnQm
CALIFORNIA’S SCHOOL NURSE CRISIS: Thousands of schools lack a campus health worker. With budget cuts threatening e... http://bit.ly/b7TyP6
Sticker Shock: RFK-12 IS LAUSD’s MOST COSTLY CAMPUS – AND IT NEEDS MORE CASH: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA ... http://bit.ly/cxhBiB
LOCAL DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT LINDA DEL CUETO: Has Fundamental Belief that All Children Can Learn: MY TURN OPINION... http://bit.ly/cckK6C
HS #13: GLASSELL PARK HIGH SCHOOL RECEIVES MOST LETTERS OF INTENT FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE v.2.0: By EGP News Repo... http://bit.ly/cI1blJ
A PEEK INSIDE CALIF’S PERSUIT OF SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT GRANTS: By Lesli Maxwell in Ed Week State Ed Watch July 7,... http://bit.ly/cHDg1s
FORMER LAUSD LAWYER TO BE INTERIM INSPECTOR GENERAL: by Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News 07/07/2010 08... http://bit.ly/bXJIvh
TESTING FRENZY CROSSES INSANITY LINE: Op-Ed By Stephanie Jones in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Tuesday, ... http://bit.ly/bhgAWQ
CARTOON: "Good news! We figured out what was costing soi much in public education!": Headline: U.S. Schools Plan o... http://bit.ly/9RuTE7
MARGARET SPELLINGS, ARNE DUNCAN – WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?: Joseph A. Palermo in the Huffington Post July 7, 201... http://bit.ly/9EG4Ix
CLOSING SCHOOLS’ ACHIEVEMENT GAPS: Five school systems across the country, with differences in location, funding a... http://bit.ly/da18bQ
LOW-ACHIEVING FREMONT HIGH REOPENS; MOST OF ITS TEACHERS ARE NEW + a message from Mónica + smf’s 2¢: by Howard Blu... http://bit.ly/a7fUEI
Research Brief: TEACHER TURNOVER IN CHARTER SCHOOLS: by David Stuit and Thomas M. Smith | National Center for Scho... http://bit.ly/drEO6u 10:01 PM
STUDY SHOWS TEENS BENEFIT FROM LATER SCHOOL DAY + DELAYED SCHOOL START TIME ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVEMENTS IN ADOLES... http://bit.ly/bfHdRF
CODEPENDENCE DAY: In California, every state election is another example of political dysfunction: LA Daily News E... http://bit.ly/bjU350
LAUSD RESPONDS TO THE RECENT GRAND JURY REPORT ON LAUSD PAYROLL SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION: News Statementfrom the LAUS... http://bit.ly/abap6e
School Daze: SCHOOLS NEED TO BE CREATIVE TO MAKE UP FOR SERIOUS BUDGET CUTS: By MARCELLA S. KREITER - United Press... http://bit.ly/adxy9c
THE LIST: CALIFORNIA’S MOST FISCALLY UNSOUND SCHOOL DISTRICTS: from California’s Children by way of the CDE and yj... http://bit.ly/bRr3Xx
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
____________________________________________________
• 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! • Find your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • 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.
|
