In This Issue:  | | • | CHICAGO MODEL "A DISASTER' + WHY ‘RACE TO THE TOP’ WILL CHANGE NOTHING IN CALIFORNIA | | | • | STATE BOARD OF ED APPROVES NEW NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS | | | • | Pajaro Valley & Los Angeles Unified: A SIMPLE TALE OF TWO SCHOOL DISTRICTS AS STATE BOARD OF ED FAILS TO AWARD SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT MONEY | | | • | IS THE GATES FOUNDATION INVOLVED IN BRIBERY? + smf's 2¢ | | | • | 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: | | | | The art of writing letters survives: from The Times of August 6th:
► Re "A sprint or a marathon?" LA Times Editorial, Aug. 1
THANKS FOR JUMPING OFF THE EDUCATION BANDWAGON and writing a cautionary editorial on the misguided direction of Race to the Top. As it has been said: "Education is a journey, not a race."
Linda Mele Johnson
Long Beach
UNITED TEACHERS LOS ANGELES IS HEARTENED at The Times' recognition that Race to the Top has many flaws. California schools are severely underfunded, and the amount of monies Race to the Top would bring are insignificant compared with the recent cuts to school budgets.
Because there is no reporting or linkage of a student's test scores to his or her name or academic record, many students do not take standardized tests seriously and often "bubble" their answers in a random fashion. To use such unreliable data to evaluate teachers is problematic at best.
UTLA opposes Race to the Top mainly because of its approach to school funding. It creates a competitive model for funding schools, penalizing students whose schools and districts will receive no monies through no fault of their own. This is unfair and shortsighted.
Race to the Top does not meet the educational needs of millions of children nationwide.
A.J. Duffy
Los Angeles
The writer is president, United Teachers Los Angeles.
FIFTY-PLUS YEARS SINCE BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION and despite decades of education-reform studies and hearings, the status quo still rules. No wonder California leads nationally in dropouts.
Race to the Top challenged us to take on the status quo, which has fostered a culture of failure in public education. California responded with innovations: an open-
enrollment policy allowing students to attend a school based on its quality, not just its location. Similarly, parents can now "trigger" change at persistently low-performing neighborhood schools. Children have one shot at a top-quality education.
Shaking up the status quo can be scary for those who foster failure. How much longer will status-quo apologists hide behind pretentious claims of "imperfectly" drafted laws to deny fundamental, substantive education reforms?
We drafted legislation, SB X5 4, to end a culture of failure in our public schools. We must proceed with all deliberate speed: Negative economic and social consequences will last generations if we don't.
Thankfully, this president, the governor, a majority of the California Legislature and the state Board of Education get it. Hopefully, another half a century of educational paralysis won't elapse before The Times gets it too.
Sen. Gloria Romero (D-East Los Angeles)
Sen. Bob Huff (R-Glendora)
Sacramento
The writers are, respectively, chair and vice chair of the state Senate Education Committee.
● smf: I wasn’t going to include the following ….but how could I not?
► Re "Ban on gay marriage overturned," Aug. 5
I'M 54 YEARS OLD. Half a century is more than enough time to get used to the idea that something is not an option.
Which is precisely what made Wednesday so remarkable.
I called home to see if Jaymes had remembered to pick up the water filter from Home Depot. He answered the phone with the most exuberant "I love you" that I've heard from him in our six years of partnership. He told me that Proposition 8 had
just been declared unconstitutional by the federal court.
Then he asked me to marry him.
What a surprisingly strange, otherworldly experience.
Later I closed the class I was teaching with the news that I was headed out to celebrate the Proposition 8 ruling. When one of my students asked, "Are you getting married?" and I replied, "I was actually proposed to this afternoon," the class burst into a spontaneous wave of applause. That surprised me a little.
And with each student's expression of congratulations — and there were many —I realized it wasn't marriage per se that was being congratulated. It was the fracturing of a 54-year-long story of being "less than," of being "other." It was an affirmation that my relationship deserves equal protection. Wow.
By the way, Jaymes didn't remember the water filter from Home Depot. And I can't imagine having cared less.
Charley Lang
Los Angeles
The writer is a professor of psychology at Antioch University Los Angeles.
● smf: Dr. Lang is a teacher; in his letter he teaches us and in his teaching he learns himself. I have to include the letter following:
AFTER 54 YEARS OF MARRIAGE TO THE SAME WOMAN, I must be near the top of the list of people who have credentials to talk about this subject. I don't want to hear anyone who has not been married for at least half a century to the same person talk about how sacred or meaningful the institution of marriage is. That would reduce the noise level to a whisper.
I am particularly offended by the idea that if two people who happen to be the same sex are in love and want to make a commitment to each other, that they will destroy the nature of marriage.
Marriage is more likely to be diminished by the Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston marriage comedy.
I see no evidence that the politicians and crusaders have done anything to alter the 50% failure rate of American marriages.
It is time to change the subject and let people make their own marriage decisions.
Charles Weisenberg
Beverly Hills
● It's been 54 years since Brown v. Board of Ed. 54 years since Charley Lang was born. 54 years since Mr. & Mrs. Weisenberg wed. Good news and irony comes in threes. Gloria Romero was the first person I ever heard say that public education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century …but Senator Romero: The right for folks who want to marry to marry is The Civil Rights Issue for the Here+Now.
No one will remember Race to The Top 54 years from now - or where they were when California embraced Common Core Standards. Or Lindsey Lohan getting out of jail or Dr. Deasy's first week at LAUSD or the continuing miscarriage of injustice and cover-up at High School #9. In 2064 he City of Bell brouhaha will be amusing footnote in the local history, Elena Kagan one of many women Supreme Court Justices and the Pakistani floods another harbinger of global warming.
Real history and real progress were made on Wednesday afternoon - for the reasons Lang and Weisenberg so well write in their letters - and U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker recorded in his opinion | http://scr.bi/d5UE10.
¡Further onward/Más adelante! - smf
CHICAGO MODEL "A DISASTER' + WHY ‘RACE TO THE TOP’ WILL CHANGE NOTHING IN CALIFORNIA
► CHICAGO MODEL "A DISASTER'
by Pauline Lipman - Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) Press Release -
WASHINGTON - July 30 - Dr. Lipman is professor of policy studies at the College of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Her books include High Stakes Education: Inequality, Globalization, and Urban School Reform.
She said today: "President Obama's speech Thursday, in which he touted the performance of 'Race to the Top,' is now the prime example of equating 'change' -- and we do need change -- with privatizing public education.
"Chicago is important to look at because it's the model [Education Secretary Arne] Duncan [who headed up the Chicago system] is using. In Chicago we've seen what this plan means, beginning in 2004, and it has been a disaster for students, teachers, and low-income communities of color. Some 70 schools have been closed creating massive dislocation in African American and Latino communities. These schools simply didn't get the support they needed, they were basically set up to fail. We now have 100 new schools, two-thirds of them charter, thousands of teachers laid off, over 2,000 African American teachers and administrators. Research by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that school closings did not improve student education. Most displaced students were transferred to another low-performing school.
"Several studies, most recently one from Stanford University ["National Charter School Study"] have shown that in the aggregate, students in charter schools are not doing as well as their counterparts in public schools. In Chicago, charter high schools have less qualified, less experienced teachers and a lower percentage of special education and English language learning students. These experiments are not being run on the affluent students.
"Privatizing schools and imposing teacher merit pay pits teachers against each other, undermining essential teacher collaboration. It's a move to weaken teacher unions.
"What's needed is improvement in public education based on what we know works: decrease class size, high-quality public pre-K education, rich, engaging and relevant curriculum for all students -- including arts and athletics, professional working conditions and high quality relevant professional development for teachers."
###
● A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
____________________
► WHY ‘RACE TO THE TOP’ WILL CHANGE NOTHING IN CALIFORNIA
Op-Ed in the LA Daily News By K. Lloyd Billingsley, editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute - a libertarian think tank in San Francisco.
August 5, 2010 - CALIFORNIA is now a finalist in the federal "Race to the Top" education contest. Californians might want to hold off on the champagne because even if the state wins little change will be forthcoming. The contest is also misleading.
The "race" is actually for a piece of $4.35 billion in federal funds, and this leaves the impression that education reform is a matter of spending more money. Even U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan knows it isn't.
The Washington, D.C., schools have had "more money than God for a long time," Duncan said, "but the outcomes are still disastrous." The Washington, D.C., public schools spend as much as $29,000 per student per year. In similar style, California ranks 23rd among the 50 states in per-pupil spending, and 21st among the 50 states in spending from all sources, state, federal and local. Yet academically the state is a bottom feeder.
According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, known as the nation's report card, California ranks 47th in fourth-grade reading, 45th in fourth-grade math, 49th in eighth-grade reading, and 48th in eighth-grade math. At some California State University campuses, more than half the incoming freshman class needs remedial math and English.
One finds little evidence that more spending is the answer, and in any case Race to the Top does not amount to a windfall. California stands to get $700 million, not a lot of money in a highly bureaucratized system known for The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, spent more than $200 million on the Belmont Learning Center, now called the Edward Roybal Learning Center, before it served a single student. The LAUSD is spending more than $578 million for a complex of schools on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel.
Race to the Top also sends the message the federal leadership is important for reform. It isn't. Canada has no federal secretary of education, no federal department of education, and spends nothing on education at the federal level.
Canadian students, however, are outpacing their American counterparts by a wide margin in the International Student Assessment, a system of tests measuring the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, math and science literacy. Canada also spends about 20 percent less per student than the United States.
Duncan claims the Race to the Top process has unleashed "an avalanche of pent-up educational reforms." That overstatement contains a bit of truth.
President Obama wants to link teacher evaluations to student achievement, which teacher unions oppose. By gaining finalist status in Race to the Top process, California did manage to implement changes opposed by teacher unions, one of the biggest obstacles to reform.
The lesson should be clear. Press for other progressive and successful reforms that reactionary teacher unions oppose, such as school choice.
Canada offers much more educational choice than the United States. So does Sweden, which has instituted a universal voucher system that empowers parent to choose government-run schools or independent schools. It is academically successful and particularly popular with low-income families.
California's K-12 system is a collective farm of ignorance and mediocrity, in which money must trickle down through four layers of bureaucratic sediment before it reaches the classroom. Another $700 million won't change anything, money is not the key to reform, and federal leadership is not important.
California can launch a true race to the top by enacting full choice in K-12 education for all students as a matter of basic civil rights.
smf: Billingsley/PRI is opposed to RttT – a good thing - for all the wrong reasons. But sometimes one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend.
●● amf: The great thing about libertarian thought is that one can watch Fox News, drink the Tea Party tea, be for vouchers (and call it school choice), be against big government, accept funding from the tobacco companies, big pharma, Walmart amd Gates …and still rail against reactionaries and claim to be a progressive! Remember Paul’s Grandfather from “Hard Day’s Night”? A troublemaker con-artist with socialist rhetoric. Such a clean old man.
STATE BOARD OF ED APPROVES NEW NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS
by Howard Blume | LA Times LA Now blog
August 2, 2010 | 1:41 pm -- At a special meeting Monday, the state board of education unanimously adopted common national academic standards. These standards are to provide the basis for future instruction in the state.
The common-standards initiative has been pushed by the Obama administration, but executed through a voluntary national effort in which nearly all states are participating.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger applauded the vote, praising the state board for maintaining “California’s high expectations and our belief that every student is capable of success in the classroom.”
The standards are to ultimately supplant California’s current academic framework, which is widely viewed as among the best in the nation, although the same cannot be said of the results in the classroom.
A state commission supplemented the national standards with elements of the existing state plan as well as with updated approaches.
In Massachusetts, another state with high standards, the national plan became controversial, although it was finally approved. In California, there’s been vigorous debate, but most opposition had faded by Monday's vote.
Two commissioners on the state’s standards review committee said they opposed the national framework out of concern that the approach to math, and especially algebra, instruction could water down California’s efforts.
Other speakers at the meeting supported the national standards but said more work is needed to make the plan effective for students learning English.
The common standards were endorsed by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the L.A. teachers union. The state meeting, held in Sacramento, marked perhaps the first official appearance of new L.A. Unified Deputy Supt. John Deasy, who started work for the district on Monday. Deasy is considered a possible successor to L.A. schools chief Ramon C. Cortines, who plans to retire next year.
The vote enhances the state’s chances in its bid for federal school reform dollars through the Obama administration's controversial Race to the Top school reform program.
The decision before the California board went right to the wire, with a federal deadline set for 1:30 p.m. for states to vote on the standards, to qualify for added points in the Race to the Top competition.
Pajaro Valley & Los Angeles Unified: A SIMPLE TALE OF TWO SCHOOL DISTRICTS AS STATE BOARD OF ED FAILS TO AWARD SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT MONEY
By DONNA JONES - Santa Cruz Sentinel
8/02/2010 06:57:30 PM PDT : WATSONVILLE - What do Pajaro Valley and Los Angeles school districts have in common?
Neither was set to get federal money to improve low achieving schools when the California Board of Education met Monday.
But thanks to the political clout of the Southern California city, Pajaro Valley may get a second chance at $6.6 million to implement reform plans at MacQuiddy, Hall District and Calabasas elementary schools.
"Sometimes good processes can lead to absurd conclusions," said state board member Benjamin Austin, joining a majority in delaying approval of a list of districts recommended for school improvement grants.
To have the state's largest school district, a centerpiece in its reform plan to meet federal requirements for qualifying for federal Race to the Top funding, not get any of money targeted for the most academically needy schools didn't make sense, board members said.
The federal government is giving California $415 million to improve schools ranked in the bottom 5 percent of student achievement, "the persistently lowest achieving." The state tagged the three Pajaro Valley elementary schools, as well as E.A. Hall Middle School and Watsonville High School, with the label, making them eligible to compete for a share of the federal funds.
But competition criteria gave funding preference to districts that applied for all eligible schools. Since Pajaro Valley didn't seek money for E.A. Hall or Watsonville High, it didn't make the cut, even though its application scored better than 19 of the 30 recommended districts.
L.A. Unified found itself in the same spot, though its application scored slightly less well than Pajaro Valley's.
Los Angeles officials protested at Thursday's meeting, arguing that there wasn't enough time to come up with strong reform plans for all of its 31 schools on the list, and at some, change already had been implemented and starting over with a new strategy wasn't appropriate. Officials said they were being penalized for being a large district doing the right thing.
"This was in the public's interest and was a responsible use of taxpayer dollars," said Joan Sullivan, Los Angeles deputy mayor for education.
Pajaro Valley Superintendent Dorma Baker wasn't at the meeting, but she agreed with L.A.'s position.
After the district schools were named low achievers in March, Baker said they worked to develop plans for the elementary schools under a tight time line and constantly changing criteria.
Baker said Watsonville wasn't included because its reforms were under way, and more time was needed to involve the community in planning for changes at E.A. Hall.
"We didn't want a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plan just to get money," Baker said.
Whether the state board's delay in making a decision will affect the outcome is unclear. State education department staff said no change was possible due to an agreement with the federal government.
But the board directed staff to review criteria and consult with federal officials to see if adjustments could be made.
Time is short. The grants were supposed to be awarded before the first day of school, which for many state districts comes in a week or two.
IS THE GATES FOUNDATION INVOLVED IN BRIBERY? + smf's 2¢
● “Behind every fortune lies a great crime.” - Balzac
by Sam Smith in the Undernews blog | http://bit.ly/bCdq2n
July 22, 2010 -- An online legal dictionary defines bribery this way:
"The offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties."
When we think of bribery we usually envision a check or cash being passed on the sly to public officials. But what if it is right out in the open, concealed only by the fact that the briber is a foundation created by Bill Gates rather than some back street shyster?
Here is how a news story describes it: "Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools. The federal dollars are unprecedented, too. President Barack Obama persuaded Congress to give him the money as part of the economic stimulus so he could try new ideas to fix an education system that most agree is failing. The foundation is offering $250,000 apiece to help states apply, so long as they agree with the foundation's approach."
If you or I did something like this, even at an infinitesimally smaller scale, we could likely be headed for prison. It is a criminal act to use money to influence official positions in such a manner.
And it gets worse, as the story related: "Duncan's inner circle includes two former Gates employees. His chief of staff is Margot Rogers, who was special assistant to Gates' education director. James Shelton, assistant deputy secretary, was a program director for Gates' education division. . .The administration has waived ethics rules to allow Rogers and Shelton to deal more freely with the foundation, but Rogers said she talks infrequently with her former colleagues."
This is even before one considers broadly understood restrictions on political lobbying by non-profits. But then who needs to bother with lobbying if you can just deliver the cash and get your way?
A particularly gross example of this upscale, and so far legal, bribery was revealed by Bill Turgue, in the Washington Post in April:
"The private foundations pledging to help finance raises and bonuses for D.C. teachers have placed themselves in the middle of the city's mayoral race with one of the conditions for their largesse: If Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee leaves, so could the money.
"The private donors have told the District that they reserve the right to reconsider their $64.5 million pledge if leadership of the school system changes. . .
"Should the foundations pull their funding after the agreement is finalized, the District could be liable for at least $21 million -- the amount of private money earmarked to pay teacher salaries. . .
The leadership condition [is] set out in letters to District officials from the Walton Family Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Broad Foundation."
On a national scale, we have the unprecedented and increasing control of national education by a foundation created by a single billionaire. The thing driving these standards is not wisdom or public choice but the money:
"I think the reality of it is the Gates Foundation has been the major funder of the national standards and the three major reports on which the Massachusetts recommendation is based are funded by Gates. It's a little like being judge and jury," said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for Education Reform at the Pioneer Institute.
Wrote Matt Murphy in the Lowell Sun:
|||| The Gates Foundation since January 2008 has awarded more than $35 million to the Council of Chief School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the two main organizations charged with drafting and promoting common standards.
In the run-up to his recommendation, Chester told the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that he would base his decision on analysis being done by his staff, as well as independent reports prepared by three state and national education research firms -- Achieve, Inc., The Fordham Institute, and the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education.
Achieve, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based education-reform organization, received $12.6 million from the Gates Foundation in February 2008, according to data provided to the Washington Post by the foundation.
The Fordham Institute has accepted more than $1.4 million from the Gates Foundation, including nearly $960,000 to conduct Common Core reviews.||||
If an individual were to influence governmental decisions with this sort of money, it would be clearly a criminal offense. Why should it be any different for a foundation?
Gates has opened the door to an manifestly corrupt approach to government where a handful of well funded groups and individuals override the democratic legislative process by the prospect of funding or the threat of losing it. If you can't go to jail now for doing this, there should be laws that make it clear that you do from here on out.
●● smf's 2¢: Truth isn’t just there, it’s a destination. It must be found. Very little of this is reported as truth, it’s all just part of the story: Conjecture. Here are the dots… it’s up to you to connect them.
* Just because it’s in a blog and not the mainstream media doesn't mean it’s not true.
* Just because it’s in the mainstream media doesn't mean it is true.
_________________________
Undernews is the online report of the Progressive Review, edited by Sam Smith, who covered Washington during nine of America's presidencies and who has edited alternative journals since 1964. The Review, which has been on the web since 1995, is now published from Freeport, Maine. See prorev.com for full contents of our site
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
• NOT A RESCUE, BUT SCHOOLS CATCH A FINANCIAL LIFE RAFT: Themes in the News for the week of Aug. 2-6, 2010 By UCLA I... http://bit.ly/dvqvi9
• APPEALS COURT LIMITS STATEWIDE CHARTER SCHOOLS: By John Fensterwald in The Educated Guess August 4th, 2010 -- A s... http://bit.ly/actxGn
• CHICAGO MODEL "A DISASTER': PAULINE LIPMAN - Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) Press Release Dr. Lipman is ... http://bit.ly/bTRJbT
• WHY ‘RACE TO THE TOP’ WILL CHANGE NOTHING IN CALIFORNIA: Op-Ed in the LA Daily News By K. Lloyd Billingsley, edit...
• Upcoming Town Hall - TALES OF TWO SCHOOL DISTRICTS: LAUSD’s HUGE DISPARITIES & HOW TO FIX THEM: from 89.3 KPCC/Sou... http://bit.ly/ddFPcz
• IS THE GATES FOUNDATION INVOLVED IN BRIBERY?: by Sam Smith in the Undernews blog | http://bit.ly/bCdq2n ... http://bit.ly/9qGaaC
• Editorializing on the editorials: 3 FROM THE DAILY NEWS ON THE (MIS)ADVENTURES OF THE EDUCATION MAYOR: by smf for 4LAKidsNews... http://bit.ly/9tJHpo
• Pajaro Valley & Los Angeles Unified: A SIMPLE TALE OF TWO SCHOOL DISTRICTS AS STATE BOARD OF ED FAILS TO AWARD SCH... http://bit.ly/9JiUQD
• WHITMAN MODELS CAMPAIGN, VISION ON NEW YORK MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG –or- The Girl in the Billionaire Boys Club: Me... http://bit.ly/a7dgqG
• Diane Ravitch: OBAMA’S RACE TO THE TOP WILL NOT IMPROVE EDUCATION (Huff Post) + THE SOUND OF BUBBLES BURSTING: STU... http://bit.ly/cHjs7h
• STATE BOARD OF ED APPROVES NEW NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS: Photo: Fourth-graders work on a math lesson at Romero... http://bit.ly/dr4tB7
• STUDENTS RAISED IN FOSTER CARE TO GET PRIORITY HOUSING AT CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES: Experts say stable residency is... http://bit.ly/bkmuOr
• SB 1440 + AB 2320 : A SIMPLE DEGREE PATH: Legislation would direct both the community college and CSU systems to e... http://bit.ly/9IRfoW
• (On the day before his first day of employment…) DISTRICT'S No.2 MAN JOHN DEASY LIKELY SUCCESSOR TO RAMON CORTINES... http://bit.ly/8Xpput
• Food-fight alert: LAUSD, OAKLAND MAY NOT GET TURNAROUND GRANTS: By John Fensterwald in The Educated Guess July 3... http://bit.ly/dCjLhR
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.
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