Sunday, June 26, 2011

Multitasking in the dark

Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 26•June•2011
In This Issue:
School Funding: PUBLIC GOOD. PUBLIC CUTS - State budget shortfalls will bring a raft of cuts to public schools
LAUSD TEACHER REHIRING FUNDS LANGUISH + LAUSD CHIEF GIVES PRINCIPALS WEEKEND HOMEWORK ON LAYOFFS
LAUSD MOVES FORWARD WITH PLAN FOR NEW CHARTER SCHOOL ON WALGROVE CAMPUS
Crescendo Charter Schools: LA SCHOOLS CHIEF DROPS CHARTER-REVOCATION PROCEEDING AGAINST SCHOOLS IN CHEATING SCANDAL
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?


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FIRST + EVER FOREMOST: ¡CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES!

Whether from High School or Middle School or Kindergarten or Preschool ...or if you are just matriculating into the next grade, the next challenge, the next adventure.: Good job!

The mantra is 100% Graduation – I hope we look at that as a goal for Every Student. Every Year. Every Day..


I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS REPORTED ANYWHERE ELSE – but on Wednesday June 22 at 11:42 AM the District dissolved all the Title One District Advisory Councils – elected parent panels that advised and consulted the local districts on ESEA Title One policy and implementation. Title One is is the largest federal government investment in K-12 Education; it is LAUSD's second largest funding source outside dwindling state ADA and categorical financing. Parental involvement and input is a absolute requirement of Title One – yet the advisory councils were disbanded by LAUSD's new Chief of School, Family and Parent/Community Services (that's her title on the website!) Maria Casillas - former CEO of Families in Schools – heavily funded by Broad, Gates, etc. Last week 4LAKids enumerated the various ways from the list of How You Can Tell if Your District is Infected with the Broad Virus [http://bit.ly/BroadNos]. I refer you to #'s 6, 7, 29 and 30 – and leave it at that for this week.

6. Power is centralized..

7. Decision-making is top down.

29. A rash of Astroturf groups appear claiming to represent “the community” or “parents” and all advocate for the exact same corporate ed reforms that your superintendent supports — merit pay, standardized testing, charter schools, alternative credentialing for teachers. Of course, none of these are genuine grassroots community organizations. [see: How To Create A Faux Grassroots Ed Reform Organization In12 Easy Steps!Posted by Sue Peters on seattleducation2011| http://bit.ly/ejZdRT]

30. Existing groups suddenly become fervidly in favor of teacher bashing, merit pay or charter schools. Don’t be surprised to find that these groups may have received grant money from the corporate ed reform foundations like Gates or Broad.


OFF TOPIC: Much has been made by NeoCons and NeoLibs alike of Osama bin Laden's residence in Abbottabad, How could the Pakistanis not know when ObL lived less than a mile from their military academy? Yet most-wanted fugitive Boston mobster Whitey Bulger lived for seventeen years within walking distance of the Mall in Santa Monica!

SATURDAY MORNING I AWOKE AT AN UNGODLY HOUR and let my mind wander as I took-and-made end-of-school-year note.

What the hell (the hour was ungodly) is going on?

Some of my thinking was colored by the BBC droning in the background, A business programme discussed mercantile philosophy. An interviewer interviewed on the fall of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. (Time flies when you are the only superpower.) A health special discussed the worldwide shortage of midwives (50 million unattended births annually).

One of the businessmen discussed what he called the Myth of the Rational Mind, He believes (and I agree) that all decision making is ultimately based on gut instinct – and that this is especially true in service industries.

Education – despite all the purported reforms driven by business modeling, the scientific method and data – is a service industry. We serve our customers (students, parents and the community) – we do not manufacture scholars.

We need to train students (and ourselves as parents and educators) to be rational decision makers. But as human beings we must accept that ultimate decisions are based on anecdote and emotion; Education is anecdotal not empiric.

Wikipedia: The Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: "a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses." http://bit.ly/lJj1l3

While education can (and should) be phenomenal, I doubt if it is a phenomena. And I really doubt if we agree what those 'specific principles of reasoning' are....other than the decidedly nonscientific 'we will know it when we see it'.

In the end Education is an Art.

I look to Eric Hoffer for philosophic background on decision makers and their capability for dangerous decisions. . Hoffer warns of The True Believer as (Ir)rational decision maker – a danger whether from the right, left or center. Hoffer's archetype is probably G. Gordon Liddy – a minor character True Believer who left a dark mustachioed shadow as a philosophical sociopath on the Watergate era.

A Hoffer sidebar: “The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.”


Joseph Campbell gives us another archetype decision maker. The Hero is a believer a leader rather than a follower – but ultimately is so driven by mission and goals that rationality is lost. Heroism is irrational.

[Here the BBC segued to a story of Sir Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem – a number theory problem that had plagued mathematicians since the 17th century.]

Wile solved the proof through years of dedicated labor – but the proof came in an 'aha moment' of insight – not scientific rationality. Hoffer says that invention is more likely from toymaker's imaginations than manufacturer’s necessity.

So where am I going? In education we are and must be more interested in the future – where the children we teach will live their lives – not in the past and present where all this data resides.

Perhaps we are fixed on the past – Last May's Test Scores, and the May before that, because LAUSD (and public education in general) is incapable making long range plans. With the state and federal education budgets unknown how can we?

The current LAUSD 2011-12 Budget [http://bit.ly/lVC8b8 + http://bit.ly/fiSFxs] and the Collective Bargaining Agreements [http://scr.bi/ktkVCc] based on it are pure speculation – rosy scenarios founded on wishful thinking and optimistic scenarios.
• IF the tax extensions get put on the ballot.
• IF the voters approve them.
• IF there is bridge funding in the interim.

Voting on and approving wishful thinking don't make it so!

The California State STAR tests - the way we observe, measure and evaluate students, teachers and schools – the generator of API Scores and the LA Times Misbegotten Teacher Assessments - the drummer to whom we march – setter-of property values in our community (Those banners on the fence that say “This is an API 800 or API 900 School “ are not there for the aesthetics) will all go away in two years. There will be no STAR test and no API as we know in in 2013..

State law requires that California school districts submit a three-year balanced budget by July 1 – next Friday. The current rosy draft of the LAUSD budget is hopeful for next year, but Year Two is dark. And Year Three is Dickensian. Charles, not Emily.

The Stare Controller (he who determines what 'balanced' means)on Saturday opined that he is hopeful that the legislature will come up with a budget Wednesday.

• What of the Ninth Graders entering high school on September 6th?
They should graduate in Year Four of this cycle - if they do as they should and we do also.
• And the entering Kindergarteners should graduate in Year Thirteen ...all things being things.

If we are not focused there – on those spots beyond the horizon – we will be wasting their opportunities and their lives.

¡Onward/Adelante! -smf


New America Foundation: LAUSD Comparative analysis of funding, student demographics and achievement data.



School Funding: PUBLIC GOOD. PUBLIC CUTS - State budget shortfalls will bring a raft of cuts to public schools

Editorial from the U.S. Edition of The Economist | http://econ.st/k3eL5c

Jun 16th 2011 | AUSTIN |IN 1783 Noah Webster, a schoolteacher, published the first edition of his American spelling book. It would become a standard text in classrooms around the country, selling 60m copies over the course of the next century. Webster’s view was that the new country deserved its own approach to English, more accessible than the version it had inherited. For Webster and his followers, literacy was a democratic goal as much as a pedagogical one.

That vision of public education is a compelling one, although America has often fallen short in its pursuit of the ideal. This makes it troubling that many cities and states, struggling to make up budget shortfalls, have put schools on the chopping block. In Texas, for example, legislators expect $4 billion in cuts for schools over the next two years, a 6% decrease from the state’s projected funding formulas for 2012. The state convened a special legislative session to hash out the details, after a Democratic state senator filibustered the legislation in the regular session.

The cuts are also meeting resistance from pupils, teachers and, in some cases, the courts. In Los Angeles the teachers’ union voted in favour of salary cuts, an effort to save jobs. Republicans in Michigan have complained that they are getting emotional letters from kindergarteners. Last month a New Jersey judge issued a report declaring that 36% of the state’s schools are inadequately funded, given the obligations laid out in the state constitution—so Governor Chris Christie’s budget for the current fiscal year, which would cut $800m, should not have passed muster.

Despite these efforts, most states will see at least some cuts, adding up to billions of dollars around the country. These will come from thousands of minor economies, which will be readily apparent when schools reopen in the autumn—among those that do reopen, that is. Classes will be more crowded, school-bus rides longer. Baseball may be cut to keep football going. Latin will be even rarer—and forget about adding Mandarin this year.

Some schools are now charging fees for certain classes or activities, a startling trend that violates some basic ideas about what public schools are supposed to do. The idea of asking people to chip in for schools is not unprecedented, but it is usually a bit more subtle. Elementary-school teachers ask their pupils to buy school supplies; high-school students sell cupcakes and wash cars to raise money for the prom. Parents may supplement a child’s education with extra services—a tutor, a week at lacrosse camp, a second-hand car, a new silver trumpet rather than the borrowed cornet, glottal with generations of spit. Asking pupils to pay fees for core activities or classes seems much worse. These services may be for individual students, but public schools are a public good.

Projected cuts around the country will bring forward some deeper questions about school finance. As it is, Americans already pay for public schools by virtue of where they live; schools are partly funded by property taxes. The richer the parents, the better the schools, or at least better resourced. That is a fundamental inequity of the American system, not a new one.

A broader question is whether money is the best way to improve schools. A 2008 study from the Centre on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington found that spending on schools, adjusted for inflation, increased by 29% between 1990 and 2005, without a commensurate gain in pupil achievement. Better strategies may not be more expensive. The cuts may force states to think creatively. That would be some consolation.


LAUSD TEACHER REHIRING FUNDS LANGUISH + LAUSD CHIEF GIVES PRINCIPALS WEEKEND HOMEWORK ON LAYOFFS
LAUSD TEACHER REHIRING FUNDS LANGUISH
By Connie Llanos Staff Writer/Daily Breeze/Daily News | http://bit.ly/ik9H7U

6/25/2011 - Up to $57 million in funds controlled by Los Angeles Unified schools that were expected to save the jobs of hundreds of teachers, nurses and counselors have not been spent, according to district officials.

The district placed the funds under the authority of schools in an effort to promote local decision-making, but now Superintendent John Deasy faces a dilemma: He supports local control, but he wants schools to spend their money to help reduce the roughly 1,900 layoffs of teachers, nurses and counselors planned in the new fiscal year that begins Friday.

After negotiating furlough deals with district unions earlier this year to help reduce layoffs, officials had estimated that local schools would help out by choosing to use their own funds to buy back about 700 to 1,000 positions.

But as of Friday they had only bought 82 positions.

In a memo, Deasy gave principals and local district superintendents until Monday to explain why they have unused money in their school accounts.

"I believe in autonomy, but I also believe that if you have the means to provide support to students - and we've been hearing lots of concerns about students not getting what they need - you have a responsibility to do that," Deasy said.

Those local funds can be used for a range of purposes, including the purchase of instructional materials and supplies. Deasy said that while he is committed to schools having local control of their budget, he could be forced to step in and direct schools to bring back critical staff like counselors, social workers and nurses whose ranks have been decimated by budget cuts.

In fact, last week he made an executive decision to rescind the layoff notices of 142 counselors, social workers and nurses who were set to be laid off July 1.

The district faced a budget gap of $408 million for the 2011-12 school year before the furlough deals and other cost-saving measures. Officials hope they can resolve the buyback issue before the July 1 start of the fiscal year, in part because it is easier to rescind a layoff notice than it is to rehire personnel, and to avoid unemployment costs.

Judy Perez, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, offered several potential explanations why the funds have not been spent.

For one, she said, principals and other administrators were asked to go back and look at their campus budgets at the end of the school year, when many are overwhelmed with end-of-the-year responsibilities, which could have prevented some from purchasing more positions.

Also, some of the schools have only a few thousand dollars in those local school accounts - although dozens of schools hold more than $100,000 and some up to $500,000.

The average cost of buying back a teacher is about $80,000, district officials said.

Further complicating the issue for many principals is their inability to select the employees they want, when given the option to buy back staff.

State law requires that educators be laid off - and hired back - based on seniority.

John McLaughlin, principal of Roy Romer Middle School in North Hollywood, said when he opened the new campus three years ago he carefully selected a top-notch staff of educators to serve the school's predominantly low-income and Latino students.

While he has limited funds to buy back some positions, he said it is frustrating to know that he will have to select this staff based on how long they have been with LAUSD - not on how well they fit into his campus.

Concerns about seniority have also prevented some principals from filling the vacancies they have at their schools.

The overhaul of at least seven low-performing LAUSD campuses this year, where at least half of the staff members were removed, has left hundreds of teachers displaced, many of whom have rights to jobs because of how long they've worked with the district.

But McLaughlin bristled at the idea of having to replace some of the dynamic teachers he's losing this year with educators who were removed from failing schools.

"I am losing my handpicked people and now they want me to drink from a pool of stagnant water," McLaughlin said.

"If someone is terrible in one place they are going to be terrible here. ... Why would I want to do that to my kids?" he asked.

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy said it was wrong for principals to assume that all teachers who have been displaced from schools have been removed because of low performance.

He also chastised school leaders who have opted not to buy back positions when they have money available. When UTLA leaders asked their members to vote in favor of a furlough agreement, the union predicted almost all of the jobs would be saved through the furloughs and local buybacks.

Duffy, however, said he now expects at least 600 more positions to be restored by the start of the next school year.

LAUSD CHIEF GIVES PRINCIPALS WEEKEND HOMEWORK ON LAYOFFS
from City News Service (Beverly Hills Courier) | http://bit.ly/jKPYUJ

(CNS) Sunday June 26, 2011 – 9:50am - Principals and other Los Angeles school administrators have been given a Monday deadline to explain why they haven't used $57 million in local discretionary funds to stave off the pending layoff of 1,900 teachers, nurses and counselors, it was reported today.

Superintendent John Deasy gave the Los Angeles Unified School District bureaucracy until Monday to justify sitting on the money, which was allocated to individual campuses in a move to decentralize spending priorities, the Daily Breeze newspaper reported.

"I believe in autonomy, but I also believe that if you have the means to provide to students -- and we've been hearing lots of concerns about students not getting what they need -- you have a responsibility to do that," Deasy told the newspaper.

The president of the association that represents principals said many of its members have been overwhelmed with end-of-the-year responsibilities.

Other principals, said Judy Perez, do not have enough local discretionary funds to pay for an entire teacher's salary and benefits, estimated at around $80,000 each.

One principal told the Daily Breeze that he did not want to use his school's local funding to rehire teachers because he would be forced to take teachers based on the district-wide seniority list.

Six underperforming LAUSD schools have had their staffs dissolved this year, adding senior teachers from them to the pool of laid-off teachers.

John McLaughlin, principal of Roy Romer Middle School in North Hollywood, said he had carefully selected the teachers at his school, and did not want to hire teachers who had been laid off.

"I am losing my hand-picked people and now they want me to drink from a pool of stagnant water," McLaughlin told the Daily Breeze. "If someone is terrible in one place, they are going to be terrible here ... "Why would I want to do that to my kids?" he asked.

Teachers union president A.J. Duffy bristled at that, and told the newspaper it was wrong for principals to assume that laid-off teachers were in that position because of poor performance.

Deasy, who took office this spring, has the power to step in and force principals to rehire teachers, nurses and counselors.

He told the newspaper that the matter should be settled quickly, to avoid the cost of laying educators off, paying them unemployment insurance benefits, and then rehiring them this fall.


LAUSD MOVES FORWARD WITH PLAN FOR NEW CHARTER SCHOOL ON WALGROVE CAMPUS
The LAUSD Board authorizes staff on Tuesday to release an 'Intent to Lease' for two acres of space at Walgrove Ave. Elementary where a new charter school would be built.

By Samantha Page | Venice Patch| http://bit.ly/jvDSIx

22 June - With little deliberation, the Los Angeles Unified School District board on Tuesday authorized its staff to issue a notice of intent, calling for proposals from charter schools to build a new school on two acres of the Walgrove Avenue Elementary School campus.

"All we're doing is approving the intent to lease the land," said LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer, who represents the district.

Zimmer was reiterating statements he made at a contentious meeting at Walgrove last week. This is the first step toward putting a charter school on Walgrove's campus. LAUSD staff said they intend to issue the notice sometime this summer. If and when a proposal is selected, the board will have another opportunity to vote, which will come with another round of public comment.

"We do not need another school," one Walgrove neighbor told the board on Tuesday. She suggested that a better use of the space would be to "create a safe zone for loading and unloading passengers."

Congestion along Walgrove Avenue was the primary complaint of most of the few speakers who could attend the 1 p.m. meeting downtown. Four other neighbors registered complaints of people blocking them in their driveways, speeding away after dropping off passengers, and even parking in private driveways.

Some said the space rightfully belonged to Walgrove and should not be given away.

Sandi Wise, who lives nearby, noted when the Lincoln Place apartments are fully occupied, the area will be supporting more traffic, and the magnet school starting at Mark Twain Middle School nearby is expected to add 300 students to the area.

Currently, Ocean Charter School has 14 classrooms and about 150 students at Walgrove, through the program instated by Proposition 39.

"In this particular area, there has been incredible pressure on classroom space due to Prop. 39," Zimmer said. "There are not enough spaces to accommodate requests.

Twelve of OSC's classrooms are in out-buildings, which have to be removed at the end of the 2011-2012 school year. In addition, the Green Dot charter school organization is looking for space in Venice. The LAUSD briefly considered colocating Green Dot's new middle school at Westminster Avenue Elementary.

Sarah Reimers, co-president of the Friends of Walgrove booster club, said it was a "very innovative solution" to the space problem in the area.

"A great deal of stress and energy" has been spent on the colocation of OCS at Walgrove, Reimers said. "Parents at Walgrove are not concerned with losing two acres."

Do you think a new school should be built at Walgrove? Tell us in the comments.



smf's 2cents: There are questions that need to be answered before charter schools build on District-owned land.

Who will pay for construction? …and from what money?
Who will hold title to the building? – buildings last a lifetime, charters last five years.
Will it be built to DSA/Field Act standards?
Prop 39 is not an entitlement to space because a charter wants it – it only makes space available if it exists and is available

Keep an eye on the Environmental Impact Reports. This is no place to scrimp on the school building codes and standards

Follow the money. ● Connect the dots. ●. Sunshine the process.


Venice Tsunami Map: Not only is Walgrove within the Tsunami zone, but it is also within a Seismic Hazard (Liquefaction) Zone.



Crescendo Charter Schools: LA SCHOOLS CHIEF DROPS CHARTER-REVOCATION PROCEEDING AGAINST SCHOOLS IN CHEATING SCANDAL
BY CHRISTINA HOAG Associated Press | http://bit.ly/mBosVj

Posted: June 21, 2011 - 5:12 pm - LOS ANGELES — Six Los Angeles charter schools have been allowed to remain open because of reforms following a state test cheating scandal involving teachers and principals.

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy told the Board of Education on Tuesday that he halted charter-revocation proceedings against Crescendo Schools because they have implemented sufficient safeguards to prevent future cheating violations.

Parents erupted into cheers as he announced his decision.

Crescendo Schools operates elementary schools in low-income areas and is noted for an innovative music-math program.

In May 2010, the then-executive director showed an advance copy of state tests to principals, ordering them to direct teachers to quiz students based on actual questions on the tests. Two teachers reported the cheating to the district and the state invalidated the exam results.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
Educated Guess: FEW STATE RULES FOR TRANSITION K + MESS WITH PROP 98, DO NOT PASS GO: FEW STATE RULES FOR TRANSI... http://bit.ly/mHhcKW

Walgrove (cont.): LAUSD PLANS TO OFFER OPEN SPACE AT WALGROVE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN MAR VISTA TO CHARTER ORGANIZA... http://bit.ly/l8aOr0

Here+There/Now+Then: MANY FROM ‘A’-RATED NYC SCHOOLS NEED HELP AT CCNY: By ANNA M. PHILLIPS and ROBERT GEBELOFF ... http://bit.ly/kUaBIG

SCHOOL TURNAROUNDS GET NEW EMPHASIS WITHIN U.S. ED DEPT - Safe and Drug Free Schools? Not so much.: By Michele ... http://bit.ly/l9xOvM

LAUSD MOVES FORWARD WITH PLAN FOR NEW CHARTER SCHOOL ON WALGROVE CAMPUS: The LAUSD Board authorizes staff on Tue... http://bit.ly/jTqWnp

SCHOOL IS IN SESSION FOR VILLARAIGOSA’S CRITICS …including smf: Opinion by By Bill Boyarsky in the Jewish Journa... http://bit.ly/kD17sT

Homework: THE USEFUL AND THE USELESS + NEW RECRUIT IN THE HOMEWORK REVOLT – THE PRINCIPAL: THE USEFUL AND THE US... http://bit.ly/itz3j7

School Funding: PUBLIC GOOD. PUBLIC CUTS - State budget shortfalls will bring a raft of cuts to public schools: ... http://bit.ly/luwlvl

Crescendo Charter Schools: LA SCHOOLS CHIEF DROPS CHARTER-REVOCATION PROCEEDING AGAINST SCHOOLS IN CHEATING SCAN... http://bit.ly/jubciE

Crescendo Charter Schools: LAUSD MOVES TO CLOSE 6 CHARTER SCHOOLS AFTER CHEATING SCANDAL: Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | ... http://bit.ly/lXDj2P


FIGHT ENSUES OVER FACEBOOK MONEY FOR NEW JERSEY SCHOOLS + The Broad Connection: by Nancy Solomon NPR Morning Edi... http://bit.ly/mcOfbV

Principals+Administrators: WHAT SCHOOL LEADERS CAN DO TO INCREASE ARTS EDUCATION – effective no+low cost strateg... http://bit.ly/lA7JGc

fyi/off topic: BILLIONARE ELI BROAD WANTS MORE OF YOUR CASH TO BUILD SHRINE TO HIMSELF: By Dennis Romero/LA Week... http://bit.ly/mgVUyT

WHY LOS ANGELES SCHOOLKIDS GET LOUSY MEALS: by Gendy Alimurung/ photos by GREGORY BOJORQUEZ | LA Weekly | http:/... http://bit.ly/kDBy7w

HELP FOR YOUNG IMMIGRANTS: By some estimates, nearly a million young people in this country are living in a kind... http://bit.ly/lEB58O

Letters to the Editor/RE: MAYOR TONY ON IMPROVING EDUCATION: to the la times Re "The teaching fix," Opinion, ... http://bit.ly/iSQR6o

AMID BUDGET CUTS, COLLEGES REDUCE OR ELIMINATE SUMMER SCHOOL: Students face long commutes, higher fees and delay... http://bit.ly/iITOie

WHOOPING COUGH EPIDEMIC SPURS DRIVE FOR INOCULATIONS: Law requires ALL students entering the seventh grade and b... http://bit.ly/l7Zfro


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
June 26, 2011 - TONIGHT ON KPCC 89.9 FM
"RECIPES FOR SUCCESS: TALES FROM GREAT TEACHERS"

Today’s economy – and our nation’s future – depends on the next generation of minds. Creativity and critical thinking skills will be essential tools for that generation, but are our schools equipped to prepare them? And how best to measure success – with standardized tests, or with the sight of enlivened classrooms, filled with engaged, productive students? Town Hall Los Angeles recently brought together some of the brightest minds in education and business for a two-day summit on the future of education. Tonight’s program presents a compelling conversation between Dr. Bill Smoot, author of Conversations with Great Teachers, and MacArthur Fellow Amir Abo-Shaeer, whose radical approach to teaching physics has high school students designing and building robots. And we’ll hear from the late Jaime Escalante, whose belief in his students was key to his recipe for success.

Town Hall Speakers:
Dr. Bill Smoot, Author, ‘Conversations with Great Teachers’
Amir Abo-Shaeer, Director and Teacher, Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy and, MacArthur Foundation Fellow

Town Hall Vault Speaker:
Jaime Escalante, Educator (1990)

*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


• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR



What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
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 Brown: 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. THEY DO!.


Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and is Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served as a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
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Saturday, June 18, 2011

It's Complicated: not an explanation, an excuse.

Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 19•June•2011 Fathers' Day
In This Issue:
40 YEARS OF CHANGE IN LOS ANGELES UNIFIED: Behind student success, a school librarian
LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS BUDGET WOES HIT ARTS PROGRAMS HARD
THE PROP 98 DISAPPEARING ACT: Vetoed budget contained an end-run around funding law
WASSERMAN FOUNDATION DONATES $1 MILLION TO L.A. UNIFIED
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?


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ON TUESDAY THE BOARD OF ED THREW OUT CHOCOLATE MILK, ELEMENTARY-AND-MIDDLE-SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND PARENT INVOLVEMENT IN LAUSD.

The chocolate milk issue – and the Gates-financed National Council on Teacher Quality study provided cover for the wrongdoing.

●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]: #17: A (self-anointed, politically connected) group called NCTQ comes to town a few months before your teachers’ contract is up for negotiation and writes a Mad Libs evaluation of your districts’ teachers (for about $14,000) that reaches the predetermined conclusion that teachers are lazy and need merit pay. ["The (NAME OF CITY) School District has too many (NEGATIVE ADJ) teachers. Therefore they need a new (POSITIVE ADJ.) data-based evaluation system tied to test scores…”

More column-inches and media-minutes were filled with blather about sweetened milk and kvelling about over the bought-and-paid-for NCTQ study that hardly anyone noticed that libraries and librarians; students and parents were thrown under the bus.

SO CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL #9, the High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, will be named for former Superintendent Cortines – no matter what the board and school district's policies say – and no matter what the parents and school community at HS#9 would like. #9 IS a pilot school – with increased local autonomy

●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS: [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]
#6. Power is centralized.
#7. Decision-making is top down.
#8. Local autonomy of schools is taken away.
#9. Principals are treated like pawns by the superintendent, relocated, rewarded and punished at will.
#10 Culture of fear of reprisal develops in which teachers, principals, staff, even parents feel afraid to speak up against the policies of the district or the superintendent.
#32 Your school board starts to show signs of Stockholm Syndrome. They vote in lockstep with the superintendent. Apparently lobotomized by periodic “school board retreat/Broad training” sessions headed by someone from Broad, your school board stops listening to parents and starts to treat them as the enemy.

THE LIBRARY/LIBRARIAN ISSUE is – to oversimplify it with Beaudry’s own no-excuse excuse: Complicated. High School Librarians are represented by UTLA, Middle and Elementary School Librarians (aka Library Aides) are represented by CSEA. LAUSD has settled with UTLA, not with CSEA. Divide+conquer.

[Incidentally: LAUSD is currently hiring Library Aides – who: “As a paraprofessional who provides instructional assistance to students, a Library Aide performs a pivotal role in the operation of
Elementary, Middle, and Senior High Schools by providing assistance to students and teachers in a school library.” details: http://bit.ly/j8WkgI] Pivotal.

When presented with thousands of letters from children asking their libraries be preserved the superintendent bristled: “I better not learn those were written on instructional time.”

It's Civics Education Dr. Deasy. The teachable moment: The First Amendment and petition for redress of grievances.

Superintendent Deasy says he is open to further negotiations with CSEA – but his principal negotiator walked out of talks twice in a recent session. The offer on the table is something like this: The elementary and middle school librarians are being asked to take a reduction in salary and hours worked that amounts to 67%. And for many – a total loss in benefits. Teachers and students work six-hour-days in the classroom (plus planning time and homework); Librarians are being offered three-hour-days. And AFTER THAT factor in furlough days and the reduced instructional calendar. This is institutionalized under-employment.

I am making no pretense that I am an impartial observer, I am not neutral. I am for children in the library served, supervised and taught by professional staff.

● There is no more important classroom in the school than the library.
● A library without a librarian is a book room.

Libraries are the most technologically evolving classrooms in a school, but eliminating their staffing is not innovation – it's educational mayhem.

Libraries over the millennia have evolved – from scrolls to bound books, from hand copies to printed, from handset type to Linotype to photocompositors, from letterpress to offset to digital media, the computer to the cloud. The constant is human factor: The reader and the librarian. Not a gatekeeper but a guide.

I am reading a Harvard graduate theis about innovating school design in Los Angeles – I am anxious to share a case study on library redesign for the future for Van Nuys High School. No futurist projects school libraries – no matter how electronic, virtual or technology driven – without Teacher-Librarians. And nowhere is the human interface more critical than in K-8.

Read Hector Tobar's excellent valedictory to the retiring Narbonne High School librarian below.

IN OTHER NEWS:
● The Supreme Court acknowledged that children have Miranda Rights too.
● Mayor Emanuel in Chicago announced that all the schools (which he runs) will have a five year performance contract. Maybe we can get that for the schools our mayor runs.
● The California legislature passed a smoke-and-mirrors 'balanced' budget.
● The governor promptly vetoed it.
● The state controller disputes whether it was balanced anyway.
● Superintendent Deasy congratulated the governor on his courage.
● The President – who has tried to solve social justice over beers in the Rose Garden and Public Education over hoops, will work on The War Powers Act and The Debt Ceiling over a round of golf.

It's complicated.

Happy Fathers Day. ¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


40 YEARS OF CHANGE IN LOS ANGELES UNIFIED: Behind student success, a school librarian
DURING HER TENURE IN THE DISTRICT, ROXANNA ROSS HAS EXPERIENCED THE RELATIVE ABUNDANCE AND OPTIMISM OF THE EARLY 1960S TO THE AUSTERITY AND LAYOFFS OF TODAY.

By Hector Tobar - LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/mJ5Al5

June 17, 2011- She is the daughter of Scottish immigrants, tough people whose travels across the Atlantic first took them to the austere East Coast whaling and fishing hamlets. There is a shipwreck in her family history. A relative was lost at sea.

But it was on the dry land of Southern California that Roxanna Ross' life took root. Not long after arriving as a teenager, she enrolled at a high school built on a drained swamp to serve a community then known as "the celery capital of the world."

Most of the old farms in Lomita and Harbor City are gone. But Narbonne High is still there. "The trees are bigger," Ross told me, but much of the campus looks the same.

Ross graduated from Narbonne in 1963. Next week she'll retire from Narbonne, stepping down as the school's librarian after a 40-year career as an educator with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

From the relative abundance and optimism of the early 1960s to the austerity and layoffs of today, Ross has been on a sometimes bumpy, often wonderful ride through California's public education system.

She began her studies at what was then Long Beach State College three years after the California Legislature adopted a master plan to open up higher education to working families. Ross, the daughter of a Navy butcher, eventually got a graduate degree at the university.

"If we hadn't moved to California, I probably wouldn't be where I am today," she told me as we sat in the Narbonne school library, surrounded by books, many of which she purchased in more abundant times.

Ross made a career trying to give other sons and daughters of the working class the same sort of opportunities she had. First she worked in the classroom, then in the library.

When I asked her how the schools have changed in 40 years, budget cuts weren't her starting point.

"Parents are incredibly stressed out," Ross said. "Everything is so expensive. They struggle just to keep up, let alone get ahead."

Over the years, Narbonne High offered many different people an avenue to social mobility. But the rollbacks of the last few years are yet another blow, she says, in a generalized assault on middle-class life.

When Ross started teaching, most of her students still had stay-at-home moms. These days, it's usually two parents working long hours to pay car and health insurance bills that are bigger than mortgages used to be.

"I feel great despair when I think of what my money can do today and what it used to be able to do," Ross told me.

Harbor City is one of those places that's not in the news much but is, in its own way, at the center of things. It sits, both geographically and metaphorically, roughly halfway between the heights of Palos Verdes and the flatlands of Compton.

"This campus has always been very diverse," Ross said. Back in the early '60s, it had white, black, Asian and Latino students. Over the years, it's stayed diverse. "I've had students who lived in their cars and students who lived in Rancho Palos Verdes," Ross told me.

Ross has lived much of her life in the Harbor City-Lomita area.

Back when she started, working people there paid their taxes and in return they got a school system that offered their kids a world of learning — French, Latin, art, drivers ed.

More parents could afford to donate either time or money to the school. For those kids not destined to go on in academia, there were excellent classes in such practical subjects as culinary education. Over the years, Ross said, Narbonne sent many graduates to the nation's best culinary schools.

That was then.

At Narbonne, as at countless other public schools, drivers ed was done away with long ago. "So our parents have to spend hundreds of dollars on private driving schools," Ross said. The money the school's parents association used to donate to the library is gone too. Among other things, it's being used to keep the athletic programs going.

Electives — art and music — are being cut. The culinary program will disappear next year.

Beyond all that, there's less respect for the teaching profession than ever before. When Ross first started, teaching drew people with a fiercely independent streak. "You could be creative. It was fun," she remembered. Now we treat our teachers like bureaucrats, quantifying their performance.

"State standards don't take into account that intuitive experience that a teacher has with a student," Ross told me. "It's not that the standards aren't credible or valuable. But it's all so cut and dried, black and white."

When Ross completes her last day June 24, she will leave a legacy of a library filled with computers and excellent reference books, including a complete 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary.

Some things haven't changed, she told me. Students still come in asking about Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the schools' most popular books. But other parts of the job are recent arrivals.

"Ms. Ross. How do I check this disc for viruses?"

"Just a minute. I'll show you."

Ross, white-haired and 65, gives a teenager a basic computer lesson.

She's also taught almost the entire student body how to use the school district's new digital library.

"It's one of the best things the district has done for school libraries," she told me as we scrolled through its databases. "I hope and pray the district doesn't do away with it."

She wants to think that, after she leaves, students will still have it to research questions on any subject that enters their minds — AIDS, the Civil War, American literature.

But in these days of illogical and cruel slicing and dicing, no one can know that for certain.


LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS BUDGET WOES HIT ARTS PROGRAMS HARD
AS LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS ARTS TEACHERS MINGLED DURING A BENEFIT FOR THEIR PROGRAMS, SOME TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT THE PRELIMINARY LAYOFF NOTICES THEY'D GOTTEN.

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/mKgFlR

June 13, 2011 - Debra Engle went to a celebration of the city school district's arts program with a dark cloud hanging over her head.

Like almost 7,000 other school district employees, Engle had received a preliminary layoff notice earlier this year and could lose her job by midsummer. For the last several years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has faced large budget shortfalls and the school board has approved cutting positions and programs to try to balance the budget.

The nation's second-largest school system is facing an estimated $408-million shortfall, and many unions have agreed to their members' taking four unpaid days off. But, depending on the state's budget, district officials could still approve cutting jobs over the summer.

"The amount of stress that it brings is horrible," said Engle, as musicians played and guests sipped coffee and ate finger food in the courtyard of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex during Saturday night's benefit event.

Almost no academic program has been spared, but Los Angeles Unified's arts program has been particularly hard hit. In 2008, there were 335 full-time elementary arts teachers. This year, after state and federal funding dried up, there are about 250, according to district officials. The district and state have also allocated less funding to the arts.

Many teachers say they have to travel to more schools, spending as little as one day a week at each campus.

"It doesn't give you the chance to build much sustainability," said Ginger Rose Fox, who teaches at 10 schools in the San Pedro area. Last year, she worked at seven.

Others said it was sometimes difficult to scrounge up enough materials for class.

"I've had to beg principals to allocate money for one ream of white drawing paper," said Michael Blasi, who teaches at nine campuses in South Los Angeles.

Many who attended the benefit, which included a silent auction and student performances, said they were concerned that scores of campuses are not offering a full slate of arts programs. This year students at the City of Angels Bellevue campus could take instrumental music, visual arts and dance. Instructors who taught those classes have received preliminary layoff notices, and some worry that those programs could be cut back in the future.

"Not all kids want to do theater. We have a lot of kids who are shy and don't want to be singing," said Katy Hickman, a theater teacher at the campus. "You need a critical mass of colleagues to offer a robust program."

Because layoffs are based on length of service, many teachers said they were trying not to spend too much time thinking about when they were hired to calculate their odds of keeping their jobs — the less seniority they have, the more vulnerable they are.

"I don't know where I am" on the layoff list, said Blasi, who has received layoff notices two years in a row but so far has managed to avoid losing his position. "I'm afraid to ask."



THE PROP 98 DISAPPEARING ACT: Vetoed budget contained an end-run around funding law
By Kathryn Baron | Thoughts on Public Education/TOP-Ed | http://bit.ly/klIkpO

Posted on 6/17/11 - When Gov. Brown vetoed the budget yesterday, he also halted one of the “legally questionable maneuvers” referred to in his veto message, in which legislators attempted to ignore the constitutional funding requirements of Proposition 98. Analysts at the education consulting firm School Services of California said they were reviewing the numbers in the budget bill when they noticed something was missing from the Prop 98 guarantee – more $1 billion.

In a video conversation and an article for their clients, Vice President Robert Miyashiro and Associate Vice President Michael Ricketts describe how the Legislature essentially suspended Proposition 98 without the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote.

The governor’s May revise assumed that the Legislature would extend temporary taxes, bringing in about $4 billion for the next fiscal year. Without that revenue, the Proposition 98 portion owed to the schools would drop by about $1.6 billion. “Any greater reduction in Proposition 98 funding for schools, whether through cuts or deferrals, would require a suspension of the guarantee,” requiring Democratic and Republican votes to reach the two-thirds threshold for suspension, they write in their article. To balance the budget, the Democrats proposed deferring $2.85 billion, an additional $1 billion.

Like the best of illusions, this one appeared to fund K-12 education without any new cuts, at about $50.4 billion. At the same time, however, legislators raised the amount deferred into the 2012-13 school year by nearly $3 billion, about a billion more than the governor first proposed.
“We think this is a very troubling precedent,” Miyashiro said in the video. In the 23 years since voters approved Prop 98, it has been suspended twice, he noted, “but never has the legislature simply ignored the two-thirds vote requirement for suspension and underfunded the guarantee.”

How can they do this?

Apparently, it’s not difficult. “The legislature can actually do anything they want until they’re challenged,” explained Ricketts with a wry laugh. If the budget hadn’t been vetoed, and this provision was allowed to stand, he said it could have rendered Proposition 98 meaningless “for purposes of establishing a base for funding for education because the legislature year-to-year could fund it any level it wanted to just with a simple majority vote.”

Gov. no girly-man

The veto also gave Gov. Brown a little more street cred with educators. Talk around the hall lockers is that he exhibited more muscle yesterday in taking on his party and the Republicans than his predecessor Gov. Mr. Universe ever showed.

“I think it was a very strong leadership move for the governor,” said Mike Hanson, superintendent of Fresno Unified School District. ”He’s laying out the rules of the game; it’s got to be a budget that will work.”

Like many superintendents, Hanson has had to make years of painful cuts and is hopeful that the governor’s firm stand will force a reengagement that brings both political parties back to the table to develop a “permanent and attainable” solution. Fresno Unified will have 522 fewer teachers next year, and several hundred fewer classified staff, and the district is actually in better shape than most because it has a 7 percent reserve – which they’ll soon be drawing down.

“If the governor were to fold and to sign the budget, his political future in the state would just be in the toilet,” said Bob Blattner of Blattner & Associates, an education consulting firm based in Sacramento. “It would be another four years of Schwarzenegger with a smaller collar size.”
Blattner said his clients were terrified that the budget approved on Tuesday would have led to mid-year budget cuts because so many of the savings and revenues were based on shaky assumptions. He said the governor’s action gave them hope for a structural change that would give them a sustainable and predictable budget solution. He said that by standing up against the status quo of legislative inaction, Brown showed that there’s an adult at the wheel who knows where the state should be going.


WASSERMAN FOUNDATION DONATES $1 MILLION TO L.A. UNIFIED
THE PRIVATE FOUNDATION'S CONTRIBUTION WILL FUND FOUR PROGRAMS AND UP TO FIVE POSITIONS FOR THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, WHICH HAS BEEN BATTLING MULTIMILLION DOLLAR SHORTAGES FOR SEVERAL YEARS.

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/jDiVYV

June 18, 2011 - A private foundation has donated $1 million to the city school district to help pay for several academic programs and new positions, officials said Friday.

The Wasserman Foundation, headed by entertainment/sports entrepreneur Casey Wasserman, has donated more than $4.3 million to the district since 2009. It now pays for about 10 positions in the district.

Numerous philanthropic groups, including the Gates and Walton foundations, and billionaire Eli Broad have made donations to the district to help pay the salaries of mostly senior district officials. The donors have strong ties to charter schools.
●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]:
#37 - Grants appear from the Broad and Gates foundations in support of the superintendent, and her/his “Strategic Plan.”
#38 - The Gates Foundation gives your district grants for technical things related to STEM and/or teacher “effectiveness” or studies on charter schools.


The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, has struggled to deal with multimillion-dollar shortfalls for the last several years.

The Wasserman donation will help fund four programs and up to five positions, including those overseeing a new school budgeting effort and an administrative job, to ensure that campuses turned over to groups inside and outside L.A. Unified under the Public School Choice program are meeting their stated goals, according to school district officials.

"We must take advantage of this unique moment in time — the confluence of an energetic new Los Angeles superintendent and a national willingness to move our public education system into the 21st century," Wasserman said in a statement.

Supt. John Deasy, who took over in April, has said that the district needs to encourage outside donations but that although he welcomes the support, he and the school board must set the district agenda.

"I call on a new generation of leaders and philanthropists … to join us in our effort to engage all Californians in the education of our children," Deasy said in a statement.



HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources

Parent Involvement: L.A. UNIFIED TO SPEND $20 MILLION ON PARENT CENTERS: by Howard Blume – LA Times/LA Now | htt... http://bit.ly/lF3hN8

Parent Involvement: SAN JOSE SCHOOL PARENTS SAY BIGGER, NOT BETTER, IS A BAD PLAN FOR PARENT VOLUNTEER PROGRAM: By Sharon Noguchi | ... http://bit.ly/jrWbfu

AUTHORITIES WARN SCHOOLS ABOUT MISHANDLING CONSTRUCTION BONDS: By Corey G. Johnson/California Watch | http://bit... http://bit.ly/jw3E18

JOBS AND SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT: Themes in the News for the week of June 13-17, 2011 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/lu... http://bit.ly/mfHWEj

House GOP Seeks to Bolster Charters in ESEA/NCLB Rewrite measure introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-CA. bl http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/06/house_gop_seeks_to_bolster_cha.html

A MONTH IN NEW JOB, CHICAGO MAYOR EMANUEL IS HAVING AN IMPACT + CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD RESCINDS TEACHER RA... http://bit.ly/m5e65e

CHOCOLATE MILK vs. OJ: LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/mEKW3X LAUSD is right to ban chocolate and other flav... http://bit.ly/iquU33

By the numbers: HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED BY THE BROAD VIRUS: by Sue Peters, a parent in S... http://bit.ly/igw1Io

Mayor Tony: TEACHER QUALITY MUST BE JOB 1 OF EDUCATION REFORM IN L.A. …+smf’s 2¢: A study released last week by... http://bit.ly/iAJqvc
●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]: RX#5: Vote your mayor out of office if s/he is complicit.

LEGISLATURE APPROVES MAJORITY BUDGET PLAN AHEAD OF DEADLINE!: Wed, Jun 15, 2011 5:25 pm - The state Legislature ... http://bit.ly/lfAqyF

SCHOOL LIBRARIANS GET THE THIRD DEGREE: by Gena Haskett / BlogHer Original Post | http://bit.ly/lrVaGl June ... http://bit.ly/kKRfxF

THE LAUSD BOARD MEETING: Chocolate Milk, Elementary + Middle School Librarians and Parental Input are Out.: stor... http://bit.ly/jCxUBZ

An Open Letter to Los Angeles Parents, Students & Teachers – THE LAUSD COMPANY LINE: SMOKE, MIRRORS & LIES: by C... http://bit.ly/ig6xby

WE NEED TO FIX THE ECONOMY TO FIX EDUCATION: Diane Ravitch's position gains support from a new study that sugges... http://bit.ly/iC7hZx

A SPEECH FROM ARNE DUNCAN WE’D LIKE TO HEAR: by John Merrow from the LEARNING Matters blog | http://bit.ly/kGDl... http://bit.ly/ip8pIp

The Mayor’s Partnership: SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL WILL SOON CLOSE: LOS ANGELES TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL IS ALL IT SHOULD B... http://bit.ly/lP4WXo

A Little Light Reading: DISRUPTING DISRUPTION - How the language of disruptive innovation theory and the“tools o... http://bit.ly/lj1YIJ

Hell Freezes Over! L.A.Times Editorial Board, Justice Antonin Scalia + smf agree: A VICTORY IN THE SUPREME COUR... http://bit.ly/mrG0Q9

HS#9: FORMER LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT RAMON CORTINES RELUCTLANT TO ACCEPT NAMING HONOR: Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC |... http://bit.ly/mvprA4

A PARENT GUIDE TO THE BROAD FOUNDATION’S PROGRAMS AND EDUCATION POLICIES: from Parents Across America / http://p... http://bit.ly/mutgvY

NCTQ Study: L.A.UNIFIED; A REPORT CARD - A review by the National Council on Teacher Quality highlights some of ... http://bit.ly/lvQBd3

NCTQ Study: CONCERNS ARISE OVER LAUSD’s ‘SALARY CREDIT’ SYSTEM - Teachers get $519M for furthering training; som... http://bit.ly/iqZGw9

Other Voices: CALIFORNIA TEACHERS’ UNIONS COLLABORATE WITH STATE OFFICIALS TO IMPOSE CUTS: By Allison Smith and ... http://bit.ly/kphxxJ


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


• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR



What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
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 Brown: 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. THEY DO!.


Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and is Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served as a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
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