What...? Were they thinking?

4LAKids: Sunday 25•Oct•2015 In This Issue:  •  L.A. ARCHDIOCESE DROPS SUPPORT FOR LAUSD EFFORTS IN TEACHER SEX ABUSE CASE OVER STRATEGY OF ALLOWING CHILD’S PAST SEXUAL HISTORY IN EVIDENCE  •  HIGH-POWERED SECRET PANEL EXAMINING LAUSD FINANCES + smf's 2¢  •  L.A. MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI SAYS LOS ANGELES UNIFIED'S NEXT SUPERINTENDENT SHOULD HAVE THE QUALITIES OF FORMER SUPERINTENDENT ROY ROMER.  •  FIRST PUBLIC TEST OF EARTHQUAKE ALERT SYSTEM ROLLS OUT AT EAGLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL  •  HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources  •  EVENTS: Coming up next week...  •  What can YOU do? Featured Links:  •  Give the gift of a 4LAKids Subscription to a friend or colleague!  •  Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404  •  4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!  •  4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. Two darkly provacative developments continue to develop: FIRST WE HAVE THE “SHE WAS A NAUGHTY GIRL BEFORE HER TEACHER MOLESTED HER” LEGAL DEFENSE’ – and the District’s rehiring of the attorney who presented it and continuation of that strategy after a thirteen-year-old student was seduced and molested by her middle school teacher. This is so maddening to me – it’s the immoral equivalent of “she was wearing tight jeans and therefore was asking for it” ("Indossava jeans stretti e l'è cercata") verdict briefly embraced and ultimately repudiated in Italian law. [http://bit.ly/1PNNLkx] Only worse. The Italian victim was an adult; our victim was a child. I’m the father of a young woman who was for a brief shining moment an emerging adolescent. I’m a fan of adolescents – they are awkward+wonderful versions of ourselves evolving to discover+become themselves. We cannot+will not+must not tolerate this indefensible defense. No how. No way. What part of “NO!” is so hard to understand? The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, itself caught up in abominable+monumental child abuse issues has distanced itself from LAUSD’s unconscionable position – proving that it at least has made progress. | LA ARCHDIOCESE DROPS SUPPORT FOR LAUSD IN TEACHER ABUSE CASE OVER ALLOWING EVIDENCE OF CHILD’S PAST SEXUAL HISTORY http://bit.ly/1OYmjQp To my friend David Holmquist, the LAUSD general counsel I say: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? To the Board of Ed I ask “Have we no shame?” AND THEN WE HAVE THE INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL REVIEW PANEL. Which LA School Report – normally a fan of disruptive+®eformy thinking – calls a “high-powered secret panel examining LAUSD finances”. HIGH-POWERED SECRET PANEL EXAMINING LAUSD FINANCES + smf's 2¢ | http://bit.ly/1W9VgaD + I’m not sure how “independent” the panel can be, seeing how it’s being run out the office of the Chief Financial Officer. If the finances of District management need to be independently reviewed the proper mechanism would first be through the elected Board of Education and after that the County Office of Education – the official overseer of all school district’s finances. The CFO under the superintendent’s direction and with the board’s approval has filed its budgets and financial statements with LACOE. They have been approved - sometimes with qualified certification, sometimes with questions, never with negative certification. Superintendent Cortines is rightly concerned about the next-year-out budget and the long term financial challenges faced by the District. He is aware that LAUSD has been living from budget-year-to-budget-year because of the fiscal crisis engendered by the recession and resultant state budget cuts, declining enrollment and encroachment by charter schools complicated by former Superintendent Deasy’s misplaced spending priorities and the unanticipated cost of abuse lawsuits+settlements, etc. Much of LAUSD’s two-and-three-year-out budgeting and labor contracting has been based on wishful thinking and rosy scenarios …and Mr. Cortines is more of a fiscal realist than that. El Niño is soon upon us - we have over 1000 schools and untold buildings. Roofs will leak, drains will back up, pumps will fail and basements will flood. Some schools may need temporarily to close down to repurpose as emergency shelters. LAUSD’s critical repairs budget is almost exhausted. Right now the State of California’s financial projections are looking up – but one person‘s boom can look like a bubble about to burst. The Prop 30 education funding mechanism that finances the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) spending boom is about to expire. The District’s obligation to fund retirement+health benefits do not present a happy picture. The Local Control Accountability Plan (which governs the LAUSD LCFF) has been questioned in the past over the funding of Special Ed – and there is a move afoot to add teeth to LCFF oversight+accountability. LCAP REVIEWS CONTINUE WITHOUT EVALUATION TOOL http://bit.ly/1LUjleP And Special Ed encroachment still hammers LAUSD’s finances. And Eli’s comin’. Hide your heart girl. Just in: LAUSD INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL REVIEW PANEL: The Board Informative and Meeting Materials http://bit.ly/1k1ETeC It would be easy for this Independent Financial Review Panel to declare an emergency and proclaim potential insolvency, bankruptcy and that the sky is falling. Which is going to make any potential new superintendent feel all warm-and-fuzzy about the job prospects in LAUSD! In the end the Board of Ed is ultimately accountable for the District’s finances – and if Ms. Reilly the CFO and the General Counsel let the previous superintendent pull the fiscal+legal wool over their eyes (“The devil made me do it!”) the board has themselves, those folks and hubris to blame. Hubris. Leaders misleading by misleading their leaders with the data+statistics+inadequate intelligence they choose to believe. Maybe ‘bamboozled’ is the word. Leonard Cohen is guided by the ‘Beauty of Our Weapons’. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and Pearson’s of math instruction were here somewhere. It just might take Dick Cheney to find them: Melting in the dark – the sweet green icing flowing down. MAYOR GARCETTI HAS BEEN CAREFUL ABOUT GETTING INVOLVED IN DISTRICT POLITICS but weighed in on the Superintendent search. | 2 from The Times: WHO MIGHT HEAD L.A, UNIFIED, AND WHAT ARE OFFICIALS LOOKING FOR IN A LEADER? http://bit.ly/1W9Kyf1| …and maybe an answer: MAYOR GARCETTI SAYS LAUSD'S NEXT SUPERINTENDENT SHOULD HAVE THE QUALITIES OF PAST SUPE ROMER. http://bit.ly/1KuPdBq And hizzonner (in the most excellent company of Dr. Lucy Jones) showed up at Eagle Rock High to champion a safety+technology initiative that shows genuine promise. FIRST PUBLIC TEST OF EARTHQUAKE ALERT SYSTEM ROLLS OUT AT EAGLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL http://bit.ly/1Wb81MX | MAYOR GARCETTI ANNOUNCES EAGLE ROCK HS TO GET EARTHQUAKE WARNING SYSTEM http://bit.ly/1Mb5AUN (The mayor’s reticence to get into the political weeds shouldn’t be mirrored – whether you are an educator, staff member, parent or student you should come on out next week and be heard on the Supe Search: ●MONDAY, OCT. 26 9 a.m. Local District-West Community Forum Webster Middle School-Daniel's Den 11330 W. Graham Pl. Los Angeles 90064 7 p.m. Local District-West Community Forum Webster Middle School -Daniel's Den 11330 W. Graham Pl. Los Angeles 90064 ●TUESDAY, OCT. 27 9 a.m. Local District-West Community Forum Crenshaw High School-Multipurpose Room 4120 11th Ave. Los Angeles 90008 11 a.m. Local District-Central Community Forum Eagle Rock High School Auditorium 1750 Yosemite Dr. Los Angeles 90041 6:30 p.m. (smf/4LAKids will attend this one!) Local District-Central Community Forum Eagle Rock High School Auditorium 1750 Yosemite Dr. Los Angeles 90041 7 p.m. Local District-West Community Forum Crenshaw High School 4120 11th Ave. Los Angeles 90008 ●WEDNESDAY, OCT. 28 7 p.m. Local District-Northeast Community Forum Van Nuys High School 6535 Cedris Ave. Van Nuys 91411 7 p.m. Local District-South Community Forum White Middle School-White Hall 22102 S. Figueroa St. Carson 90745 …and if you come to Eagle Rock on Tuesday you’ll be safer than ever from earthquakes! And the auditorium has a new roof …so the sky falling danger is ameliorated. ¡Onward/Adelante! - smf L.A. ARCHDIOCESE DROPS SUPPORT FOR LAUSD EFFORTS IN TEACHER SEX ABUSE CASE OVER STRATEGY OF ALLOWING CHILD’S PAST SEXUAL HISTORY IN EVIDENCE “THEY’RE ARGUING FOR MORE PROTECTION FOR INSTITUTIONS THAT ALLOW MOLESTATION INSTEAD OF MORE PROTECTIONS FOR CHILDREN.” by Teresa Watanabe, LA Times |http://lat.ms/1S2yZFM Oct. 24, 2015 :: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles abruptly dropped its support for efforts by the Los Angeles Unified School District to make it more difficult to hold institutions liable for employees who commit sexual abuse. In a letter to the California Supreme Court this week, archdiocesan attorneys had objected to an appellate court’s ruling that plaintiffs only prove that an institution knew an employee had a “potential” for sexual abuse instead of a “dangerous propensity,” as the trial court judge had instructed jurors in the L.A. Unified case. In that case, the district argued a 14-year-old girl was partly to blame for sexual abuse by her then-math teacher at Edison Middle School during 2010 and 2011. The teacher, Elkis Hermida, was convicted of lewd conduct with a minor and sentenced to three years in state prison, but the girl has filed a civil suit against L.A. Unified, claiming negligence. A jury found that L.A. Unified was not liable because the girl and the teacher concealed their behavior from school officials. But the Court of Appeal reversed that decision last month, saying that L.A. Superior Court Judge Lawrence Cho erred in using the “dangerous propensity” standard and in allowing evidence of the girl's past sexual history and arguments that she was partly to blame for her abuse. The appellate court ordered a new civil trial. The Los Angeles Board of Education has authorized an appeal of the ruling on the standard to the high court and attorneys are finalizing documents to do so by Monday, said General Counsel David Holmquist. But the district will no longer be supported by the archdiocese, whose intervention in the case had drawn criticism from attorneys representing sexual abuse victims. “They’re arguing for more protection for institutions that allow molestation instead of more protections for children,” said Frank Perez, attorney for the girl in the L.A. Unified case. “It’s very offensive.” The archdiocese had asked the high court to bar publication of the appellate decision so it could not be cited or used as precedent. It justified its intervention by saying it has been subjected to lawsuits raising such issues and could face them again in the future. The appellate court decision “appears to set up an unworkable, indefinite standard that is based on no precedent and provides no guidance for claims of negligent supervision in a sex abuse,” according to the Oct. 19 letter signed by Lee W. Potts of the McKool Smith law firm. But Potts sent a new letter to the high court Friday, withdrawing the request. "The Archdiocese initially expressed concern regarding publication when it concluded that the now conflicting Court of Appeal decisions could be used to confuse the standards for employers to protect children and young people from abuse," the letter said. "Upon further reflection, the Archdiocese is withdrawing its request. "The Archdiocese supports justice for victims of abuse and a process that assures that perpetrators and anyone complicit are held accountable for abuse against a child or young person." John Manly and Vince Finaldi, whose law firm has represented more than 150 victims of clergy sex abuse in California, had criticized Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez for allowing the request to go forward. They said the actions contradicted recent promises by Pope Francis to hold bishops accountable for failing to protect children from misconduct. HIGH-POWERED SECRET PANEL EXAMINING LAUSD FINANCES + smf's 2¢ Posted on LA School Report by Mike Szymanski | http://bit.ly/1kAKZ6l October 23, 2015 11:32 am :: A blue-ribbon panel of leading figures in education, politics and finance has been working behind the scenes to help LA Unified identify financial challenges and solutions as the district faces budget deficits in the near future. The panel includes people who have worked with the district in the past, and many have won awards or honors for their involvement in education. One member is now working for the search firm hired to find the district’s next superintendent. Known as the Independent Financial Review Panel, the group was formed in March by Superintendent Ramon Cortines and is being supported by $250,000, approved by the board. The panel’s findings and recommendations are due before the end of the current academic year. Cortines has expressed his desire to step down by the end of the calendar year. The money to support the examination was approved in June, but no one is being paid, said a district spokesperson, adding, “We will be buying them sandwiches.” Despite the constant refrain by board members to bring transparency and accountability to the business of the district, the work of the panel is being conducted in private. The members of the panel were not identified publicly (see below), and meetings are not open to the public. The panel was mentioned almost as an afterthought in a report earlier this week before the Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee by Chief Financial Office Megan Reilly, whose office is overseeing the panel’s work. In her presentation, Reilly said it is an “all-volunteer” panel that will take “a comprehensive deep dive and look at the financial problems facing the district.” She said they were “outside experts asked to join us on behalf of Mr. Cortines.” Reilly has projected a budget shortfall of $333 million in 2017-18, presumably one of the reason the group was impaneled. During the public forum section of the committee meeting, led by board member Mónica Ratliff, a former school board member, David Tokofsky, pointed to the secrecy surrounding the panel and its work. “This is the first time in a public meeting that this financial review panel has ever been mentioned,” he said. The district did not immediately respond to a request for more detailed information about the panel and its progress. According to Reilly, Cortines asked her in March to establish a group of experts in California public finance and education. The panel convened that month to “help review and make recommendations concerning the long-term financial sustainability and health of the district,” according to a slide she presented at the committee meeting. She added, “Their work is intended to provide a foundation for our discussions regarding the district’s long-term priorities and investments.” This is the first time such a high-profile panel of outside experts have been asked to look at LAUSD’s budget. According to another statement, the panel is “expected to review and make recommendations concerning long-term financial matters, financial priorities and the health of the district’s finances.” The report says the panel “will not be involved in the development of current budget plans or discussions with the district’s collective bargaining units.” ______________ ►”This Official Statement, which includes the cover page through the appendices hereto, is provided to furnish information in connection with the sale of the $326,045,000 2015 General Obligation Refunding Bonds, Series A (the "Bonds ") by the Los Angeles Unified School District (the "District "). The Bonds are issued pursuant to certain provisions of the California Government Code and other applicable law and a resolution adopted by the Board of Education of the District (the "District Board ") on April 14, 2015 (collectively, the "Resolution ") authorizing the issuance of not to exceed $2,500,000,000 of general obligation refunding bonds.” Independent Financial Review Panel: In March 2015, the Superintendent announced the formation of an independent panel with expertise in public finance and education in the State (the "Independent Financial Review Panel "). The Independent Financial Review Panel is expected to review and make recommendations concerning longterm financial matters, financial priorities and the health of the District's finances. The Independent Financial Review Panel will not be involved in the development of current budget plans or discussions with the District's collective bargaining units. The Superintendent expects the Independent Financial Review Panel to release a report with its recommendations during the 2015 -16 school year. - “$326,045,000 Los Angeles Unified School District 2015 General Obligation Refunding Bonds, Series A” 6/15/2015 : pp A-3 These are the members of the panel: • Maria Anguiano, an architect of the University of California-wide fiscal improvements plan and a former senior advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Post-Secondary Success Team. • Delaine Eastin, the 25th California State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the first woman to be elected to that position. • Michael Fine, a deputy superintendent for the Riverside Unified School District. Chief administrator for Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. • Bill Lockyer, former California Treasurer and veteran politician. • Darline Robles, the former superintendent of Los Angeles County Office of Education and the Salt Lake City School District who is now part of the search firm seeking the next LAUSD superintendent. (●●smf: Dr. Robles is a former board member of the now-defunct Pearson Charitable Foundation) • Miguel Santana, former city administrative officer for Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa and deal with a time of severe belt-tightening for the city. • Darrell Steinberg, longtime state politician and president pro tem of the Senate who authored more than 70 bills involving education, mental health and foster care. • Peter Taylor, president of ECMC Foundation, chaired the James Irvine Foundation and is on the boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust. • Kent Wong, the director of the UCLA Labor Center, and former staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union. ___________________ ●●smf’s 2¢: Apparently John Walsh, listed variously as the Assistant General Counsel at Los Angeles Unified School District and LAUSD Financial Policy Director is facilitating the Independent Financial Review Panel meetings and preparing its report. Earlier Walsh justified LAUSD’s misbegotten iPad finance polices thus: “Another issue was whether it's legal to buy tablets, with an estimated life of three to five years, with bonds that taxpayers would retire over 25 years. Early on, the district talked of using short-term bonds that would match the life of the tablets. “But officials have since decided that regular, long-term bonds can be legally used, provided that some of the money goes to projects, such as buildings, with a longer lifespan, said John Walsh, L.A. Unified's director of finance policy.” [LA Times/Aug 27, 2013 | http://lat.ms/2041tEw ] LAUSD INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL REVIEW PANEL: The Board Informative and Meeting Materials L.A. MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI SAYS LOS ANGELES UNIFIED'S NEXT SUPERINTENDENT SHOULD HAVE THE QUALITIES OF FORMER SUPERINTENDENT ROY ROMER. Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC 89.3 | http://bit.ly/1LrWxSg Oct 23, 2015 :: 5:10 AM :: Mayor Eric Garcetti suggested the Los Angeles Unified School District look to the past as it searches for a superintendent for the future. Asked Thursday what he would like to see in the next leader of the country's second largest school district, Garcetti said: “Somebody in the Roy Romer mold, I think, who has the gravitas.” Romer was a three-term governor of Colorado and the general chairman of the Democratic National Committee before he arrived in Los Angeles to serve as superintendent from 2000 to 2006. During his tenure, he shepherded a massive school construction project and helped expand charter schools. With several camps currently battling over the direction of LAUSD, Garcetti said the district’s next superintendent should have Romer’s political skills. “I do think you need somebody with enough gravitas to bring these warring parties together, hit their heads together and say, ‘Look, the kids have to come first,” he said, speaking after a press conference on the Department of Water and Power. Since taking office as mayor, Garcetti has rarely commented publicly on the direction of the public schools. In sharp contrast to previous mayors, Garcetti has generally refrained from voicing opinions on how the 600,000-student LAUSD should operate or how it can be improved. His immediate predecessor, Antonio Villaraigosa, made public education a top priority of his campaign and administration. He actively sought control of the LAUSD school board through state legislation that was later ruled unconstitutional. The teachers' union opposed his move to assert his authority over the board* as did then-Superintendent Romer. [●●smf: This is more than a bit of selective memory. UTLA initially supported Mayor Tony’s (a former UTLA official) takeover] Romer’s leadership was marked by urgency and statesmanship, said LAUSD school board president Steve Zimmer. “More important than the profile of the name is this ability to truly galvanize our disparate communities, our disparate perspectives, and bring people together in a way that has not been done recently,” Zimmer said. But not everyone shares Zimmer's and Garcetti's positive assessment of the former superintendent. United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl remembers Romer as a top-down leader who didn’t collaborate with the labor group. “We don’t need a superintendent who is going to try to bring the so-called warring parties together,” Caputo-Pearl said. The effort by philanthropist Eli Broad to double the number of charter schools in Los Angeles will destroy the school district as an institution, he said. “We need a superintendent who is going to push back against that effort,” the labor leader said. On Monday, Caputo-Pearl shared his opinions on the next superintendent with Hazard, Young, Attea & Assoicates, the search firm hired by LAUSD to help run the hunt for its next superintendent. The firm is scheduling more than 100 meetings with civic leaders and community groups within the school district to gather views on the kind of superintendent needed for the district. Earlier on Thursday, Garcetti met with Hank Gmitro, the president of the search firm, to share his views on the topic. Public forums continue to be held throughout the district to collect comments on the superintendent search. FIRST PUBLIC TEST OF EARTHQUAKE ALERT SYSTEM ROLLS OUT AT EAGLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL by Rosanna Xia | LA Times | http://lat.ms/204D3uy Oct 23, 9:43 pm :: In a major sign that California's earthquake early warning system is moving forward, officials announced Friday that Eagle Rock High School will provide the first classrooms to test the program developed by the U.S. Geological Survey and a team of scientists. This marks the first time officials have tried the system with the general public. Until recently, only academics, select government agencies and a few private firms have received the alerts. "This is really about helping us understand what works, what doesn't," USGS seismologist Lucy Jones said Friday to a classroom filled with excited students, school board members and city officials. "By putting it in with ordinary people — with not geeks, not Caltech — we can start seeing … how people hear the information, how they process it, how they make decisions." Scientists now have enough ground sensors in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas to broaden their pilot programs. They emphasized that the system, known as ShakeAlert, is far from perfected, but said expanded access will help identify problems and fine-tune its usability. Early warnings were successfully generated last year when several moderate earthquakes hit Southern California. Scientists testing the system in San Francisco got eight seconds of warning before shaking arrived from the 6.0 Napa earthquake in August 2014. The system is already being used by the BART commuter rail system in the Bay Area to slow down trains before a quake hits, reducing the risk of derailment. Now, 10 science classrooms at Eagle Rock High School have been hooked up to the system. Alerts have been programmed to go off on a teacher's computer even during small earthquakes, said Jill Barnes, emergency services coordinator for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Students will be able to study the data and practice responding to the alerts by taking cover under their desks. Officials will learn from the way students and staff react to the alerts. Different emergency procedures, such as knowing what to do if an earthquake hits during recess or in the cafeteria, will be developed and taught to students. Social scientists will help experiment with various interfaces and sounds to see what works best with a general audience. The early warning system operates on a simple principle: The shaking from an earthquake travels at about the speed of sound — slower than the speed of light. That means it would take more than a minute for the shaking from, say, a 7.8 earthquake that starts at the Salton Sea to actually hit Los Angeles 150 miles away. Seismic sensors stationed at the Salton Sea would detect the first shaking waves in as little as 5 seconds, and blast a warning throughout Southern California. In this scenario, Palm Springs would have 20 seconds of warning; San Bernardino, 45 seconds; and the Los Angeles area, more than a minute. In its fully envisioned form, the warning system could help automatically shut off sensitive equipment at private companies and alert workers at construction sites to move from dangerous locations before the shaking begins. Even a few seconds' notice to duck under a sturdy desk could be a matter of surviving a building's collapse, officials said. "In the future, it may mean you'll have enough time to pull over to the side of the road, or step back from getting in an elevator, or stop medical surgery that's underway.... The applications truly are endless," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. "No Angeleno should die in an earthquake because of inaction." One private firm, Seismic Warning Systems, has already begun selling its own early warning tools to certain cities and businesses in California. School districts in the Coachella Valley have been working with this private system since 2009, said Scott Nebenzahl, a vice president of the company. The ShakeAlert system envisioned by the USGS would be free to the public. The USGS, which developed the system with Caltech, UC Berkeley and other state and local partners, has been sharing the prototype with companies that have been inventing smartphone apps and machines that trigger automatic safety options, such as opening a heavy fire station door or prompting an elevator to open at the next possible floor. In Northern California, school superintendents in the Redwood Empire have been testing the system and mapping out how students and staff would respond when the alerts go off. Once a procedure has been established, schools will begin live-testing the system in classrooms, said Jennifer Strauss of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. At L.A. Unified, the goal is to roll out early warnings to the rest of Eagle Rock High and other schools using the loudspeaker system. "Once we have gotten some good feedback from Eagle Rock, and once we look at funding options, and the options that are available to us in terms of how we can roll something out in a larger way, then we can put something in place in more schools and hopefully district-wide," Barnes said. For now, the alerts will be a useful, impromptu way of teaching students about primary and secondary seismic waves, said Eagle Rock science teacher Sara Ramos. In Ramos' classroom Friday, Jones fielded questions from students. When will this system become permanent? one asked. "You're going to always have it here at school," Jones explained. "We hope to get it to everybody through a computer interface, through broadcast on TV, through, eventually, a smartphone app as soon as we have the funding in place to make sure we don't screw up." Scientists need about $16.1 million a year to complete and maintain the system. President Obama earlier this year proposed $5 million in the federal budget, and officials have also been seeking state funding. Once full funding is achieved, the system could be running within two years, Jones said. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources TEACHING TEACHERS TO TEACH. IT’S NOT SO ELEMENTARY http://bit.ly/1XqWds9 OBAMA WANTS STUDENTS TO STOP TAKING UNNECESSARY TESTS http://bit.ly/1i4Q7hb + OBAMA PROPOSES CAPPING STANDARDIZED TESTING AT 2% OF CLASSROOM TIME - LA Times http://lat.ms/1Wc9gRi + YOUR KIDS TAKE 112 TESTS BETWEEN PRE-K AND HIGH SCHOOL - LA Times http://lat.ms/1jIrhFA - “If you live in a big city, your child probably took eight standardized tests this year. On average, kids sit through 112.3 tests between preschool and high school graduation, according to a new study.” | http://tinyurl.com/ouc8pv7 LAUSD INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL REVIEW PANEL: The Board Informative and Meeting Materials http://bit.ly/1k1ETeC Prop 98 minimum school funding guarantee has jumped almost 32%: FINAL BUDGET REPORT NOTES BIG SCHOOL SPENDING UPTURN http://bit.ly/1NZBkTB FIRST PUBLIC TEST OF EARTHQUAKE ALERT SYSTEM ROLLS OUT AT EAGLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL http://bit.ly/1Wb81MX LCAP REVIEWS CONTINUE WITHOUT EVALUATION TOOL http://bit.ly/1LUjleP LA ARCHDIOCESE DROPS SUPPORT FOR LAUSD IN TEACHER ABUSE CASE OVER ALLOWING EVIDENCE OF CHILD’S PAST SEXUAL HISTORY http://bit.ly/1OYmjQp REPORT CALLS FOR BIG CHANGES IN EDUCATING STATE’S ENGLISH LEARNERS http://bit.ly/1Xp5voK MAYOR GARCETTI ANNOUNCES EAGLE ROCK HS TO GET EARTHQUAKE WARNING SYSTEM http://bit.ly/1Mb5AUN HIGH-POWERED SECRET PANEL EXAMINING LAUSD FINANCES + smf's 2¢ http://bit.ly/1W9VgaD "Save your Confederate money, boys - there’ll always be a ...": HOW TEXAS TEACHES HISTORY http://bit.ly/1RsT6fA White Paper - NOT JUST FOR SPECIAL ED ANYMORE: INDIVIDUAL LEARNING PLANS FOR ALL STUDENTS http://bit.ly/1NYu36d 2 questions from The Times: WHAT ROLE SHOULD PARENTS TAKE IN THE LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH? 2 from questions fromThe Times: WHO MIGHT HEAD L.A, UNIFIED, AND WHAT ARE OFFICIALS LOOKING FOR IN A LEADER? http://bit.ly/1W9Kyf1 …and maybe an answer: MAYOR GARCETTI SAYS LAUSD'S NEXT SUPERINTENDENT SHOULD HAVE THE QUALITIES OF PAST SUPERINTENDENT ROMER. http://bit.ly/1KuPdBq S.F. teachers get help living in city under ambitious plan to subsidize housing - SF Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Mayor-and-SFUSD-have-a-plan-to-help-teachers-keep-6583001.php … LAUSD repair crews hustling in advance of strong El Niño | LAUSD Daily http://lausddaily.net/2015/10/lausd-repair-crews-scrambling-in-advance-of-strong-el-nino/ … FOR SACRAMENTO MAYOR KEVIN JOHNSON (Mr. Michelle Rhee) CHILD SEX ABUSE ALLEGATIONS RESURFACE | http://nyti.ms/1ZXL58w EVA MOSKOWITZ'S "SUSPENSION ACADEMY" CHARTER SCHOOLS | Alan Singer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/eva-moskowitzs-suspension_b_8356050.html … 4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PLEASE VOTE FOR PEOPLE FOR PARKS TO WIN A $100,000 LA2050 GRANT! http://bit.ly/1jUCdzE Poll: VOTERS RATE EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION "CRITICAL FOR FUTURE SUCCESS“ & A TOP NATIONAL PRIORITY http://bit.ly/1Rpbm9t ‘FRIEDRICHS v. CTA’ – What you need to know about challenge to union dues | EdSource http://bit.ly/1MTX41x A Year Later: OAKLAND - THE SCHOOL SYSTEM THAT WELCOMED UNACCOMPANIED UNDOCUMENTED MINORS: NPR Ed : NPR http://n.pr/1LMDZNT Study: ONLY 2% OF FRESNO STUDENTS ARE 'COLLEGE READY" - Associated Press/San Jose Mercury News http://bayareane.ws/1QUPnHD 4LAKids: UPDATE ON “PARENTS ARE ANGRY NO ONE TOLD THEM WHAT HAPPENED TO TEACHER RAFE ESQUITH” http://bit.ly/1PEf00O FIRST PUBLIC MEETING TO PICK A NEW L.A. SCHOOLS CHIEF IS SMALL BUT GETS LIVELY + schedule for future meetings http://bit.ly/1kmCtrI STATE LABOR PANEL TO FILE INJUNCTION IN CHARTER SCHOOL UNIONIZATION PUSH - LA Times http://lat.ms/1LIqEGu OVERCROWDING, CLASSROOM SIZE OUTRAGE IN LAUSD SCHOOLS MAY FORCE PARENTS TO FILE COMPLAINT AGAINST DISTRICT +smf's 2¢ http://bit.ly/1ZTSRAk EVENTS: Coming up next week... ●Tuesday October 27, 2015 - 11:00 a.m. SPECIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OPEN SESSION: Appointment of Ms. Abigail R. Marquez, representing the Los Angeles City Mayor’s Office to the School Construction Bond Oversight Committee CLOSED SESSION ITEMS: 1. Conference with Legal Counsel: S.M. v. Los Angeles Unified School District 2. Court of Appeal State of California Case No. B253983 3. Employee Evaluation: Superintendent of Schools ●Tuesday October 27, 2015 - 2:00 P.M. BoE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE – Legislative agenda and priorities. ●Thursday October 29, 2015 – 11:30 a.m REGULAR MEETING OF THE SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND CITIZENS’ OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE – [Note later-than-normal start] *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: Scott.Schmerelson@lausd.net • 213-241-8333 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Ref.Rodriguez@lausd.net • 213-241-5555 George.McKenna@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Monica.Ratliff@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, county supervisor, state legislator, 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 at http://registertovote.ca.gov/ • 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 was Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and has represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for over 12 years. He is Vice President for Health, Legislation Action Committee member and a member of the Board of Directors 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 "WHO" Gold Award and the ACSA Regional Ferd Kiesel Memorial Distinguished Service Award - honors 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. • FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. • To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-mail smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

Distraction… Disruption… ¡Squirrel!

4LAKids: Sunday 18•Oct•2015 In This Issue:  •  PARENTS ARE ANGRY NO ONE TOLD THEM WHAT HAPPENED TO TEACHER RAFE ESQUITH + smf’s 2¢  •  LAUSD IPAD SETTLEMENT NOW COMING OUT OF PEARSON’S POCKET  •  JOIN THE SEARCH FOR OUR NEW SUPERINTENDENT!  •  The debate around Vanderbilt preschool study: PRE-K RESEARCHERS CAN’T GET PAST THE THIRD GRADE  •  HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources  •  EVENTS: Coming up next week...  •  What can YOU do? Featured Links:  •  Give the gift of a 4LAKids Subscription to a friend or colleague!  •  Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404  •  4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!  •  4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc. From the DisneyWiki: “Dug is the top dog in Disney/Pixar's “Up!” - a playful, friendly, overweight and loveable Golden Retriever who is always kind to those he loves. He likes almost everybody he comes across. He is also very good at following rules and can be somewhat of an airhead at times.” Disney’s ADD/ADHD archetype, Dug is easily distracted by some things …mainly squirrels. From the ADD Help Guide “The good news is that, no matter how it feels, the challenges of attention deficit disorder are beatable. With education, support, and a little creativity, you can learn to manage the symptoms of adult ADD/ADHD—even turning some of your weaknesses into strengths. It’s never too late to turn the difficulties of adult ADD/ADHD around and start succeeding on your own terms.” ¡Squirrel! ________ THERE IS AN OAK TREE IN MY BACKYARD; I can sit in my living room and see the branches heavy with acorns. There is a fat squirrel in the branches; master of all he surveys. LAUSD HAS BEEN MEETING THE CHALLENGES, WHATEVER THEY ARE, FOR YEARS. We do it despite the distractions and disruptions and the squirrels. We have survived the deliberate intentional disruption of John Deasy. We have survived Great Recession and Mayor Tony’s AB1381 and NCLB and a succession of “reform” boards of Ed – each less progressive and more recessive than the last. We have survived budget cuts and layoffs and RIFs and ‘right-sizing’. We have survived CAHSEE and STAR Testing and AYP and API and AGOT and all the acronyms of the alphabet soup. We are surviving The Great Charter Scare and the attempts by outsiders to buy+sell our elected school board. We have survived two of the three “Hello, I must be going!” superintendencies of Ray Cortines – and we think we have a handle on the script for the third! We will survive the superintendent search and Eli Broad’s attempted takeover of half the District. We will survive MiSiS and iPads as we survived the payroll fiasco and the layoffs. If John Deasy ends up going to jail we will survive that …and if he doesn’t we will survive that too! Would things have been better still had the recession and “Dr.” D and the iPads and Mayor Tony and all the drama never happened? Undoubtedly. There are those who say we are following the status quo to rack+ruin and to them I say “Nuts!” I have never met a more individually creative+resilient group than educators. Or a group more questioning, challenging+unaccepting of the status quo at every grade level than students. Or a group with more hope+investment in the future than parents. We – the great “we” that are LAUSD – we are in it for the long haul. Today, in this District, with the metaphorical boot of the prior regime lifted and with the investment of far-too-little-money/oh-so-slightly increased I see a million flowers bloom. I see smiles in the hallways of Beaudry and local district offices and at a thousand school sites. We are changing our direction and things are looking up. I am meeting folks in the field and the lunchroom and the staffroom who are committed to make good things happen for all these kids; to continue the progress and accelerate it if possible. This is who we are. There will be distractions+disruptions to come. Eli+Co. will make trouble and there won’t be enough money and there will be inevitable studies and reports and papers forecasting-and/or-proving rack+ruin or financial meltdown. Perhaps even substantiating it on a spreadsheet. There will be cries of bankruptcy and failure and calls for break up. John Deasy left a fiscal+ethical mess – it ain’t gonna be easy to straighten it out! There will be surprises to come. Bad decisions will continue to be made by good people. There will be billion dollar lawsuits and good teachers will be fired and bad lawyers will be rehired. There will be alleged porn shoots at District schools. ¡Squirrel! There will be studies about the wonderfulness of charter schools. ¡Squirrel! Reporters will get the story wrong. ¡Squirrel! Adults will make bonehead blunders and Steve Lopez will call them out. [He's back? You've got to be kidding me. LAWYER BACK ON JOB FOR LAUSD—AFTER EGREGIOUSLY BLAMING YOUNG SEX ABUSE VICTIM - http://bit.ly/1OCepgQ] ¡Big Fat Squirrel! 4LAKids will report on these things …and maybe will even chase some of the squirrels. But we will endure. It is the job of the Board of Education and the superintendent-we-have and the superintendent-to-come to stay the course and not be distracted or allow us to be distracted – to keep the disruption contained and the progress progressing. It is the job of administrators to keep all eyes on the prize, especially when it resides just beyond the horizon. It all of our job to allow the good work in the boardroom and the staffroom and the classroom to continue+flourish. This is all we ask. This is all we need. ¡Onward/Adelante! – smf Just this one ¡Squirrel!: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE BROAD CHARTER EXPANSION PLAN? Poll conducted by LA School Report PARENTS ARE ANGRY NO ONE TOLD THEM WHAT HAPPENED TO TEACHER RAFE ESQUITH + smf’s 2¢ By Sonali Kohli | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1Lpk1VQ October 16, 2015 :: Brenda Gonzalez was supposed to perform in "A Winter’s Tale" in April, along with her fellow Hobart Shakespeareans. They’d been preparing all year, her mother, Angie Gonzalez, recalled Thursday. Brenda was going to dance and play the guitar. But the group’s teacher, Rafe Esquith, was not at Hobart Elementary School the day that the performances were supposed to begin, Gonzalez said. After about a week of absences, she went to the principal’s office to ask where Esquith was — it was unlike him to miss school. “We were told it was a family issue,” Gonzalez said. A few weeks later, Brenda came home and told her mother that students were being pulled out of class and interrogated about Esquith’s actions. Gonzalez and other parents asked, again, what was happening. Again, the school said it was a personal issue. In reality, the Los Angeles Unified School District had removed Esquith from class and was investigating a number of issues related to him after a colleague reported that he made a joke to students that contained a reference to nudity. This week, the school district fired Esquith, Hobart’s most famous teacher. The district investigation began after the colleague complained about seeing Esquith make an inappropriate joke. The investigation expanded to other matters, including allegations that Esquith touched minors inappropriately before and during his decades-long teaching career. Esquith has denied wrongdoing. A district spokeswoman said she could not immediately confirm what parents were told, and but that details of the investigation were confidential. District officials said they could not discuss a vote to dismiss a teacher because it is a personnel matter. The Times learned of the vote to begin the dismissal process from sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. By now, many Angelenos are familiar with Esquith’s name: He’s a former Disney National Outstanding Teacher of the Year who wrote books with titles such as “Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire.” The investigation into his conduct has been covered by local and national media; scores of former students have spoken out in his defense. Esquith sued the district in August, seeking to be reinstated, and on Thursday, his attorneys filed a second lawsuit. The new litigation, filed on behalf of Esquith and other unnamed teachers, accuses the district of using questionable investigations to drive veteran, higher-salaried instructors out of their jobs. Even in the aftermath of Esquith’s dismissal this week, Hobart parents say they have to rely on news reports for details of the case. Some still don’t even know that a teacher at their children’s school was dismissed. When Esquith stopped teaching, Cecilia Martinez’s daughter, Leslie, was upset. “It was a surprise for me because Leslie was so happy with the teacher,” Martinez said as she stood outside Hobart on Thursday afternoon, waiting to pick up her 7-year-old son. Martinez also thought that Esquith had to leave because of personal reasons. She had not heard about the allegations against him, or about his being fired. And the little she did know, she said, she found out from another parent. The school has never contacted her about it or questioned her daughter, as far as she knows. Neither of Eduardo Salvador’s two elementary school daughters were in Esquith’s class last year, but he said that parents should have been informed about the situation. He had heard a rumor about Esquith making an inappropriate joke, but didn’t know about the more recent allegations, the investigation or the vote to fire him. “They should have sent letters or something,” Salvador said. That lack of official communication, Gonzalez said, continued even amid this week’s LAUSD vote to dismiss Esquith. Gonzalez found out that the board voted to fire Esquith on Wednesday night, through a link to the Times story on the Hobart Shakespeareans Facebook page. She hasn’t found a way to to tell her daughter yet. Yesica Navarro saw the same Facebook post Thursday morning. She was reading the story on her computer at home, and didn’t realize that her son Oscar Llerenas was standing nearby. He was in Esquith’s class too, and asked what she was reading. She tried to explain the situation, but he didn’t react well. “He cried,” Navarro said. “He was very, very frustrated.” • Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this report. _________ ●●smf’s 2¢: At first impression one can understand an uncertain level of confusion. The stock+trade rote response is that ‘This is a personnel matter’. As in: “District officials said they could not discuss a vote to dismiss a teacher because it is a personnel matter.” Esquith’s student’s parents are, by+large, Hispanic or Korean; English is not their first language and the difference between ‘personal, and ‘personnel’ is ambiguous and confusing. The stories about the self-styled “Tiger Team” [http://lat.ms/1Lpr40T] investigating LAUSD alleged child abuse are creepy enough – reminiscent of Inspector Javert and Les Misérables - but the line (above):“A few weeks later, Brenda came home and told her mother that students were being pulled out of class and interrogated about Esquith’s actions” makes what little hair I have stand on end. “Interrogated” may be too-loaded a word – but my expectation, as an unrepentant middle-class white parent, would be that when investigators of any stripe question my child I will be informed in a timely manner. As in: Immediately …if not sooner. And I do recall that that was the policy the Board of Education created after the Paul Chapel case at Telfair Elementary in Pacoima in 2011-12. :: NBC News 3/29/2012: “LAUSD Mandates Parents be Alerted of Teacher Abuse Allegations Within 72 Hours” | http://bit.ly/1LT4GfG …but then “Dr.” Deasy and The LA School Report declared the end of Teacher Jail back in 2014 | http://bit.ly/1grY1jk LAUSD IPAD SETTLEMENT NOW COMING OUT OF PEARSON’S POCKET by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC 89.3 | http://bit.ly/1kdSDna Audio from this story: 0:38 Listen > http://bit.ly/1KgAOZr October 16, 04:39 PM :: Education company Pearson PLC said on Friday it is paying for the settlement negotiated by Los Angeles Unified with the Apple and Lenovo computer firms over the botched software used in the iPads-for-all program. Pearson created the educational program that was installed in thousands of tablets that LAUSD distributed beginning in fall 2013. The effort was part of a $1 billion technology program to get the devices in the hands of each student. Teachers and students almost immediately reported significant problems with the software, including missing math problems and errors in the material. Many teachers concluded that the curriculum program did not fit their students' needs and stopped using it. The district announced in April it would no longer use the software and demanded a refund from Apple. In September, Superintendent Ramon Cortines said the district had negotiated a $6.4 million settlement with Apple and Lenovo. But on Thursday, the district said it will be Pearson that will pay the settlement. The company will pay $4.2 million directly to LAUSD and reimburse Lenovo for a $2.25 million account credit that Lenovo is providing the school district. In written statements issued, the district did not blame the companies for the software problems and Pearson did not apologize or explain how the issues occurred. Neither the district nor Pearson would explain how Pearson ended up paying the settlement rather than Apple and Lenovo as earlier announced. Pearson is "not going into other details about the settlement process,” said company spokeswoman Laura Gamble by email. LAUSD called the Pearson settlement, approved by the school board on Tuesday, an “amicable agreement.” The school district plans to use most of the settlement money to fund technology proposals submitted by individual schools. The district softened its description of the Pearson software since school district attorney David Holmquist stated in his strongly worded letter in April that Apple and Pearson failed to deliver the state-of-the-art technology they had promised. Holmquist declared the district was "extremely dissatisfied." LAUSD spokeswoman Shannon Haber said in an email: “Due to multiple factors, it became clear that this was not the right solution for LAUSD’s technology program at this time. However, we continue to work with Pearson in some areas.” LAUSD's purchase of the iPads and the problems that followed contributed to the departure of former Superintendent John Deasy, the tech program’s strongest advocate. Deasy resigned last year following revelations that district officials communicated with Apple and Pearson details of the tablet program before the project was put out to bid. Deasy has denied any wrongdoing. The FBI launched an investigation into the iPad purchase in December, carting out 20 boxes from the district office on bidding material, communications and other records involving Apple and Pearson. JOIN THE SEARCH FOR OUR NEW SUPERINTENDENT! By email 17 October 2015 Dear Friends, As you probably know, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has launched a nationwide search for a new Superintendent of Schools to manage the nation's second-largest school district. To assist our efforts, the District selected Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA), an executive search firm that specializes in finding school district executives. I am pleased to share with you that this search will include a robust and inclusive conversation with families, teachers, staff, and members of the community to identify the qualities we want to see in our next Superintendent and what our goals are for the District. Much of the information about the search process, including a brief online survey, can be found at: http://achieve.lausd.net/superintendentsearch. The surveys will be compiled by HYA and the feedback, which is offered anonymously, will be shared with Board Members to help inform our opinions. Starting next week, the District and HYA will conduct a series of fourteen community meetings to which all are invited. The first is downtown on Monday night. Another four meetings will be held in the San Fernando Valley on Wednesday and Thursday. I look forward to you joining us! HERE IS THE FULL SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS THROUGHOUT THE DISTRICT: Superintendent Search Public Forums MONDAY, OCT. 19 6 p.m. Roybal Learning Center Auditorium 1200 Colton St. Los Angeles, CA 90026 TUESDAY, OCT. 20 9 a.m. Local District-East Office (PLCC Room) 2151 N. Soto St. Los Angeles 90032 7 p.m. Local District-East Office (Saldivar Room) 2151 N. Soto St. Los Angeles 90032 7 p.m. Local District-Northeast Community Forum Cesar Chavez Learning Academy 1001 Arroyo Ave. San Fernando 91340 WEDNESDAY, OCT. 21 8:30 a.m. Local District-Northwest Community Forum James Monroe High School - Odin's Hall 9229 Haskell Ave. North Hills 91343 9 a.m. Local District-East Community Forum South Gate High School Auditorium 3351 Firestone Blvd. South Gate 90280 1 p.m. Local District-Central Community Forum Belmont High School Auditorium 1575 W. 2nd St. Los Angeles 90026 6:30 p.m. Local District-Central Community Forum Belmont High School Auditorium 1575 W. 2nd St. Los Angeles 90026 7 p.m. Local District-East Community Forum South Gate High School Auditorium 3351 Firestone Ave. South Gate 90280 7 p.m. Local District-Northwest Community Forum Monroe High School - Odin's Hall 9229 Haskell Ave. North Hills 91343 THURSDAY, OCT. 22 8:30 a.m. Local District-Northwest Community Forum Valley Academy Theatre 10445 Balboa Blvd. Granada Hills 91344 9 a.m. Local District-East Community Forum HIlda L. Solis Learning Academy Gymnasium 319 N. Humphreys Ave. Los Angeles 90022 7 p.m. Local District-Northwest Community Forum Valley Academy Theatre 10445 Balboa Blvd. Granada Hills 91344 7 p.m. Local District-South Community Forum Diego Rivera Learning Center 6100 S. Central Ave. Los Angeles 90001 MONDAY, OCT. 26 9 a.m. Local District-West Community Forum Webster Middle School-Daniel's Den 11330 W. Graham Pl. Los Angeles 9006 7 p.m. Local District-West Community Forum Webster Middle School -Daniel's Den 11330 W. Graham Pl. Los Angeles 90064 TUESDAY, OCT. 27 9 a.m. Local District-West Community Forum Crenshaw High School-Multipurpose Room 4120 11th Ave. Los Angeles 90008 11 a.m. Local District-Central Community Forum Eagle Rock High School Auditorium 1750 Yosemite Dr. Los Angeles 90041 6:30 p.m. Local District-Central Community Forum Eagle Rock High School Auditorium 1750 Yosemite Dr. Los Angeles 90041 7 p.m. Local District-West Community Forum Crenshaw High School 4120 11th Ave. Los Angeles 90008 WEDNESDAY, OCT. 28 7 p.m. Local District-Northeast Community Forum Van Nuys High School 6535 Cedris Ave. Van Nuys 91411 7 p.m. Local District-South Community Forum White Middle School-White Hall 22102 S. Figueroa St. Carson 90745 Information about the search process can be found at: http://achieve.lausd.net/nextsuperintendent. Public discussions will revolve around three key questions: 1. What are the strengths and successes of LAUSD that you want to see continued and enhanced during the transition to new leadership? 2. What are the challenges, issues, and problems that the new superintendent will need to face and address in the coming three years? 3. What are the characteristic and attributes that the new superintendent must possess in order to be successful as the next superintendent in LAUSD? To complete the search firm’s brief online survey, use this link by October 28th: https://survey.ecragroup.com/index.php/887999/lang-en#. You may also want to follow the conversation on LASchools on Facebook and Twitter. Your participation in this search process is critical to our success and that of our students. If you cannot attend one of the scheduled meetings and the survey does not suffice, please contact my office directly at (818)-654-3785. I value your input and appreciate all that you do on behalf of the students, parents and employees of the LAUSD. Please help us spread the word! We look forward to seeing you for these important conversations. Thank you, Scott M. Schmerelson Board Member, District 3 Los Angeles Board of Education The debate around Vanderbilt preschool study: PRE-K RESEARCHERS CAN’T GET PAST THE THIRD GRADE “THE DECISION TO JUDGE PROGRAMS BASED ON THIRD-GRADE TEST SCORES DISMISSES THE FULL RANGE OF SKILLS AND CAPACITIES DEVELOPED THROUGH EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION THAT STRONGLY CONTRIBUTE TO FUTURE ACHIEVEMENT AND LIFE OUTCOMES.” by James Heckman | The Hechinger Report | http://bit.ly/1LAO4gT October 15, 2015 :: Disadvantaged children who receive quality early childhood development have much better education, employment, social and health outcomes as adults, the vast majority of research shows. Unfortunately, this good news is getting lost in the current obsession over third-grade test scores. This is the case with the recent debate around the new Vanderbilt study on the Tennessee pre-K program. Opponents and proponents of early childhood education alike are quickly turning third-grade assessments into a lopsided and deterministic milestone instead of an appropriate developmental evaluation in the lifecycle of skills formation. There is a reoccurring trend in some early childhood education studies: disadvantaged children who attend preschool arrive at kindergarten more intellectually and emotionally prepared than peers who have had no preschool. Yet by third grade, their math and literacy scores generally pull into parity. Many critics call this fadeout and claim that quality early childhood education has no lasting effect. Not so, and not by a long shot. Too often, program evaluations are based on standardized achievement tests and IQ measures that do not tell the whole story and poorly predict life outcomes. For example, the well-known Perry Preschool program did not show any positive IQ effects just a few years following the program. Upon decades of follow-ups, however, we continue to see extremely encouraging results along dimensions such as schooling, earnings, reduced involvement in crime and better health. The truly remarkable impacts of Perry were not seen until much later in the lives of participants. Similarly, the most recent Head Start Impact Study seemingly shows parity at third grade while numerous long-term, quasi-experimental studies find Head Start children to attend more years of schooling, earn higher incomes, live healthier, and engage less in criminal behavior. Considering this, it is especially important that we see HSIS through before condemning Head Start. The decision to judge programs based on third-grade test scores dismisses the full range of skills and capacities developed through early childhood education that strongly contribute to future achievement and life outcomes. The success of an early childhood program ultimately comes down to what is being evaluated, and too many evaluate the wrong things. Too many measure only half the child, focusing on IQ and cognitive gains at the expense of social and emotional skills that are often stronger determinants of adult success. Conscientiousness, self-control, motivation, persistence and sociability have far greater influence on full-time employment, lifetime wages, health, family and social outcomes than IQ and cognitive skills. In fact, these skills facilitate better performance on achievement tests despite treated children performing no better on IQ tests. Quality, persistence and the right measurements are essential to actualizing the promise of quality early childhood education to elevate the lives of disadvantaged children and families. The Abecedarian preschool program in North Carolina started at birth and provided parental education, early health, nutrition, and early learning up to age five. After over 35 years of follow-up study on the treatment and control groups it is the only early childhood program that permanently raised IQ and instilled greater character skills which, in combination, delivered greater returns in educational achievement, employment and, most importantly, health. At age 35, treated males had zero incidence of metabolic syndrome — a precursor to chronic disease — in stark contrast to 25 percent of males who didn’t participate in the program. A 25 percent reduction in chronic disease is lifesaving and cost saving. Research clearly shows that we must invest dollars not dimes, implement high quality programs, develop the whole child and nurture the initial investment in early learning with more K-12 education that develops cognition and character. When we do, we get significant returns in better education, health, social and economic productivity that more than pay for the cost of quality early childhood programs. Yes, quality early childhood education is expensive, but we pay a far higher cost in ignoring its value or betting on the cheap. ________ ● Nobel laureate James Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and an expert in the economics of human development. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources Steve Lopez: He's back? You've got to be kidding me. LAWYER BACK ON JOB FOR LAUSD—AFTER EGREGIOUSLY BLAMING YOUNG SEX ABUSE VICTIM http://bit.ly/1OCepgQ Panel Discussion: AT WHAT COST ARTS EDUCATION? http://bit.ly/1ROUmdR DID ARNE DUNCAN REALLY BRING AMERICAN EDUCATION, ‘KICKING+SCREAMING’, INTO THE 21st CENTURY? http://bit.ly/1LVAald HOLLYWOOD HIGH SCHOOL SIGNS UNPRECEDENTED AGREEMENT WITH SPANISH MINISTRY OF EDUCATION http://bit.ly/1KgRJev COLLEGE AND CAREER PLAN CREATES DIPLOMA PATH FOR ALL STUDENTS http://bit.ly/1MwjDET TEACHER RAFE ESQUITH'S MISCONDUCT INVESTIGATION IS A HIGH-PROFILE TEST FOR LAUSD'S 'TIGER TEAM' - LA Times http://lat.ms/1Lpr40T LAUSD BOARD REJECTS PUBLIC FORUMS W/SUPERINTENDENT FINALISTS – Includes list of community forums beginning next week http://bit.ly/1LuobiS BOARD MEMBERS CRITICIZE LAUSD’S REHIRING OF LAWYER IN SEX ASSAULT CASE http://bit.ly/1LkXmdl UNIONS FORGE ALLIANCE TO FIGHT GROWTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS IN L.A. http://bit.ly/1hEJSAD LEARNING TO LOOK BEYOND KIDS’ BEHAVIOR, RESPECT THEIR SURVIVAL, BELIEVE IN THEIR FUTURE http://bit.ly/1VSUGZf Just in Time for Dia de los Muertos: THE RETURN OF VOTERIA! Latino Elected Officials: Higher Voter Turnout Guaranteed! http://bit.ly/1Ludixg IS ELI BROAD’S HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF LAUSD COMING FROM THE OUTSIDE …OR IN? +smf’s 2¢ http://bit.ly/1MqJkGW LAUSD & THE TROUBLING CASE OF ELKIS HERMIDIA: How the District Blamed an 8th Grader for Her Molestation + smf’s 2¢ http://bit.ly/1LiZVg0 LAUSD BOARD TO DETERMINE HOW MUCH PUBLIC SHOULD AFFECT SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH http://bit.ly/1Pqr8T4 Pre-CNN/Facebook Democratic Debate: K-12 EDUCATION QUOTES FROM HILLARY CLINTON & BERNIE SANDERS http://bit.ly/1LKqxfo GOVERNOR BROWN VETOES BILL SETTING A TIMETABLE FOR EXPANSION OF PRESCHOOL http://bit.ly/1LFWhMt Politico Morning Education: COMMON CORE HAS WON THE WAR! http://bit.ly/1OxR2DM SCHOOL MOVIE SHOOTS RESUME AFTER EMBARRASSING REVELATION ABOUT PORN FLICK + smf’s 2¢ http://bit.ly/1Ou9Tkw Why are we not surprised?: CHARTER ADVOCATES RELEASE POLL THAT SHOWS SUPPORT FOR L.A. EXPANSION! http://bit.ly/1MntzR0 IN WAKE OF SCHOOL SHOOTINGS, GOV. JERRY BROWN BANS CONCEALED GUNS ON CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES - LA Times http://lat.ms/1Lpl6Al EVENTS: Coming up next week... See Superintendent Search Forums (above) ●Tuesday October 20, 2015 At Beaudry, in the boardroom: BUDGET, FACILITIES AND AUDIT COMMITTEE Start: 10:00 am SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL CLIMATE COMMITTEE Start: 4:00 pm ●Thursday, October 22, 2015 | 7PM - 9PM Panel Discussion: AT WHAT COST ARTS EDUCATION? At St. Bede's Episcopal Church 3590 Grand View Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90066 (Mar Vista/Palms) http://bit.ly/1ROUmdR with Bob Bates, Robin Lithgow, Carl Schafer & Carole Valleskey Presented by West LA Democratic Club *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: Scott.Schmerelson@lausd.net • 213-241-8333 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Ref.Rodriguez@lausd.net • 213-241-5555 George.McKenna@lausd.net • 213-241-6382 Monica.Ratliff@lausd.net • 213-241-6388 Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385 Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387 ...or your city councilperson, mayor, county supervisor, state legislator, 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 at http://registertovote.ca.gov/ • 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 was Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and has represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for over 12 years. He is Vice President for Health, Legislation Action Committee member and a member of the Board of Directors 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 "WHO" Gold Award and the ACSA Regional Ferd Kiesel Memorial Distinguished Service Award - honors 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. 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