In This Issue:
 |
| • |
REPORT SAYS MiSiS FLAWED FROM THE GET GO, ISSUES IGNORED BY TOP LAUSD BRASS |
|
| • |
RACES SHAPING UP FOR LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS IN MARCH |
|
| • |
SAN FRANCISCO'S UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL COULD PROVE A MODEL FOR SOCAL CITIES |
|
| • |
GREAT TEACHERS TEACH STUDENTS, NOT SUBJECTS |
|
| • |
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:
|
|
|
|
Every once in a while, though not often enough, we get out of LA and LAUSD and are exposed to the real world.
On Tuesday there was an election – and we were reminded that there is a whole other world out there.
Outside California there are Republicans.
Who knew?
I am of course being glib; we’ve had Republicans in California. Action
Hero Republicans who became governor after staging their own election.
Song-and-Dance-Man Republicans who became US Senators. Pete Wilson and
George Deukmejian Republicans: birds so unlike the feather to become
their own sub-species. Richard Nixon was a lot of things and California
Republican was one of them. And the jurist who defines ‘Activist Judge’
in the conservative lexicon - Earl Warren - was Republican Governor of
California before he led the Warren Court to the liberal Promised Land
and/or tea party Wrack+Ruin. (I’m looking into it …but I’m told the
Iranian Republican Guard has no connection to the California Republican
Party.)
We had our election in California; the Westside L.A. Liberals picked
their champion, no Republicans were elected to statewide office and the
governor was reelected while ignoring his own reelection. Our most hotly
contested race in CA was between two registered Democrats for the
non-partisan and fairly powerless job of Superintendent of Public
Instruction. I confess that had Marshall Tuck won I would have added
“meaningless” to the “powerless” description ….but had the School Reform
Billionaires and Teachers Unions Political Action Committee invested
their millions in paying teachers or buying library books instead of
ads+air-buys I’d feel warmer+fuzzier about the democratic process. That
Tuck got 48% of the vote worries me …once again the Billionaire Boys
Club almost got what they paid for!
• There are national elections every two years.
• Republicans and geezers tend to vote very two years,
• Democrats and youth, every four.
• In L.A. we have elections fairly continuously …more on that later.
I’ve said this before, but repetition is key in education. When Mayor
Tony tried to take over LAUSD his opponents (me among them) had yellow
t-shirts that said “Parents. Not Politics.” The other side had blue T
shirts that said “Parent Power”. When two diametrically opposed
positions claim to be for the same thing you need to put on your
hip-waders and/or Ebola suits. Both sides are full of it, the effluvia
is going to be noxious and the debate is going to be spun+framed by the
PR firm of Balderdash, Twaddle, Claptrap and Malarkey.
Parents need to get involved in school politics as part of getting
involved in their kid’s education. This is especially true in the brave
new world of the Local Control Funding Formula – as decision-making
allegedly is pushed down to the school level.
I bring this up now precisely because:
1. The ‘Local’ in Local control is still solidly ensconced s at 333 S. Beaudry, not at the school site, and
2. Yesterday was the deadline to file to run for school board. Just as
your voicemail and snail mail boxes empty of robocalls and political
fliers a majority of the board is up for election and the competition
has been joined for the election in March. (see XXXX, following)
I have, in my life, worked as a consultant. Consultants are
disinterested third parties hired to write a report on something; the
words “disinterested” and “hired” being mutually exclusive.
Most consultants are technical writers, not creative writers. When a
consultant is hired by someone to deliver a report on something and in
their research and expert opinion finds that the party who hired them is
incompetent and doing a really crummy job of doing their job, the
consultant’s creative writing skills are sorely challenged.
Such is the case in the Oversight Report on the My Integrated Student
Information System generated by Arnold Viramontes. (bit.ly/1xpKDC2 )
(A Parent leader– who clings to anonymity but wishes to be identified
here as ‘Tall Dark and Handsome from San Diego' translates the MiSiS
acronym as “The Student MiSinformation System.” That’s far kinder than
describing the LAUSD Information Technology Team as “The Three Blind
Mices” …though that under-enumerates the vision-challenged rodent
infestation.)
Viramontes was hired by Superintendent Deasy to generate an independent
third party report on MiSiS implementation and to report directly to
him. Unless it was delivered very early in the AM by the time the report
was delivered on October 16th Deasy was no longer superintendent – and
it takes neither rocket science nor tealeaf reading nor the Alameda
County Superior Court to determine that part of the reason Deasy was
gone was The Office of Superintendent’s mishandling of MiSiS.
The Office of Superintendent being architecture and furniture – no
actual humanity was involved. The Viramontes Report names no names and
points no fingers – but it describes cluelessness, incompetence and rank
misunderstanding on a grand scale – albeit between the lines. And
despite all the previous “We got the program for free from Fresno” – and
the “We own the code” – it spells it out quite clearly: “MiSiS
application development involves a partnership between Microsoft and
LAUSD.”
The report is a seven-page snapshot in twelve-point Arial of a deer
frozen in the headlights. The report is dated Oct 16th – the day Deasy
resigned …though the version released is dated Oct 22nd – which suggests
this is a revised draft. LA School Report reports it didn’t go to the
Board of Ed until Nov. 6th.
The report conclusion almost says “Don’t blame yourselves, you didn’t
know what you were doing, you didn’t know what to expect and you didn’t
understand what was expected of you …or why. And even when you knew what
you were doing and the team down the hall knew what they were doing
….neither team knew what the other was doing.”
But that’s a report I’ve been writing and delivering every Sunday for ten years.
In my getting out of town and LAUSD last week I spent a few days with
other California PTA leaders, Yes, we talked about LAUSD – how could we
not? – but we also discussed the triumphs and travails of other school
districts. The entire Sweetwater USD Bd of Ed has been indicted. (…one
of them ran for reelection on the “I wasn’t as guilty as the rest of
‘em” platform). The voters passed and funded Universal Preschool in San
Francisco for the next 24 years. Most school bonds and parcel taxes
up-and-down the state passed – but some did not. The UC’s and CSU’s may
raise tuition. Children succeeded. There is not enough Art and Music and
PE and Health Ed and Civics – or nurses, counselors and mental health
professionals in our schools today, And PTA and parent fundraising is
paying for too much of it where it is.
There simply aren’t enough of those things – or dark chocolate – in our lives.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
REPORT SAYS MiSiS FLAWED FROM THE GET GO, ISSUES IGNORED BY TOP LAUSD BRASS
►Report: LAUSD’S MISIS FLAWED FROM THE GET-GO, CALLED ‘NOT FEASIBLE’
By Thomas Himes, Los Angeles Daily News | http://bit.ly/1xzQini
11/06/14, 7:43 PM PST | A tech expert hired to evaluate Los Angeles
Unified’s now notorious record-keeping system, MiSiS, issued a scathing
report Thursday, faulting everything from the decision to model the
system after one used by a far smaller school district to insufficient
efforts to fix data problems that led to erroneous student records.
Arnold Viramontes, a former high-level tech expert for two school
districts in Texas, said the problems that have plagued MiSiS from the
get-go continue to pose issues. He was hired by LAUSD in September at a
cost of up to $73,500.
“There are many reasons why the current project plan is not feasible
unless it is modified to reflect the dynamics of the implementation,”
his report states.
The system is still hampering educators, failing for a second time this
week on Thursday. It was shut down for work from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.
because educators were “unable to log in, take attendance, enter grades
and perform other critical school functions,” according to an email the
district sent to employees Thursday afternoon.
Thursday’s failure came on the heels of Tuesday’s meltdown, which forced
LAUSD to push back elementary school report cards by one week to Nov.
14. The delay caused problems for parents and teachers who planned to
have report cards in hand for conferences next week.
Former Superintendent John Deasy plowed ahead with launching the
all-purpose record-keeping software at the start of the school year,
ignoring the repeated warnings of teachers, principals and counselors
who said it was not ready, as reported first by this news organization.
Board member Bennett Kayser warned Deasy in a July 21 letter that the
system was causing numerous problems at Bell High School, which operates
on a year-round schedule.
After reviewing Viramontes’ report, Kayser expressed outrage at Deasy’s
disregard for problems the system was causing and repeated efforts to
deceive the public and his elected bosses on the school board.
“From ignoring multiple warnings, including my own, to deceiving board
members and the public with misinformation about the severity of the
crisis, Deasy left us with a big, expensive mess to clean-up,” Kayser
said in a written statement. “I am, along with the students, parents and
district employees who have been adversely affected, furious.”
After repeated requests by this news organization about the scope of
problems caused by MiSiS, LAUSD released an Aug. 15 statement claiming
“less than 1 percent of students overall were affected” by system
glitches. It remains unclear how such a claim could be made considering
the system could not accurately track students. Deasy abruptly resigned
last month under scrutiny for his handling of MiSiS and another tech
fiasco involving efforts to put iPads in classrooms.
While Deasy made the final decision to launch MiSiS, Viramontes notes
leadership of the project ignored “red” conditions in recommending to
move forward.
The report notes that building such software from scratch requires
coordination, but the decision to modify software used by a far smaller
school district, Fresno Unified School District, added a “different
layer of complexity.” According to the report, LAUSD is about 10 times
larger than Fresno.
LAUSD spokeswoman Lydia Ramos stated Oct. 23 that using Fresno’s system
provided two “key advantages” — the program can be modified because it’s
owned by the district, and “it provides a solution that has already
been deployed and used successfully in a large urban California school
district.”
Educators who spoke on the condition of anonymity have said a key
problem with MiSiS is that it searches across all of LAUSD’s 650,000
students each time a counselor tries to do something as simple as bring
up a transcript. The previous system would confine searches to a single
school. After a lengthy wait time, MiSiS manages to locate student
records. But even if the name and identification number displayed are
accurate, course schedules for a different student can appear.
The integrity of data and student records continues to pose a problem
for the educators of LAUSD, but the report found “there was no evidence
suggesting a detailed plan for data integrity.”
Other issues included a lack of clear management responsibility. As
noted by an earlier report from a court-appointed monitor tasked with
reporting on the district’s effort to build the system and fulfill a
1993 lawsuit that required it to identify and educate special education
students, the project manager didn’t have control over important aspects
of the project, including quality assurance to test the system and
training to ensure educators could use it.
Ron Chandler abruptly resigned his post atop the district’s technology
department last week because of the program’s problems. Also last week,
MiSiS project manager Bria Jones had her contract terminated.
LAUDS’s efforts to help educators overwhelmed by the faulty system and
returning students were also inadequate, according to the report, which
notes more calls were “abandoned” by employees working a hotline than
answered. Additionally, the help-desk employees never reported back to
educators who needed assistance, according to the report.
The partnership with Microsoft that developed MiSiS — “mired with
software bugs and missed functionality” — needs an “effective
communications model.” According to the report, Microsoft used both “off
shore” and on-site resources as a contractor working on the project.
LAUSD decided to hasten MiSiS’s deployment, which was originally set for 2015-16, leaving just one year to develop the software.
Out of a $29-million budget that was supposed to be spent over two
years, only $10 million was used by the end of year one. Additionally a
$1.5-million contingency fund sat untapped.
“There is little evidence that timelines and expectations were modified
and communicated,” according to the report’s review of communication
efforts between LAUSD and Microsoft.
In starting to clean up the mess, new Superintendent Ramon Cortines this
week called on Microsoft’s top executives to send help. It is one of a
number of measures Cortines has undertaken to fix the problem since
stepping in to replace Deasy.
“I want you to know that we have already made some changes to address
the issues in this first report by Arnold Viramontes, and will continue
to work to resolve the problems until we have a fully functioning
student information system to serve the students, parents and employees
of the Los Angeles Unified School District,” Cortines stated.
___________________
►Report: EARLY L.A. UNIFIED DATA SYSTEM ISSUES IGNORED BY TOP ADMINISTRATORS
By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC 89.3 | http://bit.ly/1GFVTyu
November 06 2014 :: Los Angeles Unified administrators, charged with
ensuring a new district data system for 650,000 students worked as it
should, ignored warnings that the system wasn’t ready to launch, an
independent consultant group concluded in a report released Thursday.
The consultants also expressed doubts that the current district team
working to fix the problems will be able to repair the troubled data
system known as MiSiS.
A copy of the seven-page report was obtained by KPCC before a scheduled Thursday afternoon release.
Although several documents indicated early problems with the data
system, the district's project team leadership gave the go-ahead for its
launch nonetheless, the report prepared by The Viramontes Group Inc.
said.
“There were not any indicators from project team signifying a 'No Go' decision," the report states.
The system's problems have led to a litany of issues, including problems with class scheduling and student attendance.
In the latest of the troubles, Superintendent Ramon Cortines told
principals and teachers in a letter Wednesday that the district has
delayed issuing elementary school report cards for a week, to Nov. 14.
He attributed the problem to continuing challenges with MiSiS and an
unexpected outage.
Cortines notified parents in a Wednesday letter. "I apologize for the
delay of your student's grades right before parent-teacher conferences.
Be assured that your teachers and principals are doing everything
possible to meet student needs despite the technology challenges they
have recently encountered."
The district said in a news release that the data system has required
"fine-tuning, as with any new program." The "glitches have affected less
than 1 percent of students overall," the district said.
Officials acknowledged continuing problems with scheduling and said the
system has been "slower than expected." Because of continuing snags,
teachers have been asked to take attendance offline for now.
The consultant group's report does not name the L.A. Unified officials
who failed to heed the warnings of trouble with the new data system. But
the top technology officer overseeing the project, Ron Chandler,
resigned last week after four years with the district.
The same week, the district fired an outside consultant in charge of the
project, Bria Jones, who was compensated at $135 an hour and was
overpaid, according to the district's inspector general.
Both Chandler and Jones reported ultimately to former Superintendent
John Deasy, who resigned in early October after mounting issues with the
data system, known as MiSiS, a botched rollout of a program to place
iPads in the hands of all L.A. Unified students, and strained relations
with the school board that hired him.
School board member Tamar Galatzan said Deasy’s role in the green
lighting of the flawed system should be laid out in a more thorough
report from the district's inspector general due out later this month.
"The board and the superintendent want to hold people responsible who
messed this up," Galatzan said. "But also, we have to understand that
we’re in the middle of dealing with this crisis and we also need to move
forward and focus attention on that."
Board member Monica Ratliff agreed that those responsible should be held
to account, but she suggested the problem may run deeper.
"My takeaway from this report is that we need to change the culture
around here so that when people realize that something is not working,
they say something, really loud, and they make sure it doesn’t go
forward," she said. "Because there’s absolutely no reason why this
project should have gone forward in light of how many problems were
apparent during its production."
In expressing skepticism that the district has the ability to fix MiSiS,
the consultant group said: “The current project management structure
and staffing models are not adequate for project completion.”
“There is lack of evidence that a data conversion and integrity plan exists,” according to the consultant group.
L.A. Unified has managed student data with multiple systems over the
years. An inadequate transfer of student data from old computer systems
to the new MiSiS system contributed to the issues that include students
assigned to wrong classes and courses they had already taken.
The data system is also producing incorrect student transcripts, causing
problems for 12th-graders who need accurate transcripts for college
applications, many of them due at the end of November.
“The MiSiS implementation has several occurrences of duplicate students,
missing students, scheduling inconsistencies, and coding
irregularities,” the report said, and that “could be catastrophic to the
future of a student in the form of scholarships, college entrance and
grade progression.”
School personnel such as clerks and teachers who would ultimately be
responsible for entering data and using the system weren’t consulted in
its development, the report said.
“There appeared to be significant lack of input from the community of
personnel that would eventually use the applications. Without dedicated
stakeholder involvement, the requirements specifications lack clarity
and specification for development.”
The report was discussed in a closed-door meeting Thursday between L.A. Unified’s board and Superintendent Cortines.
The cost of fixing the broken data system has been mounting.
Last month, L.A. Unified’s school board approved $3.6 million for the
purchase of 3,340 computers to be sent to schools to use MiSiS. Old
desktop computers would not run the data system.
At the same meeting, board members approved $1.1 million to fix
scheduling problems caused by the data system at Jefferson High School
after a judge said the issues there were particularly serious.
The board also approved spending $15,000 to $25,000 a day to hire
retired educators who are checking student transcripts one by one for
accuracy.
Schools began reporting problems with the data system in July, and the
issues proved widespread. An independent study found that 80 percent of
district campuses had problems with MiSiS properly tracking special
education data.
The report praised the dedication and time spent by current employees to fix the data system’s problems.
“The status room has been turned into a situation/war room to reflect
current schedules, issue resolution and system status. The Help Desk has
been augmented with additional resources and tiered to handle traffic."
As of Thursday, the district's website listed over 200 "known issues" with the MiSiS system.
RACES SHAPING UP FOR LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS IN MARCH
►FOUR L.A. SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS LIKELY TO FACE REELECTION CHALLENGES
By Howard Blume | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1udvBhH
Nov 9, 2014 :: A majority of the Los Angeles Board of Education is up
for reelection this spring, and all four are likely to face challengers
based on the election filing period that closed Saturday.
The four incumbents — Richard Vladovic, Tamar Galatzan, Bennett Kayser
and George McKenna — are seeking to remain on the board that oversees
the nation's second-largest school system.
Related story: Consultant's report details problems with LAUSD student record system
Related story: Consultant's report details problems with LAUSD student record system
Howard Blume
Aside from the familiar challenges, including budgets, union
negotiations and student performance, the incoming board also is
expected to choose a permanent successor to Supt. John Deasy, who
resigned under pressure in October. Ramon Cortines returned from
retirement to replace him, but at 82 is not expected to stay
indefinitely.
A search process for the next superintendent could begin soon, with the
final choice almost certain to fall to the board majority that prevails
at the ballot box in either the March primary or the May general
election.
The next board also will have to decide how to proceed with a troubled
$1.3-billion effort to provide a computer to every student, teacher and
campus administrator. The project began by distributing iPads at an
initial set of schools last fall, but the iPad contract was recently
suspended.
Candidates had until noon Saturday to declare their intent to run for a
seat on the seven-member board. To get on the March ballot, they'll
still have to collect signatures from at least 500 registered voters in
their district by Dec. 3.
District 1 is represented by McKenna and stretches across south and
southwest L.A. McKenna was elected in August to replace the late
Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, but had to run again immediately. His
potential challenger is Daymond R. Johnson, who heads the union for
non-teaching employee at a group of local charter schools. McKenna's
opponent in August chose not to run again.
District 3, represented by two-term incumbent Galatzan, is in the west
San Fernando Valley. Six potential challengers signed up to face her:
Elizabeth Badger Bartels, who describes herself as a children's
advocate/businesswoman; Carl J. Peterson (businessman/activist parent),
Filiberto Gonzalez (school parent/professor), Ankur Patel
(teacher/scientist/entrepreneur), Scott Mark Schmerelson
(administrator/retired teacher) and Mario Burrell (teacher).
In District 5, four challengers have signed up to run against one-term
incumbent Kayser. They are Andrew Thomas, who describes himself as an
educator/parent; Ref Rodriguez, the co-founder of the PUC charter school
group; James C. O'Gabhann III (public school teacher), and Benjamin
Luis Jimenez (city of L.A. senior storekeep).
District 5 cuts a tortuous path from northeast of downtown to the small cities of southeast L.A. County.
School board President Vladovic, the two-term incumbent, will be
defending his seat in District 7, which stretches from South L.A. to San
Pedro. His potential challengers are Euna Anderson (principal/adjunct
professor) and Lydia A. Gutierrez, an elementary teacher who twice ran
unsuccessfully for state superintendent of public instruction.
Candidates also filed for the L.A. Community College District board.
Unlike the board of L.A. Unified, the college district seats are not
assigned to specific geographic areas within the district.
For Seat 1, incumbent Mona Field could face Francesa Vega, Maria "Sokie" Quintero, Mervin Evans, Angra Hoffman and Mark Isler.
Signed up to run for the open Seat 3 are: Kevin M. Collins, Sydney
Kamlager, Yolanda Toure, Glenn Bailey, Sam Kbushyan and Jozef "Joe"
Thomas Essavi.
Those hoping to win Seat 5 are: incumbent and Board President Scott
Svonkin, James "Jimmy" Johnston, Justin Kim, Sukhsimran "Sammy" Sandhu
and Steve Schulte.
Seat 7 also is open. Those signed up are: John Jose Noyola, Rodney D.
Robinson, Mike Fong, Akifa Khan, Joyce Burrell Garcia and John C. Burke.
___________________
►SCHOOL BOARD RACES COMING INTO VIEW AS FILING DEADLINE APPROACHES
by Craig Clough | LA School Report | http://bit.ly/1ynTYsp
Posted on November 7, 2014 3:03 pm :: With tomorrow’s noon deadline
approaching to file for next year’s LA Unified school board elections,
the races are coming into view.
Seats in four of the board’s seven districts — 1, 3, 5 and 7 — are up
for grabs, making the elections hugely influential on future district
policies.
All four of the incumbents are running again and facing challengers,
with the primary scheduled for March 3 and the general election on May
19. Here is a district-by-district breakdown of the school board races:
● DISTRICT 1
District 1 includes South Los Angeles, Palms and Baldwin Hills.
For the moment, this is the only race with a head-to-head contest. The
incumbent, George McKenna, is the newest board member, having won a
special election in August to fill the seat vacated by the death of
Marguerite LaMotte last year.
McKenna’s victory was key in determining the current balance of power on
the board, as his election shifted it to a 4-3 majority owing their
seats, in large part, to financial support by United Teachers Los
Angeles (UTLA). McKenna ran against a reform-backed candidate, Alex
Johnson, and his victory was the latest in a string of pro-union wins
against pro-charter, reformists in LA Unified school board elections.
McKenna holds a doctorate of education degree from Xavier University. He
is a former LAUSD teacher and principal at George Washington
Preparatory High School, where the academic turnaround he oversaw at the
school was the subject of a 1986 TV movie starring Denzel Washington.
McKenna’s challenger is Daymond R., Johnson, president of the Amino
Classified Employees Association, which represents the employees at
Green Dot Public Schools.
● DISTRICT 3
District 3 includes Studio City, Sherman Oaks and the most of the West San Fernando Valley.
The District 3 race is the most crowded, with five challengers to
incumbent Tamar Galatzan, who first won her seat in 2007. She is also a
prosecutor with the city of Los Angeles and is viewed as a reform-backed
candidate.
Her challengers are: Elizabeth Badger Bartels, a children’s advocate and
businesswoman; Filiberto Gonzalez, a school parent and professor; Ankur
Patel, a teacher, scientist and entrepreneur; Scott Mark Schmerelson,
an administrator and retired teacher; and Carl J. Peterson, a
businessman and activist parent.
● DISTRICT 5
District 5 includes the Northeast neighborhoods of Eagle Rock, Highland
Park, Echo Park, Los Feliz and Atwater Village, as well as the cities of
Bell and South Gate.
The incumbent Bennett Kayser will face at least two challengers. Kayser,
a former teacher and community activist, was elected to the board in
2011 and is seen as one of the strongest pro-union members.
The challengers are Ref Rodriguez, a co-founder of PUC Schools, which
operates a number of LA Unified charter schools; and Andrew Thomas, a
professor of education at the online Walden University and operator of a
research company that consults with school districts, including LA
Unified.
● DISTRICT 7
District 7 includes the South Bay communities of San Pedro, Lomita and Carson.
The race here will feature at least two challengers to current board
President Richard Vladovic, who was first elected to the board in 2007.
Originally a reform-backed candidate, Vladovic is seen by many to have
more to a more neutral position since last year.
Vladovic has one of the fullest education resumes on the board. With a
doctorate in education from USC, he is a former teacher, principal and
school administrator, as well as a former superintendent of the West
Covina School District.
His challengers are Euna Anderson, principal of the Vine Early Education
Center and the Alexandria Early Education Center; and Lydia A.
Guitierrez, an educator and member of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood
Council.
SAN FRANCISCO'S UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL COULD PROVE A MODEL FOR SOCAL CITIES
by Deepa Fernandes | 89;3 KPCC | http://bit.ly/1uTMiB6
November 07 2014 :: When San Francisco voters overwhelmingly
reauthorized the city's universal preschool program on Tuesday, ensuring
an annual $27 million for the next 24 years, other California cities
may well have sat up.
The Obama administration's call for universal preschool has cities
nationwide thinking about how to implement such programs. New York's
mayor swept in a pilot project this year that offers preschool to
four-year-olds and Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia wants to do the same.
But a model for funding and implementing a global program for preschool may be just up the I-5.
A group of community organizers in San Francisco began discussing the
idea of a public fund dedicated to small children’s needs in 1987. It
was the precursor to the city's passage of universal preschool and
decades ahead of what today is a national movement.
The city has gone about its Preschool For All program quietly, largely
overlooked in the national discussion about how cities are developing
universal programs for early learners.
Over 10 years, San Francisco has funded preschool education for 25,000
children. It has implemented high quality standards in all preschool
classrooms, and funds additional services like play therapists and
teacher support services.
This year, 4,000 preschoolers across 150 school sites are beneficiaries.
There are about 400 four-year-olds still on the city's waiting list.
Importantly, the children served have been from all socio-economic
groups, according to Ingrid Mezquita, Preschool For All program director
at First 5 San Francisco, the organization charged with administering
the program.
“In the [higher] grades, we don’t segregate children by income. In
preschool, we do,” Mezquita said. “In a universal system, that opens up
all families to be under one roof.”
San Francisco's not a pure universal system. While the funding covers
100 percent of the tuition for low-income children, middle and
upper-income families can receive up to 25 percent of their costs from
the city’s general fund. They are able to apply to any of the city’s
Preschool For All-approved preschools.
Mezquita says her office has plenty of anecdotal evidence that the
program has stopped "family flight" — families with small children
leaving the expensive Bay Area because they can’t afford childcare.
“San Francisco has the highest rents,” she said, forcing some families
to choose between paying rent or sending their children to preschool.
For some middle-income families, Mezquita said, they make too much for
free preschool, but not enough to afford privates rates.
“San Francisco has been able to help a lot of moderate-income families
not have to make that choice so [they] can stay in the city,” Mezquita
said.
Jennifer Delos Reyes knows that dilemma well. Her husband grew up in San
Francisco and they wanted to raise their young daughter there, too.
Both have good jobs, she said, but with the high cost of San Francisco
living, preschool seemed out of reach.
“One of the ways that we are able to afford to stay is though Preschool
For All. We get 25 percent off at her school, and it really is a big
break for us,” she said.
On average, private preschool costs about $1,350 per month in the city,
according to First 5 San Francisco. The savings of up to 25 percent can
help bring the cost down to under $1,000 per month. There are also
half-day options open to all families, regardless of income, that are
offered for free.
Delos Reyes runs programs for another San Francisco preschool, Holy
Family Day Home. She said she sees closeup the benefits of having
children of mixed incomes in the same classrooms. One example: children
learn empathy through the school's monthly collective birthday
celebrations. Instead of some children bringing in expensive cakes to
celebrate, kids bake cupcakes at school once a month to celebrate all
the birthdays for the month.
Holy Family has been providing childcare for 100 years. In the 10 years
since the city’s universal preschool began, the school has increased
slots for children by 50 percent and serves 154 kids. A majority of the
children are low-income and fully subsidized, but the preschool ensures
at least a quarter of all students are from higher-income homes.
“Just because a family of four is making $100,000 a year doesn’t mean
they aren’t in need of assistance and don’t deserve a quality preschool
program,” Delos Reyes said.
“If we didn’t have Preschool For All, we would be serving the very poor
and the very rich,” she added. “PFA gives access to everyone.”
The Preschool For All program also funded Holy Family to hire a
play-therapist to help children exhibiting behavioral issues, as well as
a “therapeutic shadow teacher” who could be at the school 30 hours a
week to help teachers in the classroom.
These extra services get to the heart of “quality” early education, said
Carla Bryant, chief of early education for the San Francisco Unified
School District.
“When Preschool For All started they were very clear that they were
looking for very high quality preschools,” Bryant said. Even though the
school district remains the largest provider of preschool in San
Francisco, Bryant said Preschool for All helped lift quality in the
district's classrooms.
“Preschool For All was able to look at some of the work that was being
done nationally and borrow some of it, and actually move it quite
quickly,” Bryant said. “So they absolutely set a bar and ensured that
anyone who was PFA met that bar.”
A long struggle to get there
As other cities attempt to push through universal preschool, knowing the
path that organizers took in San Francisco might prove useful, said
Mezquita of First 5 San Francisco.
“It took a lot of training to get even people in the field to understand
how outrageous it was that it wasn’t just automatic that our children
had the best possible beginning in life,” said Margaret Brodkin, a
community organizer and former head of the city Department of Children,
Youth and Their Families.
“People are not used to thinking of it as a social justice issue and
that’s what I think we’ve done so remarkably in San Francisco.”
She said it took years of grassroots organizing to convince people of the need to fund services and preschool for all children.
“It doesn’t come naturally to people who work in preschool who are
gentle people to get involved in politics and learn to play political
hardball,” Brodkin said. “But that is what you have to do if you want to
have a universal preschool measure pass in your community.”
They didn’t start out demanding universal preschool. Instead the organizers took on smaller battles with targeted demands.
“We had baby brigades at City Hall year after year where hundreds and
hundreds of kids from child care centers would invade City Hall and
extract promises from elected officials,” she said.
“We were at every budget hearing, we had the parents of people in
childcare centers send 10,000 postcards to the mayor when we needed to
get salaries raised for childcare workers.”
From 1987 to 1991 children’s advocates, led by Brodkin, pushed for a
“children’s budget.” That work culminated in the passage of a children’s
fund in 1991 with a $6 million pot of money.
In 2004, San Francisco voters approved 10 years' of funding to start a
universal preschool program, and in the recent election, voters approved
the 24-year reauthorization.
That makes Brodkin smile. But she’s not pausing too long to enjoy the
victory. She’s busy traveling up and down the state advising advocates
in small cities on how to bring about similar preschool funding streams
to their own towns.
GREAT TEACHERS TEACH STUDENTS, NOT SUBJECTS
THE BEST EDUCATORS I KNOW TEACH STUDENTS, NOT
SUBJECTS, AND THEY ACTIVELY NURTURE LIFE-ENHANCING QUALITIES LIKE GRIT,
TEAMWORK AND GENEROSITY
Letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal | http://on.wsj.com/1tmZ83h
.
Nov. 7, 2014 5:50 p.m. ET :: I’m a classroom teacher with two master’s
degrees, and I’m working toward a doctorate. I appreciate Joel Klein ’s
call for greater credentialing and certification in the profession (“A
Lesson Plan for A+ Teachers,” http://on.wsj.com/1E8vvuU).
But his proposal to remake American teachers in the mold of their
Finnish counterparts overlooks the most essential goal of education: to
produce better human beings.
The best educators I know teach students, not subjects, and they
actively nurture life-enhancing qualities like grit, teamwork and
generosity. These virtues and others like them comprise the “total
education” of a child and should be prized by any teacher entering the
field. They certainly won’t show up on one of Mr. Klein’s bar exams but
are just as indicative of a teacher’s professional readiness as his or
her mastery of material. Schools that are staffed by highly trained but
morally ambivalent teachers will simply become grading factories, not
goodness incubators. To be truly effective practitioners, teachers need
standards that have soul.
Joe Hirsch
Dallas
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
Albert Viramontes’ MiSiS Report: MY INTEGRATED STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM OVERSIGHT REPORT | Oct 16, 2014 | http://bit.ly/1xpKDC2
Letters: Great Teachers Teach Students, Not Subjects http://on.wsj.com/1tmZ83h via @WSJ
MiSiS CRISIS: L.A. school district reports more problems with student records | http://fw.to/G3mTLhW
Enrollment Numbers Increase! | Baby rattlesnakes found at Van Nuys elementary school http://fw.to/GvyBXWi
The MiSiS REPORT: L.A. TIME'S HOWARD BLUME TWEETS IT ALL FOR YOU @howardblume: Excerpts of MISIS report: There i… http://twishort.com/jwOgc
*U*P*D*A*T*E*D* :: MiSiS SYSTEM GOES DOWN, DATA LOST - With additional info from Superintendent Cortines | http://bit.ly/1tBRBBb
'Remember, remember the the 5th of November!" HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY
Rhee’s Husband Loses Power Grab in Sacramento, as Voters Say No http://wp.me/p2odLa-8Zn
MiSiS GOES DOWN, DATA LOST. Cortines apologizes + offers most important lesson-learned. “Back up and save your work!” http://bit.ly/1tBRBBb
TORLAKSON WINS CALIFORNIA SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION REELECTION Read: http://tl.gd/n_1seam7d
INNOVATIVE PROGRAM RETHINKS HIGH SCHOOL | http://bit.ly/1t9oqSv
CORTINES ON DEASY'S 2014-15 LAUSD BUDGET: "I think somebody drank the Kool-Aid and we didn’t look down the road...” http://bit.ly/1urEpT3
THE MiSiS CASH REGISTER IS STARTING TO PUT UP SOME NUMBERS | http://bit.ly/1urEpT3
COST OF FIXING LAUSD’s MiSiS LEADS TO HIRING FREEZE | http://bit.ly/1wv7MTt
BIG OUTSIDE MONEY IN SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS: Not just here, it's (Cue The Beatles) Here, There & Everywhere | http://bit.ly/1xYVpNx
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman
GO DO IT ANYWAY.
MiSiS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LA SCHOOL’S COMPUTER CRISIS | http://bit.ly/1AbFhxS
RIP (...but laugh on) #TomMagliozzi #EndAlz The rest of us need to get in our Dodge Darts + MGAs and GO VOTE!
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Budget, Facilities, and Audit Committee - November 13, 2014
Start: 11/13/2014 1:00 pm
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@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, 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!.
|
