Sunday, December 27, 2015

Listing to starboard



4LAKids: Sunday 27•Dec•2015
In This Issue:
 •  Still no ‘White Smoke’: MICHELLE KING WILL HEAD L.A. SCHOOLS AS THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERINTENDENT CONTINUES
 •  STUDENTS AT CHARTERS START OFF HIGHER ACADEMICALLY, BUT SOME ALSO LEARN FASTER, STUDY FINDS
 •  Ancient History/Breaking News: IN AT LEAST ONE HUGE DEAL IN L.A., TRUMP GOT SCHOOLED
 •  BEST AND WORST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015 — A TEACHER’S LIST
 •  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:
 •  ► Friends4smf :: The GoFundMe campaign
 •  Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting
 •  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.
“…we must remain mad in order to be sane…” - Siddhartha Gigoo


A slow week in school news gives one an opportunity to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. The end-of-the-year phenomenon presents an opportunity to create lists of successes and failures and lessons-learned and things-remaining-to-do.

All that sounds too much like work and the same-old/same-old. And lists, even of anecdotes, transform anecdotes into data and ultimately to trivia, reversing the DIKW hierarchy.

“The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists.” - H. Allen Smith

The LAUSD Board of Education has their own short little list and they can’t seem to choose a favorite. Maybe while some of us have been awaiting the telltale puff of White Smoke they have been waiting for Luke 2:10’s angel?
“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”


LAST WEEK the New York Times reported a list of The Top 1000 Restaurants in the World (selected by the French Foreign Ministry using an algorithm(!). The best in the LA area is Melisse in Santa Monica [16th best in the US] http://nyti.ms/1mGA107) …And somewhere I came across a lists of Famous Folks’ Favorite Poems [http://nyti.ms/1mjVbRn] …and The Worst Christmas Music Ever [http://n.pr/1NQI5Cj].

This list making is all very subjective and objective and qualitative and quantitative. In a bizarre twist “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is inextricably linked to my Bahama Out Island honeymoon. GGROBAR may have been a “lowlight” …but it was a honeymoon! And The Little Drummer Boy is so insipidly saccharine that it deserves a Surgeon General’s warning.


“When I see the Ten Most Wanted Lists... I always have this thought: If we'd made them feel wanted earlier, they wouldn't be wanted now.” - Eddie Cantor


THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF LAST WEEK was Elon Musk/SpaceX’s recovery of its first-stage booster; a piece of mechanical engineering as important as all the theoretical physics of the past decades. The Higgs Boson is interesting …reusable spaceships are practical …and Pluto is still a planet!


A FLURRY OF STUDIES SHOW:

• Students who enter Los Angeles charter schools start out more academically advanced than their peers in traditional public schools.
• Tweaking standardized tests to make them easier for Special Ed students made them more difficult.
• Increasing the school day seems to improve educational outcomes for English Language Learners.
• 83% of New York City’s public elementary schools are not “fully accessible” to children with disabilities, in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

MICHELLE KING became Acting-if-not-Interim Superintendent. The LA Times played A GAME OF 'WHAT IF?" SPECULATION WITH THE BOARD OF ED over a hypothetical future bomb threat. The ALL DISTRICT HONOR BAND rehearsed for the Rose Parade.

LAUSD ALUMNA MISTY COPELAND, principal ballerina with the American Ballet Theater, returned in triumph to San Pedro.

BENNET OMALU, the doctor the movie 'Concussion' is about wrote an op-ed in the NY Times earlier this month: Don't Let Kids Play Football

WE WERE REMINDED that Donald Trump has been on Santa+LAUSD’s Naughty List for years.

AND LARRY FERLAZZO did my homework and compiled a Good News/Bad News List.

Happy New Year everyone:
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.


¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


Still no ‘White Smoke’: MICHELLE KING WILL HEAD L.A. SCHOOLS AS THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERINTENDENT CONTINUES
by Howard Blume | Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/1PgnppV

Dec. 21, 2015 :: Ten days after Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines quietly slipped out of the district, his deputy, Michelle King, is assuming the role until a permanent successor is selected, officials said.

The Board of Education had hoped to announce a new superintendent Saturday, but emerged from a closed door, 13-hour session with nothing settled.

Although the board took no official action, King will serve as superintendent because she was the No. 2 administrator under Cortines, said district general counsel David Holmquist.

Follow the Times' education initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >>

King is a candidate for the top job, but there is no indication that her provisional promotion is either an endorsement or a sign that she's out of the running.

Besides King, educators who are under consideration or who have been recruited include Fremont Unified Supt. Jim Morris, a longtime L.A. Unified senior administrator; San Francisco Supt. Richard Carranza; and Miami-Dade County Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who has said publicly that he did not want the L.A. job.

Other individuals have been under serious consideration as well.

The school board has scheduled another meeting on the selection of a superintendent for Jan. 5.

Late Saturday evening, after the meeting adjourned, board President Steve Zimmer offered an upbeat view of the search process.

"The board is absolutely on track, working extremely hard, and I am confident that we will be able to reach a decision within the first month of the school year," Zimmer said. "And the conversations are absolutely appropriate to the weight and significance of the decision.

"I am very proud of this board. Everyone has brought their best selves and kept their best selves even through these marathon sessions."

The board has held four lengthy meetings over the last seven days as it tried to make its most important hire.

The choice of King, 54, to step in temporarily was no surprise; she'd already become acting superintendent on Dec. 11, when Cortines unofficially stepped aside. Cortines returned to duty three days later, however, when district officials received a terrorist threat. The threat prompted the cancellation of school for 640,000 students Tuesday, but turned out to be a false alarm.

Cortines said in an interview last week that King, as acting superintendent, had the authority to cancel schools, but that it also was reasonable to bring him back to manage the crisis.

King did not respond to questions about the handling of the incident, but she was one of three senior district leaders who had dealt with the situation early on, along with school district police chief Steven Zipperman and Zimmer, who received the email threat at 10 p.m. Monday.

When it became clear that local and federal law enforcement officials were neither going to take charge nor give unequivocal guidance, Cortines was called at 5 a.m. He said that it would be unfair to criticize his L.A. Unified colleagues, but that he wished he'd been alerted sooner or perhaps not at all.

Cortines also said he was comfortable with his actions even though the threat proved a hoax.

With his retirement about to take full effect, the district needs to establish a clear chain of command, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

"If they're not ready yet to name a permanent replacement, the events of Tuesday morning made it clear that there is at least a strong need to put an interim superintendent in place," Schnur said.

King has experience serving for short periods as acting superintendent, especially when she worked under Cortines' predecessor, John Deasy, who frequently went out of town for conferences and meetings.

Last week, she oversaw the staff presentation at a board meeting over a sensitive topic: the temporary closing of two schools because of a natural gas leak in the northwest San Fernando Valley.

In April 2014, she oversaw the early hours of the district's emergency response when a bus carrying students on a college visit crashed in Orland, killing 10, including one L.A. Unified student. Other district students were injured.


STUDENTS AT CHARTERS START OFF HIGHER ACADEMICALLY, BUT SOME ALSO LEARN FASTER, STUDY FINDS
by Howard Blume | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1PimQM9

Dec 22, 2015 :: Students who enter Los Angeles charter schools are more academically advanced than their peers in traditional public schools, according to a study released Monday by researchers at UC Berkeley.

Charter students in middle schools also stand out academically after they enroll in charters, making faster gains than similar students in traditional schools, according to the study.

The findings add more fuel to the debate over charters but stops well short of settling the question of whether these schools are more effective at educating students.

Charter school performance has come under scrutiny recently as a group of advocates and donors, spearheaded by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, developed a proposal to enroll half of L.A. Unified School District students in charters. The plan, if pursued, could threaten the solvency of the school system, some district officials say.

These advocates insisted, in a draft proposal obtained by The Times, that charter schools are successful and that L.A. Unified is failing.

Charters are attracting increasing numbers of families — about 16% of district enrollment — and L.A. Unified has the most charter students — about 100,000 — of any district in the nation.

These schools are publicly funded and exempt from some rules that govern other campuses. Most are non-union.

Charter supporters have cited other research using Los Angeles data to assert that these schools provide a better education. But if students already are academically superior when they enter, that claim is undermined. The research also raises the question of whether some charter operators are trying to enroll higher-achieving students or trying to exclude those less likely to perform well.

“We are not suggesting that charter schools unfairly cherry-pick stronger students or more resourceful families,” said study co-author Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley. “However, parents with more savvy or time seem more likely to seek out stronger schools.”

Under state law, charters must accept all students, and they must conduct a random lottery when there are more applicants than capacity. There have been charters that have skirted these rules, although other charters have taken steps to increase the number of low-income, minority students who get in, and those students typically have lower test scores.

Because Fuller’s study relied on test scores, it was limited to those grades in which students are tested.

The California Charter Schools Assn. noted that Fuller concluded that second-graders in charters started off higher academically by looking at their test scores in second grade, the earliest year available for test scores. The group said that these higher test scores could be a result of charters offering a superior education in kindergarten and first grade — and not because the charter students started off as higher achieving.

The researchers tried to account for this issue, however, by looking separately at students who switched from traditional schools to charters after second grade.

The charter group also challenged the sample size in portions of the study, among other things.

“It is unfortunate that Dr. Fuller and his team seem unwilling to acknowledge that the credit for charter schools’ superior performance goes to the highly talented and driven educators who, with a healthy balance of autonomy and oversight, have innovated and adapted to their unique communities’ and students’ needs, yielding student gains that should be celebrated, not snubbed,” the association said in a statement.

The charter association also criticized Fuller for including so-called affiliated charters, which are district-run and lack the independence and operating structure of charters that are fully independent. Fuller countered that the overall findings were unchanged when he removed the district-run campuses.

District officials say that the better comparison is between charters and magnet schools that offer specific programs for students who voluntarily enroll.

The UC Berkeley study tracked 66,000 students from 2007 through 2011, using state test data and information about students provided by the California Department of Education and L.A. Unified. Fuller’s co-authors were Hyo Jeong Shin and Luke Dauter. The study was funded by the Spencer Foundation of Chicago and the PACE center, based at Stanford University.

Charter supporters have defended their efforts by noting that their students are comparable with those in district schools in terms of family income level. Moreover, other researchers have concluded that L.A. charter schools with similar students score higher than nearby district schools in direct comparisons. But Fuller’s study suggests that there are subtle but important differences between charter students and those in traditional campuses.

Charter critics also have asserted that there are less subtle distinctions, accusing some charters of limiting the number of students with moderate to severe disabilities or those who have behavioral issues.

“The main takeaway of the new study is that it shows that many charter schools are in fact selecting higher-performing students and excluding lower-performing students,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which has criticized charters. “Whether it is intentional in-your-face exclusion or excluding because that’s how the process works — either way they’re not serving a proportionate share of lower-performing students and that’s not good for a public education system.”

School board President Steve Zimmer said the results of the research weren't “earth-shattering” for either side of the debate.

“When you’re talking about the same kids in the same situations, we’re not talking about huge breakthroughs for charters,” said Zimmer, who has supported most petitions to open or renew charters but also has criticized the rapid growth of charters as harmful to the school system.

He added it would be important to learn why charters appear to benefit middle school students.

“The data doesn’t indicate what charter middle schools are doing better, but it does give us some suggestion that there might be some effective approaches,” Zimmer said.
__________________
CAVEAT: The Times receives funding for its digital initiative, Education Matters, from the California Endowment, the Wasserman Foundation and the Baxter Family Foundation. The California Community Foundation and United Way of Greater Los Angeles administer grants from the Broad Foundation to support this effort. Under terms of the grants, The Times retains complete control over editorial content.

THE STUDY: DIFFERING EFFECTS FROM DIVERSE CHARTER SCHOOLS – Uneven Student Selection and Achievement Growth in Los Angeles



Ancient History/Breaking News: IN AT LEAST ONE HUGE DEAL IN L.A., TRUMP GOT SCHOOLED
THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL SITE, MORE THAN 23 ACRES NEAR DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, WAS BOUGHT BY TRUMP WILSHIRE ASSOCIATES IN 1989. NOW IT'S AN LAUSD CAMPUS.

By Doug Smith | LA Times| http://lat.ms/1TXRYBQ

Dec 20, 2015 :: On one side was the alpha male of New York developers who burst into town with pockets full of money, a legion of lobbyists and lawyers and an audacious plan to build the nation's tallest building.

Opposing was a tag team Donald Trump would have little reason to fear: Jackie Goldberg and Jeff Horton, two rumpled progressives on the Los Angeles Board of Education.

Long before his run for president and his reality TV career as the ruthless boss, Trump fought an ugly decade-long battle over a Los Angeles landmark.

It's not an exploit he's bragging about on the campaign trail

The prize was the Ambassador Hotel. A legendary Hollywood celebrity hangout and the site of the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, it had endured a long downward spiral before closing in 1989.

The 23.5-acre property, much of it open space, became a rare object of desire in a densely built part of the city.

The Board of Education already had its eye on the property for a badly needed high school when a Trump syndicate swooped it up for $64 million in 1989 and announced plans to erect a 125-story office tower.

The school board countered with a 7-0 vote to take the property from Trump via eminent domain.

Usually that would start a process in which the parties and their appraisers, or a court, would settle on a price.

But not when one of the parties was Trump.

His team launched a fierce lobbying campaign to block a $50-million state allocation to help the district buy the property.

Goldberg, then the president of the school board, took on the notoriously tough negotiator.

"They simply have enough money to buy enough lobbyists to go absolutely everywhere and talk to as many people as need to be talked to until they get what they want," she said.

The district mounted its own lobbying effort and got the state allocation restored.

Talks on a possible sale price ensued but then broke down.

Roused by Goldberg, protesters outside the Ambassador chanted "Dump Trump" and carried signs saying, "Public need over private greed."

Barbara Res, executive vice president for Trump Wilshire Associates, accused the board of "fiscal irresponsibility" for choosing to build a school on "some of the world's most expensive property."

The $73 million that the district was offering for 17 acres of the site was far below the developer's estimate of its value — up to $200 million, she said.

The district, Res said, "will be embroiled for years in litigation it cannot win."

Then Trump blinked.

In January 1991, he and his partners decided to take the nearly $48-million deposit the school board offered as part of its eminent domain condemnation suit.

In doing so, Trump Wilshire Associates, in effect, conceded the district's right to take the property.

Attorney Rita J. Miller denied the widespread perception that the syndicate needed the money to deal with mounting financial problems. Miller said it was the district that had money trouble.

"Trump Wilshire Associates is confident the decision will be in the neighborhood of $200 million," Miller said of the court case. "It would be totally irresponsible for the Los Angeles Unified School District to pay that amount for a school site."

Two and a half years later, Goldberg had moved on to the Los Angeles City Council. Her former aide and successor, Horton, ratcheted up the pressure.

As the eminent domain suit was set to go to trial, the school board abruptly dropped its bid to buy the land. The recession had driven the property's value down to $50 million, and Horton saw no reason to pay the previously estimated value of $74 million.

The Trump team's arguments continued but began to sound overblown.

"We told them from the start they were going to wind up years down the road with no school for those kids, and that's exactly how it's working out," Res said. "You tell me: Who's the winner here?"

Res accused the district of duplicity, saying it reneged on a promise to pay $82 million for the entire 23.5-acre site "because they said politically it wasn't a good idea."

Horton discounted that, saying the offer was only "a potential deal that we didn't accept, because we couldn't figure out a way to pay for it."

Early in 1994 a judge sided with the district.

"The district has treated us terribly and has been extremely cavalier about this," Res said. She said Trump's next step would be to sue the district for damages because it unfairly tied up the Wilshire corridor property. "We are going to end up with the lion's share of the $48 million."

But in December 1997, another judge ordered Trump to repay the $48 million deposit.

Although the Ambassador was once again its property to develop, the Trump partnership maintained that such an undertaking would no longer be financially feasible. Soon Trump, whose share was reported to be 20%, left the partnership with no signature building and little, if any, cash.

By then, Trump's successor in the venture, Wilshire Center Marketplace, couldn't return the deposit, having used the money to pay off debt.

The district sued to recover its deposit. The firm fought, claiming compensation for delays that had made the project untenable.


Again the court ruled in the district's favor. At one point, the board ordered a sheriff's sale, a move the owner forestalled by declaring bankruptcy.

The end of the story comes four years later when the district was flush with construction money.

The school board again voted to buy the Wilshire Boulevard property for a negotiated price of $76.5 million.

Today Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade campus of standout architecture, is there.

But if Trump lost, the district didn't entirely win. It would take nine more years before RFK opened, too late for more than a generation of students.


BEST AND WORST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015 — A TEACHER’S LIST
By Larry Ferlazzo from Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet/Washington Post | http://wapo.st/1PkU1yR

December 23 at 10:15 AM :: Larry Ferlazzo is a veteran teacher of English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. Every year he writes a list of the best/worst education news of the year — and here’s what he has come up with for 2015. Ferlazzo has written eight books on education, writes a teacher advice blog for Education Week Teacher and has his own popular resource-sharing blog. See if his list resembles your own. What did he miss?

By Larry Ferlazzo

It’s time again for an annual recap of education news. As usual, I don’t presume to say it’s all-encompassing, so I hope you’ll take time to share your own choices. I’ll list the ones I think are the best first, followed by the worst. It’s too hard to rank them within those categories, so I’m not listing them in any order.

THE BEST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015

• Seattle teachers went out on strike and won an exceptional list of changes, including guaranteed recess for elementary school students and an in-depth examination of equity issues such as the disproportionate number of suspensions handed out to students of color.

• Momentum continues to build for increasing use of restorative practices in school over punish-and-suspend. Similar momentum continued for increasing the use of Social-Emotional Learning (two new excellent reports on SEL were issued over the past year), but there’s a negative to that found in the “bad” section of this post, too.

• The Washington State Supreme Court decided that taxpayer-funded charter schools are unconstitutional. The case might provide a blueprint to opponents in other areas. I, and many others, are supportive of charters the way they were originally intended to operate — as laboratories for, and not “creamers” from, public schools. Perhaps this case and others might force charter advocates to reflect on that original purpose.

• States have begun concluding that high school exit exams are destructive to the education and to the lives of students, and have eliminated them. In my own state of California, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that could allow 40,000 students who had denied diplomas to receive them retroactively.

• U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the architect of many policies that negatively impacted students, families and teachers, resigned. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, though everybody should be given a chance to show what they can do, things don’t look like they’ll get much better under his successor.

• The U.S. high school graduation rate increased for the fourth straight year. Some districts might be fudging their numbers a bit but, overall, it still looks like good news.

• Student protests in support of racial justice, against school closings, and around other issues had success in the United States and in other parts of the world, often with teacher and parent allies.

• Renowned education writer and researcher Linda Darling-Hammond’s announced her retirement from Stanford to begin an impressive new education “think tank” called The Learning Policy Institute. You can read her description of it here. Its list of senior research fellows looks like a “who’s who” of talented and progressive education researchers in the country. I can’t wait to see the results of their work!

• Momentum may be building, at least in some areas, to remove student test scores from a role in teacher evaluations. It appears that New York is near deciding on a four-year moratorium of their use in that formula.

• Educators responded to tragedy and racism by supporting students dealing with the police murders of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, and the church killings in Charleston.

• Kevin Johnson, the Mayor of Sacramento and a person who has done much to damage our city’s public schools, declined to run for re-election following publicity of past allegations of sexual misconduct. At one point he and Michelle Rhee, his wife, were a two-person “school reform” wrecking crew, but it appears that separate actions taken by each have damaged their credibility beyond repair.

• Democratic presidential Hillary Clinton questioned the role of charter schools and criticized the use of tests in teacher evaluations. If elected, it appears that she might be planning a break from Obama administration education policies.

• The Every Student Succeed Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind, was signed into law. Though it is by no means perfect (I’m not at all crazy about how it will impact English Language Learners), I tend to think it will be an improvement.

• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the $45 billion Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with an emphasis on education. He says he’s learned from his mistakes. Call me naive, but I’m hopeful he has…

• Teachers, both in the United States and in other parts of the world, provided care and education to refugees fleeing violence in Central America and the Middle East. The bad news is that those numbers don’t show any sign of abating…

• Millions of students had great learning experiences in their schools this year.



THE WORST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015

• Research found that many states are spending less on schools than they did before the recession, and there is incredible funding inequities between schools in lower-income and higher-income areas.

• Changes in the GED by Pearson resulted in passing rates plummeting in many areas by as much as 90 percent. As a result, thousands of predominantly low-income people did not obtain a badly-needed high school equivalency certificate and had their economic prospects severely damaged.

• Despite public warnings from some of the most well-known researchers of Social-Emotional Learning that there are not now accurate ways to measure those skills, the Every Student Succeed Act encourages their use. Even the international PISA test is getting into the act by planning a bizarre scheme to measure student collaboration by pairing them up anonymously during the test to solve a problem. Speaking of bad news related to SEL, there still seems to be an effort by some to push it as a “blame the victim” strategy to replace support for adequate social policy measures. I’ve called it the Let Them Eat Character perspective; Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman coined a different term this year for that kind of attitude – The Laziness Dogma.

• Schools became more segregated, and they have been moving in that direction since 1990. This is bad news for students, families, teachers and our entire society.

• Billionaire Eli Broad began gearing up for a $500 million campaign to create nearly 300 new charter schools, which would irreparably damage the Los Angeles public school system.

• Speaking of billionaires behaving badly, the Walton Foundation announced plans to increase support for plans like Broad’s across the country, the Gates Foundation wants to now mess around with teacher prep programs, and David Geffen decided that UCLA needed $100 million for a private middle and high school on its campus.

• Who didn’t see the video of the police officer assault on the South Carolina high school student? That awful incident began to shed light on the widespread and inappropriate use of the police to enforce classroom management, as well as broader questions about the role of officers in schools, and particularly with how they relate to students of color. Similar questions have been raised in California when a recent report revealed that police in San Bernardino have made 30,000 arrests in schools over the past ten years.

• Teacher Amy Berard shared a story that gives just about every teacher nightmares in her must-read “I Am Not Tom Brady” blog post at the EduShyster blog. In it, she recounts being required to wear a microphone in her ear while a committee of adults sit at the back of the room and give her instructions on what to do and say to students.

• A big new study on online charter schools found that the results were so terrible that “it is literally as if the kid did not go to school for an entire year.”

• Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett pled guilty to a kickback scheme she arranged before she resigned. In one of the emails she sent while negotiating the kickbacks, she wrote, “I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit.”

• The Nevada legislature approved a bill letting parents take their child from a public school and use taxpayer money to pay tuition at a private or religious school – or even for homeschooling.

• For the first time in at least fifty years, in 2015 a majority of public school students came from low-income families.

• Muslim students are being harassed in schools — which should be a safe haven — because of anti-Muslim hysteria in the United States. At least the U.S. Attorney General is trying to respond to these terrible acts. And the atmosphere is not helped by over-reactions to student assignments of writing in Arabic.

• There is a growing teacher shortage in many areas. It’s even made some longtime teacher-bashers wonder if teacher-bashing contributed to making teaching a less attractive profession.

• Ten Atlanta educators involved in the test-cheating scandal received unfairly lengthy jail sentences (even after some were reduced).

• The Supreme Court made the bad decision to hear the Friedrichs case which, if they rule in favor of the plaintiffs (the likely outcome) will eviscerate public employee unions, including teachers associations.

• Students, their families and communities had to deal with terrible incidents of racism and murder. The other side of those tragedies was that educators stepped up to support students dealing with the police murders of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, the church killings in Charleston, and in other areas.

• Millions of students should have gotten a better education than they received.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
A MASTER CLASS WITH BALLERINA MISTY COPELAND BECOMES A SAN PEDRO HOMECOMING + smf's 2¢ http://bit.ly/1OeRoQ8

HOW L.A. SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS WOULD REACT TO ANOTHER BOMB THREAT
http://bit.ly/1PotG4L

MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX ABUSE IN EAST COAST PREP SCHOOLS
http://bit.ly/1JzgLXo

'Educational Arms Race', Reform or Just Race?: REFORMS TO EASE STUDENTS' STRESS DIVIDE A NEW JERSEY SCHOOL DISTRICT
http://bit.ly/1kjP3Ho

‏@4LAKids Dec 25: There is gospel and scripture,
chapter and verse.
And then there's Irving Berlin:
"May your days be sunny and bright..."

LAUSD MUSICIANS STRIKE UP THE ALL DISTRICT HONOR BAND IN PREPARATION FOR THE ROSE PARADE
http://bit.ly/1ONgkKE

SHOULD LOS ANGELES HAVE CLOSED SCHOOLS WHEN FACED WITH A THREAT? +smf's 2¢
http://bit.ly/1Tjo4YQ

AT ONE SAN BERNARDINO SCHOOL, ARTS PROGRAM HELPS STUDENTS BOUNCE BACK FROM TRAGEDY
http://bit.ly/1OcMJxZ

UPDATED: NEW TOOLS MEANT TO HELP SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS TAKE STANDARDIZED TESTS ACTUALLY MADE IT HARDER
http://bit.ly/1NJAYvt

SCHOOL SEGREGATION ISN'T JUST REALITY BUT ALSO PART OF THE LESSON AT ONE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOL
http://bit.ly/1mAzi0q

LESS INCOME, MORE WORRY: More on Pew Parenting Study
http://bit.ly/22q0jEu

STATE EDUCATION CHIEFS PONDER ESSA
http://bit.ly/1QIbm8g

MOST NEW YORK CITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ARE VIOLATING DISABILITIES ACT, FEDERAL INVESTIGATION FINDS
http://bit.ly/1NACS3G

NEW TOOLS MEANT TO HELP SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS TAKE STANDARDIZED TESTS ACTUALLY MADE IT HARDER
http://bit.ly/1NJAYvt

'TIS (ALMOST) THE FAFSA SEASON: Prospective college students+parents will be able to file a ‘16-‘17 FAFSA app Jan.1:
http://1.usa.gov/1IdpOCg .

CA. REPUBLICANS KEEP PRESSING FOR K-12 TENURE, LAYOFF, EVALUATION REFORMS | EdSource
http://bit.ly/1ZlsO3E

▲STATE CHAMPIONSHIP FOOTBALL GAME BETWEEN CENTENNIAL AND DE LA SALLE FEATURES HARD PLAY, SPORTSMANSHIP
http://bit.ly/1meYLfy

▼'Concussion' Doctor Bennet Omalu: DON'T LET KIDS PLAY FOOTBALL
http://bit.ly/1TlMAs5

SO. CAL. MUSLIM STUDENTS FIND HOSTILITY, CURIOSITY IN THEIR SCHOOLS AFTER SAN BERNARDINO | 89.3 KPCC
http://bit.ly/1OiWCMw

No ‘White Smoke’: MARATHON SESSION YIELDS NO PICK FOR L.A. UNIFIED CHIEF; NEXT MEETING IN 2016 + smf's 2¢
http://bit.ly/1QD4N6O

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION'S GLOBAL GAP
http://bit.ly/1mekEeM


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
▲ Thursday, Dec. 31 :: HOGMANAY is the Scots word for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the celebration of the New Year in the Scottish manner. It is normally followed by further celebration on the morning of New Year's Day. Customs vary throughout Scotland, and usually include gift-giving and visiting the homes of friends and neighbours, with special attention given to the First-Foot: The first guest of the New Year.

In Scottish and Northern English folklore, the first-foot is the first person to enter the home of a household on New Year's Day and a bringer of good fortune for the coming year.

The first-foot usually brings several gifts, including perhaps a coin (silver is considered good luck), bread, salt, coal, or a drink (usually whisky), which represent financial prosperity, food, flavour, warmth, and good cheer respectively. [Wikipedia]

________________________________________
• 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.
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Sunday, December 20, 2015

Back2Beaudry


4LAKids: Sunday 20•Dec•2015 ¡Winter Break!
In This Issue:
 •  STATEMENT FROM SUPERINTENDENT RAMON C. CORTINES / DECLARACIÓN DEL SUPERINTENDENTE RAMÓN C. CORTINES
 •  HANDLING OF L.A. SCHOOLS SHUTDOWN OFFERS A CIVICS LESSON
 •  PORTER RANCH GAS LEAK: The Los Angeles Unified School Emergency
 •  Ancient History/Breaking News: IN AT LEAST ONE HUGE DEAL IN L.A., TRUMP GOT SCHOOLED
 •  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:
 •  ► Friends4smf :: The GoFundMe campaign
 •  Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting
 •  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.
By the time you read this The Big News About LAUSD may very be that a new superintendent has been selected by the Board of Education.

As I write and send this out TBNALAUSD is the District Shutdown on Tuesday and the Porter Ranch Relocation. Those stories – building upon a theme of LAUSD Practicing An Abundance of Caution – have pushed The Great Superintendent Search out of the headlines.

…but I’ve gotta say that the trend is trending the other way:

Sample phone call:

CALLER: “Whataya know?”
ME: “Nothin’. You heard anything?”
CALLER: “Only that they are down to two candidates, X and Y.” [Here I must point out that the two candidates named are never the same from call-to-call …just XYZ selections from the usual suspects.]
ME: “¿Y? Really? I heard there’s a problem with Y’s degree/record/history/leadership skills.”
CALLER: “I’ve heard that too. But anyone’s better than Deasy.”
ME: “Deasy’s exit contract says he can never work for the District again.”
CALLER: “Call me if you hear anything.”
ME (making a note to add Caller to the list): “You’ll be the first one I call!”

As I write the Board of Ed is sequestered in an undisclosed location (The Board Agenda http://bit.ly/1J0HWiM doesn’t even say where the meeting is – I’m not sure how Ralph M. Brown would feel about that!) having secret confabs about The Next Superintendent

We hang on every tweet - Saturday at a Glance:

●LAUSD ‏@LASchools 8:37 AM - 19 Dec 2015
The Special Board Meeting, scheduled to start at 8:30, has not begun.
●LAUSD ‏@LASchools 8:45 AM - 19 Dec 2015
The meeting has been called to order.
●LAUSD ‏@LASchools 8:47 AM - 19 Dec 2015
Board Member Dr. @richardvladovic is ill, and not at the meeting.
●LAUSD ‏@LASchools 8:47 AM - 19 Dec 2015
One public speaker wishes to address the Board.
●LAUSD ‏@LASchools 8:49 AM - 19 Dec 2015
Board Member Dr. @richardvladovic will participate in closed session via conference call. The Board has recessed into closed session.
…thirteen hours later:
●LAUSD ‏@LASchools 9:32 PM - 19 Dec 2015 ·
Board of education in recess. Nothing to report.

…as of this writing at the crack-of-early Sunday no future meetings are scheduled for Sunday or next week. The next Regular Board Meeting is January 12, 2016 at 1:00 p.m.
Maybe they should decompress and all go to a screening of Star Wars?…
Maybe the Board of Ed is being exceedingly abundantly cautious in their decision making?…
Maybe I detect a Wisp of White Smoke?…

…and Get Well Soon Dr. V!


TUESDAY SAW THE RETURN OF RAMON CORTINES v. 3.1 …and points out how important the leadership of a superintendent-who-knows-what-he’s-doing-and has-the trust,-faith-and-support-of-the-organization-is.

Some doubt that there is actual tangible difference between Management and Leadership; if there is it is in the perception of the led.

I’m pretty sure Ray was looking forward to using his earned vacation time at his leisure, stay-cating at home. Instead he was called Back-to-Beaudry and led LAUSD in one-last-crisis (or perhaps: not-a-crisis …it matters not) – and he led us well in his yellow Cape Cod ball cap!

Our District turns its lonely eyes to you.

I can understand the decision made by Chief Bratton and Mayor De Blasio in NYC to ignore the e-mailed threats. I can neither understand nor ignore Bratton’s criticism of Cortines’ decision – other than to attribute it to NYC arrogance …misplaced in a Bostonian.


THURSDAY SAW THE DECISION TO TEMPORARILY RELOCATE THE PORTER RANCH SCHOOLS AWAY FROM THE SEMPRA/SO. CAL. GAS CO. ALISO CANYON METHANE LEAK. If you watch the replay of the Board Meeting [http://bit.ly/1NwvENV | It’s not that long] you can see the Board and District Staff weigh the health threats and danger of future health threats against the current disruption – and reach what probably is the only right decision; a decision sure to be unpopular with a number of someones somewhere.

Yes, the Gas Company will have to pay for much of (if not all of) the cost – but the disruption and ill will and inconvenience and sheer unpopularity will never be compensated ...and right now some of that accrues to the District. Which is sort of like blaming the Gulf of Mexico for the BP/Deepwater Horizon Disaster.

►Breaking: L.A. Times Editorial: CLOSE SoCalGas' FACILITY IN ALISO CANYON – EVENTUALLY | http://lat.ms/1mekmog

“…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.
“May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
“And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


STATEMENT FROM SUPERINTENDENT RAMON C. CORTINES / DECLARACIÓN DEL SUPERINTENDENTE RAMÓN C. CORTINES
Cortines: "ALL L.A. UNIFIED SCHOOLS AND CHARTERS HAVE BEEN INSPECTED AND CHIEF STEVEN ZIPPERMAN HAS GIVEN THE ALL-CLEAR."

From LAUSD | http://bit.ly/1IUJgDN

15 Dec 2015 :: Today has been a difficult day, with L.A. Unified schools closed for the first time in decades. Thanks to the extraordinary effort by Los Angeles Unified School Police and law-enforcement partners, all L.A. Unified schools and charters have been inspected and Chief Steven Zipperman has given the all-clear. Classes and after-school activities will resume on Wednesday. The District will have crisis counselors available for students and employees who may need additional support.

I decided to close schools, and this choice was not made lightly. It disrupted the lives of our students, our employees and their families. Based on recent events, I took this precaution out of an abundance of caution and to ensure safety and security in our schools.

We now must get back to the business of educating our kids. Our local districts will be supporting school and maintaining consistency. I have asked state Schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson to allow us to count today as an instructional day and reimburse the District for funds we will otherwise lose.

I want to thank our L.A. Unified families for your support and your sacrifice as we worked through a very difficult day. I am also very grateful to my colleagues on the Board of Education and to our principals, plant managers and police officers who played a pivotal role in securing our schools.

In addition, I want to express my appreciation to Superintendent Torlakson and to Mayor Eric Garcetti, the Los Angeles City Council, and to Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck for their unwavering support. We also owe our thanks to the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and to a host of law-enforcement agencies that came to our aid. They are: the Los Angeles Police Department; Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department; California Highway Patrol; the Departments of Police Services at the University of California and Cal State-Northridge; and the police departments from Long Beach, San Fernando, Bell, Gardena, Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Inglewood and South Gate.

Finally, this event underscores the need for everyone to remain diligent and serves as a reminder -- if you see something, say something.
___________________________

Declaración del Superintendente Ramón C. Cortines

Hoy ha sido un día difícil por el cierre de las escuelas del Distrito Escolar Unificado de L.A. por primera vez en décadas. Gracias al esfuerzo extraordinario de la Policía Escolar de Los Ángeles y de nuestros colaboradores de las fuerzas del orden público, ya se han inspeccionado todas las escuelas del Distrito Escolar Unificado de Los Ángeles, y también todas las escuelas autónomas Charter autorizadas por el distrito, y el Jefe Steven Zipperman nos ha dado luz verde. Se reanudarán las clases y las actividades extraescolares el miércoles. El Distrito tendrá disponibles a los consejeros de crisis para los estudiantes y los empleados que puedan necesitar apoyo adicional.

Tomé la decisión de cerrar las escuelas el martes, y esta no fue una decisión hecha a la ligera. Creó interrupciones en la vida de nuestros estudiantes, nuestros empleados y sus familias. Basándome en los acontecimientos recientes, tomé esta decisión colmada de precaución y en un esfuerzo para garantizar la protección y la seguridad de nuestras escuelas.

Ahora debemos volver a la labor de la educación de nuestros niños. Nuestros distritos locales apoyarán a las escuelas y mantendrán la solidez. He pedido al Superintendente de Educación del Estado, Tom Torlakson, que nos permita contar el día de hoy como día de instrucción y que reembolse al Distrito por los ingresos que, de lo contrario, perderíamos.

Quiero agradecer a nuestras familias del Distrito Escolar Unificado de Los Ángeles por su apoyo, y por su sacrificio mientras trabajábamos en conjunto en este día tan difícil. También, estoy muy agradecido con mis colegas en la Junta de Educación y nuestros directores, gerentes de planta y agentes de la policía que desempeñaron un papel fundamental para la seguridad de nuestras escuelas.
Asimismo, quisiera expresar mi agradecimiento al Superintendente Torlakson y al alcalde Eric Garcetti, al Consejo Citadino de Los Angeles, y al Jefe de la Policía Charlie Beck por su inquebrantable apoyo. También extendemos nuestro agradecimiento al FBI, a la Oficina de Bebidas Alcohólicas, Tabaco y Armas de Fuego, y a una gran cantidad de agencias de las fuerzas de seguridad que vinieron en nuestra ayuda: el Departamento de Policía de Los Ángeles, el Departamento del Sheriff del Condado de Los Ángeles; la Patrulla de Carreteras de California; los Departamentos de Servicios Policiales de la Universidad de California y de Cal-State -Northridge; y los departamentos de policía de Long Beach, San Fernando, Bell, Gardena, Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Inglewood y Southgate.

Por último, este caso pone de relieve la necesidad de que todos estemos al pendiente y nos sirve como recordatorio - si ves algo, repórtalo.


HANDLING OF L.A. SCHOOLS SHUTDOWN OFFERS A CIVICS LESSON
by Peter Jamison and Howard Blume | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1OyoFle

Dec 17, 2015 :: On Tuesday morning, as the nation's second-largest school district was shutting down in response to a suspected terrorist threat, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti took the microphone at a news conference led by L.A. Unified School District Supt. Ramon Cortines.

With his first words, the mayor established the posture he would adopt toward the crisis throughout the day. "The decision to close the schools is not mine to make, but is mine to support," Garcetti said.

That seemingly innocuous statement underscored the jurisdictional divisions that marked L.A. government's response to the threat. In L.A., unlike New York and Chicago, the mayor does not control the schools. Cortines ultimately made the choice to close the district.

A day after that decision, which has drawn some criticism because the threat turned out to be a hoax, key players acknowledged that their effort could have been better coordinated.

Cortines, who was awakened with news of the threat seven hours after it was received, said in an interview that he should have been called earlier. Garcetti said one lesson of Tuesday's school shutdown was that officials of different agencies should try to coordinate more closely during future city emergencies.

"I think it is better to be brought in as collaboratively and as quickly as possible," he said.

Politicians and law enforcement experts continue to debate the wisdom of closing schools to L.A.'s 640,000 students, a dispute intensified by New York City officials' decision to write off a similar threat. For their part, many L.A. parents say they do not fault the district for excess caution with students' lives.

Meanwhile, some critics say the false alarm has laid bare potential shortcomings in officials' capacity to handle future crises, both in the nuts and bolts of coordination among government agencies and in the less quantifiable ability to reassure the public.

Garcetti's repeated efforts throughout the day to emphasize his lack of ownership of the decision gave the impression that he and the police department he oversees were not fully committed to the school district's course of action, said Joe Domanick, associate director of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"They were just moving away from the decision. That's what it looked like," Domanick said.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said the episode presented Garcetti with a dilemma.

Schnur said he understood concerns about the lack of a unified front among city and school officials at a time of crisis. But had the mayor chosen to take a more assertive role, Schnur said, he might have been vulnerable to accusations that he was playing politics with the safety of schoolchildren by trying to influence Cortines' deliberations.

"If he takes the lead, it makes it look like he's politicizing the decision," Schnur said. "There is absolutely no way he can win on this."

Asked why he had explicitly stated several times on Tuesday that he did not make the call to close the district, Garcetti said he wanted to "simply sort out confusion." With the "national coverage" of the event by media organizations, he said, many people might not be aware that as mayor he is not in charge of the schools.

Garcetti said the Los Angeles Police Department had advised the school district prior to Cortines' decision, but declined to say what the advice was. He declined to say whether he agreed with the school closure.

"We were here to support it, period. That's their decision to make," Garcetti said.

Some also question the mechanics of how the city and school district responded to the threat, especially the amount of time it took to notify Garcetti and Beck, and the lack of coordination among various parts of government affected by the shutdown.

Brian Michael Jenkins, a counterterrorism expert at the Rand Corp., said that the mayor and police chief ideally should have been consulted on the possibility of closing city schools as soon as district officials began to consider it seriously.

"You're not going to wake people in the middle of the night for every stupid phone call or threat," Jenkins said. However, "If this is sufficient that closing down the district is even an option … they should be brought in immediately at that point."

He added, "The consequences of the decision go way beyond the schools themselves."

Much remains unknown about what took place between about 10 p.m. Monday, when school board President Steve Zimmer first saw a vaguely worded email threatening an attack on L.A. schools with explosives and gunmen, and Cortines' decision shortly after 5 a.m. the next day to close the schools. In an interview Wednesday, Garcetti said that Beck woke him up with a text message and then a phone call alerting him to the situation about 4:40 a.m. Tuesday.

The mayor said he did not speak to Cortines before the superintendent made the decision to close the schools. Garcetti said he spoke to Zimmer "maybe a half-dozen times in the morning, offering feedback and advice," but said that "it was clear that they had made the decision to close the schools."

Zimmer said Wednesday that after receiving the email he immediately alerted L.A. school police Chief Steven K. Zipperman, who told the LAPD and FBI about the threat. Over the next several hours, Zimmer said, he consulted with Zipperman and Chief Deputy Supt. Michelle King. They only contacted Cortines after they became convinced that law enforcement could not decisively rule out the attack threatened in the email.

In an interview Wednesday, Cortines defended the decision to close the schools, which he had minutes to make.

"We saw in the Boston Marathon what pressure-cooker bombs could do. All of that came into my decision," he said. "I go back to 9/11. People knew something. Maybe they didn't know enough. But they knew something and they didn't act. And I was not going to let something happen on my watch."

Cortines said he received no recommendation from the LAPD.

"Time was against me. The starting of the buses was against me," he said. "I knew I had to do something quickly if I was going to do something. My priority yesterday was our children, our staff and our property."


PORTER RANCH GAS LEAK: The Los Angeles Unified School Emergency
By City News Service from KABC | http://bit.ly/1IglAtG

Posted on December 17, 2015 :: LOS ANGELES (CNS) – The Los Angeles Unified School District board unanimously declared an emergency today at two Porter Ranch schools affected by a natural-gas leak and authorized that the nearly 1,900 students be moved to other locations. The board also authorized its attorneys to pursue litigation against Southern California Gas Co. to recover any costs incurred as a result of the leak.

The vote came despite objections from some parents who said only a small percentage of students at the schools have reported any problems from the gas and complained that the relocation of students will disrupt their schedules while forcing them to wake up earlier and miss out on after-school programs. According to an LAUSD staff report, Porter Ranch Community School is located about two miles from the Aliso Canyon storage facility that has been leaking natural gas since late October. Castlebay Lane Charter school is about one mile from the site.

“These two schools have been significantly disrupted by the gas leak,” according to the report. “Absenteeism and visits to the health offices at each of these schools has significantly increased.

Furthermore, since the leak was first reported, families are opting out of attending school and are instead choosing independent study for their children, while others have transferred to a different school. Additional requests for independent study programs and school transfers continue.” Despite the concerns of some parents, school board members said they did not want to risk the health of students. “I believe that we should never gamble without sufficient knowledge that absolutely convinces me 100 percent this (leak) won’t hurt kids, and I’m not convinced,” board member Richard Vladovic said. “… If it were my child, I would want to move.”

Michelle King, the district’s chief deputy superintendent, stressed that the move will be temporary, taking effect after the winter break and likely continuing until June. According to the district, students from Castlebay will be moved to Sunny Brae Avenue Elementary school in Winnetka. Porter Ranch Community School students will be moved to Northridge Middle School. The students will be housed in portable classrooms and other available space at each campus. Gas Co. executives have said a relief well they are having drilled will allow them to cap the leak, but that process is expected to take weeks. School district officials said the process could take three to four more months, necessitating action at the two schools. Porter Ranch Community Schools has about 1,100 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, while Castlebay has 770 students from kindergarten through fifth grade.

School board member Scott Schmerelson and Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian said earlier that the district has already installed air filters in classrooms at the schools, assigned additional nurses to the campuses and began daily air-quality monitoring. In a joint statement, they said the problem “has become a distraction to the teaching and learning taking place at our schools.” The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors declared a local emergency on Tuesday in response to the gas leak, in hopes of expediting state and local assistance to help with air monitoring and efforts to cap the leaking well.

No evacuation orders have been issued for the area, but nearly 1,700 Porter Ranch-area families have been relocated and another 1,000 have applied to be moved, at the cost of the Gas Co. The Gas Co. opened a Community Resource Center in the Porter Ranch Town Center Wednesday to offer a variety of assistance to residents, including relocation help. It also has created a website, www.AlisoUpdates.com, to provide updates on the relief well progress, air quality monitoring, community resources and other relevant information.


Ancient History/Breaking News: IN AT LEAST ONE HUGE DEAL IN L.A., TRUMP GOT SCHOOLED
THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL SITE, MORE THAN 23 ACRES NEAR DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, WAS BOUGHT BY TRUMP WILSHIRE ASSOCIATES IN 1989. NOW IT'S AN LAUSD CAMPUS.

By Doug Smith | LA Times| http://lat.ms/1TXRYBQ

Dec 20, 2015 :: On one side was the alpha male of New York developers who burst into town with pockets full of money, a legion of lobbyists and lawyers and an audacious plan to build the nation's tallest building.

Opposing was a tag team Donald Trump would have little reason to fear: Jackie Goldberg and Jeff Horton, two rumpled progressives on the Los Angeles Board of Education.

Long before his run for president and his reality TV career as the ruthless boss, Trump fought an ugly decade-long battle over a Los Angeles landmark.

It's not an exploit he's bragging about on the campaign trail

The prize was the Ambassador Hotel. A legendary Hollywood celebrity hangout and the site of the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, it had endured a long downward spiral before closing in 1989.

The 23.5-acre property, much of it open space, became a rare object of desire in a densely built part of the city.

The Board of Education already had its eye on the property for a badly needed high school when a Trump syndicate swooped it up for $64 million in 1989 and announced plans to erect a 125-story office tower.

The school board countered with a 7-0 vote to take the property from Trump via eminent domain.

Usually that would start a process in which the parties and their appraisers, or a court, would settle on a price.

But not when one of the parties was Trump.

His team launched a fierce lobbying campaign to block a $50-million state allocation to help the district buy the property.

Goldberg, then the president of the school board, took on the notoriously tough negotiator.

"They simply have enough money to buy enough lobbyists to go absolutely everywhere and talk to as many people as need to be talked to until they get what they want," she said.

The district mounted its own lobbying effort and got the state allocation restored.

Talks on a possible sale price ensued but then broke down.

Roused by Goldberg, protesters outside the Ambassador chanted "Dump Trump" and carried signs saying, "Public need over private greed."

Barbara Res, executive vice president for Trump Wilshire Associates, accused the board of "fiscal irresponsibility" for choosing to build a school on "some of the world's most expensive property."

The $73 million that the district was offering for 17 acres of the site was far below the developer's estimate of its value — up to $200 million, she said.

The district, Res said, "will be embroiled for years in litigation it cannot win."

Then Trump blinked.

In January 1991, he and his partners decided to take the nearly $48-million deposit the school board offered as part of its eminent domain condemnation suit.

In doing so, Trump Wilshire Associates, in effect, conceded the district's right to take the property.

Attorney Rita J. Miller denied the widespread perception that the syndicate needed the money to deal with mounting financial problems. Miller said it was the district that had money trouble.

"Trump Wilshire Associates is confident the decision will be in the neighborhood of $200 million," Miller said of the court case. "It would be totally irresponsible for the Los Angeles Unified School District to pay that amount for a school site."

Two and a half years later, Goldberg had moved on to the Los Angeles City Council. Her former aide and successor, Horton, ratcheted up the pressure.

As the eminent domain suit was set to go to trial, the school board abruptly dropped its bid to buy the land. The recession had driven the property's value down to $50 million, and Horton saw no reason to pay the previously estimated value of $74 million.

The Trump team's arguments continued but began to sound overblown.

"We told them from the start they were going to wind up years down the road with no school for those kids, and that's exactly how it's working out," Res said. "You tell me: Who's the winner here?"

Res accused the district of duplicity, saying it reneged on a promise to pay $82 million for the entire 23.5-acre site "because they said politically it wasn't a good idea."

Horton discounted that, saying the offer was only "a potential deal that we didn't accept, because we couldn't figure out a way to pay for it."

Early in 1994 a judge sided with the district.

"The district has treated us terribly and has been extremely cavalier about this," Res said. She said Trump's next step would be to sue the district for damages because it unfairly tied up the Wilshire corridor property. "We are going to end up with the lion's share of the $48 million."

But in December 1997, another judge ordered Trump to repay the $48 million deposit.

Although the Ambassador was once again its property to develop, the Trump partnership maintained that such an undertaking would no longer be financially feasible. Soon Trump, whose share was reported to be 20%, left the partnership with no signature building and little, if any, cash.

By then, Trump's successor in the venture, Wilshire Center Marketplace, couldn't return the deposit, having used the money to pay off debt.

The district sued to recover its deposit. The firm fought, claiming compensation for delays that had made the project untenable.


Again the court ruled in the district's favor. At one point, the board ordered a sheriff's sale, a move the owner forestalled by declaring bankruptcy.

The end of the story comes four years later when the district was flush with construction money.

The school board again voted to buy the Wilshire Boulevard property for a negotiated price of $76.5 million.

Today Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade campus of standout architecture, is there.

But if Trump lost, the district didn't entirely win. It would take nine more years before RFK opened, too late for more than a generation of students.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION'S GLOBAL GAP
http://bit.ly/1mekEeM

LAUSD/NYC SCHOOLS THREATS INVESTIGATION CENTERS ON 21-YEAR-OLD MAINE MAN IN ROMANIA
http://bit.ly/22eXQN6

AGENDA+MEETING MATERIALS FOR TODAY'S 1:30 PM EMERGENCY LAUSD BOARD OF ED MEETING RE PORTER RANCH GAS LEAK http://bit.ly/1k5fald

LAUSD WORKS TO CLOSE TWO PORTER RANCH SCHOOLS OVER GAS LEAK
http://bit.ly/1k4KpNl

HANDLING OF L.A. SCHOOLS SHUTDOWN OFFERS A CIVICS LESSON
http://bit.ly/1QPb4L0

THE TEXT OF THE THREAT THAT LED LOS ANGELES TO CLOSE ITS SCHOOLS
http://bit.ly/1mpGiNF

L.A. SCHOOL DISTRICT COULD CLOSE TWO SCHOOLS BECAUSE OF PORTER RANCH GAS LEAK + smf’s 2¢
http://bit.ly/1ZcD5yY

Statement from Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines / Declaración del Superintendente Ramón C. Cortines
http://bit.ly/1IUJgDN

New York Times: LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK DIFFER IN THEIR RESPONSES TO A TERRORISM THREAT
http://bit.ly/1m7QKcn

THE THREAT + THE SHUTDOWN: L.A. School Report's coverage
http://bit.ly/1T1WQ8K

KPCC: LAUSD SCHOOLS TO REOPEN AFTER THREAT PROMPTED CLOSURES
http://bit.ly/1UA1BHQ

Tale of Two Cities: AFTER CLOSING ALL SCHOOLS, LAUSD FINDS THREAT NOT CREDIBLE - LA Daily News/Multiple articles
http://bit.ly/1TQcfsS

L.A. DEFENDS RESPONSE TO THREAT THAT NEW YORK DISMISSED AS A HOAX
http://bit.ly/1O8zsbI

L.A. SCHOOLS TO REOPEN WEDNESDAY; THREAT AGAINST SCHOOLS WAS 'NOT CREDIBLE,' OFFICIALS SAY
http://bit.ly/1Owh2f6
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Scott Folsom Retweeted
LAUSD ‏@LASchools Dec 15

LAUSD schools will be open and operating under normal school operations on Wed. Dec. 16,
http://home.lausd.net/apps/news/article/525380

"It's the kind of thing that people talk about happening ...but never actually does. Except today it did."
http://bit.ly/1QKPreM

LAUSD officials have yet to announce whether they would reopen their campuses on Wednesday. They plan a 5:30 PM news briefing at LAUSD HQ

#LAUSD Closure: watch this morning's full news conf.
https://youtu.be/Gk9D6Z17n2o

Updates updated :: LAUSD THREAT LIVE UPDATES: Email author claims to be 'extremist Muslim' - LA Times
http://lat.ms/1RQb66l

Teen killed crossing street after L.A. schools closed over threat was - LA Times
http://lat.ms/1I753s0

LA TIMES: All Los Angeles Unified schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence - LA Times
http://lat.ms/1k0IKIP

DISTRICTS MUST ENSURE EQUITY IN RULES FOR ACCELERATING STUDENTS IN MATH
http://bit.ly/1lMMkYL

Press conference now moved to 10 am.

LAUSD ‏@LASchools Dec 15: Parents/Guardians please bring proper ID when picking up your child at school. They will be required.

Students that have arrived at school will be with staff until parents or guardians can be contacted.

LAUSD schools are closed today due to credible threat. Updates will be provided via http://lausd.net & 213-241-2064.

BREAKING: All LA schools shut over 'threat' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35102954

¡Happy Last Night of Chanukah everyone! …or Hanukkah if you choose!

LAUSD Adult Misbehavior Updates [Updated]: DISCLOSURES CAST NEW LIGHT ON DISTRICT'S PROBE OF TEACHER RAFE ESQUITH
http://bit.ly/1NqQCLV

CDC GRADES AMERICAN SCHOOLS ON HOW WELL THEY TEACH SEX EDUCATION
http://bit.ly/1YdgaBg

HIGH SCHOOL CAREER CLASSES CONNECT LEARNING, LIVING FOR TEENS
http://bit.ly/1J3FLFT

Public Policy Institute of CA: GOOD TIMING ON NEW FEDERAL EDUCATION LAW
http://bit.ly/1NioDQJ


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
▲WINTER BREAK: Don't break anything!

*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.
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