Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Grieve. Mourn. Repeat.



4LAKids: Sunday 19•June•2016
In This Issue:
 •  WHAT PAMELA ANDERSON’S NIGHT VISIT TO THE LA UNIFIED SCHOOL BOARD WAS ALL ABOUT
 •  Editorial: WHAT’S REALLY IN LAUSD’S ONLINE CREDIT RECOVERY COURSES?
 •  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.
Orlando.
San Bernardino.
Charlotte.
Sandy Hook.

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AS DELIVERED IN HIS WEEKLY RADIO ADDRESS


The White House | June 18, 2016 :: It’s been less than a week since the deadliest mass shooting in American history. And foremost in all of our minds has been the loss and the grief felt by the people of Orlando, especially our friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. I visited with the families of many of the victims on Thursday. And one thing I told them is that they’re not alone. The American people, and people all over the world, are standing with them – and we always will.

The investigation is ongoing, but we know that the killer was an angry and disturbed individual who took in extremist information and propaganda over the internet, and became radicalized. During his killing spree, he pledged allegiance to ISIL, a group that’s called on people around the world to attack innocent civilians.

We are and we will keep doing everything in our power to stop these kinds of attacks, and to ultimately destroy ISIL. The extraordinary people in our intelligence, military, homeland security, and law enforcement communities have already prevented many attacks, saved many lives, and we won’t let up.

Alongside the stories of bravery and healing and coming together over the past week, we’ve also seen a renewed focus on reducing gun violence. As I said a few days ago, being tough on terrorism requires more than talk. Being tough on terrorism, particularly the sorts of homegrown terrorism that we’ve seen now in Orlando and San Bernardino, means making it harder for people who want to kill Americans to get their hands on assault weapons that are capable of killing dozens of innocents as quickly as possible. That’s something I’ll continue to talk about in the weeks ahead.

It’s also part of something that I’ve been thinking a lot about this week – and that’s the responsibilities we have to each other. That’s certainly true with Father’s Day upon us.

I grew up without my father around. While I wonder what my life would have been like if he had been a greater presence, I’ve also tried extra hard to be a good dad for my own daughters. Like all dads, I worry about my girls’ safety all the time. Especially when we see preventable violence in places our sons and daughters go every day – their schools and houses of worship, movie theaters, nightclubs, as they get older. It’s unconscionable that we allow easy access to weapons of war in these places – and then, even after we see parents grieve for their children, the fact that we as a country do nothing to prevent the next heartbreak makes no sense.

So this past week, I’ve also thought a lot about dads and moms around the country who’ve had to explain to their children what happened in Orlando. Time and again, we’ve observed moments of silence for victims of terror and gun violence. Too often, those moments have been followed by months of silence. By inaction that is simply inexcusable. If we’re going to raise our kids in a safer, more loving world, we need to speak up for it. We need our kids to hear us speak up about the risks guns pose to our communities, and against a status quo that doesn’t make sense. They need to hear us say these things even when those who disagree are loud and are powerful. We need our kids to hear from us why tolerance and equality matter – about the times their absence has scarred our history and how greater understanding will better the future they will inherit. We need our kids to hear our words – and also see us live our own lives with love.

And we can’t forget our responsibility to remind our kids of the role models whose light shines through in times of darkness. The police and first responders, the lifesaving bystanders and blood donors. Those who comfort mourners and visit the wounded. The victims whose last acts on this earth helped others to safety. They’re not just role models for our kids – their actions are examples for all of us.

To be a parent is to come to realize not everything is in our control. But as parents, we should remember there’s one responsibility that’s always in our power to fulfill: our obligation to give our children unconditional love and support; to show them the difference between right and wrong; to teach them to love, not to hate; and to appreciate our differences not as something to fear, but as a great gift to cherish.

To me, fatherhood means being there. So in the days ahead, let’s be there for each other. Let’s be there for our families, and for those that are hurting. Let’s come together in our communities and as a country. And let’s never forget how much good we can achieve simply by loving one another.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, and have a great weekend.


YOU MAY NOTE THAT THIS WEEK’S 4LAKIDS IS ABRIDGED.

1. I was writing of the pending District Budget/LCFF/LCAP – saved by a deus-ex-machina/last-minute-letter from the Superintendent of Public Instruction
2. …plus Eli Broad’s magical reanimation of his Great Schools Now Plan!
3. I had a well-researched-yet-dripping with-vitriol rant about how the Beaudry Building is the Most Visitor Unfriendly Building on the Planet!
4. But it is Sunday afternoon and I am feeling unwell …and nothing I write can compare to the tale of the wonderful+enchanted Tuesday night visit of Pamela Anderson to the LAUSD Board of Education!


¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


WHAT PAMELA ANDERSON’S NIGHT VISIT TO THE LA UNIFIED SCHOOL BOARD WAS ALL ABOUT
Posted on LA School Report Mike Szymanski | http://bit.ly/1UWgtBe

June 17, 2016. 11:16 am. :: Sometimes staying late at the LA Unified school board meetings has its benefits. Particularly when quirky things happen in only-in-LA moments.

About 8:45 p.m. Tuesday late into the meeting, most of the audience members had cleared out of the school board auditorium and the 200 or so protesters outside were gone. There were almost as many people up on the horseshoe dais as there were watching.

Board President Steve Zimmer kidded about seeming a bit loopy because his cold medicine was kicking in. Then, the school police officers stirred, the board members stopped talking and a blur of diverse people marched down the aisle of the auditorium.

Up front was blonde bombshell Pamela Anderson, looking as stunning as she did in her “Baywatch” days two decades ago. In a tight black top and flowered skirt, she brushed back her characteristic blonde locks and prepared herself to address the school board for the first time.

In the pressroom watching on closed-circuit TV, reporters were surprised and snickering about why she was there. The LA Unified communications team didn’t have any idea.

Along with the actress, there were TV journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell and 9-year-old actress Felix Hemstreet, as well as a triathlete, a cardiologist, a best-selling author, a dietician, a doctor of 40 years and Torre Washington, who bills himself as “a professional vegan bodybuilder.”

The circus of presenters was inspired by 14-year-old Lila Copeland from Paul Revere Middle School who wants to have a regular vegan option on the menu in the nation’s second-largest school district. It appeared she had an impact on the board, and she had already met with Laura Benavidez, of the district’s Food Services division, who seemed open to the idea.

“This school district is at the forefront of offering good nutritious food for the students, so we just want them to be aware of allowing vegan options for the students too and helping us have a healthy future for this planet,” Copeland said. “We want the district to provide a vegan option.”


The experts spewed statistics and anecdotes. They brought up methane caused by cows, the drought, global warming, childhood obesity and ethical reasons for being vegan. They talked about how eating meat can cause heart disease and strokes, they detailed the outmoded federal nutritional standards and brought in packets of vegan meal samples for each of the seven school board members prepared by plant-based protein company Gardein’s chef Jason Stefanko.


Anderson spoke for two minutes about milk and water and the United Nations. She said, “Kids today are appalled to learn that animals killed for cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets live in crowded dark filthy sheds by the thousands and are mutilated and slaughtered by having their throats slit while they’re still conscious.”

Lila met this week with Zimmer and fellow school board member Ref Rodriguez as well as with the food services officials. The district already has a “Meatless Mondays” program and has taken the lead in requiring antibiotic and hormone-free chicken and turkey and is considering inexpensive low-fat options created by student chefs. On the other hand, the most animated part of a school board meeting two weeks ago centered on bringing back chocolate milk
.
“I’m impressed with what I’ve been told, but maybe I’m too old to change, maybe I’m not,” said 75-year-old board member George McKenna. “I’ve learned that everything I eat and love is not supposed to be healthy.”

McKenna, who grew up in New Orleans, confessed his love for po’boys and beignets and said he just ate a ham sandwich. “I’m hooked on meat and ice cream.” But, he added, “I’m enlightened, and you make the case for healthy children. At least I’ll think about what I eat. Maybe you’ll change our behaviors, and maybe mine.”

Zimmer quipped to his fellow board member, “We’ll go out for a veggie burger soon.”

It didn’t go unnoticed to the school board that young Lila brought together a virtual Who’s Who of vegan experts, including vegan cardiologist Dr. Kim Williams, Dr. Michael Klaper, Kawani Brown, Dr. Heather Shenkman, Sharon Palmer and others.

Of course, Anderson was a highlight, and although there wasn’t much of an audience, the school board meeting will be rebroadcast on Sunday morning at KLCS Television Channel 58 in between children’s shows such as “Dora the Explorer.” This time around, the show will feature an appearance by Pamela Anderson, and also a rant of a student earlier during Tuesday’s public comments that had a great deal of four-letter words while he described creating his own barber shop. Anderson’s talk is toward the end of the broadcast (at the 5:08:48 mark), which is now available on the LA Unified website.

“I’ve learned so much from these people,” Anderson told LA School Report. “These are the experts. This is my first time to speak to the LA school board, and I think it’s so important to teach children to be vegan.”

Anderson’s children went to schools in the Malibu school district, and she said she allowed her children to make their own choices. “As a mother, we are always trying to raise healthy kids, and this is one of the serious environmental problems. I’m here as a mom.”

Velez-Mitchell said she came as a journalist but felt she had to speak out about some of the food served at the district. “The food that is served in this school district causes cancer. Give them an option to choose foods that will not cause them cancer.”

Ultimately, the team offered to talk to any of the school board members. Zimmer quickly said, “I’m always happy to talk. And thank you for the samples, they were really good.”

The next step is to get a resolution from the school board, and Lila thinks that will happen.

Lila concluded: “No animal wants to die to become our food.”



●●smf: Not to argue Lila Copeland's point, but I refer us all to: Children's Book Review: ARLENE SARDINE Author+Illustrator Chris Raschka, Scholastic $15.95 (40p) ISBN 978-0-531-30111-1 http://bit.ly/1PBaFc2


Editorial: WHAT’S REALLY IN LAUSD’S ONLINE CREDIT RECOVERY COURSES?
By The LA Times Editorial Board | http://lat.ms/1PBaflZ

19 June 2016 :: Because of new rules designed to raise graduation standards, officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District woke up in December to the grim news that only half of its students were on track to graduate, down from 74% the year before. The problem was that this was the first year all students had to pass the full range of college-prep courses — known as the A through G sequence – required by the University of California and California State University for admission.

But just a couple of months later, the situation suddenly, startlingly improved, with 63% on track to graduate. By the end of March, 68% had completed their A-G courses, and an additional 15% were close enough that they might be able to make it. The actual graduation rate will not be known for several months.

How did this remarkable turnaround happen, and what does it mean?

Partly, it was that Michelle King, LA Unified’s new superintendent, moved swiftly and decisively, plunging the district’s high schools into a full-bore effort to bring students up to snuff, with extra counseling, Saturday classes and after-school classes.

But also, the district relied heavily on what are known as online credit-recovery classes. These courses, which have helped boost graduation rates locally and across the country, have grown quickly from a barely known concept a decade ago to one of the biggest and most controversial new trends in education.

This is how they work: Students who flunk a course can make up the credit by taking classes either in computer-equipped rooms at school, or at home if they have the equipment and Internet access. Teachers lecture on videos, the computer displays the readings or practice problems, and students take tests that are automatically graded. Written work is supposed to be reviewed by a district teacher. The courses have certain benefits: Students can replay a lecture for missed material, something that can’t happen in a regular classroom. When they can’t concentrate any longer, they can put the course on hold and take a break.

But professors and other education experts are concerned that there is too little quality control to ensure that students have completed the equivalent of a regular classroom experience.

Considering all the credit-recovery courses provided by educational publishers, it’s impossible to say as a rule whether these courses are sufficiently rigorous. Only one large-scale study has been published: Researchers reported in April that Chicago students who were randomly assigned to take an online Algebra I makeup course fared somewhat worse than those who were assigned to classroom makeup courses, with lower pass rates and lower scores on an end-of-course assessment. And an online credit-recovery course observed by Russell Rumberger, director of the California Dropout Research Project at UC Santa Barbara, required only 12 hours of computer time and the reading of one book.

LAUSD maintains that’s not the case with its programs, which it says are rigorous and effective and take about 60 hours of work.
A Los Angeles Times editorial writer arranged to take one of the courses... The results were at the same time reassuring and potentially disturbing.

In order to get a closer look, a Los Angeles Times editorial writer arranged to take one of the courses offered to students at LAUSD: English Language Arts 11A, commonly known as the first semester of junior-year English. The results were at the same time reassuring and potentially disturbing.

Any student who actually takes the full course — sits through each lesson, answers the questions and completes the assignments — gets a meaningful education. That’s why UC accepts the course, produced by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Edgenuity, as a college-prep class. The reading excerpts come from fine and often challenging literature — “Moby-Dick,” “The Scarlet Letter,” great poetry and the like. Video lectures give the background of the works and teach lessons about tone, setting, vocabulary choice and so forth. There are four writing assignments during each semester. All in all, it would easily take 50 or 60 hours or more.

The catch is that taking the full course isn’t always necessary. Some students are able to pre-test out of much of the course, including the writing.

A 10-question multiple-choice quiz is given at the beginning of each of the three-dozen units. With a score of 60% or better — six of the questions — a student passes the unit, without having to go through the lectures, read the full materials or write the essays. Opening up other tabs on the computer to search for answers on the Internet is allowed. That’s not really cheating: The questions aren’t about straightforward facts. Students must interpret passages, for instance. But there’s plenty of help online via Sparks notes and other resources, and a full hour is given to answer the 10 questions.

A second problem with the course is that no full books are assigned in the first semester; the second semester requires just one book. That’s the minimum required by UC, but significantly fewer than most junior-year classroom-based courses. Carol Alexander, director of college-prep requirements at LAUSD, said there’s only one book required because the students have already taken the course in class and read books there. But if they flunked the course in class, what reason is there to believe that they did the reading or understood it?

Frances Gipson, the district’s chief academic officer, said that not all students get the opportunity to pre-test out of all the units in the course. Students are not supposed to be allowed to skip sections that they did poorly on the first time, she said.

That might be true. But two students at Fremont High School who took the same junior English course described nearly identical experiences. Both said they had pre-tested out of most of the units. One said he had been given only one writing assignment, and the other said he had been given one or two over both semesters — only a fraction of those the course supposedly requires.

L.A. Unified appears to be setting the bar lower than most districts across the nation. Edgenuity says that of the 1,900 districts using the company’s credit-recovery courses, most will not allow students in English classes to pre-test out of units. Districts that do allow skipping of units through pre-testing often require the students at least to do the writing assignments, and they monitor the tests so students can’t search the Internet for clues. And most districts set the passing grade for the pre-test at 70% or higher in contrast to L.A. Unified’s 60%.

The big issue is the lack of accountability... Who checks that students are getting enough online coursework to receive a meaningful education?

The big issue is the lack of accountability. The district has a vested interest in raising graduation rates and making the A-G policy look good. But who checks that students are getting enough online coursework to receive a meaningful education? Who sets the standard, if there is any standard, for the minimum amount of work that must be put into an online course to receive credit?

A UC official also was surprised to learn that students might be pre-testing out of most of the units in any course. Monica Lin, associate director for undergraduate admissions, said UC doesn’t supervise how local school districts use their courses and doesn’t have the time and resources to conduct regular audits even if it wanted to. She added that the university would reconsider approval if it knew that large numbers of students were pre-testing their way through most of the course.

Her instincts are right. If large numbers of students are indeed testing out of significant portions of these courses — which is difficult to ascertain — and if they’re skipping writing assignments on a regular basis, then those students are being done a serious disservice. If they’re just reading one book in a year in what’s supposed to be the equivalent of a junior-year English course, that’s unacceptable too — and raises worrisome questions about the rest of the credit-recovery courses being offered as well.

L.A. Unified deserves credit for its intensive attempt to raise its graduation rates. Online credit recovery can and should be a helpful tool, giving students independence, flexibility and a chance to make up for past mistakes.

But the district needs to get a handle on these courses. It — along with UC and the State Board of Education — needs to set minimum standards, including how much of a course must be completed without pre-testing in order to earn credit.

The new federal school-accountability law that replaced the No Child Left Behind Act places considerable pressure on low-performing high schools and their districts to raise graduation rates. But that’s a worthy goal only if students are better educated than they were as dropouts.

No one is doing teenagers a favor by sending them to college or into the work world thinking they have skills that are still lacking.


COST OF SUSPENSIONS IS HIGH FOR STUDENTS WHO DROP OUT AFTER DISCIPLINE, REPORT FINDS | EdSource http://bit.ly/200VtLf

STATE GIVES LA UNIFIED AN EXTRA YEAR TO ACCOUNT FOR SPENDING ON NEEDY KIDS | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/1UIOHFG

JUST IN: GREAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS NOW UNVEILS PLAN TO FUND EXPANSION OF SUCCESSFUL SCHOOLS TO SERVE 160,000 LOW-INCOME LA STUDENTS - LA School Report http://bit.ly/24ZBrll

PHILLY’S SODA TAX MAY BE TURNING POINT
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/soda-tax-philadelphia-224442


EVENTS: Coming up next week...


*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700


• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR



What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
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 the Superintendent:
superintendent@lausd.net • 213-241-7000
...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. Volunteer in the classroom. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child - and ultimately: For all children.
• 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 13 years. He currently serves as Vice President for Health, is a 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, June 12, 2016

On the merit+worthiness of stargazing+strategizing+heavy lifting



4LAKids: Sunday 12•June•2016
In This Issue:
 •  Op-Ed :: BERNIE LOST. WHAT DO LIBERAL CALIFORNIANS DO NOW?
 •  Art+Rhyme & Art+Story: BEFORE BROAD MUSEUM OPENS FOR BUSINESS, L.A. STUDENTS HAVE IT TO THEMSELVES, AND THE POETRY FLOWS
 •  WHY SCHOOL START TIMES PLAY A HUGE ROLE IN KIDS’ SUCCESS
 •  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.
“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."

"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures.”

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote


There is a movement afoot to improve Civics Education in the U.S. | http://bit.ly/1PQPOGY. …actually there are more than one: www.iCivics.org.

►ANOTHER HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION REQUIREMENT ON THE HORIZON

From the AALA Update/ http://bit.ly/1XOxRMg

Week of 13June | Thirteen states have passed legislation since 2014 that requires students to pass a citizenship test prior to receiving a diploma.

The map below [http://bit.ly/24It9yn] Education Week, June 7, 2016) shows where such legislation is already in place and where similar requirements are being considered.

Arizona and North Dakota were the first states to implement this requirement and are utilizing the same questions that are asked of those applying for U.S. citizenship. The Civics Education Initiative from the Joe Foss Institute in Arizona is pushing for this requirement to be in every state by 2017. A representative from the Institute said that the goal of the Initiative is to bring attention to a quiet crisis. We see it as a good first step toward balancing curriculum in [the] classroom and bringing emphasis to soft disciplines…subjects like social studies and civics [are] getting short shrift in schools.


Improving the nonexistent is always fertile ground for ‘meaningful change’. One need only invest a little chin music (“Raise the Standards!!”) with an appropriately furrowed brow to get in on the Golden Sponsorship Level!

A nice ball cap might help: “Make American Civics Great Again! (Embroidered is better than printed, but never underestimate the marketing potential of an inexpensive baseball cap).


▲QUIZ: Civics Education In California:: EDUCATION FUNDING


A. In California the K-12 Education Budget is centered on THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS. The Governor proposes a State Budget in January and a Revision in May based on anticipated state revenue and legislative priorities. The two legislative houses propose, discuss, debate and amend legislation – The June 15 Budget Bill must be passed by midnight June 15. The Governor approves, vetoes and line-item-vetoes bills
B. In California the K-12 Education Budget is centered on the LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT; locally elected boards of education control education expenditures in their own districts, overseen by the State Office of Education and the County Offices of Ed. - making sure that budgets are balanced, prudent and comply with state and federal regulations.
C. It’s even more local than that! Gov. Brown’s Prop 30 Educational Reform Initiative empowered Boards of Ed, Individual Schools and Elected+Appointed Parent Advisory Councils to cooperatively+collaboratively write and implement LOCAL CONTROL ACCOUNTABITY PLANS (Budgets) that put in place THE LOCAL CONTROL FUNDING FORMULA …which changed California Education Funding forever!
D. Last weekend THE BIG THREE: the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly and the President pro Tempore of the Senate got together behind closed doors and hammered out a budget deal.

For the answer, let’s turn to an article in the LA Times:

▲GOV. JERRY BROWN AND LAWMAKERS STRIKE CALIFORNIA BUDGET DEAL THAT ADDS MONEY FOR HOUSING AND CHILD CARE

By Liam Dillon, Chris Megerian and John Myers | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1Un71Il

June 10, 2016 :: Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders reached an agreement Thursday on a new budget to fund state government, a proposal highlighted by $400 million in low-income housing subsidies as well as expanded funding for child care and early learning programs.

The plan received its first public vetting by the Legislature’s budget conference committee Thursday evening. A formal vote by both the state Senate and Assembly would come later, though the timing remains unclear. California’s new fiscal year begins July 1.

"We’re on a very good path right now and I think we can all be proud of what we’re going to be delivering to the people of California," said state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

The housing money would come with strings attached, according to administration officials who had been briefed on the details, and it could not be spent unless lawmakers loosened regulations on homebuilders.

Housing has been one of the most talked about issues during the spring budget season at the state Capitol, and Brown has urged lawmakers to streamline the process for building new housing units.

The agreement comes almost one week before the constitutional deadline for a new budget, an early compromise that’s likely a sign of just how few contentious issues there were between Brown and his fellow Democrats.

The governor offered a concession to Democrats when revising his budget last month, agreeing to a $2-billion bond measure aimed at mental health needs for the homeless. Legislators responded by embracing Brown’s January proposal to divert an extra $2 billion into the state’s rainy-day fund, an effort to cushion against any economic downturn that might be on the horizon. Both of those items are in the final agreement reached Thursday.

As part of the budget deal, rates paid to state-subsidized child care providers are being ramped up to keep pace with California’s increasing minimum wage. The extra funding is expected to total $500 million annually starting in 2019.

News of the expanded effort on child care programs for low-income families was welcomed by members of the Legislative Women’s Caucus, which made the issue its top priority.

“This is going to be the biggest appropriation in a decade,” said Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), the caucus’ vice chairwoman. “We’re trying to be progressive and think about the future.”

Lawmakers would also repeal a 20-year-old rule known as the maximum family grant, which prevents mothers from receiving additional welfare assistance if they have another child.

“It’s been a long overdue process of eliminating a rule that everyone knew was unfair,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center, a nonprofit that advocates for programs aimed at low-income families. “It’s good news that they’re finally doing that.”

Under the change, families would receive an extra $136 per month per child. An estimated 130,000 children in 95,000 families would benefit.

“It’s the difference between making a rent payment or being put out on the street,” said Frank Mecca, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Assn. of California. “For a family living on or below the edge, it’s going to make a huge difference.”

The budget agreement boosts funding for both the University of California and California State University systems if more in-state students are admitted. UC’s money requires the system to place a new cap on out-of-state student enrollment.

On housing, the budget deal represents a promise to address the priorities of both Democratic legislators and Brown.

Democrats in the Assembly had pushed for the new housing subsidies money as the state’s affordability crisis has continued to spiral. Brown had resisted, saying subsidies didn’t deliver enough bang for the buck. Instead, he proposed clearing some local regulatory hurdles for developers if they reserved units in their projects for low-income residents.

The budget now incorporates both demands, as the new housing money is contingent on lawmakers approving Brown’s proposal at a later date.

::

SO LONG …AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH!
: Maybe you’re working late at Beaudry or in school office or at home over your part of the Budget – whether to fill in a blank cell in a spreadsheet or to justify an entire new program – or continue a successful one; more successfully but with less money. Whether you are providing a dozen slides of a Board Informative slide deck or perhaps formulating a Strategic Master Plan Moving Forward – or even suggesting how get the Parent Advisory Council’s advice just listened-to: Thanks but no thanks. The deal is done/The ship, sailed. The strategy is set; it’s all tactics+operations+logistics from here-on-out. That entrepreneurism looked good on you; file it in the pantry with the cupcakes.


That big budget meeting on Tuesday at the Board of Ed? The Big Vote before the deadline?

Just like last year and the year before – and all the fat+lean years before+ since. Exercises in civic theater and non-participatory democracy.; Come up with new questions for the answers arrived-at last weekend – and be sure to phase your answer as a question …that way it’s debate!


Thank you for the work; I hope we didn’t get your hopes up too far!
Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want – sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.


SEE Op-Ed: BERNIE LOST. WHAT DO LIBERAL CALIFORNIANS DO NOW?
by Harold Meyerson/LA Times| http://lat.ms/1S0j7Bk

[Meyerson concludes: ] June 10, 2015 :: Over the past two years, oil companies and “education reform” billionaires have been funding campaigns for obliging Democratic candidates running against their more progressive co-partisans under the state’s “top-two” election process. In this week’s primary, independent committees spent at least $24 million, with most of that money flowing to Democrats who opposed Gov. Jerry Brown’s effort to halve motorists’ use of fossil fuels by 2030, and a substantial sum going to Democrats who support expanding charter schools.

Charter School ‘independent’ Political Action Committee money from PAC going to a single assembly candidate for in AD 43 is a case in point.

In Assembly District 43 Candidate Ardy Kassakhian is critical of the more than $1.2 million of independent expenditures spent by the previously spectacularly egregious “Parent Teacher Alliance”, which is sponsored by the California Charter Schools Assn. in favor of Laura Friedman. CANDIDATES CRITICIZE, DEFEND CONTRIBUTIONS IN STATE ASSEMBLY RACE - Glendale News-Press | http://lat.ms/1XOlQGJ

In the primary Friedman made the runoff, eliminating Kassakhian. They are both Democrats – though I bet a have five pounds o’ flyers that say Kassakhian is – once was (or heads a sleeper cell) of Republicans awaiting the accession of King Donald!

In “EDUCATION REFORM-BACKED CANDIDATES SWEEP CALIFORNIA PRIMARY ELECTIONS” http://bit.ly/1Yk0BLk - the LA School Reports gets some righteous+angry quotes from LAUSD Board President Zimmer over CCSA’s Big Money PAC …and the the LASR/CCSA apparent conflict o’ interest (being bought+piad-for with the same check) is delightfully answered: DISCLOSURE: LA School Report is the West Coast bureau of The74Million.org, which is funded in part by foundations whose board members have also contributed to the CCSA Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee and EdVoice.

Last election cycle both California State PTA and National PTA sent ‘cease+desist’ letters requesting that the California Charter Schools Association’s so-called independent Political Action Committee/Bogus PTA stop violating PTA’s copyright+trademark.

Crickets.



Sunday Steve Lopez published a column BEFORE BROAD MUSEUM OPENS FOR BUSINESS, L.A. STUDENTS HAVE IT TO THEMSELVES, AND THE POETRY FLOWS (follows)

This gives me permission+opportunity to thank our Ed ®eform Philanthropists when they do the right things …and also to print two LAUSD student poets:


A student named Astrid took a hard look at Jean-Michel Basquiat’s "suggestive dichotomies” and wrote:
Obnoxious liberals
You stand in the middle
Of racial suffrage and rich
Insufferable men
Holding hands high
While Samson is chained
Against his will as time
Passes by.


Juleny Duenez, a junior at Animo Leadership High in Inglewood wrote:
“Weep weep because you aren’t free. Speak speak because you aren’t free. Pray pray because you aren’t free. Don’t stop don’t stop until you are free.”

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


Op-Ed :: BERNIE LOST. WHAT DO LIBERAL CALIFORNIANS DO NOW?

Harold Meyerson | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1S0j7Bk

Jun 10, 2016 :: What should California’s Bernie Brigades do now? How should they proceed with the revolution once the Democratic convention formally bestows its nomination on Hillary Clinton?

If Sanders backers (or, for that matter, Clinton supporters) want to involve themselves in politics, there are a number of elections right here in California in which a keystone issue of the socialist’s campaign – breaking the hold that big money has on our system – is effectively on the ballot.

For even as Sanders was thundering against the corrosive role of money in politics and Clinton was condemning the plutocratic consequences of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, corporate money was carving an ever larger role for itself in California politics – California Democratic politics.

Over the past two years, oil companies and “education reform” billionaires have been funding campaigns for obliging Democratic candidates running against their more progressive co-partisans under the state’s “top-two” election process. In this week’s primary, independent committees spent at least $24 million, with most of that money flowing to Democrats who opposed Gov. Jerry Brown’s effort to halve motorists’ use of fossil fuels by 2030, and a substantial sum going to Democrats who support expanding charter schools.

Six years ago, according to the Associated Press, just one legislative primary race had more than $1 million in outside spending, and four had more than $500,000. This year, eight races saw more than $1 million in such spending, and 15 more than $500,000.

In a heavily Democratic district outside Sacramento, a November state Senate runoff will pit Democratic Assemblyman Bill Dodd, who opposed Brown’s legislation, against former Democratic Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada. Dodd has already benefited from one independent campaign funded by Chevron and other energy companies to the tune of more than $270,000, and from an education reform campaign funded by charter school proponents such as billionaire Eli Broad in the amount of $1.68 million.
The combination of [a] top-two election system with free-flowing outside spending has given rise to a new birth of corporate power in Sacramento.

In a nearby overwhelmingly Democratic assembly district, two Democratic candidates with strong environmental credentials lost out in this week’s primary to a Republican and a Democrat who benefited from more than $1.2 million from charter school advocates and an additional $650,000 from Chevron, Tesoro, Valero and other oil companies.

A similar dynamic has shaped a San Bernardino Assembly contest in which Democratic incumbent Cheryl Brown has been bolstered by major oil company expenditures in her race against Democrat Eloise Reyes.

These contests reflect the new reality of California politics. Businesses that previously would have backed Republicans – oil companies and real estate investors in particular – have responded to the GOP’s electoral eclipse by shifting their contributions to malleable, more conservative Democrats. These Democrats would not prevail in a closed primary system, but have a better chance than Republicans in a general election because they’re not associated with that toxic – to Californians – brand. (They appeal to some Democratic voters and to some Republican ones, who have no better choice.) In this sense, the top-two system helps corporate interests like Chevron.

In some races, unions and such wealthy environmentalists as Tom Steyer have answered the flood of corporate money with a torrent of their own, but the balance remains heavily weighted toward business.

The combination of this top-two election system with free-flowing outside spending has given rise to a new birth of corporate power in Sacramento, in the form of the self-proclaimed Moderate Caucus of Democrats. Aligning themselves with their Republican colleagues, caucus members have blocked a range of environmental and pro-worker reforms. Late last year, Assemblyman Henry Perea of Fresno, who’d headed the caucus since 2012, resigned to take a government relations job with Chevron.


So what’s a California Bernie bro – or for that matter, a Hillary sis – to do? Joining together (because the environmental and liberal groups that backed Clinton oppose the Moderate Caucus’ handiwork as much as the Sanderistas do), they should support the progressive legislative candidates whom the oil companies and charter school advocates seek to defeat. They should work to repeal the top-two primary, through which organized money has increased its clout in Sacramento. And they should work to elect a presidential candidate – her name is Clinton – who will appoint justices who will overturn Citizens United.

You say you want a revolution? This would be a good place to start.


Harold Meyerson is executive editor of the American Prospect. He is a contributing writer to Opinion.


Art+Rhyme & Art+Story: BEFORE BROAD MUSEUM OPENS FOR BUSINESS, L.A. STUDENTS HAVE IT TO THEMSELVES, AND THE POETRY FLOWS

Steve Lopez, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1Pn7uED

June 12, 2016 :: It’s early in the morning in the house where Jean-Michel Basquiat lives down the hall from Marlene Dumas and not far from Ed Ruscha.

And now some visitors are at the door.

One group of students is from Belmont High’s Multimedia Academy. Almost three dozen ninth-graders.

Another group has bused in from Animo Leadership High in Inglewood. More than 60 11th-graders.

What a deal they’ve got.

Before the Broad Museum opens for business, this coliseum of creativity is theirs. No crowds, no lines, no noise but the echoes of their own voices.

But the free pass has a few strings attached. The students can’t just wander off on their own. They have to take seats in front of provocative paintings, learn something about them, discuss.

And then write.

Since the program began in January, 3,200 students have ogled the art and Picassoed the images into words. The Broad Museum teams with local schools and 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center, to tap creativity that is too often idled by lack of exposure.

These students have never been to the Broad.

Many have never been to a museum.

“I’ve actually been wanting to come here for so long, but I know tickets are overbooked,” says Juleny Duenez of Animo. “Once I knew we were having a field trip here, I was ecstatic.”

When elementary school students visit, they study Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog,” Robert Therrien’s “Under the Table” or Ruscha’s “Norm’s La Cienega on Fire.”

Then they write a story.

The older students study works including Roy Lichtenstein’s “Mirror #1,” Barbara Kruger’s “(Untitled) Your Body is a Battleground,” Glenn Ligon’s “Double America 2,” and Basquiat’s “Obnoxious Liberals.”

Then they write a poem.

The range in quality is vast; the bar is high.

On an earlier visit, a student named Astrid took a hard look at Basquiat and wrote:

Obnoxious liberals
You stand in the middle
Of racial suffrage and rich
Insufferable men
Holding hands high
While Samson is chained
Against his will as time
Passes by.

Scrawled in the lower center of “Obnoxious Liberals” are the words “Not For Sale.” Kristin Lorey, an 826LA director who helped design the program, says one student keyed on that phrase in an earlier visit.

“It was someone well-versed in art history who knew what it was like for Basquiat to sell his own artwork, and [the student] talked about obnoxious liberals as people who might buy artwork and turn it from something special into something commonplace,” Lorey says.

“That’s not my take, but what I love about this program is that … there are no wrong answers. They respond to what they see, their interpretation of it, and that’s what we want.”

Art can be intimidating for all of us, especially for youngsters who don’t frequent museums. Ed Patuto, director of audience engagement at the Broad, is trying to blot out the fear factor.

Students are handed prompts to get them thinking and talking. With Ligon’s “Double America,” in which the word “America” is both upright and inverted, Patuto says the prompts are along the lines of:

“Why did the artist make one of them upside down and backwards? What is he saying about America?”

An Animo student thinks on that for a moment and then volunteers an answer.

“Maybe,” she says, “America has two faces.”

A Belmont 9th-grader named Yancey examines Lichtenstein’s “Mirror” and quickly catches on. It isn’t a mirror, but a set of questions: What do you see? What do you want to see? What do you not want to see?

Yancey sees the future.

“I have my job. I have my family. My hair is curled.”

Animo teacher Erin Woods brought her history class to the Broad because “in history we talk about art” as a trip to another time. “I think they can relate more to a different period if they can hear the music and see the poetry.”

Stephanie Lopez, one of her students, sits on the floor in front of Kruger’s “Untitled (Your Body Is A Battleground).” It depicts a woman’s face split by positive and negative exposures, and the image was an emblem in a women’s reproductive rights march on Washington in 1989.

“We’ve been talking in Miss Woods’ class about civil rights, and this has a lot to do with the feminist movement,” Stephanie says. “In my opinion, women should have the right to choose what they do with their own bodies. There’s society’s expectation that you should be a certain way or look a certain way. But you should be the things you want to be.”

Lopez tells me she wants to study political science in college and run for office.

Maybe governor, I ask?

“I want to be president of the United States,” she says. “I tell everyone that and they say, ‘You’re crazy.’ But I think I have the potential.”

At Dumas’ “Wall Weeping,” nine men stand facing a wall, their hands up. Are they praying? Are they under arrest?

Manny Villanueva guesses this is a scene from Jerusalem because the blocks of the wall look ancient. Another student knows it’s not in America because the men don’t have baggy pants. Several students say they’ve seen similar images in their neighborhoods during arrests.

“I’m a minority in which being a majority is the big priority,” writes Ismael Rodriguez.

Juleny Duenez writes:

“Weep weep because you aren’t free. Speak speak because you aren’t free. Pray pray because you aren’t free. Don’t stop don’t stop until you are free.”


The Art+Rhyme and Art+Story program is now on summer vacation but will continue in the fall. To apply, teachers should send an email to schoolvisits@thebroad.org.


WHY SCHOOL START TIMES PLAY A HUGE ROLE IN KIDS’ SUCCESS
TEENS ARE SEVERELY SLEEP-DEPRIVED. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE.

Rebecca Klein Editor, HuffPost Education| https://t.co/zInVJoy29W


06/09/2016 02:05 pm ET :: Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia did it. Seattle Public Schools is doing it. Madison School District in Wisconsin is considering doing it.

Around the country, more school districts are moving to delay their start times. Here’s why: Teens currently aren’t getting enough sleep. And this lack of sleep is having a detrimental effect on their grades and mental health.

Terra Ziporyn Snider, co-founder of the nonprofit Start School Later, has been documenting this problem and advocating changes to fix it since 2011. She started the organization after posting an online petition asking authorities to establish 8 a.m. as the earliest allowable school start time. Within a month, she’d received nearly 2,000 signatures from all over the country. Now, there are close to 75 local chapters of Start School Later, all educating communities about the importance of making school hours compatible with teens’ sleep needs.

“I think educated public opinion is very much in favor of this. Even a vast majority of people who know anything about the issue, if they’ve done any homework or read about it, are for later start times, in theory,” said Snider. “When it comes to specific changes in their school system, there’s much more debate.”

A range of small and large school districts in at least 44 states have taken steps to push back school start times in order to maximize students’ sleep time. In April, Maryland passed a bill incentivizing schools to delay school start times, and New Jersey lawmakers are currently studying the issue.

Here’s why Snider, pediatricians and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention think more districts and states should follow suit.

MOST SCHOOLS START REALLY EARLY

In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement recommending that middle and high schools start classes after 8:30 a.m.

According to Department of Education data from the 2011-2012 school year analyzed by the CDC, only a small share of districts were doing so. About 17.7 percent of middle and high schools started after 8:30. The average start time was 8:03 a.m., with 75 to 100 percent of schools in 42 different states starting classes before 8:30 a.m.

Early start times like these cause teens to be severely sleep-deprived. The AAP recommends that teens get 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep a night, but over 90 percent of of teens are chronically sleep-deprived, according to a 2014 report.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION IS BAD FOR LEARNING

A lack of sleep can have a devastating impact on kids’ futures. Sleep-deprived students are more likely to be overweight, anxious, depressed, have suicidal thoughts, perform poorly academically and engage in risky behaviors, according to the CDC.

Later school start times are proven to improve academic performance.

A 2012 study found that students who started school an hour later than usual saw their math scores on standardized tests increase an average 2.2 percentage points and reading scores increase an average 1.5 percentage points. They also watched less television, spent more time on homework and had fewer absences, the research found.

“Start times really do matter,” Finley Edwards, author of the study, told The Huffington Post in 2012. “We can see clear increases of academic performance from just starting school later.”

Snider, who has a Ph.D. in the history of medicine, first learned about this issue as a medical writer in the 1980s, but it started to hit home as she raised her three kids.

She learned that schools didn’t always start so early and that this type of sleep deprivation was a relatively new phenomenon.

“Nobody is going to tell you it’s good for kids’ health or safety or learning to start class at 7 in the morning,” Snider said.

THE REASON THERE’S RESISTANCE TO CHANGING THE SYSTEM

When Snider’s kids were in school, she worked hard to push school times later, with little success. School start times deeply impact many aspects of community life and are difficult to change, she learned.

“School hours affect everybody in the community, whether or not you have kids. The time the public school runs will affect what time the parks and recreation department can have after-school classes, what times the sports leagues can run, what times school athletics can practice, what time daycare hours are, what time traffic gets bad because of the school buses, what time local employers can hire kids after school; it affects the whole town,” she said.


“It’s those sorts of interests, which are perfectly understandable, and fears which lead people to say, ‘Don’t change, because I had to jump through hoops to make my life work, and now you’re going to change my life,’” Snider said.

Still, delaying school start times doesn’t always mean that kids will get more sleep. Students may just stay up later, according to a study published this year in the journal Sleep. The efforts can also end up being costly. In 2015, Fairfax County spent $5 million to delay school start times nearly an hour, according to the Capital Gazette.

But advocates argue that the benefits outweigh the costs.


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
REGULAR BOARD MEETING - June 14, 2016 - 8:00 a.m. - Including Closed Session Items
AGENDA: http://laschoolboard.org/sites/default/files/%2006-14-16RegBdCSOB-Rev.pdf

REGULAR BOARD MEETING - June 14, 2016 - 1:00 p.m.
AGENDA: http://laschoolboard.org/sites/default/files/06-14-16RegOBpost.pdf

*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 the Superintendent:
superintendent@lausd.net • 213-241-7000
...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. Volunteer in the classroom. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child - and ultimately: For all children.
• 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 13 years. He currently serves as Vice President for Health, is a 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, June 05, 2016

Hero.


4LAKids: Sunday 5•June•2016
In This Issue:
 •  GATES FOUNDATION FAILURES SHOW PHILANTHROPISTS SHOULDN’T BE SETTING AMERICA'S PUBLIC SCHOOL AGENDA
 •  Local Control Funding Formula: STATE OFFICIALS FIND LA UNIFIED SHORTCHANGED STUDENTS
 •  EARLY-ONSET EXISTENTIAL CRISES: Many thanks to the College Board and capitalism
 •  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.
Muhammad Ali
1942 – 2016


"Muhammad Ali shook up the world," the President and First Lady said in a statement released by the White House yesterday. "And the world is better for it.”

“We are all better for it.”


Last Thursday morning LAUSD celebrated itself+its excellence:” CELEBRATING OUR STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT” at special meeting of the Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee. [Video Stream: http://bit.ly/1Y8eJaO]

We measure success in myriad ways.

The program/meeting was a compendium of the things LAUSD has been doing, is doing and does well/better/best – and it was mostly presented by kids!

There were presentations of multicultural/multilingual education: STUDENT VOICES FROM LANGUAGE PROGRAMS. There was an announcement that future dual-immersion bilingual programs will include Arabic, Armenian, and more. We have come a long way from reclassifying English Language Learners …and we are doing well at doing that!

There was a presentation on LINKED LEARNING – and how the District is positively linking learners, programs and outcomes through Project Based Learning and Pathway Portfolio Defense.

…followed by a celebration of DISTRICT ARTS PROGRAMS, including a musical number from the Daniel Webster Middle School Chorus, Presentations in Visual Arts by two students: Pedro Gomez a 5th grader from Los Angeles ES and Kathleen Gonzales, a senior from Valley Academy of Arts+Sciences …plus a showstopper presentation from Kittridge Elementary’s production of The Lion King!

The STEM (SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATH) contingent may have been upstaged ….but were not about to be outdone – with presentations by three of Millikan Middle School’s robotic teams and a presentation on Cyber Patriots from North Hollywood High.


The committee members left the room humming the same tune: and in the full realization that it’s not about what the students have learned …but what they teach us.


The Chicago Tribune/L.A. Times – formerly known as Tribune Publishing has changed its name to “tronc” (always lowercase) in a moment of silly rebranding unmatched since New Coke. | TRIBUNE PUBLISHING, NOW ‘tronc,’ ISSUES WORST PRESS RELEASE IN THE HISTORY OF JOURNALISM - The Washington Post http://wapo.st/1Zn8zlF

“If you wanted to signify the pathetic nasal honks of the last dying dinosaur, "tronc" would be a pretty good word.” - @qhardy) June 2, 2016

…and it kinda/sorta rhymes with Trump. In a post-modern way.

Thursday the LA Times (…or is it the L.A. tronc?) published an editorial that really needs repeating+reading+rereading: GATES FOUNDATION FAILURES SHOW PHILANTHROPISTS SHOULDN’T BE SETTING AMERICA'S PUBLIC SCHOOL AGENDA (follows)


And ever-so quietly the State Board of Ed issued a letter that muffled the sound (“¿¡tronc! ?”) of the other shoe dropping as the state declined to accept LAUSD’s unique way of computing the Local Control Funding Formula/Local Control Accountability Plan. The department stated in a May 27 report that L.A. Unified improperly attributed $450 million in benefits for special education students as also contributing to meeting the requirements of the Local Control Funding Formula

Stay tuned as all sides lawyer-up …what’s half a billion dollars among friends?

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


GATES FOUNDATION FAILURES SHOW PHILANTHROPISTS SHOULDN’T BE SETTING AMERICA'S PUBLIC SCHOOL AGENDA
Editorial by The Times Editorial Board | http://lat.ms/1TUw3A4

June 1, 2016 :: Tucked away in a letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week, along with proud notes about the foundation’s efforts to fight smoking and tropical diseases and its other accomplishments, was a section on education. [http://gates.ly/1TUuTEW]

Its tone was unmistakably chastened.

“We’re facing the fact that it is a real struggle to make systemwide change,” wrote the foundation’s CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellman. And a few lines later: “It is really tough to create more great public schools.”

The Gates Foundation’s first significant foray into education reform, in 1999, revolved around Bill Gates’ conviction that the big problem with high schools was their size. Students would be better off in smaller schools of no more than 500, he believed. The foundation funded the creation of smaller schools, until its own study found that the size of the school didn’t make much difference in student performance. When the foundation moved on, school districts were left with costlier-to-run small schools.

Then the foundation set its sights on improving teaching, specifically through evaluating and rewarding good teaching. But it was not always successful. In 2009, it pledged a gift of up to $100 million to the Hillsborough County, Fla., schools to fund bonuses for high-performing teachers, to revamp teacher evaluations and to fire the lowest-performing 5%. In return, the school district promised to match the funds. But, according to reports in the Tampa Bay Times, the Gates Foundation changed its mind about the value of bonuses and stopped short of giving the last $20 million; costs ballooned beyond expectations, the schools were left with too big a tab and the least-experienced teachers still ended up at low-income schools. The program, evaluation system and all, was dumped.

The Gates Foundation strongly supported the proposed Common Core curriculum standards, helping to bankroll not just their development, but the political effort to have them quickly adopted and implemented by states. Here, Desmond-Hellmann wrote in her May letter, the foundation also stumbled. The too-quick introduction of Common Core, and attempts in many states to hold schools and teachers immediately accountable for a very different form of teaching, led to a public backlash.

“Unfortunately, our foundation underestimated the level of resources and support required for our public education systems to be well-equipped to implement the standards,” Desmond-Hellmann wrote. “We missed an early opportunity to sufficiently engage educators — particularly teachers — but also parents and communities, so that the benefits of the standards could take flight from the beginning.

“This has been a challenging lesson for us to absorb, but we take it to heart. The mission of improving education in America is both vast and complicated, and the Gates Foundation doesn’t have all the answers.”

It was a remarkable admission for a foundation that had often acted as though it did have all the answers. Today, the Gates Foundation is clearly rethinking its bust-the-walls-down strategy on education — as it should. And so should the politicians and policymakers, from the federal level to the local, who have given the educational wishes of Bill and Melinda Gates and other well-meaning philanthropists and foundations too much sway in recent years over how schools are run.

That’s not to say wealthy reformers have nothing to offer public schools. They’ve funded some outstanding charter schools for low-income students. They’ve helped bring healthcare to schools. They’ve funded arts programs.

The Gates Foundation, according to Desmond-Hellmann’s letter, is now working more on providing Common Core-aligned materials to classrooms, including free digital content that could replace costly textbooks, and a website where teachers can review educational materials. That’s great: Financial support for Common Core isn’t a bad thing. When the standards are implemented well, which isn’t easy, they ought to develop better reading, writing and thinking skills.

And foundation money has often been used to fund experimental programs and pilot projects of the sort that regular school districts might not have the time or extra funds to put into place. Those can be extremely informative and even groundbreaking.

But the Gates Foundation has spent so much money — more than $3 billion since 1999 — that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of education policy. Former foundation staff members ended up in high positions in the U.S. Department of Education — and, in the case of John Deasy, at the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The foundation’s teacher-evaluation push led to an overemphasis on counting student test scores as a major portion of teachers’ performance ratings — even though Gates himself eventually warned against moving too hastily or carelessly in that direction. Now several of the states that quickly embraced that method of evaluating teachers are backing away from it.

Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldn’t be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nation’s public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.


Local Control Funding Formula: STATE OFFICIALS FIND LA UNIFIED SHORTCHANGED STUDENTS
By John Fensterwald | EdSource | http://bit.ly/1PvDoUP

June 1, 2016 |In a ruling with statewide implications and financial repercussions for the state’s largest school district, the California Department of Education has determined that Los Angeles Unified has shortchanged low-income students, English learners and foster children by hundreds of millions of dollars they should have received through the state’s new funding system.

The department stated in a May 27 report that L.A. Unified improperly attributed $450 million in benefits for special education students as also contributing to meeting the requirements of the Local Control Funding Formula, which is weighted to provide additional services for children in greatest need. The department found that by counting the same expenditure twice, the district spent less than required on high-needs students. As a remedy, the state has ordered the district to revise its 2016-17 spending plan, known as the Local Control Accountability Plan, or LCAP, to add additional services and programs for the district’s high-needs students.

“We applaud the department for issuing its straightforward legal ruling and ordering L.A. Unified to comply with the law under the Local Control Funding Formula,” John Affeldt, managing partner of the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates, said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing the district halt this illegal practice and invest more fully in its low-income students, English learners and foster youth.”

In a statement late this afternoon, L.A. Unified said it intends to challenge the decision, “which we believe is an incorrect interpretation of the Local Control Funding Formula. If the decision is allowed to stand, it would seriously undermine the district’s ability to continue providing our deserving students with the effective instruction and support services they need to succeed.“

“The state put districts in a bind. Funding is not enough for non-high-need students to receive an adequate education,” said John Affeldt, managing partner of Public Advocates, which filed the complaint. “But the answer is not to rob from supplemental and concentration dollars.”

Insisting that the district “has long been committed to serving the needs” of children receiving extra support from the Local Control Funding Formula, the statement said the state’s decision “would require L.A. Unified to shift money away from these programs and impair our ability to best serve our students. To be very clear, the district is fulfilling its responsibility to provide rigorous and effective instruction, along with social and emotional services, to the hundreds of thousands of high-needs students in Los Angeles. The (department’s) decision runs counter to the intention of LCFF and to our duty to educate our students.”

Public Advocates and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California filed a complaint that led the state education department to investigate the allegations. Affeldt said he was aware of no other district that had double-counted special education dollars as L.A. Unified had.

L.A. Unified is already facing financial pressure as a result of declining enrollment and rising expenses in pay and pension costs that could consume hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years if state voters do not approve an extension of an increase on personal income taxes. If the state ruling stands, it could force the district to shift money in its general fund to services and programs primarily benefiting high-needs students.

Public Advocates and the ACLU estimate the total would be $380 million next year, building to $450 million annually in coming years. That’s on top of the $690 million that the district estimates it will receive in additional funding for high-needs students when the Local Control Funding Formula is fully funded, which the state projects for 2020-21.

But, the ruling noted, the district could also lower that amount by documenting that some special education services, such as language supports for English learners with disabilities, qualified as appropriate expenditures for high-needs students under the funding formula. Affeldt expressed doubts that the district could justify substantially lowering the total.
‘Strained’ legal interpretation

The funding dispute involves a critical but complex calculation that districts make to determine how much money they must spend annually on high-needs students as the Local Control Funding Formula is phased in. Each year, districts must spend an increasing portion of the difference between what they were spending on high-needs students before the new formula was passed in 2013 and the extra money, called “supplemental and concentration dollars,” that they will receive at full funding. The more money that districts claimed they spent on high-needs students when the law was enacted, the less they have to spend moving forward.
L.A. Unified spent about $570 million of its general fund in 2013-14 on special education services. Because 79 percent of disabled students also were English learners and low-income children, the district counted $450 million of that expense as spending for high-needs students, thereby reducing what the district would have to spend at full funding of the formula.

District attorneys, in responding to the complaint, said their calculation was a legal application of the funding formula statute. But the Department of Education agreed with Public Advocates and called the district’s approach a “strained” interpretation of the law. The intent of the funding formula is to provide additional programs and services for high-needs students beyond the level provided for all students, the decision said. Money for special education generally doesn’t meet that standard, because it’s provided to all students who have a disability, regardless of their high-needs status under the law, the department concluded.

“Thus, dollars spent on special education services are not expenditures on services targeted for high need students and may not be counted as a prior year expenditure for high need students,” Public Advocates wrote in its complaint.

Public Advocates first questioned the district’s underfunding in 2014 and sued a year later. Last November, it agreed to an intermediate step of filing a formal complaint with the state. Public Advocates had asked that the state require the district to retroactively fix the funding errors that reduced supplemental and concentration dollars by $126 million in 2014-15 and $288 million this year. The state ruled that the district need only provide additional funding for high-needs students moving forward.

L.A. Unified has 35 days to appeal the ruling. Both the district and Public Advocates can also turn to the courts to resolve the dispute.

Affeldt said he is sensitive to pressures that districts are facing on their base-level funding from rising pension and other expenses, but L.A. Unified “should have been more prudent in approving any new substantial expense, including pay raises, knowing that the issue of special education funding had been raised.”

“The state put districts in a bind. Funding is not enough for non-high-need students to receive an adequate education,” he said. “But the answer is not to rob from supplemental and concentration dollars.”

“We urge LAUSD to move swiftly to adopt the state’s decision, and to work with the community to consider ways to make up for the last two years of underfunding of services for those students. LAUSD has already wasted too much time and money pursuing an interpretation of the law that shortchanged students who need more, not less, support,” Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, said in a statement.

• EdSource reporter Michael Janofsky contributed to this article.
• John Fensterwald covers education policy.



SB/LAUSD INVESTIGATION REPORT



EARLY-ONSET EXISTENTIAL CRISES: Many thanks to the College Board and capitalism
Editorial in the Los Feliz Ledger by Belen Cahill, Polytechnic High School (Pasadena) ‘17 ·

June 2, 2016 :: Describe yourself in 400 words or less:

I am not a woman. I am not a poet. I am not the daughter of Nancy and Jason or the granddaughter of Sally and Lisle, Ann and Peter. I am not Olivia’s best friend. I am not a patient with a neurological condition and titanium in my heart. I am not someone who had an eating disorder. I am not a kid who loves their guitar more than most humans. I am not an activist. I am not sad. I am not a democrat, I am not Irish, I am not smart.

I am a B+ average.

I am not a lover of road trips or Joni Mitchell. I am not fascinated by manatees. I am not a storyteller. I am not a child. I am not spiritual. I am not enamored of the ocean. I am not a wonderer. I am not a wanderer. I am not sensitive. I am not vulnerable. I am not made sublimely happy by the smell of rain. I am not most at home when engulfed by the stars. I am not someone who knows every line of Arrested Development. I am not introverted, I am not naive, I am not afraid.

I am a 3.5 GPA.

I am not someone who laughs. I am not someone who screams. I am not someone who cried ceaselessly as they watched two baby squirrels die on top of one another; one from puncture wounds, the other from heartbreak. I am not from a background of suicide and stifled joy. I am not from a background of alcoholism and dancing on tabletops. I am not obsessed with Jane Austen. I am not a sucker for boys with kind eyes. I am not an insomniac, I am not a bad driver, I am not imperfect.

I am a number. I am a statistic. I am a dot on a scatter plot. I am a transcript. I am an SAT score. I am a frozen smile on an application. I am manipulative. I am bitter. I am stagnant. I am self-loathing. I am a gaping hole of someone else. I remember what it feels like to be a person, but I forget how.

In 371 words, that is who I have become. I wrote a speech this past year on why we should eliminate academic awards at my high school, the larger themes of which mostly dealt with the depersonalization of education which, to me, is the single most upsetting aspect of the contemporary educational experience in America.

What makes my school and schools similar to it in level of demand feel, on some days, unbearable, is this survival-of-the-fittest attitude towards success. There is no time, room, or true empathy for mistakes, unforeseen obstacles, or exhaustion.

And so, we are effectively dehumanizing kids during the time of their lives that is most formative—and that damage, although not irreparable, is lasting. Maybe adults forget that we are still just kids, and so perhaps it is hard for them to see that a good part of our childhood is being drowned by the weight of an educational system-turned-anxiety-propelled industry that depends directly upon the dwindling of our sanity not just to function, but to exist.

As someone who came into high school incredibly confident, passionate and curious, and as someone who has been reduced to not much more than a suffocating self doubt, I have no doubt that this dynamic is not reflective of callow students simply buying into a mindset, but is instead systemic.

More harmful than the pressure to take APs, the sheer workload, or the power of an ACT score is the dark underbelly of it all: the cavernous absence of forgiveness.

Some of my teachers harbor much bitterness about, but show little interest in, my inconsistent presence in class. Few of them know that I had a disease when I was younger that rendered my immune system scarily vulnerable, and that I consequently am ill probably more often than not. Few of them know that I have struggled with depression since my brain surgery in seventh grade, and that some days I cannot get out of bed.

We talk a lot about community and there is something undeniably magical about my school. But we cannot continue to invalidate the very human experiences students undergo because the reality is that those experiences are inevitably going to bleed into our school lives and we aren’t just automatons with an on/off switch.

This is not about relinquishing student responsibility—it is about seeing students as multidimensional people, through a lens of genuine empathy. Because at the end of the day, we are just a bunch of kids doing our best to keep it together, and the odds are not in our favor.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
BREAKING: UTLA Members vote YES on Tentative Agreement. The TA will be voted on by the @LAUSD School Board June 14.

Follow week-long series @CapitalAndMain documenting HOW THE PUSH FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS IMPACTS PUBLIC EDUCATION IN CA.
http://capitalandmain.com/failing-the-test-series/ …

DOES 'CHARTER' MAKE YOU LOOK SMARTER?? Principal of LAUSD's newest affiliated charter says Yes!- LA School Report
http://bit.ly/1UkIKhP


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Special Board Meeting - June 7, 2016 - 9:00 a.m. - Including Closed Session Items
Start: 06/07/2016 9:00 am

*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 the Superintendent:
superintendent@lausd.net • 213-241-7000
...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. Volunteer in the classroom. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child - and ultimately: For all children.
• 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 13 years. He currently serves as Vice President for Health, is a 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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