In This Issue:
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MAKING DEMANDS |
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UTLA+AALA ON THE SPECIAL BOARD MEETING |
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FUNDING REFORM WORRIES POTENTIAL ‘LOSER’ SCHOOLS WITHIN ‘WINNING’ DISTRICTS |
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L.A.
TIMES WISHY-WASHES CHILD WELFARE SCANDAL: There must be zero-tolerance
for tragic child deaths from DCFS, the Board of Supes ...and The Times! |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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FIRST: Congratulations to all the graduates out there
who did the work, completed the assignments, passed the tests and
amassed the credits. You have the diploma and hopefully you are college
ready and career prepared. Or college ready or career prepared – that
debate continues. The world is your oyster – but never lose track of
the fate of young oysters as recounted by Lewis Carroll in the Walrus
and The Carpenter. The wingedness of pigs is questionable …but the sea
is indubitably boiling hot.
Kudos to the parents and family and community of educators and staff:
librarians and custodians and office clerks and administrators and
nurses and social workers and lunch ladies and Beaudry bureaucrats.
Thank you to all the wonderful little people out there in the dark - who
saw these youngsters thus far along against the odds of underfunding
and rightsizing and furloughs and RIFs; despite the hazards of
sanctimonious do-gooders and downright wrongdoers. You are the Villagers
it takes.
Congrats also to the students who culminated from pre-K to K; from
elementary to middle school, from middle to high school. Hooray for the
ones who matriculated from this grade to the next; to every student who
mastered a skill - whether shaping a letter or declining a verb or the
seven-times-table or the periodic table. Good job on every A, B or C –
or gold star/happy face earned. Good job. Thank you to those who helped,
assisted, pushed, cajoled and drove the car pool. Who came to the
meeting. Who bought at the bake sale. Who voted.
You have lit candles and this is the Festival of Light.
SECOND: Our right wing friends – and we all have them – have worried
since its founding that the United Nations would become some sort of
World Government, meddling in our liberties, reading our mail and
regulating our freedom. Now we have PRISM – the NSA and FBI are
collecting and storing emails, sorting contacts, parsing web searches
and looking at browser histories. They know if you’ve been bad or good,
so be good … or else. “Don’t worry,” the president says, “it’s only
metadata.” We aren’t actually reading your mail – we are only storing
it in the unlikely event we need it later. And for the most part, it
only happens to foreigners.
As time goes by the “we” who are doing the storing changes. And later
becomes sooner - and eventually becomes now. The distant possibility
becomes the inevitable.
My public radio station is in a pledge drive. (Yes, I am a subscriber –
they have my money and support but that doesn’t protect me from the
frantic begging!) So I’m listening to the BBC and they – the foreigners –
are worried because it is their mail we are collecting and storing and
sorting and parsing; their web-searches being secretly data mined. The
Dursley family of 4 Privet Drive,
Little Whinging, Surrey, should watch those web searches about wizardry
and the occult – and Vernon’s visits to naughty websites. Gosh forbid
young Dudley takes an interest in pressure cookers. Or bombs. Or both.
A headline about the controversial new edition of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5 – the definitive reference
work for mental health diagnosticians) asks: “Is Crazy the New Normal?”
Apropos of that, read carefully as our menu has changed. Please select from the following options:
● “First they came for the Socialists”, Rev. Niemöller reminds us, “and
I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for
the Trade Unionists….”
● Excellent advice from my favorite mental health professional: “Don’t be so paranoid that it shows.”
● Wisdom from Pogo Possum: “We have met the enemy …and he is us.”
EVERYTHING ELSE THIS WEEK IS TIED FOR THIRD PLACE:
A BIT OF LIGHT at the end of the tunnel as the Board of Ed opened up and
let a ray of sunshine in on Tuesday. The transparency about the Local
Control Funding Formula was a bit opaque. The only speakers allowed
supported the governor’s plan – no other voices need be heard. Supt.
Deasy’s proposed LAUSD budget is totally dependent upon the LCFF passing
exactly as proposed; LAUSD has counted those LCFF eggs as chickens.
There is no Plan B. As to comments upon LAUSD’s budget priorities going
forward, many voices were heard from – and certainly the consensus among
the speakers was to restore cut programs. The superintendent instead
dangles a pay raise; the outgoing board president proposes extending the
school year. The Board of Ed appears to listen but doesn’t respond. Ms.
Galatzan is absent for the whole thing. Ms. Garcia leaves early. For
the unique evening session the superintendent and five board members are
absent. And then there was one.
NOW WE KNOW HOW TO USE THE MULTIPLE CHOICE BUBBLING SKILLS learned in
standardized testing: Ms. Galatzan (who missed the discussion Tuesday)
is circulating an online poll with multiple choices and bubbled-in
answers on how LAUSD should set its budget priorities: BASELINE FUNDING
SURVEY FOR LAUSD SCHOOLS. (Link follows) Far better than a poke in the
eye with a sharp stick …but better no stick at all. And bear in mind
what LAUSD Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said at Tuesday’s
meeting about baseline funding: The funding "base" is the "bare
minimum" ...barely adequate if that.
The choices are not: Do you want an A: Elementary Librarian or a B;
School Nurse and C: How many hours are adequate for each? Schools need a
librarian there when the library is open so kids can study and read
check out books. We need a nurse at the school when students need a
nurse. We don’t decide these things in an online poll or a popularity
contest at the schoolsite. The Board of Ed needs to decide, as former
boardmember Warren Furutani said, that a school without a staffed
library does not fit the definition of a school. (See MAKING DEMANDS,
following, on enlightened priority setting. Also see: FUNDING REFORM
WORRIES POTENTIAL ‘LOSER’ SCHOOLS WITHIN ‘WINNING’ DISTRICTS – which
addresses Ms. Galatzan’s concerns far more succinctly than she.)
The board will set priorities and pass a budget on June 18th, three days
after the statutory deadline for the state’s budget on June 15th …which
may or may not be met. Actually, it won’t be an actual state budget
even then – it will be a budget delivered to the governor’s desk where
he will veto and blue pencil items before he sends it back to be tweaked
and trailer-billed into implementing legislation. The state budget
won’t be said-and-done until after July 1st – when a new Board of Ed
takes office. And a new school year, 2013-14 - ripe with promise and
anticipated fiscal windfalls - begins.
AND THE LAST YEAR? It turned out better than it might have, not as bad
as it could’ve been. Twenty-six students and educators died at Sandy
Hook; the rest of us are survivors. Not Reality TV survivors but
survivors of the reality. Positive things happened last year. Prop 30.
The elections for the most part. Furloughs rescinded; the school year
restored. LAUSD’s 1-2-3 nationally in Aca Deca. New schools and many
School-based Community Wellness Clinics opened. Maybe the most positive
outcome is that it’s over. I went to a luncheon on Friday where the
ground troops (as opposed to the powers-that-be) of ®eform
regrouped+recharged, confronted their setbacks and addressed their
challenges. [NEW COALITION LAUNCHES WITH HIGH HOPES, FEW SPECIFICS] They
are, for the most part, good people with good hearts -- trying to do
what they think is best for kids. They are passionate- as are we all -
because our children are something to be passionate about. The
conversation continues.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
MAKING DEMANDS
by John Merrow in Taking Note/ Learning Matters | http://bit.ly/12ypGsk
5. Jun, 2013 :: If you were regional sales manager for, say, washing
machines, auto parts or lawn fertilizer, you might insist on performance
guarantees from your sales reps, perhaps with the promise of bonuses
for superior performance. But suppose you were a school superintendent?
What guarantees would be appropriate to demand from your principals?
I pose the question because some former principals in Washington, DC,
recently shared their correspondence with former Chancellor Michelle A.
Rhee. Here are two examples, one of which uses ‘safe harbor’–a gain of
at least ten percentile points–as the target.
On September 27, 2007, Chancellor Rhee wrote Carol Barbour, principal of
Rudolph Elementary School, “You are guaranteeing me that you will see a
bump in test scores from 29.2% in English and 26.9% in math (proficient
and advanced) to ‘safe harbor’ in the coming year. I plan to hold you
accountable to these goals.”[1]
One day later the Chancellor wrote Lucia Vega, principal of Powell
Elementary School, “You are guaranteeing me that you will see a bump in
test scores from 22.7% to 27.7% in English and 22.0% to 37.0% in math of
students who are proficient and advanced. This is a substantial amount
of progress to make in one year, and I plan to hold you accountable to
meeting this goal.” [2]
Those one-on-one meetings were tense affairs, according to former
Associate Superintendent Francisco Millet, who sat in on many of
them.[3] “In that 15-minute period she would ask each one of the
principals, ‘When it comes to your test scores, what can you guarantee
me?’ And she would write it down. And you could cut through the air with
a knife, there was so much tension.”
As I read those emails, I found myself wondering what I would want
school principals to guarantee in writing if I were their
superintendent. Here’s my thinking: Because what we choose to measure
reveals what we value, I would use performance guarantees to send a
clear message to my principals about what matters:
Dear Principal Smith,
In our meeting we established the following eight goals for your
school. Please understand that I am going to hold you accountable for
achieving them, just as I expect you to hold me accountable for
providing you with the resources you need to achieve them.
1. Daily recess of at least 30 minutes for every child;
2. Art and/or music at least three times a week for every student;
3. Detailed records of pupil and teacher absenteeism, including patterns and your strategies for dealing with problems;
4. At least one opportunity per week for every teacher to observe a colleague’s teaching;
5. At least four evening events involving parents and interested community members, such as a student talent show;
6. A maximum of one week of ‘test prep’ activities;
7. Evidence of ‘project-based learning’ and other group projects
using technology to involve others schools, either in-district or out;
8. Reliable evidence of academic improvement, including student performance on our district’s standardized test.
Respectfully,
John Merrow, Superintendent
Every one of these goals is measurable. Perhaps some should be more
specific. Perhaps I have omitted goals that you would insist upon. Feel
free to edit them.
I leave you with two big questions: “Is it reasonable for
superintendents to enter into this bargain with their principals?” And
“Could setting multiple and varied goals, such as the ones I chose, be a
healthy giant step away from our current obsession with test scores?”
Your thoughts?
—————-
Footnotes
1. Principal Barbour ‘resigned under duress,’ according to a
grievance she filed in August, 2008. Rudolph did not achieve the ‘safe
harbor’ gains. It improved from 29.23% to 36.45% in reading but declined
in math from 26.92% proficient to 16.82%.↵
2. Principal Vega made both goals. Her students went from 21.97% to
48.94% in math and from 22.7% to 34.04% in reading. However, she
resigned under pressure in the spring of 2008–before the test results
were announced. According to sources, about two dozen principals,
including Ms. Vega, were offered a choice between resigning or being
fired. Ms. Vega wrote in her undated letter to the Chancellor, “It is
with great sorrow that I am hereby tendering my resignation to you
effective July 15, 2008. Although there is much to say, I believe the
reasons leading to this decision are known by you, and I will therefore
leave them unsaid at this time.”↵
3. For more, see “Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error” [4LAKids http://bit.ly/15xits5]
● This blog is written by John Merrow, veteran education reporter for
PBS, NPR, and dozens of national publications. He is President of
Learning Matters, a 501(c)(3) media production company based in New York
and focused on education. He is also the author of The Influence of
Teachers.
●● smf: There are extensive comments and responses to this article on Merrow’s website [http://bit.ly/12ypGsk]
as well as clarifications by Merrow himself. There is an interesting
debate of education theory and management theory among+between education
theorists and management theorists: Campbell’s Law: “The more any
quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the
more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will
be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to
monitor” in invoked – as well as Policy Based Evidence Making – which is
quite the opposite of Evidence Based Policy Making.
The only reasons I have not posted the comments and responses here. is they are extensive and ongoing.
I’m not sure I’m proposing Merrow as the next LAUSD supe – but I do want him on the selection committee!
UTLA+AALA ON THE SPECIAL BOARD MEETING
►UTLA: SPECIAL BOARD MEETING OF TUES., JUNE 4 - KEEPING THE PROMISE OF PROP. 30
From UTLA.Net | United Teachers Los Angeles http://bit.ly/ZBlILt
UTLA applauds the push by LAUSD School Board members Bennett Kayser,
Richard Vladovic and Steve Zimmer for smaller class sizes and full
staffing. The trio is calling on the Superintendent to “develop
strategies to return LAUSD to 2007-2008 school staffing levels and
ratios.” The motion, drafted by Mr. Kayser, comes before the School
Board at a special meeting, Tuesday, June 4th at 9am.
In November California voters passed Proposition 30, fully expecting
those increased tax dollars would go directly to classrooms. Months
later the District has yet to keep the promise to voters. UTLA
enthusiastically supports the Kayser motion and calls on the School
Board to pass it in a timely manner.
UTLA President Warren Fletcher said, “LAUSD needs a repair budget, not a
status quo one. Budgetary decisions made now will profoundly affect
what kind of educational opportunities L.A. students have for several
years to come. We cannot allow the current degraded levels of funding
and staffing; and the ballooning class sizes to become the new normal.”
Parents expect their children will get a quality education at clean,
safe schools, and Mr. Kayser’s motion addresses that. It calls not only
for schools fully staffed with teachers and Health and Human Services
professionals, but also full staffing of classified employees —
including custodians and safety personnel.
►COMMENTS TO THE BOARD OF ED BY AALA: :STRATEGIC PLAN ON DISTRICT STAFFING
From the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Weekly Update Week of June 10, 2013 | http://bit.ly/19aPGLB
June 6, 2013 :: On June 4, 2013, the Board of Education held a special
meeting to discuss Governor Brown’s proposed budget in depth. Several
presenters explained the Governor’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)
and legislators’ responses. As mentioned in last week’s Update, a
resolution sponsored by Bennett Kayser, Dr. Richard Vladovic and Steve
Zimmer received its initial announcement during the meeting. Entitled
Creating Equitable and Enriching Learning Environments for All Los
Angeles Unified School District Students, the resolution will be
considered at the Board meeting of June 18, 2013. Following are comments
made at the meeting by AALA President, Dr. Judith Perez, regarding the
budget and the resolution:
Good morning, Mr. Superintendent and Board members. My name is Judith
Perez; I am President of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. AALA
fully supports the Governor’s LCFF and signed a letter with you and
other members of the L. A. Compact endorsing it. To us, it’s a matter of
justice for our students. We have encouraged our members to communicate
with their legislators and support it, as well .
I am here today to urge you to develop a long-term, strategic plan to address staffing in LAUSD .
Eight months ago I stood at this podium and informed you that our
administrators are overwhelmed by their current workload. Every day I
continue to receive phone calls and e-mails from our members reminding
me that their commitment to maintaining the safety of students and
staff, the numerous initiatives they must implement, the multitude of
interruptions and dearth of administrative support make it extremely
difficult to focus on instruction. They worry about properly
implementing the new teacher evaluation system, the A-G requirements,
Common Core and restorative justice programs .
They are concerned about the supervision of instruction, extracurricular
activities and after-school programs. They want to work closely with
parents and community members. They can’t do it alone .
California is now the 49th state in the United States in funding for
public education. AALA members are fully aware that the worst recession
since the Great Depression has forced our District to hang on in
survival mode. In fact, austerity has become the norm. Because Los
Angeles County voters made sure Proposition 30 passed in the November
election, we finally can look beyond mere survival. No child should be
shortchanged because a principal is forced to choose between school
safety and highquality instruction. No administrator should be expected
to routinely work 60-70 hour weeks, at the risk of his/her health and
well-being. These are the reasons we urge the District to increase the
number of assistant principals at all levels .
Finally, let me repeat what I said last October: You simply cannot run a
school, visit classrooms, engage parents and handle the multiple issues
that occur on an hourly basis without a greater level of staffing. We
strongly support a strategic plan to reduce class size, restore office
staff, custodians, human service professionals, library aides and
increase the number of assistant principals throughout the District. Our
goal is for students, parents and the larger community to be well
served .
*To access a summary of the Governor’s funding proposal prepared by the
California Department of Finance, visit Overview of the Local Control
Funding Formula Proposal
http://www.dof.ca.gov/reports_and_periodicals/district_estimate/documents/LCFF_Funding_Estimates.pdf
FUNDING REFORM WORRIES POTENTIAL ‘LOSER’ SCHOOLS WITHIN ‘WINNING’ DISTRICTS
By John Fensterwald | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/ZCX3pP
June 7th, 2013 :: Until now, the greatest tension over Gov. Jerry
Brown’s proposed school finance reform has been largely among districts:
a political tussle between unhappy suburban and optimistic urban school
factions over how new education dollars should be divvied up. But signs
of discord in Los Angeles Unified indicate that the same battles over
money may eventually play out among “winner” and “loser” schools within
large diverse districts – like Oakland, San Diego and San Jose – that
have both high- and low-income schools.
While Los Angeles Unified as a whole will significantly benefit from
Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, which steers extra dollars to
districts with lots of poor children and English learners, schools in
Sherman Oaks and other relatively prosperous neighborhoods in LAUSD may
not. Parents there are worried that their schools may be left behind,
unable to afford essential programs and services, from summer school to
physical education teachers, that other schools in the district will
have.
In large part, the issue is over the difference between the base funding
per student and the supplementary dollars for high-needs students that
Brown has proposed; suburban districts without English learners and
low-income students – the targeted groups – say that the base is too
low, that it will not completely restore districts to the funding they
had before the recession in 2007. Both the Senate and the Assembly have
passed alternative versions of LCFF with a higher base, though they take
different approaches.
But also at play is the extent to which districts will have flexibility
in deciding how the extra dollars for high-needs students can be used –
whether that money will have to be spent exclusively on high-needs
students at their schools (one way of preventing money from disappearing
at the district office) or whether schools and districts can use some
of the money for summer school, counselors, assistant principals or
computers to benefit other students and all schools as well.
The direction should become clearer soon. Staff and legislative leaders
from the Senate and Assembly are negotiating with Brown’s staff on the
details of the formula and the restrictions on how money can be used.
They want to cut a deal within days so that a final bill can be voted on
next week.
Where the money goes
Under the LCFF, Brown is proposing three funding elements: base funding
for all students, based on most but not all of what the average district
got in 2007-08, plus cost-of-living adjustments; a supplemental amount
equaling 35 percent of the base for every English learner, low-income
student and foster child in the school; and a bonus amount, called a
concentration grant, up to 17 percent of the base, for districts in
which at least half of the students are high-needs.
Los Angeles Unified, with 70 percent of students classified as
low-income and 28 percent English learners, would get a lot of extra
dollars overall: nearly $12,000 per student, among the highest
allocations in the state, once the system is fully implemented in an
estimated seven years. Most of the 784 schools in the district would
qualify for supplementary and concentration dollars, but in about 77
schools, serving about 8 percent of students, 40 percent or fewer of the
students are low-income, qualifying them for no concentration dollars
and fewer supplementary dollars. In San Diego Unified, it’s 41 out of
222 schools. In Los Angeles Unified, schools with less than 50 percent
of students in poverty also don’t qualify for federal Title I dollars
for low-income students.
A lot is at stake. Among those awaiting word from Sacramento is Tamar
Galatzan, an LAUSD board member who represents much of the racially and
economically diverse San Fernando Valley. Parents from her district
attended a presentation at the Valley Schools Task Force on the proposed
funding formula last month that she organized to “start the
discussion,” she said.
Parents in her area are particularly anxious, because their schools lost
resources when the district raised the threshold for receiving federal
Title I money from 40 percent low-income children attending the school
to 50 percent. They suspect the district may steer LCFF money away from
them, too. “This spring our PTA was asked to fund a long list of basic
salaried positions and equipment (among these, part-time classroom aides
and a librarian, arts educators, technology for students and staff),”
Janet Borrus, a parent at Dahlia Heights Elementary School, with just
under 50 percent low-income children in the Eagle Rock area of the city,
wrote in an email. “Try though we might, we cannot afford to. We should
not have to. Nor should our low-income students be asked to peddle
cookie dough to raise money for their own academic intervention.”
This week, Galatzan introduced one of two board resolutions, which will
be voted on later this month, providing guidance to Superintendent John
Deasy on using the district’s LCFF funding. Galatzan’s resolution would
require that LCFF dollars for high-needs students “follow the child to
the school site” and asks Deasy to prepare “different allocation models”
showing how the money would follow students. Yet the resolution also
would require that the allocation models “take into consideration the
base level of funding every school needs to survive and thrive –
regardless of zip code, size or composition” and asks Deasy to determine
what that base should be.
Galatzan acknowledged in an interview the tension of two potentially
conflicting goals of directing dollars to high-needs students who
generated them under the formula and setting a level of spending for all
students exceeding what Brown has defined as base funding under the
LCFF.
“There must be a funding floor below which we are not going to go,”
Galatzan said. “We as a district must be committed to providing access
to a certain level of services that every child deserves.”
The other competing resolution, proposed by three board members, makes
the same assumption, calling for a three-year district-wide plan to
restore class sizes and provide an expanded school year, enrichment
programs, counselors, librarians and teacher raises. This option doesn’t
distinguish the specific needs of high-needs students.
Senate, Assembly approaches
Much of the anxiety among suburban districts and middle-class schools
within poor districts would dissipate if the base funding per student in
the LCFF were raised. Brown proposes, at full implementation, between
$6,437 per student in grades 4-6 to $7,680 per student for high school.
The Senate’s budget raised this by about 9 percent – between $568 and
$688 per student, depending on the grade. But the Senate assumed $4
billion more in state revenue by 2019-20 than the Department of Finance
and raised the base in part by eliminating the concentration factor – a
move Brown has rejected. Without extra revenue, raising the base would
require stretching out the implementation period or reducing dollars for
high-needs students – one option on the table that advocates for these
students would fight and Brown hasn’t indicated he’d support, said Rick
Simpson, deputy chief of staff to Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los
Angeles.
The Assembly took a different tack, offering districts an alternative to
the LCFF that fully restores their funds to pre-recession levels but
does not provide extra money for targeted students. Districts would
choose whichever option is better. It’s not clear how much money this
new option would divert from the LCFF.
The LCFF’s final fiscal accountability language will be critical.
Brown’s overall view is to give school boards flexibility to make
decisions while making sure that the spending plan is transparent and
dollars for high-needs students are spent on them. The May budget
revision says that supplementary dollars “should be proportional to the
enrollment at each school site” of the targeted students. It also says
the concentration grants should “primarily benefit” high-needs students.
The Senate’s version would impose a stricter legal condition, that the
extra dollars “supplement not supplant” dollars spent on high-needs
students; they must provide extra services and staff.
It’s a balancing act. On the one hand, schools should avoid spending
that creates segregated programs that should be better put toward a
schoolwide benefit, said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of
Oakland-based Education Trust-West, which advocates for underserved
students. But at what threshold of disadvantaged students is there
enough money generated to spread around, to shift from tutoring for
disadvantaged students to an extra counselor for all students?
Districts should have flexibility to use supplementary dollars to create
common strategies, say, for all English learners, Ramanathan said. But
base funding, not supplementary dollars, should pay for teachers’
raises, he said.
Districts are anxious to restore programs and staff positions that were
cut over the past five years. The danger is that money will end up
committed long-term, at the expense of poor students for whom the new
funding system was intended, Ramanathan said.
L.A. TIMES WISHY-WASHES CHILD WELFARE SCANDAL: There
must be zero-tolerance for tragic child deaths from DCFS, the Board of
Supes ...and The Times!
LESSONS OF THE GABRIEL FERNANDEZ CASE: YES, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE DEATHS
IN THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE CAN'T, AND
SHOULDN'T, DO BETTER.
LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/17WIPFV
June 4, 2013 :: There is nothing more outrageous than the death of a
child at the hands of an abusive parent who was under the watch of child
welfare workers who, in the end, didn't step in and stop the abuse.
Such appears to be the case with the death of 8-year-old Gabriel
Fernandez. All the elements are there for a high-pitched emotional
public response: Politicians. Government bureaucrats. Bad parents. And
an innocent child, now dead.
But if the public and the county supervisors leave their setting on
outrage, experience shows that the result is too often a cycle of
invective, firings, discipline and policy changes that may satisfy a
hunger for action, but only of the wheel-spinning sort. Los Angeles
County has been through this countless times, reacting with unfocused
anger to the cruel death of a child, with the result that the Department
of Children and Family Services has run through 17 permanent directors
or temporary leaders over the last 25 years, and that it has added and
then eliminated layers of supervision and reporting. The churn of
leadership and the changes of policy and procedure are to no avail, and
in fact are counterproductive, if they fail to move the child welfare
system any closer to improvement. If it is to have any chance of being
useful, the outrage must in the end yield to a more mundane, clinical
analysis of what went wrong. And then the difficult, slogging work of
adjusting,
supervising, overseeing,
improving.
Let's be clear that outrage, in the case of Gabriel Fernandez, is
warranted. The details of his abuse and death, as set forth in internal
county documents and reported by Times staff writer Garrett Therolf on
May 30, are gruesome and depressing. There had been numerous
investigations into allegations of neglect and emotional and physical
abuse against him and his siblings dating back to 2003. Hospital reports
tell of head injuries, BB gun wounds, fractures and bruises. Pellets
were found in his groin and his lung.
Gabriel's teacher told of bruising on his face and hands, scratches on
his head, a swollen face. The child reportedly told authorities he had
been sexually abused and shot in the face with a BB gun. A suicide note
was discovered.
Repeated referrals to the Department of Children and Family Services
resulted in investigations, followed by determinations that allegations
of abuse were unfounded. One referral was still open, two months after
the state's legal deadline for completing an investigation, at the time
of the child's death on May 24.
The reports point to repeated and apparently unheeded warnings to county
authorities whose purpose is to ensure the safety of children.
The job of a child social worker is exceedingly difficult, perhaps
nowhere more so than in Los Angeles County. When tragedies (or "critical
incidents," as they are called in county reports) occur, frontline
workers who chose the profession out of a sense of dedication to child
welfare and spent years in training are often branded in the public
as incompetent or lazy. Caseloads are large. Managers, hoping to respond
to or avoid a tongue-lashing or worse from the Board of Supervisors,
respond to each incident with a new policy or practice, a new form to
complete, a new layer of oversight, resulting in an ever-expanding
policy manual that is now about 6,000 pages long — impossible for a
child social worker to read, let alone follow.
Frontline workers often feel under assault, and they quickly learn to
hunker down and keep their heads low. Even that isn't easy. The majority
of children who die due to abuse or neglect do so in their parents'
home, so there is an obvious incentive for social workers wanting to
avoid scrutiny — wanting to avoid responsibility for the next Gabriel
Fernandez — to recommend removing children from their homes even when it
isn't clear how serious the threat is. But evidence also shows that
children taken from their parents and referred to foster care suffer
psychologically, generally perform more poorly in school, are more
likely to become involved in the delinquency system and have trouble
coping with life once they become adults — so there is an incentive too
to keep families united or, at least, to be able to produce numbers that
show fewer children being removed from their homes. Judgment is needed
above all, but judgment means choice, choices can be wrong, and
consequences
for the worker can be
serious.
A succession of confidential internal county reports to the Board of
Supervisors advise that failures begin on the front end, with workers
who have been improperly trained, don't perform investigations properly,
don't use assessment tools correctly and don't communicate well. That
implies continuing failures up and down the line — with hiring,
training, supervising.
The bucks stops with the Board of Supervisors. Its task is to walk the
very narrow line between outrage — the fury that can result in a round
of recriminations, purges and policy swings, without any actual
improvement in department culture and practice — and the fatalistic
notion that in a county the size of Los Angeles, improvement is beyond
reach. It's not. There may always be tragic child deaths. But we can do
better.
●● smf: The headline editor wrote; “There always will be deaths…”.
The editorial board wrote “There may always be tragic child deaths”.
Neither is anywhere near acceptable!
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
GOODBYE MR. DUFFY: Still-feisty former teachers union
chief retires: A.J. Duffy’s career in education ends aft... http://bit.ly/18kcXvd
NEARLY 50 YEARS UNDER A SCHOOL’S SPELL: Violin teacher Mickey Fruchter has been teaching at the Neighborhood Music School... http://bit.ly/19dOtDp
Briefly from SI&A: LEGISLATION PENDING ON TESTING, CHARTER SCHOOLS, FACILITIES, DISCIPLINE, CTE +CHANGES @ DSA... http://bit.ly/14MvR6y
WHERE SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY JOIN: Themes in the News A weekly commentary written by UCLA IDEA on the important ... http://bit.ly/19dA8aa
EdSource Quick Hits: FRESH AIR IMPROVES ATTENDANCE, SENATE GIVES UP ON DELAY OF LCFF, SCHOOL NURSES IN SUPREME COURT... http://bit.ly/13qjhKK
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARSHALL TUCK? - Partnership Head “Exploring” Run for Public Office http://bit.ly/18YeMej
C.L.A.S.S.: New Coalition Launches with High Hopes, Few Specifics + smf’s 2¢: Posted to LA Schools Report by B... http://bit.ly/13qe59H
NEW DATA SHOWS ‘®EFORMERS’ ARE GETING IT WRONG: by David Sirota | Perspectives at Moyers and Co. | http://bit.... http://bit.ly/18gE6PM
GALATZAN POLLS PARENTS, TEACHERS ON SCHOOL STAFFING LEVELS + smf’s 2¢: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Dail... http://bit.ly/18gy6GH
DEPUTY MAYOR JOAN SULLIVAN NAMED CEO OF PARTNERSHIP FOR LA SHOOLS (sic): By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Da... http://bit.ly/186VN41
L.A. UNIFIED OFFERS TO SETTLE 40 ADDITIONAL CLAIMS FROM MIRAMONTE STUDENTS: The district offers $17 million to... http://bit.ly/15NOA4O
Op-Ed: LAUSD SHOULD HAVE MORE PUBLIC MEETINGS: By Bennett Kayser Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Daily News | http://... http://bit.ly/15NJci6
SPI Torlakson: “I ask your support for the $1.5B the Assembly included
for CCSS implementation in the budget proposal it passed last week."
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD ON THE NEW SCHOOL FUNDING FORMULA: California has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ... http://bit.ly/18VKJGk
“More graduates, fewer inmates”: ENDING OUR PUNISHMENT CULTURE: Marqueece Harris-Dawson, President and CEO, Co... http://bit.ly/181vpZm
LAUSD BOARD MEETS (TWICE) TO HEAR BUDGET PRIORTIES: LAUSD board hears pleas to boost campus hiring, academic p... http://bit.ly/18UBfLI
Megan Reilly: the funding "base" is the "bare minimum"
L.A. TIMES WISHY WASHES CHILD WELFARE SCANDAL: There must be zero-tolerance for tragic child deaths from DCFS,... http://bit.ly/15Dsf9X
L.A. STUDENTS TACKLE SOCIAL PROBLEMS FOR ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL: The high school teams' projects include growing... http://bit.ly/11UXBcX
This just in: YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE SEX …and get STD test results by text message.... http://bit.ly/132BWMs
MOST CRENSHAW HIGH TEACHERS BEING DISPLACED IN LAUSD REORGANIZATION: The school is being split into three magn... http://bit.ly/15w9x3U
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
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress,
senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find
your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these
thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
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