“Charter school operators and some community groups are urging LAUSD officials to discard the idea of having a parent advisory altogether.”
Voting begins in new LAUSD reform program
By Connie Llanos Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group [Daily News/Daily Breeze] Staff writer Melissa Pamer contributed to this article.
Parents, staff and students were among groups of people voting Tuesday at San Pedro High School on whether to accept proposed reform plans. Community members cast their votes during the evening voting session. (Scott Varley/Staff Photographer)
Posted: 02/02/2010 08:06:57 PM PST -- In a voting process that appeared riddled with flaws, parents, teachers and community members cast ballots Tuesday to help Los Angeles Unified School District pick operators for 36 schools under a new reform program.
But the district's guidelines for voting were so loose that it appeared many voters, especially teachers, were allowed to cast more than one ballot.
The vote was advisory only, meant to help LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines and the school board understand public opinion as they choose outside groups to run the new and underperforming schools under the School Choice reform plan. Results were not released Tuesday, as more voting is scheduled for Saturday.
But its advisory nature didn't stop an aggressive campaign by some of the groups bidding for school control.
During the morning voting at a middle school in the San Fernando Valley, for example, most voters were school employees, rather than parents or community members.
More than 165 votes were cast during a three-hour stretch, but many voters were requesting two ballots - one for the teacher category and one for the community member category.
The ballots, color-coded for the different categories, were dropped into cardboard boxes that organizers with the League of Women Voters were expecting to bring home until after Saturday's balloting.
Even the postal carrier who delivers mail to the middle school was persuaded to vote.
"Anyone can cast a vote as a community member," one teacher told the postal carrier as he picked up letters from the school's main office.
The mailman cast his ballot before rushing off to finish his route.
The League of Women Voters is running the voting at 30 election sites at a cost of $50,000. Parents, school employees and community members will have another chance to vote Saturday.
Raquel Beltran, executive director of the League of Women Voters, verified that at least four voting sites experienced several problems. Those included electioneering, children brought in to cast ballots and school employees casting more than one ballot.
Voters who cast more than one ballot were doing so thanks to a loophole in the voting process that includes multiple voter categories, including a "community members" group that does not require any particular tie to the school or residency.
Beltran said election supervisors were "discouraging" people from casting multiple votes, but because the league did not specifically state in the rules that people could not do this, election site volunteers could not prevent it.
District officials said they will look at revising the voting process.
"The superintendent will debrief after the votes are over, we will learn from it and get back to the original intent of this plan: that is to create quality schools based on thoughtful plans and creating a space for open and honest parent and community engagement," said Matt Hill, a special aide to Cortines who is supervising the reform effort.
A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said his union did not encourage teachers to take advantage of the loophole, although the union Web site does mention that school employees are eligible to vote twice.
Duffy, however, said the "chaotic" voting process was created by district officials.
"We are following all the rules and guidelines," Duffy said.
"This voting process was created out of the dictates of a school board majority. It was ill-conceived and carried out in a chaotic way."
LAUSD board member Yolie Flores, who authored the district's reform plan, said she was also extremely "disappointed" and "disgusted" with some of the issues she'd heard about the voting Tuesday.
But she urged parents and community members to study the proposals that have been drafted by school applicants over the next three days, so that they can make an informed decision if they hadn't done so already.
"This has opened up a process for the first time in this district that has engaged hundreds of parents and we want to celebrate that," Flores said.
Locally, two campuses participated in Tuesday's election as well, but the ballots at Gardena and San Pedro high schools offered a simpler choice than those at most other campuses. That's because those two schools, like a few other aged, existing schools, drew no bids from outside operators.
Instead, a panel of teachers and administrators at each school drew up internal reform plans.
In recent weeks, parents and students were invited to hear details of the proposals. A meeting at Gardena High drew only about 150 people, while last week San Pedro High packed more than 1,300 into its auditorium.
At the two schools, voters were asked to check either the internal proposal or "none of the above."
It remains unclear what the alternative will be to the two plans, and district officials have said there's no guarantee that solitary bids will be recommended for approval to the Board of Education.
Official results of the districtwide advisory votes will be presented to the LAUSD on Feb. 12. Community members are welcome to visit the league's headquarters at 3303 Wilshire Blvd. to get an unofficial count Saturday afternoon.
Charter school operators and some community groups are urging LAUSD officials to discard the idea of having a parent advisory altogether.
"Given the irregularities occurring at every voting station, it would appear that the vote process has been tainted, calling into question the veracity of the votes in general," Jed Wallace, president of the California Charter School Association, wrote in a letter to Cortines.
"What was supposed to be a transparent informational campaign for parents to make informed choices for their children has turned into a high stakes political election campaign for some."
Elections in progress over the fate of 30 L.A. schools, nearly 40,000 students
-- Howard Blume and Jason Song | LA Times LA Now Blog
Photo: Parents and community members line-up to take part in casting ballots at Belvedere Middle School. Groups inside and outside the LAUSD system are competing to run 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
February 2, 2010 | 1:11 pm -- Parents and other community members are weighing the educational fate of nearly 40,000 students within the nation’s second-largest school system through a special school-level election.
Voters are choosing a favored reform plan for each school from among groups inside and outside of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Competing bidders are vying for control of 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses.
The ballot takes place Tuesday and Saturday. The school board will make the final decision on who runs the schools.
One of the most complex ballots is the one for the soon-to-open Esteban Torres High School complex, where five small schools will operate. There are 10 bids for the site -- five from groups of teachers and five from charter schools.
Charters are independently run, free from some restrictions that govern traditional schools, including union contracts. The charters are touting their successful schools elsewhere in the school system. The teacher groups are highlighting knowledge of the community and new management freedoms -- similar to charter schools -- which they would employ under their plans.
The election for the Torres school is taking place at Belvedere Middle School, east of downtown, where a steady stream of voters filed in Tuesday morning.
Representatives from United Teachers Los Angeles, the L.A. teachers union, as well as charter-school organizers handed out fliers and tried to speak to voters on their way to the polling place, the school’s library.
The voters in this election include high school students at the affected schools, as well as parents, school employees and community members -- whose ballots are all counted in separate tallies.
The results are not binding on school district officials. A final recommendation will come from L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, and the final decision on who will run schools will be made later this month by the school board.
Maritona Quinones, 29, voted for the teacher-led proposals for the Torres school. Quinones' son attends fourth grade at a nearby school.
“The district has its ups and downs, but I’m happy with the education my son is getting,” she said.
Members of the nonprofit InnerCity Struggle bused in parents and community members to vote, also in support of the teacher-led proposals.
“It supports our vision of smaller schools,” said Joanna Salinas, a parent organizer who spent the morning ferrying voters to the school in a gray Chevy van. “But they’re able to vote however they want.”
Charter-school advocates have asserted that they are at a disadvantage when competing with the school district and teachers for district schools. The charters lack access to parent phone numbers and addresses, for example.
They also complained Tuesday morning of irregularities, such as the alleged presence of teacher-union members in polling places, who, they said, were advising some parents how to mark ballots.
“It was very unfortunate and very questionable,” said Yolanda Sanchez, communications and compliance manager with Camino Nuevo Charter Academy.
Other complaints came from Parent Revolution, an organizing group closely affiliated with a charter-school operator, Green Dot Public Schools. It alleged that middle school students were being allowed to vote and also instructed to vote for the district plan in balloting at Foshay Learning Center, south of downtown. The group also complained there was insufficient assistance for Spanish-speaking parents.
There was no immediate response from L.A. Unified or the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, which is conducting the election.
●●smf: The elections are ….and would inevitably have been a mess -- due to the speed the whole wretched mess was put together, the immediate importance of the outcome to many adults and the ultimate importance of the outcome to many children. When I was told by District staff that high schoolers would be permitted to vote because they are secondary school students I commented that middle schoolers (as young as twelve) are also secondary students.
“You are right”, I was told. “But we haven’t really considered that.”
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