THE MiSiS CRISIS ADJUDICATED: Jefferson students have “endured a maddening degree of mismanagement from the school and the District.”

“The harms already suffered are severe and pervasive; there is no evidence of an imminent solution.”

highlights+lowlights from the cruz v. CA. restraining order, which follows:

• “LAUSD's superintendent, though ostensibly aware of these issues for more than a month is silent as whether LAUSD intends to take any steps to remedy these problems.”
• “Although Jefferson’s scheduling issues and the resulting chaos have been widely publicized and communicated to the Los Angeles School Board and Dr. John Deasey (the LAUSD Superintendent) in at least early September, scheduling problems still persist and, more importantly, there is no evidence of any organized effort to help those students who have been assigned to courses several weeks into the semester to catch up to their peers.”
• “Further, while Dr. Deasey expresses appropriate outrage regarding the assignment of empty, contentless “courses” to students, particularly those who are not on track to graduate or meet college eligibility requirements, he does not admit to knowing about Jefferson’s scheduling problems approximately one month ago or describe any actual or anticipated efforts by LAUSD to remedy them.”
• “From all of the foregoing, the court reasonably infers that neither the Los Angeles Unified School District nor Jefferson Senior High School are able and willing to take immediate and substantial steps to remedy this shocking loss of instructional time.”
• “Even those students who received timely class schedules are experiencing chaotic classrooms with constantly changing students, which has caused teachers to adjust their expectations and even hold off teaching some materials until schedules are more settled. Teachers have been required to review and re-review prior material. Some anticipate having to cut out significant instructional units later in the year.”
• “Thus, the failure to timely provide appropriate class schedules, and the ensuing chaos and disruption, has inflicted a variety of harms on a significant number of Jefferson students, few, if any, of whom have the resources needed to successfully recover from setbacks of this kind.'”
• Jeannie Oakes, an expert with more than 30 years of work in the education field, including in California. She states, “In more than 30 years of work in this field, I have encountered nothing that compares with the deprivations of educational opportunity being visited upon these students.”
• “LAUSD’s protracted and inexplicable inaction, coupled with the Superintendent’s statement welcoming a court order, suggest that LAUSD needs State intervention to adequately address the deprivations that have occurred.”
• “Put bluntly, the harms already suffered are severe and pervasive; there is no evidence of an imminent solution; Defendants disclaim their constitutional responsibilities; and the harm to students (who are among the State’s most challenged) is compounding daily.”
• “Defendants’ argument that there is an existing state policy and plan recently set into motion promoting “local control” was squarely rejected by Butt as a justification for depriving students of their fundamental right to a basically equivalent education.

“Educational policy of local autonomy and accountability is not sufficiently compelling to justify extreme local deprivation.”

Cruz vs State of CA RG14727139 TRO