THE DENOUEMENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE: The day that was: Tuesday Feb 23rd as of 8:35 pm

`de·noue·ment

/ˌdeɪ|nuˈmɑ̃/  Show Spelled[dey-noo-mahn]|

–noun

1.the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel.

2.the place in the plot at which this occurs.

3.the outcome or resolution of a doubtful series of occurrences.

smf writes for 4lakids:

The board meeting today produced interesting results, some expected – some not. For the most part the superintendent's recommendations were accepted – but there were notable exceptions.

• ICEF, Green Dot and The Alliance for College Ready Schools – powerhouse charter operators with programs recommended for acceptance – were repudiated.

• The Mayor’s Partnership for LA Schools picked up a school that they weren’t recommended for.

• The veracity of evidence and data challenging charter school acceptance of English Language Learners and Special Ed students was intensely questioned – 'good data' supports one's position, 'bad data' is to be denied.

• And though the entire PSC evaluation and review process was supposed to be data driven and evidence based, it t turned out that potential operators were not evaluated on past performance on but on whether they agree to follow the rules in the future.

• The board followed the unwritten 'Don't mess in my bailiwick' rule of following the lead of the member in their district when Boardmember LaMotte offered an amendment that was accepted denying ICEF at Obama Middle School in her district.

• Board President Garcia then violated the same rule on the next vote (denying Green Dot and The Alliance at Estaban Torres High School) by offering an amendment on a school not in her district but in Yolie Flores’. Garcia's amendment carried.

• As Flores is the author of the PSC resolution – and the champion of the superintendent’s recommendations – the tension rose, the board grew more and more divided and the politics got fast and furious.

• Horsetrading happened in the open – and operators denied this time were assured of better treatment next time (unless some wise judge stops them before they choose again!)

• Advance approval was guaranteed of a Pilot School at Gratts Elementary next year even though one wasn't even requested.

Democracy is messy when the sausage is made.

Notable quotes:

NURY MARTINEZ resurrected Connie Rice's metaphor of LAUSD reform as building the aircraft in flight. They have built their plane and it follows the script of Flight of the Phoenix – where it turns out the designer of the plane has only built scale models. Now they have to fly it – and land the puppy!

SUPT. CORTINES: “The Public School Choice process has divided us..... (that's Freudian) ….I mean provided us with an opportunity.....”

STEVE ZIMMER: (On the 'Parent Trigger'): “You can't declare war on people and not expect them to act like combatants.” “The 'red shirts' and the 'white shirts' are not the future. The future is in the plans.”

TAMAR GALATZAN: “Nothing is happening in my district, no Focus Schools, no pilots for individual student funding. You are ignoring half of the valley; successful schools are and need to be part of the wave of the future.”

MARGUERITE LAMOTTE: “It has been said by some that charter schools reestablish segregation; I cannot and will not say to my constituents that the money you gave for the bonds is being given to charter schools.”

RICHARD VLADOVIC: “In the past we have written the best plans in the worlds. We have placed them on the best shelves in the world where they collected the best dust in the world.”

MONICA GARCIA: “No one on this board takes their job lightly; I hope I can say no one in this district takes their job lightly. Tomorrow it takes all of us.”

 

from Google News

LA School Board Snubs Charter School Operators

CBS 13 - Christina Hoag - ‎27 minutes ago‎

The district already boasts the highest number of charter schools of any school district in the country. More than 160 of its 800 schools are run by ...

City Approves School Plan

Wall Street Journal - Tamara Audi - ‎44 minutes ago‎

He recommended awarding the remaining 28 schools to groups led by Los Angeles Unified School District teachers. The board ratified most of Mr. Cortines's ...

Los Angeles Times

LAUSD turns over control of schools to outside groups

Los Angeles Times - ‎1 hour ago‎

... outside the downtown Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters. Bidders inside and outside the district have been vying for the schools under a ...

LAUSD Grants Control Of Several Campuses To Outside Groups

LA Weekly (blog) - Dennis Romero - ‎2 hours ago‎

23 2010 @ 5:58PM ​Despite a demonstration by members of the teacher's union, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District Tuesday voted to roughly ...

LA school board OKs handing schools to nonprofits

San Jose Mercury News - Christina Hoag - ‎2 hours ago‎

AP LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles school board has approved a plan to turn over the operation of 30 campuses to nonprofit educational groups, but most of the ...

 

LAUSD board approves new administration for 36 schools

89.3 KPCC - ‎2 hours ago‎

The powerful United Teachers Los Angeles, which helped teachers craft successful reform plans, wants to put a stop to the process before then. ...

School Handoff Plan Divides LA

Wall Street Journal - Tamara Audi - ‎3 hours ago‎

He recommended awarding the remaining 28 schools to groups led by Los Angeles Unified School District teachers. The changes would affect 38000 students. ...

Awards for Teachers and Schools in Arts Education to be Held Downtown

LA Downtown News Online - ‎6 hours ago‎

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - The Music Center of Los Angeles County this week announced the 14 teachers and six schools named as finalists in the 28th annual ...

Hundreds protest LA board vote on school choice

MyMotherLode.com - ‎7 hours ago‎

Hundreds of teachers and parents chanted slogans and waved placards in front of the Los Angeles school district headquarters Tuesday as the school board ...

Hundreds to protest LA board vote on school choice

Education Week News - ‎7 hours ago‎

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hundreds of teachers and parents plan to protest at a Los Angeles school board meeting in which the district could approve the transfer ...

 

VALLEY CAMPUSES ADDED TO SCHOOL-BASED PROBATION PROGRAM

The Probation Department will place officers at three high schools and a middle school in hopes of stemming gang violence in the Valley. The program is already in place at 120 L.A. County schools.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske | LA Times

 

March 30, 2009 - In an effort to combat gangs and prevent teenagers from being arrested, Los Angeles County officials are stationing more juvenile probation officers at local public schools.

Probation Chief Robert Taylor and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky appeared Friday at the Boys & Girls Club of San Fernando Valley in Pacoima to announce that they were adding three high schools and a middle school in the area to probation's School-Based Supervision program.

"The younger we can get them, the easier it is to mold them and channel them in a positive direction," Yaroslavsky said.

Taylor noted that more than 3,300 youths are in detention at the county's 22 juvenile halls and camps.

"To reduce that, you have to get to them before they're in custody," Taylor said. "We know you can't just treat the youth -- you have to treat the family as a whole."

The schools added to the program are Birmingham Senior High in Van Nuys, John F. Kennedy High in Granada Hills, Panorama High in Panorama City and Charles Maclay Middle in Pacoima.

It will cost $579,000 to send a probation officer to each school and provide computer equipment and clerical support, according to Yaroslavsky spokesman Joel Bellman. Bellman said the money comes from a portion of a federal grant for juvenile justice.

School-Based Supervision has placed probation officers at 90 high schools and 30 middle schools countywide since 2000, said Paul Vinetz, a program director. The program serves 13- to 18-year-olds in and out of probation and has a budget for this fiscal year of $14.5 million.

"We're enhancing the presence in the Valley because of the increase in gangs around Pacoima," Vinetz said at Friday's meeting at the Boys & Girls Club. "Just this morning we saw some gang graffiti near here, crossing each other out. Our campuses are safe havens."

Although crime in the Valley has decreased in recent years, about 16 gangs still operate in the area and one of the best ways to combat them is by reaching youths before they become involved, said Los Angeles Police Capt. Joe Curreri. Community leaders praised the program.

"We endorse this approach," said the Rev. John Lassigne of Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Pacoima. "Any solution to gang violence has to address the family, the school and the home."

from the wonderful folks who would turn over school governance to a Jiffy Lube franchisee:

"With so much anxiety over public schools and gang violence, here’s a modest proposal: If elected, Villaraigosa’s school-board candidates will certainly vote to permit Villaraigosa to go beyond his municipal duties and take over three high schools. So in exchange, Villaraigosa should allow his newly elected school board to take over three LAPD stations in the Valley, where homicides shot up nearly 18 percent in 2006 and restaurant-takeover robberies by masked men have terrified diners."

MUNICIPAL WHIPLASH - The mayor suddenly decides gang crime, not L.A. Unified, is public enemy No. 1

by David Zahniser, LA Weekly

Ruling? What court ruling?

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa started the new year by putting plenty of miles between himself and the politically disastrous court decision handed down last month by Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs, who shit-canned his bid for power over the Los Angeles Unified School District as a violation of not just the state Constitution but also the City Charter, the legal document that says who does what at L.A. City Hall.

“Our New Year’s resolution in 2007 is to make violent street gangs public enemy No. 1,” said the mayor, standing next to Police Chief William Bratton.

The dramatic shift in emphasis was, to say the least, a bit jarring. The mayor had been doing about 90 miles an hour on education issues, spending the first 18 months of his administration talking about test scores, dropout rates, a longer school day and the need to put the mayor in charge of at least three high schools — maybe the whole district.

After such an intense push on public education, Villaraigosa’s decision to make 2007 the year of gangs left many at City Hall suffering a form of municipal whiplash. Villaraigosa rarely broached the topic of crime between June and December, lavishing time on education-oriented town-hall meetings, school-reform photo ops and last-minute lobbying trips to Sacramento, where he twisted a few arms to get lawmakers to sign off on a legally problematic L.A. Unified bill.

But then, last month’s ruling delivered a not-too-subtle message to the Villaraigosa camp: If the California Supreme Court sides with Janavs on appeal, the mayor could have precious little to show for his foray into public education. And with statistics showing a disturbing surge in gang crime — increasing by 42 percent in the San Fernando Valley alone — Villaraigosa just might have decided it was time to pay attention to some duties actually assigned to him in the City Charter.

You know, public safety and stuff.

In a 15-day period, Villaraigosa held five different press events focusing on public safety. But by then, some community activists had already begun grumbling that the mayor had lost focus on his municipal portfolio. One group of African-American leaders, alarmed by last month’s allegedly racially motivated killing of a 14-year-old Harbor Gateway girl, complained that the mayor had gone missing in action.

“He took on the LAUSD and the whole school board, trying to take over the district and make it the centerpiece of his administration,” said Najee Ali, who staged a press conference Friday in Leimert Park to chastise the mayor for his absence. “[Villaraigosa] became so engaged with that battle that he lost focus on other issues in L.A. that have been critical, and the racially motivated gang violence is the best example.”

Hours after Ali’s protest, Villaraigosa’s press shop put out a news release saying the mayor would be in Harbor Gateway the very next day to march with anxious African-American families. But that was only the latest stop in his public-safety publicity blitz. Villaraigosa showed up with Bratton on January 2 at the LAPD’s Central Division downtown to talk about crime reduction in 2006. Six days later, the mayor posed in front of 67 newly hired officers at the Police Academy, promising signing bonuses of $5,000 and $10,000 to ensure that his hiring plan does not fall apart.

Despite the flurry of safety initiatives, Villaraigosa made sure to press ahead with the other pieces of his public school campaign, publicly introducing two of his candidates in the upcoming March 6 school-board race — county administrator Yolie Flores Aguilar on the Eastside and prosecutor Tamar Galatzan in the San Fernando Valley.

The mayor is banking on his slate of school-board candidates to win board seats and then help him reach some form of legal settlement with district officials to preserve his ability to run three low-performing high schools — his major education initiative. An ideal campus for him to oversee might be Grant High School in the East Valley, where two 16-year-olds were shot the very week Galatzan and Aguilar picked up the mayor’s backing.

In a nifty piece of stage management, the mayor introduced Galatzan outside Birmingham High School, the site of a deadly shooting last year. A 16-year-old boy was killed in a gunfight right across the street in September. The gunplay occurred 40 minutes after school let out, forcing school football players to hit the ground during team practice.

With so much anxiety over public schools and gang violence, here’s a modest proposal: If elected, Villaraigosa’s school-board candidates will certainly vote to permit Villaraigosa to go beyond his municipal duties and take over three high schools. So in exchange, Villaraigosa should allow his newly elected school board to take over three LAPD stations in the Valley, where homicides shot up nearly 18 percent in 2006 and restaurant-takeover robberies by masked men have terrified diners.

Civil rights advocate Connie Rice presented a 131-page report this week on the city’s gang crisis, telling council members that they will need to work with other government agencies if they want to tackle the problem effectively. Rice’s report did a funny thing, mentioning city government and L.A. Unified over and over again, as though she thought they too should be working as a team — as equals, not with one seeking to strip the other’s power.

On the day of Rice’s presentation, Villaraigosa staffers handed schools Superintendent David L. Brewer III the mayor’s new plan for fixing L.A. Unified. Brewer received little advance notice, getting the plan just four hours before the mayor went before a televised audience to unveil it. School board member David Tokofsky fared even worse, receiving an e-mail from the mayor's office telling him that his request to attend Villaraigosa's Wednesday night education speech had been denied.

The mayor's policy paper focused mainly on non-controversial concepts: paying teachers more, making schools smaller, securing more contributions from the business community and getting more of everything – gifted programs, arts classes, foreign language lessons, etc. Once his speech ended, Villaraigosa's press shop returned to the theme for 2007, announcing that the mayor planned another trip to Harbor Gateway to talk about cracking down on – you guessed it – violent gangs.

When Villaraigosa has focused on public-safety issues, he has reaped success only dreamed of by his predecessor, former Mayor James Hahn, a man truly obsessed with public safety but politically inept. Unlike Hahn, Villaraigosa won approval of a five-year plan to hire 1,000 police officers, persuading the council to hike monthly trash fees from $11 to $28 by 2011. Where Hahn had sought a sales-tax hike, Villaraigosa deftly found a way to hit up homeowners and renters in buildings with fewer than five units.

For now, however, a majority of those extra officers are a concept for the future. Roughly half of the police hiring sought by Villaraigosa won’t occur until after his likely re-election. But then, Villaraigosa — always the master of marketing — has a tendency to speak in the present progressive tense, as in “We’re planting 1 million trees” or “We’re hiring 1,000 officers.”

As he appeared with Villaraigosa, Bratton was all too willing to call the hiring plan what it was: an incremental plan that won’t boost his department significantly for years. Standing in the LAPD’s Central Station, Bratton told his officers they shouldn’t expect reinforcements to provide much help in 2007 — a comment that somewhat undermined the mayor’s upbeat pitch.

Since his election, Villaraigosa has always been one to criticize L.A. Unified for making only incremental gains in its test scores, which rose gradually over six years under former Superintendent Roy Romer, especially in the elementary grades.

Yet Bratton too has been the master of steady, incremental progress — the type that adds up to solid double-digit gains over a four-year stretch. Villaraigosa endorsed Bratton’s leadership wholeheartedly two weeks ago, saying the chief deserves a second five-year term. Romer, on the other hand, is back in Colorado, making incremental progress on his John Deere power mower.