Q&A@HS#9

by smf for 4LAKidsNews

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - Yestereve, at Central Los Angeles High School #9, otherwise known as The High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, there was a Community Forum, sponsored by the school's PTA/PTSA in formation. It was billed as a Meet-and-Greet The New Principal, Luis Lopez - and The New Local District Superintendent, Dr. Dale Vigil - and a Q&A about the recent transfer and replacement of last year's principal, Suzanne Blake. The meeting was chaired pretty darn well by acting PTSA President Judi Bell. There were histrionics and name calling but no furniture or fruit was tossed and the angry multitudes did not resort to barricades.  School Police were not called.

It would be nice to say a fine time was had by all ...and it would be completely untrue. I doubt if anyone had a good time or a a good day - with the possible exceptions of those spectacularly absent.

One can often judge a meeting by those not in attendance. School Board President Mónica García , seen by many as the behind-the-scenes manipulator of the ouster; Superintendent Ramon Garcia - whose promise to Blake and her staff that she would be back next year was reversed. And Principal Blake, the aggrieved party ...unless you count the students, faculty, staff, parents and school community. And believe me, they consider themselves uncounted.

Seeing as García, Cortines and Blake weren’t there there they were subjects of most of the questioning.

There was one recurring question, asked over and over, re-parsed, rephrased - made hypothetical and deconstructed ad infinitum. It is the question posed in this week’s AALA newsletter. It is The Big Question, asked and not answered:

Q:Why was Ms. Blake removed and replaced?

And the answer offered by Dr. Vigil:

A:For personnel reasons that I am not a liberty to disclose to protect District employees.

He himself called it a wall: "I've put up a wall." A wall of silence. Of obfuscation. All in all, just another brick. That wall.

This much was disclosed:

• By personnel he means personnel, not personal.

• Ms. Blake has not been informed of the transgressions, actions or lack thereof  that triggered her ouster; she will be notified in due course.

• Whatever occurred or didn't occur does not approach criminal activity; this removal should not be considered disciplinary. It is administrative. Or perhaps: administrival.

• Superintendent Cortines was not aware of the allegations when he spoke to Blake and her staff, he has since been informed.

• The alleged mistakes/error/procedural missteps were uncovered by Virgil himself in his first few days in the job, based on interviews, staff reports and data he reviewed - all confidential.

• As far as Vigil is concerned his decision is final and irreversible. Blake will not be back at HS#9.No way, no how.

• Because this is a personnel matter the reasons will probably never be disclosed.

As to the protocol of the Pilot School Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) - which gives the School Site Council a role in administrator selection, -being violated: Vigil stated that because the SSC never approved their by-laws the issue is moot: HS#9 does not have and never had a functioning SSC!

Of those questioned, new principal Luis Lopez came off best. He defended his tenure at Franklin High School and that school itself and pointed out that he has an arts background in dance - is a credentialed math teacher - and has experience administering at high achieving schools like Bravo Medical Magnet and at schools with challenges: Manual Arts and Franklin.

In fairness, Dr. Vigil acquitted himself admirably - he was constantly under attack from an overwhelmingly hostile audience; made all the more so by their questions being unanswered.

Suzanne Blake was universally praised and praised again, by teachers, by students, by parents. "Ms. Blake believed in us more than we believed in ourselves". "Ms. Blake came down and ate lunch with us" ― the first year was "a raging success".

But that said - there are questions besides the The Big Question - some asked and some not - that deserve an answer.

1. There are allegations of strings being pulled and back room deals being made. What was the role of Board President Mónica García in this matter …and was it appropriate?

2. Ditto for Mayor Tony and Eli Broad – both of whom were instrumental in the MOU.

3. Ms. Blake's transfer out was obviously involuntary; was Mr. Lopez' transfer from Franklin voluntary?

4. Did any of this contribute the Superintendent Cortines decision to retire before his contract is up?

5. If the SSC did not exist what is the legal status of their decision-making over the past year? Isn't the failure to constitute a SSC the responsibility of the LAUSD Parent Community Services Branch? Was last year like that 'Bobby's Dream' season of Dallas?

And finally: When Ms. Blake's' transfer was first announced the reason given was that she lacked High School experience, indeed she was initially reassigned to a Middle School. The rationale now given is this undisclosed/undisclosable personnel matter.

And, gentle readers, if you've read this far let me take you out on an editorial limb - in a direction I feel drawn uncomfortably and inescapably - with two questions and a bit of irony drawn from the McCarthy Era.

• What did Dale Vigil, Ray Cortines, and Mónica García know and do ...and when did they know or do it?

• How exactly is a secret list: "I have here a list of X communists" different from a secret accusation, "I have a personnel matter I cannot disclose"?

• The school play next year at LA Central High School#9, The Visual and Performing Arts High School is Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

So, does Eli Broad save HS#9 with a charter school? ...or do the parents and staff?

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.”

 

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RFK SITE TO BECOME SCHOOLS + smf comments

 

By Tony Castro, Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group (Daily News)

October 11, 2009 -- On the grounds of the old Ambassador Hotel where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, officials Saturday dedicated a site of national tragedy into one of potential local triumph.

Two of Kennedy's grandchildren were among those who witnessed ribbon-cutting ceremonies for a new elementary education facility featuring two pilot schools.

"This is sacred ground," labor leader and Kennedy friend Dolores Huerta told about 500 people who attended the dedication.

The ceremony marked the culmination of a long political battle to raze the famed hotel and convert the 24-acre grounds into an urban school site. In addition to the new elementary schools, a new Robert F. Kennedy High School is scheduled to open in September 2010.

"My father was a champion of those who suffered disadvantages in America," Kennedy's son Maxwell said in a statement released by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

"This new K-12 learning center will educate and empower our young people and their parents to fight for economic and social justice. "I know of no better way to advance the living legacy of Robert Kennedy."

When complete, the educational complex will serve 4,400 students in grades K-12 in heavily Latino neighborhood west of downtown.

"My dream has been to make the schools a living memorial to Robert Kennedy," said Paul Schrade, a former senior aide to the late senator and head of the RFK-12 Community Task Force, the local group that worked toward construction of the learning complex.

Among obstacles that had to be overcome were Donald Trump's dream to build five towers at the site, one of them 125 stories tall, plans by Wal-Mart to put a store at the location and a movement by the Los Angeles Conservancy to preserve the landmark.

"Robert Kennedy told us what makes life worthwhile is the health of our children and the quality of their education," said Schrade.

Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel just minutes after winning the Democratic Party's 1968 California primary, an attack in which Schrade was also wounded.

LAUSD school board President Monica Garcia said Kennedy's message is "alive with us as we celebrate the opening of not one, but two exciting new pilot schools."

"We are inspired by the memory of Senator Kennedy who reminds us every day that we each have something to contribute," Garcia said. "And he reminds us every day that we can absolutely do better."

______________________

●● what smf said at the RFK-12 ribboncutting:

The good news is that I'm the last speaker today.

The really good news is that the youngsters behind me haven’t waited for any of us to sit down and shut up to play on the playground equipment behind this stage!

President Obama reminded us yesterday that we rise to meet challenges far more often than we solve them. This city and this school district have risen to meet the challenges of overcrowding and forced busing and the year round calendar; of disrepair and lack of vision. Those will, in time certain, be obstacles in the rear view mirror, thanks to the voters and taxpayers of this city.

Other challenges loom: Class sizes and underinvestment; a misunderstanding of the roles of art and music and physical activity in education and society. You kids must rise and meet the challenge of education and education reform --- you must rise to it, accept it and make the best of it …here in this new school, your new school – and onward – ever onward …into the high school that will be part of this incredible complex – and on to colleges and universities and art schools - to law school and medical school and engineering school; architecture school, trade school and business school.

Be safe here, Make lifelong friends. Do good work. Learn from your mistakes. Have fun.

It is a hero's journey: You must go forth …and come back and build the future. That is the dream and the vision and the promise of RFK-12.

Robert Kennedy made Bernard Shaw’s words his own: "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not”. Those words, Boys and Girls, must be your words; those dreams must be your dreams. THEN we will be the City of Angeles we aspire to be.

Dare to dream. Ask "Why not?" Re-imagine the American Dream. Your dreams are our future.

Because you, the students, are the magic, and the promise.

$1.5 BILLION UP FOR GRABS

…but it's not about the money! a 4LAKids Spreadsheet 24 NEW SCHOOLS SUBJECT TO PSC RFP
School	Students	Co$t
Gratts PC	400	$66,877,385
Valley Region ES #6	950	$59,861,759
Valley Region ES #7	800	$62,224,883
Valley Region ES #8	725	$48,567,191
Valley Region ES #9	800	$57,818,486
Valley Region ES #10	650	$36,548,280
Central Region ES #13	875	$75,512,417
Central Region ES #15	575	$70,931,735
Central Region ES #16	675	$66,748,089
Central Region ES #17	725	$64,486,404
Central Region ES #18	575	$54,465,009
South Region ES #1	1,050	$85,379,327
South Region ES #2	1,050	$97,156,182
South Region ES #3	775	$81,238,658
South Region ES #4	775	$86,419,831
South Region MS # 2A	1,404	$127,675,163
South Region MS # 2B	inc	inc
South Region MS # 2C	inc	inc
South Region MS #6	1,404	$136,636,484
Esteban E. Torres HS #1	2,322	$206,707,370
Esteban E. Torres HS #2	inc	inc
Esteban E. Torres HS #3	inc	inc
Esteban E. Torres HS #4	inc	inc
Esteban E. Torres HS #5	inc	inc
TOTAL	16530	$1,485,254,653

PLAN B/ROUND 1: The Mayor Has His Way – <cut …I mean> A New Way with LAUSD

By smf for 4LAKids

These WebPages mourn.

We mourn the death Tuesday night of "Liberal Lion" Teddy Kennedy - A champion if not THE champion of public education. As his friend Ramón Cortines said: "He was a friend of public education all the time, every day he was in office."

And we mourn the tragic outcome for public education in the LAUSD boardroom Tuesday afternoon with the passage of Yolie Flores Aguilar's "Public School Choice" Resolution.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Barr …which schools do you choose?

We do not question Yolie's heart or her good intent. Her frustration at the lack of urgency of reform in LAUSD is heartfelt and genuine - but 4LAKids cannot miss the genesis of her plan and respectfully questions the authorship. Mayor Villaraigosa probably over describes his role as it being his "Plan B" - Plan A being his failed attempt at mayoral takeover and control, thrice quashed in the courts. But the fingerprints are there - and the confession: "my plan" - must mean something.

Despite public denial of the 'done deal" by the doers - and anguish and attempts-at-amendment and pretence-at-compromise, the Deal as realized was Done.

It wasn't pretty.

The list of advocate organizations named in whereas #5 grew with each draft as the 'me too's' tasted victory and wanted their logos on the t-shirt. A least one of the alphabet soup sponsors (and the most potentially powerful partner) withdrew their support at the last moment. Ultimately the entire list - the total active membership of which is probably a couple of thousand at most - was amended out.

ON THE DONE DEAL: According a speaker in public comment the mayor at one time claimed to have "six school board votes in his pocket".

All six came through Tuesday.

As Meredith Willson wrote:

Ya got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table.
Pockets that mark the diff'rence
Between a gentlemen and a bum,
With a capital "B,"
And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!

Friends, we got trouble right here in (L.A.) River City!

DONE DEAL II: A couple of weekends ago Board President Garcia had a soiree at her house and invited the Board of Ed and the superintendent. Apparently District Counsel Bobbi Fesler gave this get together her blessing - as long as the Boardmembers didn't discuss certain things. Like any pending or potential action before the board.

All well and good - if they didn't discuss those things.  As long as they didn't think about the elephant in the room.

• The Ralph M. Brown Act is an open meeting law - a by-invitation-only-meeting at anyone's house is not an open meeting in my appointment book …even if partners and the kiddies are invited!
• Make no mistake, the invitees were invited in their official capacity; the invitation is addressed  "Dear Board Members" – this was not "Dear Yolie, Tamar, Richard, Steve, Nuri and Marguerite".
• Of course I'm strict constructionist (What part of 'no!' is it you don't understand?) who considers the intent of the law rather than the wiggle room within it.

DONE DEAL III: After the big vote at Tuesday's meeting - but before the meeting was over and adjourned - the Board of Ed had special visitors: Mayor Villaraigosa and entourage! How kewl is that? And did Hizzonner stand in the well of the boardroom and congratulate the Board of Ed? No. He took the superintendent's chair up on the dais and sat therein -- master of all he surveyed. When Superintendent Cortines returned another chair had to be found for him.

• Fifty new schools, financed by $20 billion+ in public financing - schools the taxpayers are about to get higher tax bills for - are to be up for grabs. Charter operators? Mayor's Partnership? Jiffy Lube? C'mon down!*
• As an afterthought - or perhaps a 'leftover' - two hundred existing underperforming schools were added to the mix of schools up for grabs.

It remains to be seen how interested outside operators will be in taking over those "Program Improvement " schools in light of the Mayor's Partnership's record at his ten schools …and that of Green Dot at Locke.

The promise of 'Choice' in the resolution is the resolution is illusory. The charter school model  (parents choose their child's school) is incompatible with the neighborhood school model (all students attend their local school per attendance catchment areas). The lesson of the Belmont Zone of Choice (open enrollment within a greater geographic area) has apparently been lost completely. The YFA resolution commits the District to continue attendance area boundaries - if anything perpetuating lack-of-choice.

The Board of Ed chooses between operators who choose to apply. Yes, the resolution promises to involve parents and teachers and the community in the decision making process - but their role is advisory. The superintendent recommends; the Board of Ed decides. Who's 'Choice' is that?  How many 6 to 1 votes will it take before we realize what's going on?

I suppose operators get to choose whether to honor collective bargaining agreements; under some interpretations of the plan they may get to choose which education standards and provisions of the Ed Code they choose to observe.

Bill Ring, in last week's 4LAKids wrote: "…. true public school choice means I have a choice as a parent as to the school my child will attend."

"Me."

"I choose."

Bill wasn't allowed into the Boardroom Tuesday. There wasn't room for him. Or maybe his radical ideas.

Three speakers spoke extraordinary Truth to Power Tuesday afternoon:

Jackie Goldberg, the liberal lioness of L.A. politics presented the actual bond language of the five school construction bonds to the board. It may be language previous boards wrote but is nonetheless binding on this board because it was enacted overwhelming by the voters. "If this resolution passes," Ms Goldberg warned, "Have no doubt. You will be sued!"

Boardmember La Motte posed a couple of good questions but in the end questioned the Board's authority to give up any schools to anyone, citing the California Constitution, Article IX, §6, ¶3: "No school or college or any other part of the Public School System shall be, directly or indirectly, transferred from the Public School System or placed under the jurisdiction of any authority other than one included within the Public School System."

And Boardmember Zimmer - almost a tragic figure - spoke of his anguish, disputing the process and the outcome - bemoaning the raw politics and threats made against him by both sides. Decrying the fact that the fight was about the fight and the color of the t-shirts - not about the kids. Ultimately Zimmer held his nose and voted yes - in order, he said, to be at the table in the future.

Ms LaMotte retorted that she was not voting for it and she would be at the table too ...because that's what the people elected her to do.

As for Winners and Losers…

The parents in the light blue t-shirts, paid for by the mayor and Green Dot celebrated their victory and filed back onto the buses that bused them in.

As Jackie Goldberg said three years ago in the fight against Plan A, when adults fight with adults over adult issues it is always the kids who lose.

---

* OK, Jiffy Lube, a for-profit corporation is excluded. But the Jiffy Lube Educational Foundation? C'mon down!

Report from the First of the Districtwide Community Meetings: RE - BOARD RESOLUTION ON PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE

by smf for 4LAids

August 10th -- Democracy is not a pretty thing. It's her cousin, Liberty, who stands all statuesque with the aquiline nose in New York Harbor.

Nobody bothered to tart Democracy up for the debut engagement of her cross-city tour at Griffith Middle School Monday night. Some people didn't get the word that the venue for gala premiere event: "Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines Invites You To Attend a Community Meeting to Discuss How The District Opens New Schools and Improves Low-Performing Schools' had changed from Roosevelt High School to Griffith Middle School …and it didn't help that the school police at Roosevelt weren't sure where Griffith was. (It's about twenty blocks east.)

Once at Griffith it just Democracy, warts and all. And the audience was hungry for something besides what was being served. Newly Minted Interim Local District Superintendent Robert A. Martinez started off right on time with Slide One of his PowerPoint     …and made the mistake of asking for questions or comments right then and there.

There were a couple of hundred folks in the audience and a couple of hundred questions and comments - most generally centered on variants of the same three themes:

• The plan presented in the PowerPoint had the appearance of a done deal - based on models in New York, Chicago and Denver. Were the folks present, teachers, parents and community, being asked …or were they being told? And what exactly do New York, Chicago and Denver have to do with LA?
• Is this a plan to implement the Flores Aguilar "School Choice/School Giveaway" resolution before it is even voted on by the Board of Ed?
• There were few in the audience that support bringing in partners or charters or outside operators to run "their" schools. One charter operator spoke up - and one representative from the Parent Revolution spoke out - but for the most part the audience was not supportive of charters and/or the mayor's partnership or any outside operator operating their schools - and were pointed in their derision of Mayor Villaraigosa and Monica Garcia.

If it had been a dress rehearsal it wouldn't have been half bad - as a show it pretty entertaining. It was, however, nothing like the script. Much is said by the superintendent about transparency -- there's a joke in here somewhere about amateur night at the burlesque - let's just say we saw more than we were supposed to see.

Was the crowd, probably about 300+, representative of the community? Who knows, it was the crowd that turned out on short notice.

Were there a lot of UTLA members? Yes. Was it packed with UTLA members. No.

Was it an ugly crowd? No. Was it boisterous and assertive and sometimes angry? Yes. It listened - though not always politely - to things it didn't want to hear. It cheered and booed.

Duffy from UTLA made it clear that the union was not 'involved' in process, only 'aware' of it.

Superintendent Cortines mad it clear he was there to listen.

Some teachers made their grievances, as did some parents. Anyone who would say that the folks in attendance arere accepting of the status quo has had a little too much sweetener in their own Kool Aid.

These are folks who give a damn about public education in their community …and they're not going to take very much more of the same-old/same old or the new miracle cure for very much longer.

Which leads me to beat my drum about  Relational Trust.

One down, six more to go …and why does the valley, with the two largest-in-size local districts, get only one meeting?

Check here or the latest schedule - times and venues - and one suspects, the message - are subject to change!

 

And here's the feedback form.

AMID FISCAL CRISIS, L.A. GIVES SCHOOL SITE COUNCILS REINS

Published Online: July 14, 2009

Published in Print: July 15, 2009

By Stephen Sawchuk | Education Week

Los Angeles -- In theory, it is every school’s dream to control its own destiny, rather than having administrators impose spending plans and reform initiatives from the central office.

At Jefferson High School, one of the largest high schools here, a governing body made up of teachers, nonclassroom-based educators, parents, and Principal Michael Taft appears to be living the dream, to the extent such a thing is possible during a staggering fiscal crisis.

The leadership team, officially known as a “school site council,” has mainly used an infusion of federal stimulus funding to keep class sizes around 25 students. With its remaining money, it has preserved a successful “eighth period”—a mandatory after-school class for students struggling to pass the California High School Exit Exam, or CAHSEE, a graduation prerequisite.

The example sums up the goal of district leaders, who have allotted nearly $114 million in Title I economic-stimulus funds to school site councils like the one at Jefferson High to spend on their own needs.

Decentralized Decisionmaking

According to the California Education Code, school site councils are elected bodies charged with setting and measuring the effectiveness of improvement strategies at the school, seeking input from other school advisory committees, revising strategies and expenditures, and creating and monitoring the approved “single plan for student achievement”—a consolidated plan requested of schools receiving state or federal school improvement funding.

The councils are made up of:
• The principal
• Representatives of teachers selected by teachers at the school
• Other school personnel selected by peers at the school
• Parents of students attending the school selected by such parents
• Students selected by students attending the school (at the middle and high school levels)

Middle and high school councils are composed to ensure parity among the principal, classroom teachers, and other school personnel. additionally, they must ensure that equal numbers of parents or other community members selected by parents and students serve on the council.

SOURCE: California Education Code

“If parents and the community feel they have some responsibility, they’ll be accountable for the direction of the school,” said Ramon C. Cortines, the superintendent of the district. “When [a school] is faced with the draconian cuts I’ve made, ... [it] needs parents and the community to be engaged and involved on an ongoing basis.”

Decentralization has long been a rallying cry among constituents in this sprawling district of 700,000 students. But as some Los Angeles educators are discovering, it pays to be careful what you wish for.

The influx of money this year through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act carries much higher stakes for the site councils for several reasons. First, the funding will double some schools’ typical Title I allocations, and thus it will be closely scrutinized.

These are not funds for a rainy day; they are a stopgap. In preparing budgets, the councils have had to determine how many teaching positions to preserve, how small they can afford to keep class sizes, and which local initiatives are worth saving. Many are making those decisions for the first time.

In effect, the district has spread the decision about cutting programs and personnel from seven school board members to 700 councils.

The decentralization has been praised by some Los Angeles administrators for moving instructional policy closer to the schools. But it has raised the hackles of other administrators, some parent groups, and the teachers’ union.

“There was no transition plan to develop the capacity of these schools that in some cases received an embarrassment of riches,” said Bill Ring, who heads TransParent, a grassroots organization that seeks to increase parents’ voices in school decisions.

Back and Forth

Required by the California Education Code, the school site councils have been around since the 1970s. But the discretionary pots of money they oversee typically wax and wane depending on the current district leadership. Some superintendents have funneled more discretionary funding, including federal Title I aid for disadvantaged students, to the councils; others have chosen to manage those funds centrally.

Mr. Cortines, who became the district chief in 2008, has generally favored a more localized approach to school instruction. Previously, during a stint as Los Angeles’ interim superintendent, in 2000, he broke the district into subdistricts, each overseen by a superintendent.

His latest push for decentralizing is unusual, though, not only for the amount of money involved, but also in its timing.

As the councils geared up to meet this spring, Los Angeles officials watched as their tax revenues dropped and as Sacramento made a succession of cuts to state funding. To reduce the resulting shortfall, the school board canceled programming, sent out more than 4,000 layoff notices to teachers, and pared the central-office staff. Upon receiving its first stimulus allocations, the district put most of its state-stabilization money and eligible money from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act toward its bottom-line deficit. But officials also decided to pass the Title I stimulus dollars to the councils, rather than filling in holes centrally.

With the money, schools could, for instance, “buy back” classroom teaching positions that had been eliminated under the central budget. Alternatively, they could choose to maintain after-school tutoring, preserve the jobs of school psychologists and counselors, or hire instructional coaches to help teachers make sense of the data from periodic student assessments.

More Discretionary Aid

In addition, the district liquidated a centrally run coaching program and federal Title II teacher-quality funding and disbursed those dollars to schools—a change officials said provided more discretionary aid to schools receiving small or no allocations under Title I.

The district, the Los Angeles teachers’ union, and others collaborated on a series of training sessions for school-site-council personnel, beginning last winter. Part of that training included mock council meetings to give educators clear examples of good and poor collaborative decisionmaking.

Mr. Cortines also gave each school a lot of data on student demographics and test scores to help the councils as they set their budgets.

Mr. Taft, the Jefferson High principal, and members of that school’s team—while not in agreement on every detail—felt it was worthwhile to maintain classroom teaching positions and the eighth period, and they had three years of higher scores to back up their decisions.

“Because of the success we’ve had, our parents are getting more involved in their child’s education,” Mr. Taft said. “When their child comes home and says he passed the math portion of the CAHSEE, that’s like handing them a $20 bill. They can see it, they can feel it, they understand it.”

But others say that Mr. Taft’s experience has been the exception, not the norm. Mr. Ring of the parents’ group said that the district’s efforts to build schools’ capacity to spend the money wisely have so far only scratched the surface.

“It’s exposure, not culture change,” he said of the training.

The teachers’ union, meanwhile, has grown increasingly critical of the plan, saying it has unnecessarily compromised teachers’ jobs and raised class sizes. District figures show that schools have kept a significant number of nonclassroom positions, such as coaches.

The district, officials of United Teachers Los Angeles say, shouldhave spent the stimulus money centrally to ensure a minimum class size for all elementary students and to preserve more classroom teaching positions.

“I honestly don’t think Ray [Cortines] understood that you can’t just snap your fingers and go turn an authoritarian system into a decentralized one,” said Daniel Barnhart, a UTLA board member.

The union has also accused the district of pressuring principals on the councils to maintain reading coaches over classroom teachers, and it has filed 17 grievances alleging that schools didn’t staff or conduct their councils in accordance with state law.

“Decentralization is illusory,” said Sean Leys, a teacher at Lincoln High School who went on a well-publicized hunger strike to protest the layoffs. “Without a doubt, there are hundreds of school councils that show no oversight because they have no idea what the role of the council is.”

District Response

Monica Garcia, the president of the Los Angeles school board, concedes that the district has more work to do on training. But she argues that the district’s centrally mandated strategies were not always effective for all schools.

Schools likely to benefit most under the shift are big high schools like Jefferson, which serves 2,800 students, many disadvantaged. At Jefferson, Mr. Taft estimates that during the upcoming school year, the council will oversee a total of $8 million to $9 million in regular Title I money, stimulus funding, and other state and federal bilingual education grants, for instance.

“For the first time, our large high schools have a good chunk of money to do things with,” Ms. Garcia said. “I think that is probably the silver lining, that these large underperforming high schools got attention on what they needed, rather than what we prescribed.”

And district officials flatly deny the union’s charge that they have acted as puppetmaster over councils and principals.

“It’s very frustrating because [the union] supported decentralization in 2000,” Mr. Cortines said. “But it came to the bottom line. If [the council] didn’t spend the money the way UTLA wanted, it was wrong.”Michelle King, a local area superintendent in west Los Angeles, said that schools there did make classroom teachers a priority.

But councils nevertheless struggled with the buy-back process because of seniority provisions in the district contract, she said. Local schools budget classroom “positions,” so buy-backs do not guarantee the return of beloved instructors—merely teachers who fit the appropriate categories and are next on the seniority roll.

“I think of all the messages, that was the one we had to repeat over and over,” Ms. King said.

Still, Ms. King expects councils to take on more responsibilities over time, such as promoting school safety and ensuring spending is aligned with academic goals.

“[Decentralization] was a shock to the system, but it’s something the community has been asking for a long time,” she said.

Observers hope for the best, but some harbor doubts. David Tokofsky, a consultant for the principals’ union and a former school board member, worries not just about the logistics of the move, but has a philosophical concern, too.

While it may complete Mr. Cortines’ long-held decentralization plans, it may not satisfy the reform-minded rhetoric coming from President Barack Obama’s administration on the use of stimulus funds, he suggested.

“They say all politics are local politics. Well, in Los Angeles, we say all politics are ‘loco’ politics,” Mr. Tokofsky said. “And right now, the politics of the past are racing forward at the very time that Obama is putting more money and attention toward education.”

Coverage of leadership is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.

The news that didn’t fit from April 19th

THE TWO MAJOR CALIFORNIA TEACHERS UNIONS AGREE THAT THE STATE OWES EDUCATION BILLION$, CTA Goes to the Ballot Box, CFT to the Courts
Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:43 PM
The latest on California politics and government  Posted by Kevin Yamamura, SACBEE  April 16 - The California Teachers Association has pumped $5 million so far into a campaign to pass Propositions 1A and 1B, with the carrot of $9.3 billion in total additional education revenues starting in 2011-12 under 1B.  But the California Federation of Teachers believes there's a different way to get that

L.A. ACADEMY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST PROPOSED LAUSD TEACHER CUTS
Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:57 PM
by Nadra Kareem | Contributing Writer The Watts Times  April 16, 2009 -- Lamar Queen considered applying to three school districts in Southern California upon graduating from Louisiana’s Grambling State University. In the end, the math teacher settled on the Los Angeles Unified School District.  “They had a nice incentive program for new teachers who were going to teach math, so I went with

YouTube: CTA’s YES ON 1A & 1B COMMERCIAL
Thursday, April 16, 2009 6:16 AM
4LAKIDS unenthusiastically recommends  YES votes on 1A, 1B & 1C. We don’t like any of them, but they are the best we are going to get in this economy with politics-as-unusual in Sacramento.     1D  and 1E hold early childhood education and mental health programs temporary hostage for education, if you can accept that – vote YES.     1E is a no brainer.    Familiarize yourself with the measures

NY Times’ Los Angeles Journal: GIVING LESSONS IN TRAFFIC SAFETY AT MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Thursday, April 16, 2009 5:18 AM
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER | NEW YORK TIMES    Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times - Mitchell Summer, the dean of students at Florence Nightingale Middle School in Los Angeles, helps students cross the street  April 10, 2009 — LOS ANGELES — At 2:58 each weekday afternoon, the adults brace for traffic chaos at Florence Nightingale Middle School.  The bell sounds, and children dash to the left

5000? 5400? 6850? THE NUMBERS OF LAUSD LAYOFFS LIKE THE SIZE OF THE BUDGET DEFICIT AND THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL STIMULUS REMAINS UNKNOWN. BUT HOWEVER MANY OF THEM THERE ARE THEY ARE LIKE, SO FIRED! OR NOT.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:17 PM
Update 4/15 | 3pm:           Before yesterday’s vote to “save” 1996 elementary school jobs Reduction in Force/RIF/layoff  notices  had been sent to 10,571 employees.            The final vote technically authorized 8,541 layoffs,             Superintendent Ramon Cortines and Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said the district would route state funding to individual schools, allowing them to

“DO THE RIGHT THING FOR KIDS …AND THE RIGHT THING IS NOT TO PROCEED WITH THIS BUDGET”
Saturday, April 18, 2009 2:48 PM
“You have heard from Jackie Goldberg and John Mockler;  you have heard from teachers and parents and student. Listen to them.” 

smf to the Board of Ed at the April 14th Meeting:  Members of the Board of Education, I speak today as Vice President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTA and I bring the greetings of Thirty-first District. Together we represent the entirely of PTA in LAUSD.   I am here in

LABOR ORGANIZES AGAINST BUDGET MEASURE 1-A + Strange 1A fellows move their beds closer together
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 8:10 AM
By Kevin Yamamura | Sacramento Bee     Monday, Apr. 13, 2009 - A powerful California public employee union formed a campaign committee Monday with two other labor groups to oppose Proposition 1A, a May 19 ballot measure that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have said will solve future budget problems.  Service Employees International Union's California State Council, which says

 

COALITION OF LAUSD UNIONS & H.O.P.E PARENT COALITION TALKING POINTS

Saturday, April 11, 2009 10:34 PM
Spend the Stimulus monies to ensure a future for the kids  &  Deny the District’s self-defeating and rash cuts.     Guiding Principle From 4/6 Meetings                        Public Interest Message of Hope· Maintain level of consistency of instructional and operational support.· Equity.           ·

THE LAUSD BUDGET: What we know/What we don't know.

by smf for 4LAKids

●THIS MUCH WE KNOW:

· The Federal government though the stimulus package is committed to maintain and create jobs in public education – that is the goal of this initial phase of the stimulus. Reform comes later, with different dollars.

· LAUSD's budget, approved last Tuesday, is reform and 'rightsizing' driven: the Board of Ed voted to reduce and eliminate, not save and create jobs, positions and programs.

· Yes, 1996 elementary teacher positions from a Reduction-in-Force (RIF) pool of over ten thousand were 'saved' – but 8,541 jobs were done away with Tuesday. The possibility of saving 3,167 of these jobs through the federal stimulus was relegated to the school sites' discretion – if they can find the money and can figure out the district, state and federal mandate. 5,374 jobs cannot be saved under the 4/13 budget plan.

· The California Ed Code says that only the Board of Education has hiring and firing authority.

· The first of the Federal Stimulus was released by the feds to the state Friday; California was the first state in the nation to receive the funding.

· The feds say the governor has authority and responsibility to send the money to school districts. The legislature says the California Constitution gives them that sole authority. Where the California Superintendent of Public Instruction – the state's premiere elected official in education fits in is unclear – but he has weighed in (see $3.1-BILLION ECONOMIC STIMULUS WINDFALL OFFERS A CHANCE TO REFORM CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS, TOP EDUCATION OFFICIAL SAYS, following) In LAUSD the Board of Ed and the superintendent are at odds with O'Connell's advice to come up with "creative solutions that benefit all students" while saving jobs of teachers, administrators and employees. They are intent on rightsizing – pushing the decision making authority on saving jobs out to the 900 school sites.

· The March 10th Board of Ed meeting – the first reading of the district budget – was held with no public witnesses, broadcast by a single TV camera controlled by the board from am undisclosed location behind locked doors, inaccessible to the public — in extremely dubious compliance with the state's open meeting law.

· At the next Board of Ed budget hearing on March 31^st Dr. Vladovic recused himself – removing himself from the process – citing a conflict of interest. His son was subject to layoff under the proposed RIF proposal.

· Absent consensus, under pressure of the District's congressional delegation and in deference to the public the board voted to postpone to a certain time (the regular April 13^th meeting) the motion on the floor (the budget resolution).

· Immediately prior to the April 13^th meeting a special meeting was held and Dr. Vladovic's son and 1995 other teachers were removed from the RIF list. Dr. Vladovic did not participate in the special meeting.

· At the April 13 regular meeting – at which the budget resolution was reconsidered as amended – Dr. Vladovic was recorded at the opening roll call as absent. Whether he was ever recorded as present is unclear. From time to time he came and left. At no time did he announce he was no longer recused.

· When the final vote was taken there was a 3 to 3 tie; Dr. Vladovic not being present. In a tie vote the motion would have failed – but the vote was left open pending Dr. Vladovic's return

· When Vladovic returned he explained his absence as illness (…with perhaps more detail then was required!) Asked for his vote he made an inquiry of counsel: [LATimes: "He then asked for a legal opinion on whether the district could spend more restricted money to save jobs. The district's top lawyer warned against it." — this in itself is parliamentarily questionable, no further information should be provided during a vote], He got a reply and recorded an Aye vote. 4 to 3 the motion carried.

● WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW:

· Questions arise as to whether Dr. Vladovic's participation was correct in light of his:

1. previous recusal on a continued motion,

2. absence at the roll call and

3. absence at the vote – which was understood by some witnesses as his continued recusal.

· There is also question as to whether the decision to save the 1996 elementary positions was engineered to secure Vladovic's participation.

· 4LAKids questions what the intended and unintended consequences of saving the 1996 elementary teachers will be. The initial RIF was proposed to facilitate class size increase; now 2000 more teachers are available but the class size increase mandate was not addressed in the budget. What exactly will those teachers are doing?

· How School Site Councils – charged under this budget with determining which RIFed teachers and staff will be rehired — and untrained and unprepared for this fiduciary and ethical responsibility – will function when they are likely to be composed of RIFed employees and their co-workers – and by parents whose children will be served by impacted employees.

· The composition of SSCs is statutory, they are elected bodies and their makeup is formulated to create equitable representation of employees, administration, parents and community, and in secondary: students. Wholesale recusal would disturb the equity

· SSC meetings, normally open, will be closed as they would be discussing personnel matters. This creates both the appearance-of and actual conflicts of interest of biblical proportions with little or no transparency, accountability or oversight. Stay tuned.

Tune in and watch: The April 13th Board meeting will be rebroadcast Sunday, April 19, 10:24 AM on KLCS/Channel 58 - CHANNEL 58.1 Check your cable listings for which channel it is carried.

5000? 5400? 6850? The numbers of LAUSD layoffs like the size of the budget deficit and the size of the federal stimulus remains unknown. But however many of them there are they are like, so fired! Or not.

---

Update 4/15 | 3pm:

• Before yesterday’s vote to “save” 1996 elementary school jobs Reduction in Force/RIF/layoff  notices  had been sent to 10,571 employees.

• The final vote technically authorized 8,541 layoffs,

• Superintendent Ramon Cortines and Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said the district would route state funding to individual schools, allowing them to "buy back" 3,167 positions

• Resulting in a final estimate of 5,374 layoffs.

“Allowing them” being the mother of all assumptions. - smf

---

LAUSD OKs plan to lay off 6850 employees

Los Angeles Daily News – April 15

By Connie Llanos and George B. Sánchez, Staff Writers A divided Los Angeles Unified Board of Education narrowly approved a plan Tuesday to lay off more than ...

Board OKs 5400 LA school layoffs

Long Beach Press-Telegram – April 15

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to lay off up to 5400 teachers and support personnel for the 2009-10 year, hours after saving nearly 2000 ...

L.A. Unified moves to cut 5000 teachers and others

Los Angeles Times – April 15

No one expects every employee with a layoff notice in the Los Angeles Unified School District to be out of work, and most observers believe the current ...

4/7 - Today’s headlines: PLAYING THE UNION CARDS

LAUSD, unions to discuss options

Los Angeles Daily News - ‎6 hours ago‎

Los Angeles Unified School District staff and union officials have until next Tuesday to find alternatives for the 8500 proposed layoffs. ...

LAUSD, UTLA continue negotiations

abc7.com - ‎11 hours ago‎

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Formal negotiations continued Monday afternoon between United Teachers Los Angeles and the LA Unified School District in an ...

Teachers from 2 L.A. schools offer to take pay cuts to avoid layoffs

Los Angeles Times - ‎12 hours ago‎

... LA Schools Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines and leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union for the Los Angeles Unified School District. ...

LAist

Furloughs Are Better Than Pink Slips Say Some LAUSD Teachers

LAist - ‎20 hours ago‎

(Photo by Norma*Iriz* via Flickr) Under pressure from United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing educators working in the LAUSD, ...

LA school board chief meets with teachers willing to accept pay cuts

Los Angeles Times - ‎22 hours ago‎

A top Los Angeles school district official is meeting this morning with teachers who are breaking with their union to support pay cuts as a way to avoid ...

CENTRAL REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #14 IN ECHO PARK: The adults push and shove …and the children + the voters + the taxpayers + the school (and $16 million) are potentially left behind.

Central Region ES #14, 56.40002

1018 Mohawk St., Los Angeles, CA 90026

Map and Directions

 

by smf for 4LAKids

Much has been made about Central Region Elementary School #14 — which was conceived and designed to relieve overcrowding and gets kids off the bus, out of multitrack year 'round calendars and into schools in their neighborhood.

The process at CRES#14 was not all that different than any other school construction project. A need was established, there were community meetings, alternative sites were identified and discussed, a site was proposed, the Board of Ed agreed, land was purchased - and where the purchase price couldn't be agreed upon eminent domain was exercised. Fifty families were bought out and relocated. A school was designed; approvals were secured along the way.

At the same time a very vocal and legally connected group of folks - some from the area and apparently some not - organized opposition and filed suit, challenging LAUSD at every step of the way and ultimately prevailing in court on a technicality that the environmental study had been inadequate.

The law is technical, LAUSD was adjudged wrong, they won.

A second court-ordered study was done, one that satisfied the court. The opponents continued to agitate - threatening to continue legal action - and ultimately LAUSD settled with them.

• Some might say LAUSD paid them to go away.
• The more politic characterization would be that a settlement was reached.

The project was cleared to proceed and ground to be broken - but Councilman Garcetti continued to object. Additional design modifications ensued. Still the councilman continues to object - and kids are no closer to getting their new school - or getting their old schools less crowded - than they were before the tempest first stirred. Now deadlines loom and the project may indeed be forced to cancel, postpone, go on "turn-around" at a cost of $16 million - money L.A. taxpayers will have to pay back to Sacramento. And no school.

Following are the two most recent salvos in the war of words, a public exchange between Superintendent Cortines and Board President Garcetti.

• The FIRST ENTRY is a letter to Garcetti from Cortines. Note that the greeting "Dear Eric" has been changed in Cortines hand to "Dear sir", symptomatic of whatever symbolism one cares to attach.
• THE SECOND ENTRY is a statement by Garcetti read to a well attended community meeting last week - a meeting which neither Cortines, Garcetti, nor Local District Superintendent Alonzo attended. The meeting featured angst and accusation, outrage from people whose silence was supposed to have been bought-and-paid-for, a translation headset was thrown and some people called other people names. Whether Cortines, Garcetti or Alonzo avoided attending is a conclusion you, gentle reader, must reach for yourself.

There is nothing but white space between these lines.

From Council President Garcetti, read to the CRES#14 Meeting at Rosemont ES 3/12/98

Dear Friends, Neighbors, and Community Leaders:

I strongly believe that we should be building small schools, and I have made my position known to LAUSD. I have appeared before the school board, met one-on-one with our school board member, and my staff has had numerous meetings with district staff.

As the President of the City Council and the Councilmember for one of the most underresourced districts in the City of Los Angeles, I have seen time and again that our students can too easily fall through the cracks in large, overcrowded schools. And I have seen that the smaller school environments in District 13 provide a more personalized learning environment for our students, where they feel like they matter.

In small schools, teachers and administrators can more easily work together as a unit and enjoy greater flexibility. Evidence demonstrates that small schools help close the achievement gap, make our campuses safer, increase parent and community involvement, and lead to greater teacher satisfaction and retention. I’m very glad that we are represented by a School Board Member who not only shares this belief in small schools, but who has championed it.

The school that will be built at Site 9A will be a part of our community for generations to come. So often in Los Angeles we miss opportunities, and I don’t want parents and students in this neighborhood to miss out on the opportunity to have a successful, small school to serve our needs.

Our community deserves a school, but it also deserves a great school for our kids and for our neighborhood. We deserve a great streetscape on Alvarado, that makes us feel safe and is in conformance with our neighborhood’s recently-updated community plan, written by and with Echo Park residents. We deserve a school that is the right size for our students, and we will continue to fight for building that great school.

Thank you for being engaged on this issue. I look forward to working with all of you moving forward.

LAUSD SENDS OUT REPORT CARDS EVALUATING SCHOOLS

Supt. Ramon C. Cortines pushed for the mailings to give parents a clearer view of students' graduation and dropout rates, math and English proficiency, college preparation and more.

 

Video: KTLA/TRIBUNE/from la times website

By Howard Blume | LA Times

January 12, 2009  -- Parents in Los Angeles this week will receive a one-page report card that will provide a less varnished and more accessible picture of how well their child's school is doing.

For high schools, the report card will provide more accurate dropout figures and display, for example, how many students are proficient in English and math -- and whether that number is going up or down. Much of the information is available elsewhere, but some nuggets can be found only on the report card, such as what percentage of 10th-graders are on track to attend college.

Such statistics are available because the Los Angeles Unified School District has been collecting information on individual students for about a decade. But until now, the nation's second-largest school system didn't volunteer much data beyond what the state required.

"Many parents are going to be alarmed because this is real information," said Mike McGalliard, who heads MLA Partners Schools, a nonprofit leading reform efforts at Manual Arts High School south of downtown.

McGalliard applauds the effort, despite a sobering picture for Manual Arts: 3% of students are proficient in math; 13% in English. Moreover, only 13% of sophomores are on track to qualify for admission to a University of California or Cal State campus. And only 37% of Manual Arts students from the class of 2008 graduated on time.

This abysmal on-time graduation rate, which the district is now providing to parents, is a starker statistic than the school's most recent official graduation rate of 76%, as calculated by the state.

New York City, which assigns a letter grade to every school, is among a handful of school districts to issue such report cards.

"Not a lot of districts have done it, and not a lot have done it at this level of breadth," said Marshall Tuck, a top education advisor to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

In the past, the district leaned heavily toward selecting data that demonstrated success or progress while downplaying or submerging difficult truths, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said.

"Some administrators use data selectively," said Cortines, who will unveil the report cards at a news conference today. "I want both the bad and good, and I don't want it sugarcoated."

Tuck and Cortines were instrumental in pushing forward the new report card. After Villaraigosa failed in an attempt to gain control of L.A. Unified, his team settled for authority over 10 low-performing schools. Cortines headed that effort as a deputy mayor, and Tuck worked for him.

Funding to develop the report cards came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Cortines and Tuck had intended to gauge progress at the mayor's schools but Cortines expanded the effort districtwide after he joined L.A. Unified last April. (He became district superintendent Jan. 1.)

The Boston Consulting Group designed the report card with input from focus groups across the school system. Cortines acknowledged that there has been some bureaucratic resistance: Some administrators criticized the consultants as unneeded, overpriced or educationally shallow.

The school system planned to mail report cards today to every household at a cost of about $700,000 -- just over $1 per student. Only a handful of charter schools are included in this round because they use different data systems.

The consultants also helped create a program that will give teachers more information on how individual students are performing. That system is being tested in 37 schools.

Reporting data on students and schools has been an evolving process. The state is developing its own system to track students individually. And California has long required School Accountability Report Cards, which debuted as lengthy, arcane documents filled with jargon and boilerplate text that critics said were designed more to obfuscate than illuminate.

Those documents, posted online, have improved in recent years, but can still be difficult to interpret. They include, for example, the number and rate of suspensions without explaining how to interpret the data or offering comparisons with other schools.

Parents will receive a work in progress. Missing for now are measures to evaluate teaching, school culture, safety, and satisfaction among students and parents. Developing these parameters could prove challenging.

Characterizing the dimensions of a school with numbers or on a single page is difficult in any format.

Manual Arts, for instance, now has student artwork displayed all over campus and a science club that remade a ragged yard between buildings into a permanent display of plant biomes.

The report also has no category for last year's struggle between the faculty and a principal -- who ultimately departed -- over diverging visions of the school's future.

Nor is there a place for the results of a recent school survey that found one of the small academies did particularly well at developing bonds between teachers and students -- an element considered crucial to lowering dropout rates.

Less than a decade ago, Manual Arts became notorious for manipulating data, falsely claiming that 100% of its graduates completed UC admissions requirements, that 80% enrolled in college and that nearly every ninth-grader graduated on schedule. The apparent success won the principal a photo op with then-President Bill Clinton before revelations cost the administrator his job.

In contrast, last week, ninth-grade coordinator Jose Miguel Kubes told visitors that 120 ninth-graders flunked all their first-semester classes, and another 120 failed one or more. Staff members, he said, were meeting with each student to find out why and develop an individual recovery plan.

One element missing from the report card is a summary score or grade for each school. Cortines said he is inclined to leave it that way. "I think you give them the facts. I give credit to the intelligence of the parents and community to figure it out."

from the Downtown News:: READY FOR A MEGA YEAR: School is in Session + LEADERS OF THE PACK: Monica Garcia

In the fall, the $232 million High School for the Visual and Performing Arts will open. LAUSD officials still have to hire a staff and decide who will be able to attend the state-of-the-art facility. Photo by Gary Leonard.

from Ready for a Mega Year  by Anna Scott

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - One of the biggest stories of 2009 will be the economy, and some of the signature projects Downtown Los Angeles has long awaited - the Grand Avenue plan, Park Fifth, etc. - are in question. Yet, despite the fears and uncertainties, the community this year will see the debut of several mega-developments, ones that began construction during the boom cycle and that have the power to continue to help transform the area. From skyscrapers that will house more stakeholders to an underground transit line that will make commuting into the Central City easier, these projects will all have a major impact on the people who live, work and visit Downtown.

School Is in Session: Jan 5 - The Los Angeles Unified School District's $232 million, 1,700-seat High School for the Visual and Performing Arts will open for classes this fall. The 238,000-square-foot campus at 450 N. Grand Ave. includes a 950-seat auditorium and 140-foot tower; the eye-catching (some say audacious) project is designed by Austrian firm Coop Himelb(l)au. The school will feature music, dance, visual arts and performing arts academies. However, with only months until it opens, a few key issues have not been decided, such as how much of the student body will come from outside Downtown, and whether the school will be enveloped by the LAUSD, or if it will have some charter-like independence.

 

from Leaders of the Pack by Jon Regardie: Elected Officials Who Will Be at the Center of Things in 2009

Fresh off her ouster of former LAUSD Supt. David Brewer, school board President Monica Garcia has put herself in a position of power. Photo by Gary Leonard.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - In the grand scheme of things, with scheme being the operative word, the political scene in 2008 in Downtown was pretty quiet. The scandals were less fantastic than in previous years, the local elections were a far second in terms of excitement to the vote for president, and the city's rock star politician, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, was on good behavior as he worked hard to bounce back from a disastrous 2007.          Will it be more of the same in 2009? Hard to tell at this point. We expect there will be some surprises (there always are), but for right now, expect the five figures below to be the ones to spur movement in Downtown Los Angeles

Monica Garcia: Jan 5 - The president of the school board last year led the effort to get rid of Superintendent David Brewer. It came off clunky, but the key is, she got him out and her guy in, and in politics, results are what matters. Garcia has the ear of Villaraigosa (though some say she's just doing his bidding) and she sits at the head of a school board where her side has the majority. With billons coming to the LAUSD after voters approved a school bond proposition last year, Garcia has power and is ready to use it.