CUTS, BUT FROM WHERE? + TAMAR LAYS OUT GRIM BUDGET SCENARIO

from LAUSD Board Member Tamar Galatzan's Board District 3 e-newsletter

WHERE ARE THE CUTS? According to Galatzan & Superintendent Cortines: 15% OF LAUSD’S TOTAL BUDGET NEEDS TO BE CUT

1,600 positions to be cut at Beaudry Reduced maintenance at schools Only core content support for schools Reduce facility leases Class size increase of 24 to 1 in K-3

●● smf's 2¢:

Why does the Superintendent continue to budget based on the projected state budget (which is iffy at best - based on faulty assumptions and relying upon all the May 19th ballot measures passing) and refuses to take into account the Federal Stimulus Package - which is coming and is the down payment on a new federal commitment to public education? Every other major school district in the nation has incorporated the Stimulus in their planning. Not LAUSD. Why does he continue to propose to lay off employees when the federal funds are meant to - and can - SAVE those jobs? SAVE the eliminated programs? And SAVE the 20:1 Class size in K-3? Why does he continue to pursue his 1999 Plan to Decentralize to the Local Districts (his 1993 Plan to Decentralize to Local Districts failed in NYC when he was chancellor there) and his 100 Day "Plan of Action" - written by outside consultants? And why does the board go along?

By Board Member Tamar Galatzan

March 26, 2009 - The question of how best to cut the budget understandably preoccupies the entire LAUSD community: board members, parents, teachers, administrators, and the executive staff at Beaudry.

My inbox, and that of my colleagues, is running at or above capacity as constituent groups express their strongly-held views, usually in support of a program or position that they insist must not be eliminated. As I have previously noted, in some cases, these messages provide the first indication to Board members that particular cuts are being seriously considered. In that sense, they double as a public service, keeping us informed on what might be proposed at the highest levels.

But it must also be said that rarely do those seeking to save a particular program offer a concrete alternative for reductions of similar magnitude. At best, they suggest that we cut "waste" or the "bureaucracy", without specifying which waste, or what bureaucrats.

These are easy -- but ill-defined -- targets.

I am strongly in favor of constituent groups fighting for programs that they regarded as critical to the education of LAUSD students. Their passion provides the strongest possible evidence that we live in a community where people care deeply about the fate of our neighborhood schools.

Yet LAUSD is faced with the reality of having to close a $700 million deficit in a short amount of time. Wrenching decisions are being made daily, if not hourly.

It would behoove all those who contact us about the fate of a beloved program or employee to go further and offer meaningful suggestions about where else we might reduce the budget.

Some of you have already sent specific suggestions about staffing levels, scheduling, and contracting, and I have discussed all of these ideas with the Superintendent and his staff.

I guarantee I will take these ideas seriously, and I know the Superintendent will, as well.

-Tamar

TAMAR LAYS OUT GRIM BUDGET SCENARIO

from the Galatzan Gazette

26 March - They nervously waited for the meeting to start, hoping that the news wouldn’t be worse than receiving a “reduction in force” letter the week before.

A special meeting regarding LAUSD’s budget brought together around 70 parents and teachers from schools in Sherman Oaks and Studio City at Riverside Drive Elementary School on Monday evening.

Earlier that day, Tamar had been on the phone with Superintendent Ray Cortines, getting the most up-to-date budget information available to disseminate.

Her office has been inundated with concerned calls and emails about the budget.

“We already cut $400 million from the ‘08-‘09 budget and now we are facing $700 to $800 million in cuts in the next 16 months as a best case scenario,” Tamar told the group.

Tamar also addressed the most upto- day information about federal stimulus funds for education, including money specifically designated for Special Education, technology and competitive grants.

Some parents wondered why construction bond funds can’t be used for education.

Tamar explained that bond language is very specific about what it can be used for.

Parents expressed frustration and said that they feel helpless and want to know what they can do to help.

Tamar noted that there is a special election on May 19 that could further impact the state’s budget.

She encouraged everyone to be informed and vote.

While the Board is trying to spare impacts to the classroom, with Local Districts and downtown Beaudry facing 30 to 50 percent cuts in staff, many teachers may be bumped out by administrators who have seniority and union options to return to the classroom.

One way the District is trying to cushion the blow is by offering an early retirement incentive that 2,100 teachers have already accepted.

Further, Superintendent Cortines is supportive of Tamar’s goal of supporting non-Title 1 schools (schools with a student population of less than 40 percent free or reduced lunch which receive less funding) and will be giving $30 per student next year.

Victor Palomares, a kindergarten teacher stood up and spoke, “When I was a little boy, my father passed away and school was my safe haven.I know that I will be laid off, but I want us to work to provide a safe haven for our students.”

Palomares, who holds two degrees, and a masters in multicultural education, has taught for eight years.

The School Board is tentatively scheduled to vote on a budget on March 31.

BIG BUCKS FOR LAUSD CONSULTANTS

By George B. Sánchez, Staff Writer. LA NEWSPAPER GROUP/DAILY NEWS

03/26/2009 - An audit detailing Los Angeles Unified's reliance on costly outside consultants to build schools has raised such concern for Superintendent Ramon Cortines that he called in a former bank executive to review the findings.

Cortines asked Bill Siart, former chairman and CEO of First Interstate Bank Corp., to look at the audit, prepared by Inspector General Jerry Thornton, and a defense of the building program by construction chief Guy Mehula.

Siart was not paid for his work. Cortines did not detail the scope or conclusions of his review, but said he would release it Monday.

According to district sources, the audit found that $186 million was paid to 1,277 outside consultants in 2006-07, averaging $145,653 per person that year. The audit's findings mirrored an earlier analysis by the Daily News that found the district spent $182 million on 849 consultants - about $215,000 each - in the 2007-08 year.

While the audit was completed late last month, Cortines said it contained "unsubstantiated" findings and asked Thornton and Mehula to work out their differences.

"I am on top of this," Cortines said. "I have concerns with the report and its content."

School board members are only now getting copies of the audit, which Cortines said he would explain to them on Tuesday.

The inspector general, the district's internal watchdog, said he would not release the report to the media until late next week.

---

SPIN CONTROL:

• I have not seen the audit or a draft of the audit. I have not seen Mr, Mehula’s response or a draft of Mr. Mehula’s response.  I have not seen Mr. Siart’s review of the audit or a draft of Mr. Siart’s review; this article is the first I have heard of Mr. Siart’s review.
• I am a member of the Bond Oversight Committee which is charged by the State Constitution, the actual language of the bonds from BB through Q,  and our charter with the Board of Education with review and oversight of school construction bond expenditures. One would think the BOC would be in this loop …unless there are allegations of BOC mal-or-misfeasance.
• The Inspector General, according to his charter and the District org chart , reports to the Board of Education – not the superintendent.
• The superintendent will release his response – the Siart report – next Monday – and the IG will release his report later in the week?  What’s with that?
• Not to over define the definitions but there is a difference between Consultants and Outside Professional Contractors. Mr Siart is a consultant, albeit unpaid. It is my understanding that the subjects of the IG’s report are almost entirely professional contractors.

These are my opinions, not necessarily those of anyone else.

- smf

Extra Credit Homework: Google Bill Siart. He was a candidate for Superintendent in 1999 when Cortines was Interim Superintendent and Romer was hired. As Chairman of the Board of ExEd he is a champion-of and advocate-for Charter Schools. The charter school community is currently in a dispute with the Facilities Services Division (FSD) over whether bond funds can be used to build charter schools without FSD and Division of the State Architect (DSA) oversight and inspection – outside the seismic safety of the Field Act. In 2006 Siart wrote OpEd saying that the mayor should have chartering authority – contrary to the state constitution and LAUSD v. Villaraigosa – in which the courts held that city government has  no authority in public education.

---

"I think the board members and superintendent should discuss this and determine if action should be taken," Thornton said. He would not elaborate.

Board President Mónica García declined to comment Wednesday. Tamar Galatzan has a copy of the audit, according to her staff, but has not read it and would not comment.

Other board members did not respond to phone calls.

While the audit details past spending, union officials said it raises questions about the district's current use of outside consultants amid massive cost-cutting and layoff threats.

"If this is what they were doing in '06-07, what were they doing in '07-08 and '08-09?" said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Duffy has not read the report.

The district faces a crushing deficit of $718 million over the next 18 months and the specter of mass layoffs, larger class sizes and the elimination of many popular programs.

The teachers union and other labor representatives have called for the district to halt consultant contracts and use that money for teachers and staff, among other demands.

District officials defend the practice, saying consultant contracts ebb and flow with the various stages of construction and have said district wages don't measure up to industry standards.

They add that special consultants are particularly needed to efficiently carry out the nearly $20 billion school construction program.

The Facilities Services Division is in charge of the district's construction program, which has been called the largest public construction program in the country.

The building program has continued apace despite enrollment falling in recent years. District officials say that enrollment fluctuates over the years and they must prepare for anticipated growth in the coming decades.

Last year, consultants constituted nearly 20 percent of the division and accounted for 35 percent of all employee costs. The majority of consultants have been used within two of the division's seven departments: New Construction and Existing Facilities, according to district records.

The district's use of outside consultants has come under fire for years.

"For almost 10 years, we`ve been telling the district that it's a waste of money to use contractors and not district employees," said Connie Moreno, a representative for the California School Employees Association.

"We`ve seen Facilities Division management take work away from district employees and give it to their contractors."

In contrast to consultant wages, the average employee of the facilities division earned about $99,000 in 2007-08, according to district records.

Teamsters local 572 is in arbitration over alleged illegal subcontracting as a result of the district`s use of contractors and outside consultants.

WHAT BERNIE MADOFF CAN TEACH US ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY IN EDUCATION

BERNIE’S LESSON PLAN

1. The most compelling evidence for something's being wrong is often hidden in plain view.
2. For misrepresentation to work at a large scale, people’s desires and, even more so, their fears need to be played to.
3. If you want to forestall the day of reckoning, make sure you are in charge of both generating and then interpreting your own metrics.
4. Surround oneself with true believers.

Commentary By Walter M. Stroup | EdWeek Published in Print: March 18, 2009

Mindful of H.L. Mencken's observation that "there is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong," let us urge the new Obama administration to avoid making the mistake of previous administrations in equating accountability in education with high-stakes test scores. There is increasing evidence that flaws in current test design should all but disqualify their continued use as metrics of accountability, especially in science and mathematics education.

To help us head off a potential collapse of trust in public education comparable in scale to the collapse of trust in our financial system, we might look to draw parallels from what we are learning with the economy. In particular, the closure of Bernard Madoff's fraudulent investment firm stands to teach us at least four basic lessons we might use in reflecting on the role high-stakes testing has in driving current education reform.

A first lesson is that the most compelling evidence for something's being wrong is often hidden in plain view. Consistent investment returns of 10 percent or more can’t be real, and in Mr. Madoff's case, they weren't. Similarly in education, there is mounting evidence in plain view that our current approach to high-stakes-test design can’t tell us what we need to know in order to drive education reform.

Separate from the question of whether any one test can give a complete picture of what a student knows or what he or she has learned in a given year—the answer to which is obviously no—there is the more precise question of whether, empirically, the tests work as good measures of what a teacher has done during a given school year. The answer to that question is also no.

Using student scores from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS, our university-based research group has analyzed both the effectiveness of some specific reform projects in mathematics and year-to-year scores from the entire state in science, math, social studies, and English. For the most part, we have found the TAKS tests to be what W. James Popham of the University of California, Los Angeles, calls "insensitive to instruction."

This means that even in situations where sensitivity to instruction is most implicated—those where there is a sustained, aggressive, high-quality, and content-focused intervention—most of a student’s score on the high-stakes TAKS (more than 70 percent of the variance) is predicted by the previous year's math scores (with at most only 7 percent to 8 percent of the variance related to the intervention). We have checked with colleagues involved in mathematics interventions from around the country, and their results with similar tests are comparable.

We also found in our study that the predictive power of previous math scores holds up over a number of years of math testing, not just for the year prior. Even across subject areas, test scores predict other test scores in ways that are very likely to overwhelm the effects that any teacher could be expected to have in any given year.

For reform-oriented accountability to work, test scores need to be highly sensitive to what educators do. Instead, we have tests made up of items selected for their ability to consistently sort students, year in and year out, in the same order relative to an increasingly cross-test, cross-year, and even cross-domain psychometric "profile" developed by the testing organizations. (An example would be the location of students, in terms of an ability construct, on a logistic curve.)

These profiles emerge as an artifact of how items are selected. Test developers include in their respective proprietary item pools only those items shown to sort students in the same relative order in terms of their likeliness of getting an item correct. (In other words, ideally for each item in a given area, Student Q should always be more likely to get it right than Student S.) When high-stakes tests are then assembled using only the items that fit with these internal sorting profiles, the tests themselves also end up being remarkably robust in keeping students in the same relative order in terms of their overall scores (Student Q's overall test score is very likely to be higher than S's).

Using this approach, test scores will continue to predict other tests scores in ways that will remain remarkably insensitive to the quality of content-specific instruction. And just one of the unintended consequences of this insensitivity to instruction may be that those schools feeling the most pressure to improve test scores will resort to emphasizing test-taking skills, as opposed to meaningful academic content, as a compelling alternative strategy for attaining immediate, if short-lived, results.

Needless to say, these findings are highly problematic for outcome-driven reforms.

A second important lesson the Madoff scandal teaches us is that, for misrepresentation to work at a large scale, people’s desires and, even more so, their fears need to be played to, often by appeals to highly specialized forms of expertise or insider knowledge.

Perhaps no single piece of recent domestic legislation speaks more directly to our hopes and fears as a nation than the No Child Left Behind Act, with its goals to improve both equity and the levels of excellence in education.

The fact, then, that these largely self-confirming testing profiles align so consistently with existing inequities related to socioeconomic status, race, or first language only serves to underscore how problematic our findings are. That the math tests in Texas are now being validated, in the name of predicting "college readiness," with what historically have been tests of "aptitude" (such as the SAT)—tests that have comparably problematic outcomes along these same dimensions—makes it even more likely that our high-stakes tests in math and science will reinscribe the sorts of inequities the No Child Left Behind legislation was meant to address.

A third lesson Madoff teaches us: If you want to forestall the day of reckoning, make sure you are in charge of both generating and then interpreting your own metrics.

Currently, only a handful of private organizations and companies operating in the United States have large banks of proprietary test items developed, and calibrated, in terms of fit with each of the organization’s own internal statistical profiles. Consequently, only these organizations have the ability to produce tests that can be used to evaluate our movement toward the psychometrically defined goals of the No Child Left Behind law. Test publishers are essential both to ongoing test construction and to the interpretation of the results for nearly all of the high-stakes tests developed in this country.

With affiliates of these same publishers also controlling the lion's share of the textbook market here in Texas and around the country, one might legitimately begin to wonder how, when it comes to the academic side of schooling (as opposed to school financing), anyone would continue to describe the U.S. education system as locally (or even publicly) controlled.

The fourth Madoff lesson is to surround oneself with true believers. Reputations have to be on the line, and this will make coming to grips with what is really going on that much harder. Some have speculated that even Bernie Madoff, at some early point, might have believed in his own seeming successes.

Those of us deeply involved in reforming science and mathematics education, and who might once have wanted to believe in the potential of testing as a blunt but necessary instrument of reform, are now forced to come to grips with the full implications of the tests’ insensitivity to instruction in a way that vastly diminishes the role we can hope them to have as instruments of reform. We were wrong to help sell the idea of placing so much trust in institutions that, in retrospect, stood to benefit the most monetarily from our continued willingness to suspend disbelief.

Our professional reputations are indeed on the line, making this perhaps the toughest lesson the collapse of the Madoff empire has to teach about the current state of high-stakes testing. Responsible, rigorous, and transparent alternatives do exist. For us to make accountability work, however, we need to hope the new administration can learn from past mistakes, well before belief in public education’s ability to serve the purposes of a just, economically robust, and democratic society is lost.

As with the economy, in education we can do much better—but only if we learn the lessons for which our children might someday be expected to hold us all accountable.

Walter M. Stroup is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction, an Elizabeth G. Gibb Fellow, and the chair of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education graduate studies committee at the University of Texas at Austin.

smf: This guy is from Texas, the same state that brought us George W. Bush, Karl Rove. Margaret Spellings and Rod Paige, the father of the Houston Educational Miracle.

A MESSAGE FROM THE CCSS CALIFORNIA TEACHER OF THE YEAR

from Leticia (Martha) Infante

NATIONAL BOARD CERTIFIED TEACHER/GIFTED AND TALENTED EDUCATION COORDINATOR
CALIFORNIA COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER OF THE YEAR 2009
LOS ANGELES ACADEMY MIDDLE SCHOOL

Dear Superintendent Cortines and LAUSD Board Members,

In the next week, you will be voting on important budget decisions that I am sure have taken their toll on your personal and professional lives.  I have no doubt as to the integrity and thoroughness of your decision making process, but as leaders, I'm sure you will agree that the best decisions are made when the greatest amount of data are available to help you decide the most viable course of action.

As CCSS California Teacher of the Year 2009, I wish to share the data from my school, Los Angeles Academy Middle School, located in South Central Los Angeles.

Three years ago, the Jefferson family of schools was plagued by race-riots, student walkouts, and disturbingly low academic performance.  Our school experienced the impact of the turmoil in the local high school, but made significant efforts to distinguish ourselves as academic leaders in our community.  We targeted the issue of teacher turnover that peaked at a high of 35 teachers three years ago, and reduced it to less than 5 in the last academic year by instituting a comprehensive new teacher support program.  In a community where students had to suffer the consequences of a non-stable faculty, we reached a point where we could offer students the knowledge and security that their teachers would be there to support them in their three year journey at our school.  That is, until now.

L.A. Academy has developed a successful GATE/Advanced Studies Program that has doubled its participants to 580, almost 30% of the school population.  Over 150 students attend our school on an Advanced Studies permit.  These are students we might have otherwise lost to charter schools, but who made an educated decision to stay with LAUSD because of the quality of our program.  This program could not have reached this level of quality without the dedication, and countless volunteer hours of our 42 GATE teachers.  18 of these teachers received Reduction in Force Notices, with more at risk.  If these teachers are terminated, the quality of one of the few prosperous middle school GATE programs in South L.A. will be significantly diminished.

The talent and quality of our teachers can be seen in their biographies, located HERE.

One of our young and talented teachers, who is a positive role model for African-American boys, is at risk for being terminated.  Lamar Queen's instructional rap videos are a hit in the educational community and have made mathematics instruction much easier to grasp and enjoy for his students, thanks to his creative videos.

(Over 18,000 hits at YouTube)

 

(Over 1,200 hits at Teacher Tube)

As a school, and as a community, our teachers are overwhelmingly new.  As a result, 42 of our staff of 112 teachers received a RIF [Reduction in Force notice/the ‘pink slip’].  This is 37% of our faculty.  The actual number of terminated teachers might be higher, because provisional teachers are not sent RIF's.  Most schools in West L.A. and the Valley received RIF's in the single digits.  It is unconscionable that South L.A. is scheduled to bear the brunt of the proposed layoffs.

Because South Central has been disproportionately hit with 40% of the entire district's RIF's, our students will be left to wonder what they did to deserve this.  No amount of explaining will help erase the feeling that once again, they are the forgotten children, the ones whose dedicated and caring teachers will be entirely gone from their lives within three months.  As a point of consideration, most of these teachers choose to work in South L.A., as do I, and are not here because of demotions or forced service.

If you vote to pass the proposed reduction in force without any provisions to mitigate the destructive effect it will have on South Central Los Angeles, then let there be no doubt as to the wholesale devastation this will cause for our school, our community, and the academic and emotional well-being of all of our students. 

Please, do not forget South Central.

Leticia (Martha) Infante

FORWARDING OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL: an open letter to the Superintendent and the Board of Education

"It has been suggested that the state has some ability to intercept Stabilization Fund dollars,” the letter from Congress says.

“It does not.”

Subject: Reading other people's mail

Date: 3/24/2009 7:05:06 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time

From: smf

To:ramon.cortines@lausd.net, marguerite.lamotte@lausd.net, monica.garcia@lausd.net, tamar.galatzan@lausd.net, marlene.canter@lausd.net, yolie.flores.aguilar@lausd.net, julie.korenstein@lausd.net, richard.vladovic@lausd.net

Dear Superintendent Cortines and members of the Board of Education:

Please read the following letter from the California Congressional Delegation and take it to heart.

While addressed to the Governor, The California Education Secretary and the State Schools Superintendent it is important advice to every member of the state legislature and every school board member in California - it is the definitive response to the legislative analyst and is clear and unequivocal. The emphasis in boldface:"it is the intent of Congress..." is binding upon each and every one of you.

• It instructs you that the federal stimulus money is yours to spend, not the legislature's. 
• It instructs you to spend it quickly and wisely
• It sets priorities and establishes congressional direction on how to spend it.
  • stabilize local government budgets
  • avoid cuts to education programs and services
  • keep teachers in the classroom
  • support modernization of facilities
  • you are implored to take all available steps to avoid layoffs.

To leverage this money - or hold it in reserve - to promote any agenda of  "rightsizing" or reform or district reorganization is directly counter to the intent of congress and the president.

Onward!  ... and thank you for everything you do for children every day.

- smf

 

DON’T DIVERT SCHOOL FUNDS, CONGRESSIONAL DEMS WARN

"It has been suggested that the state has some ability to intercept Stabilization Fund dollars," the letter from twenty-six California Members of Congress says. "It does not."

The latest on California politics and government

March 23, 2009

Don't divert school funds, congressional Dems warn

Congressional Democrats are telling state leaders to keep their hands off federal stimulus funds meant for schools and colleges.

The issue arose this month when Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said that California's falling economy could allow the state to cut its school funding by about $3 billion in 2009-10 and backfill the money with federal "stabilization funds." No decision has been made.

The lett-------------------------er from 26 California Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives apparently aims to nip the idea in the bud. Signers included Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chairwoman of the delegation, and Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

"It has been suggested that the state has some ability to intercept Stabilization Fund dollars," the letter said. "It does not."

The letter was sent March 17 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, state Superintendent of Public Schools Jack O'Connell and the governor's education secretary, Glen Thomas.

Congress intends that federal stabilization funds be transmitted quickly to local school districts and colleges, which should decide for themselves how best to spend the money, the letter said.

The stimulus funds are meant to "help stabilize local government budgets, to minimize or avoid harmful cuts to education programs and services, to keep teachers in the classroom, and to support modernization, renovation and repair of school facilities," the letter said.

"Any delay in funding local educational agencies may have dire consequences for children and teachers in our great state," the letter concluded.

 

Gov Letter

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Government Business & Legal california federal stimulus

SURGE IN HIGHLAND PARK VIOLENCE TERRIFIES STUDENTS

Steve Lopez: Reading, writing, and diving to the floor when gunshots are heard are all part of the routine for second-graders.

Steve Lopez  | LA Times Columnist

March 22, 2009  - Gina Amodeo shouted "Pancake!" and her second-grade students knew exactly what to do. They immediately dropped to the floor and flattened out, minimizing the chance of getting shot.

It was only a drill, but they've been doing the real thing far too often lately. With a recent surge of violence in the vicinity of Monte Vista Elementary School in Highland Park, the students are terrified.

"We don't want to get hurt," one of Amodeo's students told me after the Friday morning drill, smiling innocently.

I wish I had known what to tell him and his buddy, who both looked at me as if an adult ought to have an answer for this kind of madness. I told them they were safe in their classroom, and they nodded but didn't seem particularly reassured.

Amodeo had invited me to campus to see what these kids are up against, and I sat with her in the principal's office for a while as we took turns saying how tragic and unacceptable it is. Principal Jose Posada, a Marine in the first Gulf War, said he didn't see as much action in Iraq as there's been in the neighborhood in recent weeks. "We're caught in the middle of it," he said of violence that may involve competing Highland Park gangs.

Jeff Carr, the mayor's gang reduction leader, acknowledged that there's been a recent uptick in gang violence after a long lull in the area. But he said there's no strong evidence that there's all-out raging war underway among the region's notorious gangs.

Still, he understands the fear that students, parents and educators feel, and he said police and other agencies are responding to their concerns.

As Posada puts it, though, when you hear gunshots, sirens and helicopters so routinely, it's hard to take comfort in official reassurances. Reality doesn't seem to jibe, he suggested, with the line from City Hall.

Last Monday morning, Posada said, students were on their way to school when a shooting broke out at the corner where Monte Vista is located. "It was six to eight shots," said Posada, who ran in the direction of the shooting to check on his students.

Posada saw one gunman fleeing down an alley across the street from the school. He said parents and between 30 and 40 elementary school students had hit the ground while the bullets flew between two gunmen. Police arrived within a minute, he said, but the shooters were long gone.

It was chilling, Posada said, a brazen shootout in broad daylight with children so near the line of fire.

Posada, by the way, fled his native El Salvador in 1980 because of the violence there. He recalls walking past dead bodies on the way to school. Now he sees his staff and students talking about the risks of just getting to and from school safely.

Monte Vista lost funding this year for a counselor who focused on at-risk kids and their families. Hard to believe in a country where mismanaged financial companies received taxpayer bailouts, with millions in bonuses for their executives.

Posada said that when shots are heard, or helicopters appear overhead, the school bell rings for an extra-long time, signaling a lockdown in which all students are to go immediately to their classrooms, with teachers instructed to lock the doors.

"I've lost track of how many we've had," Amodeo said, but there were several last week and two in one day alone, when a rock thrown at an unmarked police car brought screeching sirens and a swarm of helicopters to the neighborhood.

"I work in lockdown city," Amodeo wrote in a recent entry on her Facebook page. "One time I was in my classroom after school, and I heard gunshots on the street. My classroom is right on the playground, so I opened my door to let kids in to safety. You know what? Not one kid came to my room. They were running -- running for cover."

Amodeo said it's easy to love the children of Monte Vista and cheer the progress they've made despite great challenges -- 96% of the kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunch because of low family income. Test scores are up, there's a new music program and students are designing a garden in Griffith Park.

But then comes another threat, and everyone stops, drops and flattens like a pancake.

As teacher Jutti Marsh wrote in her journal: "One thing I never envisioned was teaching from the floor . . . Singing is good. It calms the children and helps pass the time. Minutes pass like hours when you are under your tables in the dark."

There's lots of writing going on these days at Monte Vista.

SOME SCHOOLS ARE CUTTING BACK ON HOMEWORK

When is homework just busywork? Weighing stress against learning, some districts are cutting back on academic work outside the classroom.

By Seema Mehta | LA Times

March 22, 2009  - Rachel Bennett, 12, loves playing soccer, spending time with her grandparents and making jewelry with beads. But since she entered a magnet middle school in the fall -- and began receiving two to four hours of homework a night -- those activities have fallen by the wayside.

"She's only a kid for so long," said her father, Alex Bennett, of Silverado Canyon. "There's been tears and frustration and family arguments. Everyone gets burned out and tired."

see also: THE WORST JOB IN THE WORLD & WHY DO WE STILL GET HOMEWORK?  by Orson Scott Card

Bennett is part of a vocal movement of parents and educators who contend that homework overload is robbing children of needed sleep and playtime, chipping into family dinners and vacations and overly stressing young minds. The objections have been raised for years but increasingly, school districts are listening. They are banning busywork, setting time limits on homework and barring it on weekends and over vacations.

"Groups of parents are going to schools and saying, 'Get real. We want our kids to have a life,' " said Cathy Vatterott, an associate education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who has studied the issue.

Trustees in Danville, Calif., eliminated homework on weekends and vacations last year. Palo Alto officials banned it over winter break. Officials in Orange, where Rachel Bennett attends school, are reminding teachers about limits on homework and urging them not to assign it on weekends. A private school in Hollywood has done away with book reports.

"As adults, if every book we ever read, we had to write a report on -- would that encourage our reading or discourage it?" asked Eileen Horowitz, head of school at Temple Israel of Hollywood Day School. "We realized we needed to rethink that."

Nancy Ortenberg is happy about the change.

"Homework is much more meaningful now," said Ortenberg, whose daughter Isabelle, 9, was in school before the policy took effect in 2007. Before the change, it was a chore for her daughter, but "now she reads for the pure joy of reading."

Homework was once hugely controversial. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, social commentators and physicians crusaded against it, convinced it was causing children to become wan, weak and nervous.

In a 1900 article titled "A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents" in the Ladies' Home Journal, editor Edward Bok wrote, "When are parents going to open their eyes to this fearful evil? Are they as blind as bats, that they do not see what is being wrought by this crowning folly of night study?"

California was at the vanguard of the anti-homework movement. In 1901, the California Legislature banned it for students under 15 and ordered high schools to limit it for older students to 20 recitations a week. The law was taken off the books in 1917.

Homework has fallen in and out of favor ever since, often viewed as a force for good when the nation feels threatened -- after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, for example, and during competition with Japan in the 1980s.

The homework wars have reignited in recent years, with parents around the nation arguing that children are being given too much.

Much of the debate is driven by the belief that today's students are doing more work at home than their predecessors. But student surveys do not bear that out, said Brian Gill, a senior social scientist with Mathematica Policy Research.

Instead, in today's increasingly competitive race for college admission, student schedules are increasingly packed with clubs, sports and other activities in addition to homework, Gill said. Students -- and parents -- may just have less time, he said.

Not all object, however.

"Obviously we want to think it's busywork, but most of the time it's really helpful," said Allison Hall, 16, a junior at Villa Park High in the Orange district. Allison, who is taking five Advanced Placement classes, has up to three hours of homework a night; she also is on the cross country, track and mock trial teams and does volunteer work.

But others say there is just too much, especially for younger children. Karen Adnams of Villa Park has four children. She said that heavier course loads make sense for older children but that she doesn't understand the amount of work given in lower grades.

"I think teachers have lost touch with what a third-grader or a fifth-grader can really do," she said.

Vatterott, a former principal, said she became interested in the subject a decade ago as a frustrated parent. Her son, who has a learning disability, was upset by assignments he didn't understand and couldn't complete in a reasonable time.

She decided to study the effectiveness of homework. That research showed that more time spent on such work was not necessarily better.

Vatterott questioned the quantity and the quality of assignments. If 10 math problems could demonstrate a child's grasp of a concept, why assign 50, she asked? The solution, she said, was not to do away with homework but to clarify the reasons for assigning it.

Some schools, among them Grant Elementary in Glenrock, Wyo., have gone further. Principal Christine Hendricks had grown concerned that students were spending too much time on busywork and that homework was causing conflicts between parents and children and between teachers and students. So she got rid of it last year except for reading and studying for tests.

"My philosophy, even when I was a teacher, is if you work hard during the day, I don't like to work at night. Kids are kind of the same way," she said.

Other districts, including San Ramon Valley Unified in Danville, Calif., have taken a more nuanced approach.

Since San Ramon revised its homework policy last year, the youngest students are given no more than 30 minutes a night; high school students have up to three hours of work. District trustees also decided that aside from reading, no homework should be given to elementary and middle school students on weekends or vacations.

In the Orange Unified School District, trustee John Ortega grew concerned about the workload carried by his middle school daughter. "We would have a swim meet all weekend, and she would be worried about coming home and having to finish homework," he said. "She was stressed about it."

After speaking with other parents, Ortega raised the subject publicly in the fall, prompting a series of discussions in the district. It turned out that although the board had set limits on homework, they were not always followed, said Marsha Brown, assistant superintendent of educational services. She said teachers have now been informed about the policy and principals are working to clarify the purpose of homework.

Brown said children's social growth must be nurtured alongside their academic development. "We don't want just academic children. We want them involved in sports and music and art and family time and downtime," she said. "We want well-rounded citizens. I think we will always be struggling with that balance."

The news that didn’t fit from March 22

REAL TRANSPARENCY WILL BE TRICKY WITH STIMULUS SPENDING: Following the money will be the hard part
Saturday, March 21, 2009 2:42 PM
Obama says he wants the public to know exactly where the stimulus aid is going. But watchdogs complain that the White House disclosure guidelines have loopholes.  By Paul West | The Baltimore Sun | From the Los Angeles Times    March 21, 2009 — Reporting from Washington — Barack Obama says unprecedented transparency will be a hallmark of his presidency. But following the money in the stimulus

Literacy study: ONE IN SEVEN U.S. ADULTS ARE UNABLE TO READ THIS STORY
Saturday, March 21, 2009 1:39 PM
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY  A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's side effects listed on a pill bottle.  Though many communities are making strides to tackle

U  P D A T E D: CALLING THE IRONY POLICE: A letter from Superintendent Cortines dated Feb 7th, 2000
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 3:23 PM
“I wish you the best of luck as you embark on this most exciting initiative.”     3pm - 18 March: The Superintendent rescinded his proposal to eliminate the APEIS's this morning according to knowledgeable sources.    A Victory well won!   Now let's save arts and gifted and PE and bilingual ed and the futures of 700,000 special gifted artistic wonderful kids! - smf     Last week Superintendent

Crunching Dumb Data: THE 100 WORST PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN AMERICA
Monday, March 16, 2009 5:05 PM
from http://www.neighborhoodscout.com     ●●smf's 2¢ — It's dumb data, but at least none of the 100 are in Southern California - let alone LAUSD!     …and the equally suspect 100 Best follow! (19 in SoCal, 1 in LAUSD)      NeighborhoodScout® is one of those Real Estate Listing Services that attempt to show Where the Livin' is Easiest, Best, Safest, Whitest, etc.   100 Worst Public Schools in

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.
Monday, March 16, 2009 2:21 PM
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

PINK SLIPS FOR ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS: Putting a name and a face and a school and 679 students on the bottom line
Monday, March 16, 2009 9:26 AM
Pam Tronson writes: Dear fellow elementary school parents,   This week, all of the

LIVE FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: The Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles, the governing body of the Los Angeles Unified School District
Monday, March 16, 2009 12:11 AM
From the meeting of March 10th,2009 — following testimony from parents who were ushered in and out of the room one by one to speak to the lack of parent involvement in budget and reduction in force (layoff) discussions.     Note: The board, by policy, does not respond directly to public comment    transcribed from KLCS – the cast, in order of appearance

L.A. THIRD GRADER BASKS IN THE GLOW OF A PRESIDENTIAL MOMENT: At town hall meeting on Thursday Ethan Lopez asks President Obama a question about teacher layoffs

Ethan Lopez, 8, is spotlighted by the media and cheered by his classmates for being selected by Obama to ask the final question at a town hall meeting.

At a town hall meeting in Los Angeles on Thursday, Ethan Lopez asks President Obama a question about teacher layoffs. “I felt very excited,” Ethan said. | photo: Reed Saxon / Associated Press

By Seema Mehta | LA Times

March 21, 2009 — Ethan Lopez became an instant celebrity at his Los Angeles elementary school Friday, the day after President Obama selected the 8-year-old to ask the final question at a town hall meeting. Media crews filmed the boy and his family while the school principal and teachers gushed over his question about teacher layoffs, and classmates cheered.

The moment was not lost on the third-grader.

"I felt very excited," he said. "I never talked to the president of the United States before. And then we got to meet him!"

It was perhaps the most moving few minutes at Obama's session in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. After taking questions from several adults, the president announced he had time for one final question and said it should come from a young person. As many people throughout the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex gymnasium frantically waved their arms -- some entirely too old to qualify -- Obama chose Ethan, dressed smartly in a crisp, white shirt and striped tie.

"You look good in that tie," Obama said.

The small boy stood up and said, "Hi, my name is Ethan. President Obama, our school is in big trouble because our budget cuts . . . 25 of our teachers already have [received] pink slips."

He then handed the president a folder full of letters written by his classmates at Frank del Olmo Elementary School in Koreatown.

Obama told Ethan that he was doing everything he could to protect teachers' jobs and modernize schools, citing the economic-stimulus package. "I want you to get a first-class education," he said.

After the town hall ended, Ethan and his mother, Myrna, were whisked backstage, where they met the president and shook his hand.

"It was the experience of a lifetime," Myrna Lopez said.

She said her son showed interest in the campaign last year. He voted for Obama in an online Nickelodeon poll and accompanied his mother to the voting booth. But she was stunned that her normally timid son stood up and asked the president a question in front of several hundred people.

"I was surprised because he's very shy," she said. "I was very impressed."

Television crews descended on the school Friday morning, and Ethan's classmates relived the moment on video. It was a heady dose of attention for a school where more than 90% of the students receive free- or reduced-price lunches, an indicator of poverty, and nearly two-thirds are learning English as a second language.

This month, the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is grappling with a nearly $700-million shortfall over the next 18 months, notified 9,000 employees, including 5,500 teachers, that they could be laid off.

At Del Olmo Elementary, 27 of the school's 43 teachers have been given notices that they could be terminated.

If the layoffs are finalized, carefully created relationships among the school's teachers and the community will be harmed, Principal Eugene Hernandez said.

He was proud that Ethan tried to call attention to the matter.

"For a child to get up in front of the massive audience and to ask a question, I think that's very brave," he said. "It made me feel very proud -- we want our kids to have good self-esteem and feel confident. . . . He was not afraid to speak his mind and ask a curious question. That was good."

REAL TRANSPARENCY WILL BE TRICKY WITH STIMULUS SPENDING: Following the money will be the hard part

Obama says he wants the public to know exactly where the stimulus aid is going. But watchdogs complain that the White House disclosure guidelines have loopholes.

By Paul West | The Baltimore Sun | From the Los Angeles Times

March 21, 2009 — Reporting from Washington — Barack Obama says unprecedented transparency will be a hallmark of his presidency. But following the money in the stimulus package won't be easy.

Many of the most important spending decisions aren't being made in Washington. They're getting thrashed out at state and local levels, where accountability is a wild card and there's no guarantee that taxpayers will get the dollar-by-dollar information Obama is promising.

In some cases, money that goes to a local government may be impossible to follow under White House guidelines, advocates of open government say.

"It could go to the mayor's brother-in-law. We don't know," said Craig Jennings of OMB Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group.

It is up to the states, for example, to decide how to divvy up the $28 billion for "shovel-ready" highway projects.

In Maryland, for example, none of the funding that will flow to subcontractors on highway projects will be disclosed, said David Buck, a State Highway Administration spokesman. The state also doesn't provide detailed information about the location of most resurfacing projects, which will account for the largest share of highway spending under the stimulus plan.

Under the Obama administration's transparency guidelines, "the money disappears after it changes hands twice," said Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First, a watchdog group.

As things stand, the federal government will disclose how much money it gives to a state, and the state must report back on how the money is distributed to a private company or to a local government. Beyond that point, there is no requirement for disclosing where the money ends up, LeRoy said.

His group is part of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, which has warned there could be "corruption on a massive scale" as stimulus and financial bailout funds are spent.

The "only antidote is millions of eyeballs watching the money," LeRoy said, referring to ordinary citizens tracking the spending on government websites.

Obama emphasized transparency in his 2008 campaign and is continuing that theme.

"Instead of politicians doling out money behind closed doors, the important decisions about where taxpayer dollars are invested will be yours to scrutinize," Obama says on recovery.gov, an administration website.

Some states have created stimulus websites, but at least 18 -- including California -- have not.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell said states should go the extra mile in laying out exactly how federal money gets spent, even if it means providing more information than the administration requires.

"I think this is the biggest test of government in my lifetime," the 65-year-old Democrat, who also chairs the National Governors Assn., told a group of reporters.

"I don't want people to say, 'You hid this. You hid that,' " he said. "Regardless of the federal requirement, I'm hopeful that a lot of us will try to make this the most transparent, because it's important."

Literacy study: ONE IN SEVEN U.S. ADULTS ARE UNABLE TO READ THIS STORY

 

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's side effects listed on a pill bottle.

Though many communities are making strides to tackle the problem, it's worsening elsewhere — in some cases significantly.

Overall, the study finds, the nation hasn't made a dent in its adult-literacy problem: From 1992 to 2003, it shows, the USA added about 23 million adults to its population; in that period, an estimated 3.6 million more joined the ranks of adults with low literacy skills.

LOCATION: Seattle, Minneapolis most literate big cities

How low? It would be a challenge to read this newspaper article or deconstruct a fuel bill.

"They really cannot read … paragraphs (or) sentences that are connected," says Sheida White, a researcher at the U.S. Education Department.

The findings come from the department's National Assessment of Adult Literacy, a survey of more than 19,000 Americans ages 16 and older. The 2003 survey is a follow-up to a similar one in 1992 and for the first time lets the public see literacy rates as far down as county levels.

In many cases, states made sizable gains. In Mississippi, the percentage of adults with low skills dropped 9 percentage points, from 25% to 16%. In every one of its 82 counties, low-skill rates dropped — in a few cases by 20 percentage points or more.

By contrast, in several large states — California, New York, Florida and Nevada, for instance — the number of adults with low skills rose.

David Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, an adult-literacy organization, says Mississippi "invested more in education … and they have done innovative programming. We need much more of that."

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says efforts in adult literacy are inefficient and "scattered" across government agencies.

"We're not using research-based practices, broadly applied," she says.

Harvey cites undiagnosed learning disabilities, immigration and high school dropouts as reasons for the poor literacy numbers.

The findings are published online at http://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/index.aspx

Indirect estimate of percent lacking Basic prose literacy skills and corresponding credible intervals : California 2003

Indirect estimate of percent lacking Basic prose literacy skills and corresponding credible intervals in Los Angeles County: California 2003

^* The state and county Federal Information processing Standards (FIPS) codes are standardized unique state and county identifiers. The first two positions identify the state, and the last three positions identify the county. For more information, see http://www.census.gov/geo/www/fips/fips.html

¹ Estimated population size of persons 16 years and older in households in 2003.

² Those lacking Basic prose literacy skills include those who scored Below Basic in prose and those who could not be tested due to language barriers.

³ The estimated percent lacking Basic prose literacy skills has a margin of error as measured by the associated credible interval. There is a 95% chance that the value of the percent lacking Basic prose literacy skills is contained between the lower and upper bound.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy

U P D A T E D: CALLING THE IRONY POLICE: A letter from Superintendent Cortines dated Feb 7th, 2000

“I wish you the best of luck as you embark on this most exciting initiative.”

 

3pm - 18 March: The Superintendent rescinded his proposal to eliminate the APEIS's this morning according to knowledgeable sources. 

A Victory well won!

Now let's save arts and gifted and PE and bilingual ed and the futures of 700,000 special gifted artistic wonderful kids! - smf

Last week Superintendent Cortines, less than 100 days back on the job, proposed eliminating all the AP/EIS positions; pink slips were sent to all elementary assistant principals last Friday.

LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD GENETHIA HUDLEY HAYES, PRESIDENT VICTORIA M. CASTRO VALERIE FIELDS JULIE KORENSTEIN MIKE LANSING DAVID TOKOFS KY CAPRICE YOUNG

OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES

February 7, 2000

Dear Colleague,

On behalf of the more than 700,000 students of the Los Angeles Unified School District may I offer congratulations on your new assignment as an Elementary Instructional Specialist (EIS). You are among a distinguished group of educators selected to serve as trailblazers as we embark on a journey to dramatically improve achievement for every student in the District and to change the culture within our schools.

This EIS position has been established as part of the Chanda Smith Consent Decree in recognition of the critical role that elementary schools must play in the identification and early intervention of students with special needs. Among your greatest responsibilities will be providing instructional leadership that attests to the dignity and worth of every student in our District and to our obligation to assure equal access to a quality educational program in every classroom.

These positions have been funded to assure that special education students receive educational programs designed to address their unique needs, while also providing necessary interventions to reduce the number of new referrals to special programs.

Among your greatest challenges will be addressing the diverse needs of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. This is a daunting task that requires collaborative leadership, your belief in the ability of all children to succeed, and your demonstrated commitment to excellence.I wish you the best of luck as you embark on this most exciting initiative.

Sincerely,

Ramon Cortines

Interim Superintendent

[Budget] compromising past promises/Compromising the future: NEW BUDGET RULES LOOSEN UP SCHOOL FUNDING + LAUSD BOARD INFORMATIVE ON CATEGORICAL FLEX

By Laurel Rosenhall and Robert Faturechi | The Sacramento Bee

Published: Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009

Summer school. Art and music. Classes for gifted children.

Buying textbooks. Training math and English teachers. Tutoring students for the high school exit exam.

For decades, a large portion of California's school funding has been strictly designated for such categories.

Not any more.

In the budget deal crafted last week, the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger combined many of the pots of money known as "categoricals." The result is that for the next five years, principals and district administrators will have more spending flexibility than they've had in recent history.

It's a move education reformers have been pushing for years, saying a bit more freedom with the checkbook would help schools meet their students' needs.

The new state budget cuts about $2.4 billion from schools this year and changes the payment terms of another $5 billion. The reductions get even deeper next year, when schools will face an additional cut of $400 million.

About $1 billion of the cuts will be taken out of categorical funding – which makes up one-third of the money California spends on education and funds more than 60 individual education programs.

Categorical funding became popular in the 1960s as politicians tried to help disadvantaged children by spending money specifically on them and ensuring the additional cash didn't wind up in teachers' paychecks, according to a new report by UC Berkeley's law school.

As categoricals proliferated over time, however, they created a bureaucratic web of obligations for educators, who couldn't target funds where they were needed most. Money for buying new technology couldn't be used to buy books for a library. Money for checking kids' teeth couldn't be spent on counseling. Money for training principals couldn't be used to train a teacher.

"Principals said they spent a God-awful amount of their time filling out compliance forms," said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley education professor who surveyed principals for a recent study.

"They've got to keep receipts, keep billing information. … Principals become mini-bureaucrats rather than working with teachers and being in classrooms."

The findings led him to recommend – in the massive "Getting Down to Facts" report Schwarzenegger released with fanfare in March 2007 – that the state consolidate categorical funding.

And that is just what the new plan does. It collapses 42 categorical programs into one block of money, and trims it by about 15 percent, or $1 billion. Schools can now use that money for any purpose.

"They could do less on school safety and more on career tech," said Jennifer Kuhn, director of K-12 education with the Legislative Analyst's Office. "They can do less counseling and have smaller class sizes. They can do less adult ed and more K-12 ed."

Or, she said, they can skip spending on those programs and give teachers a raise.

---

COMPROMISING PAST PROMISES/COMPROMISING THE FUTURE: Under the "Budget Compromise" reached in Sacramento, Schools can now use money from these categorical programs for any purpose: [smf: "for any purpose" is somewhat misleading - see Informative (following)]
• Summer school/supplemental instruction

• Regional Occupational Centers and Programs

• High school counseling

• Specialized secondary programs

• Immediate intervention/underperforming and high achieving/improving schools programs

• Gifted and talented education (GATE)

• Mathematics and reading professional development

• Principal training program

• American Indian Early Childhood Education Program

• California Indian education centers

• Adult education

• Education technology

• Deferred maintenance

• Instructional materials

• Community day schools program

• Bilingual teacher training program

• National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification Incentive Program

• California School Age Families Education Program

• California High School Exit Exam

• Center for Civic Education

• Teacher dismissal apportionments

• Charter schools

• School safety

• Class size reduction, grade nine

• International baccalaureate diploma program

• California Association of Student Councils

• Pupil Retention Block Grant

• Teacher Credentialing Block Grant

• Professional Development Block Grant

• Targeted Instructional Improvement Block Grants

• Library Improvement Block Grant

• School Safety Consolidated Competitive Grant

• Physical Education Block Grant

• Arts and Music Block Grant

• County Office of Education Williams Audits

• Certificated Staff Mentoring Program

• Oral Health Assessments

• Commission on Teacher Credentialing

Schools must continue to pay for these programs with categorical funding:

• Child Development

• Child Nutrition

• Economic Impact Aid

• Special Education

• Home-to-School Transportation

• After School Education & Safety

• Class Size Reduction, kindergarten – third grade

• Quality Education Investment Act

---

The plan has the potential to revolutionize school funding in California, said Michael Kirst, a Stanford education professor and former state Board of Education president.

But it doesn't do away with categorical funding altogether. About 20 categorical programs remain intact, including some of the biggest – special education and K-3 class-size reduction.

Because the restrictions on many of the biggest categorical programs have not been eased, the new flexibility won't help cash-strapped districts very much, said David Gordon, Sacramento County's superintendent of schools.

The changes might have been more useful during a time of surplus, he said. But without money, flexibility is of little use.

"To me it's more like, 'Do you cut your arm off or your hand off?' " Gordon said. "We have a bare-bones program already going in. That basic core – the reading, the math and so on – is something you can't trade off."

Other educators said the eased restrictions will give them some welcome wiggle room.

Patrick Godwin, superintendent of Folsom Cordova Unified, expects the relaxed rules will allow his district to avoid painful staff cuts.

"The district here already had a strong music and arts program," Godwin said. "So we'll be able to use those monies to keep more counselors or keep more electives in the high schools."

---

The following is from an LAUSD Office Of Government Relations informative to the Bd of Ed & Superintendent dated February 19, 2009

SUBJECT: STATE BUDGET APPROVED WITH MAJOR REDUCTIONS TO EDUCATION CATEGORICAL PROGRAMS

Determining the Categorical Program Reductions

Categorical programs are being funded on the basis of three tiers, with the funding for Tier 1 being the most protected. In 2008-09, the Tier 2 and 3 categorical programs are cut by 15 percent or $944 million. In 2009-10, Tiers 2 and 3 are cut by an additional 4.9 percent or $268 million. Page | 2

1. Tier 1 – No reductions and no flexibility options on the use of these dedicated funds (there are flexibility options within the Class Size Reduction program itself, which are described later). The following are the protected programs in this tier:

Budget Item	Title
Tier 1
6110-161-0001	Special Education
6110-196-0001	Child Development
6110-234-0001	K-3 Class Size Reduction
6110-128-0001	Economic Impact Aid (EIA)
6110-649-0001	After School Programs
6110-601-3116	Home-to-School Transportation
6110-203-0001	Child Nutrition
Quality Education Improvement Act (QEIA)
6110-130-0001	Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID)

2. Tier 2 – 15 percent reduction in 2008-09, and an additional 4.9% reduction in 2009-10. There are no flexibility options with these programs.

Budget Item	Title
Tier 2
6110-113-0001	Student Assessment Testing
6110-224-0001	Year Round Schools
6110-125-0001	English Learner Student Assistance
6110-220-0001	Charter School Facility Grant Program
6110-166-0001	Partnership Academies
6110-103-0001	Apprentice Program
6110-119-0001	Foster Youth Programs
6110-158-0001	Adults in Correctional Facilities
6110-182-0001	K-12 Internet Access
6110-167-0001	Agricultural Vocational Education

3. Tier 3 – 15 percent reduction in 2008-09 and an additional 4.9 percent reduction in 2009-10. For these programs, there is complete flexibility for a district to use these funds as it wishes.

Budget Item	Title
Tier 3
6110-246-0001	Targeted Instructional Improvement Block Grant (TIIG)
6110-156-0001	Adult Education
6110-105-0001	Regional Occupational Centers and Programs
6110-247-0001	School and Library Improvement Block Grant
6110-104-0001	Supplemental Instruction
6110-189-0001	Instructional Materials
6110-188-0001	Deferred Maintenance
6110-245-0001	Professional Development Block Grant Program
6110-108-0001	Supplemental School Counseling Program
6110-211-0001	Charter School Categorical Block Grant
6110-244-0001	Teacher Credentialing Block Grant
6110-123-0001	High Priority Schools Grant Program
6110-265-0001	Arts and Music Block Grant
6110-232-0001	Class Size Reduction - 9th Grade
6110-228-0001	School Safety Block Grant (8-12)
6110-243-0001	Pupil Retention Block Grant Program
6110-204-0001	CA High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE)-Support and Services
6110-198-0001	CA School Age Families Education
6110-137-0001	Math and Reading Professional Development
6110-124-0001	Gifted and Talented
6110-190-0001	Community Day Schools
6110-227-0001	Community -Based English Tutoring Program
6110-260-0001	PE Teacher Incentive Program
6110-193-0001	Peer Assistance and Review
6110-248-0001	School Safety Competitive Grants
6110-107-0001	County Offices of Education - Fiscal Oversight
6110-267-0001	Certificated Staff Mentoring
6110-266-0001	County Office of Education - Williams Audits
6110-122-0001	Specialized Secondary Program Grants
6100-144-0001	Principal Training Program
6110-151-0001	American Indian Education Centers
6110-268-0001	Child Oral Health Assessments
6110-195-0001	National Board Certification Incentives
6110-240-0001	Advanced Placement Programs
6110-193-0001	Bilingual Teacher Training
6110-150-0001	American Indian Early Childhood Education Centers
6110-193-0001	Reader Services for the Blind
6110-208-0001	Civic Education
6110-209-0001	Teacher Dismissal Apportionment
6110-242-0001	CA Association of Student Councils
6110-123-0001	Sanctions
6110-144-0001	Chief Business Officers Training Program
6360-101-0001	Local Assistance - Commission on Teacher Credentialing

Additional Flexibility Options

1. School districts now have the option of increasing the K-3 Class-Size Reduction (CSR) Program from the present 20:1 restriction without completely losing this specific categorical program funding. Districts would be subject to the following penalties with these new flexibility options:

Class Size Penalty

20.5 to 21.5 (less than) 5 percent

21.5 to 22.5 (less than) 10 percent

22.5 to 23.0 (less than) 15 percent

23.0 to 25.0 (less than) 20 percent

25 or over 30 percent

2. Deferred Maintenance: The .5 percent statutory match for deferred maintenance would be eliminated for the period of 2008-09 to 2012-13.

3. Routine Maintenance Reserve: The requirement for a 3 percent reserve for routine maintenance would be reduced to 1 percent for the period of 2008-09 to 2012-13.

4. Transfer of Categorical Program Balances: The District would have the authority to transfer the 2008-09 categorical balances for any educational purposes, except for balances in the following programs:

Special Education

QEIA

EIA

TIIG

Instructional Materials

CAHSEE

Supplemental Instruction

Transportation

Program Elimination

The High Priority Program is eliminated in 2009-10.