B U D G E T - LAUSD TO HALVE ITS LOCAL OFFICES: Even with closing local centers, deficit and thousands of layoffs still loom for coming year

By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News

Updated: 11/24/2009 08:43:55 PM PST

In a concession to unions, Los Angeles Unified Schools chief Ramon Cortines said Tuesday he will eliminate half the number of local district offices he helped create a few years ago in a bid to reduce next year's deficit of nearly $500 million.

But Cortines said savings from the move will amount to just $12 million, and tougher cutbacks, including layoffs, will have to be made to balance the budget.

"There is no way to avoid cuts," Cortines said at a special budget meeting called to inform the school board about the district's worsening financial outlook.

"We have less state and federal money and fewer students ... the district has to adjust."

On Tuesday, district staff said LAUSD now faces a deficit of $495 million for the 2010-11 school year - up $15 million from earlier projections that included cost-of-living adjustments that the district now does not anticipate receiving from the state.

The eight local districts, including two in the San Fernando Valley, have been a major sticking point for a majority of LAUSD's employee unions. Union leaders complain too much money is wasted in these minibureaucracies and on their administrative staff positions.

Cortines, however, said cutting the local districts to four will only save him about $12 million - about 3 percent of the district's total deficit - and it will not prevent layoffs.

The elimination of all local district offices has been a long-standing request of United Teachers Los Angeles, the largest district employee union representing about 37,000 teachers and 4,000 counselors and social workers - a majority of LAUSD's employees.

UTLA president A.J. Duffy said he did not believe shutting down half of these offices would only save $12 million.

"We will have to look at exactly what offices are shut down, then we'll have to look at the properties they vacate and the personnel that leaves to figure out exactly how much is saved," Duffy said.

Set up in 2000 by Cortines, when he was acting superintendent for six months, the local district offices were created as a way to give schools, teachers, administrators and parents more support and access to LAUSD resources.

Currently the eight offices are spread across the city. With about 50 people per office, they oversee all aspects of instruction, operations and discipline of students and teachers at the district's more than 885 schools and preschools.

Valley offices scrutinized

In the San Fernando Valley there are two local district offices representing the eastern and western portions of the region. Under this plan it is likely that only one office will remain in the region.

"Things will be more impersonal and relationships will suffer at a time when the district wants more personalization," said Michelle King, local district superintendent for District 3, representing much of West Los Angeles.

King, who has been with the district for 25 years as a teacher, school administrator and now district administrator, said the addition of the local district offices nine years ago helped increase efficiency at schools since staff could go to one neighborhood office, rather than downtown headquarters to get answers and information. The office also gave parents more access to district personnel.

The move to shut down the offices comes just two weeks after Cortines gave all district employees an ultimatum to accept four furloughs days this year and a 12 percent pay cut next year or face layoffs of up to 8,500 employees.

Cortines asked that concessions be made by Dec. 8, before the district is required to submit its budget to the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

So far SEIU Local 99 - representing about 20,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers and custodians - has agreed to the concessions, saving the district about $7.7 million this year.

Duffy said he is ready and willing to talk to Cortines about concessions, but he would not comment further.

"We choose to negotiate the way the law says we are supposed to - not in the media," Duffy said.

While most of the district's budget woes stem from the state's continued fiscal crisis, enrollment at LAUSD has also dropped to its lowest point in more than a decade.

Currently 51,000 students within LAUSD boundaries - or about 8 percent of the district's entire enrollment - attend charter schools. Independent charter schools traditionally do not hire LAUSD staff.

Meeting new deficit

Last year, when the district expected a budget shortfall of $258 million, it said it would balance that by increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade from 24:1 to 29:1. The district also said it would have to cut arts and music programs in half and reduce school nurses and cops.

To address the new deficit, that includes an estimated $50 million to $60 million this year, and a deficit of $495 million next year, Cortines said schools should budget cuts of between 10 to 20 percent in services.

Revenue generating opportunities are being looked at. Cortines said he expects to sell about 10 LAUSD owned properties this year - none located in the San Fernando Valley.

When a little transparency reveals a little too much: AALA & SUPERINTENDENT CORTINES’ FRIDAY THE 13th LETTER

From the AALA WEEKLY UPDATE NEWSLETTER Week of November 16, 2009

On Friday, November 13, Superintendent Cortines e-mailed a letter to LAUSD union presidents in which he stated that our District is facing a projected $480 million budget shortfall for the 2010-2011 school year. He asked each union “. . .to become a partner in finding a shared solution to the issue.” He further stated, “Without your shared commitment, this District will see layoffs of more than 7,500 to 8,500 personnel, which will result in more than 14,000 employees being noticed for possible reduction in force.”

The Superintendent went on to outline his solutions to the budget crisis: (1) Four furlough days this school year, in 2010, and (2) A 12% salary cut for 2010-2011. He explained that each furlough day is worth $15 million to the District. One percent salary cut is equal to $40 million. Simple multiplication reveals that implementation of the Superintendent’s solutions yields $540 million. He wrote that layoffs will commence on July 1, 2010, if LAUSD bargaining units do not agree with his proposed “solutions.”

In AALA’s biweekly meeting with Superintendent Cortines on Monday, November 16, 2009, we asked for clarification regarding several points in his Friday the 13th Letter. Our questions and his responses follow:

AALA: Some of the statements in your letter are inconsistent with your comments at the Board meeting on Tuesday, November 10, 2009, where you said that you would ask for either a 9% salary cut or nine furlough days to address the 2010-2011 deficit.

Superintendent: There was no contradiction.

AALA: Could you please clarify if the four furlough days are for this year or next year?

Superintendent: This year.

AALA: Please explain what cuts you are going to recommend.

Superintendent: The Board already approved some cuts. I’m going to add some things and delete some things.

AALA: Did you look at the percentage of cuts each bargaining unit endured for 2009-2010?

Superintendent: No, and I’m not going to!

AALA: You cut over 500+ AALA members for the 2009-2010 school year—20% of our membership.

Superintendent: I’m not going to negotiate with you!

AALA: AALA has suggestions for budget savings and for the District to enhance revenue. When will AALA staff have the opportunity to discuss these recommendations with you?

Superintendent: I don’t know!

AALA has additional questions for the Superintendent:

• Why would you send a letter threatening to cut 8,500 employee positions if you are not willing to answer AALA’s questions and provide clarification?

• Why do you persist in calling your unilateral approach a request for “partnerships” with bargaining units when you seem to be unwilling to listen to our suggestions for budget savings and revenue enhancement?

• Why are you asking LAUSD employees to subsidize a $540 million deficit when you identified $480 million as the projected shortfall? Why should the bargaining units shoulder the entire burden of the deficit? What other solutions have you identified?

• AALA requested last week that the District schedule immediate negotiations. Why has the District neglected to follow through?

●●smf: with time of the essence and the deadlines looming, this becomes the question!

• How much of the projected $480 million deficit will be caused by a potential hand-over of LAUSD schools to unregulated charter operators? If the Board did not pursue its Public School Choice Resolution, how much revenue would be saved?

●●smf: O.K., That was the question!

In past years when a budget crisis loomed, the District provided the County with potential reductions to reflect a balanced budget. The projected budget is always modified by variables yet to occur, such as the Governor’s budget projections in January 2010 and potential resource enhancements. Threatening employees does not create an atmosphere in which we can partner to address the current crisis. The District should interact now with the bargaining units to prioritize potential cuts, with the understanding that maximum preservation of school sites is necessary, along with essential services for all students and staff members.

SOME L.A. UNIFIED WORKERS AGREE TO FURLOUGHS / CORTINES IMPOSES HIRING, TRAVEL, FOOD FREEZE: Two SEIU units representing 20,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other employees overwhelmingly approve the move to help close the district's large budget gap.

By Jason Song | LA Times

November 24, 2009 -- About 20,000 Los Angeles school district workers have agreed to four unpaid furlough days to help close a large budget gap, officials announced Monday.

Two units of Service Employees International Union Local 99 representing cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other employees approved the measure last week by a combined vote of 953 to 234, said Blanca Gallegos, a union spokeswoman.

The members will take one furlough day per month from February through May. The move will save about $7.7 million, according to union officials.

Earlier this month, district officials asked union members to accept the furlough days and a future 12% pay cut to offset a nearly $60-million budget deficit this year and a $480-million shortfall next year.

"By each of us taking on a bit of the hardship it is our goal to prevent more layoffs in the future and ensure that students continue to receive the services they need to learn," said Edward Reed, Local 99's president, in a statement.

The union did not vote on the pay cut, which must be negotiated.

District officials have said that they will need further concessions from unions.

"We're grateful that SEIU is the first group to stand up," said district spokeswoman Lydia Ramos. "We need everyone to stand up and do the same."

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy could not be reached for comment. Duffy has said he is willing to negotiate with district officials but wants more financial information.

Last year, the district approved, but did not require, four unpaid days off for most employees.

As part of the agreement, L.A. Unified agreed not to schedule any new SEIU Local 99 layoffs this year if the budget deficit does not grow beyond $59 million by late January. If the shortfall is more than $59 million, the union and district will begin negotiations.

Earlier this year, about 1,100 bus drivers who are also represented by SEIU Local 99 agreed to six unpaid days off this fiscal year.

To deal with the budget, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines on Monday announced an immediate districtwide spending freeze that affects travel and catering expenses and the hiring of non-classroom staff.

Teachers, administrators, bus drivers and other employees deemed essential to schools are exempted from the freeze.

ANOTHER GROUP FILES APPLICATION TO RUN 3o ‘PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE’ CAMPUSES: Misses deadline, accepted anyway

Daily Breeze website from staff reports

11/24/2009 07:09:10 AM PST | A fourth group has applied to run Gardena and San Pedro high schools under a Los Angeles Unified School District reform initiative.

The Daily Breeze previously reported that three groups - the internal school community, United Teachers Los Angeles and Illinois-based education consultancy Synesi foundation - had applied to run both schools.

The fourth group, which was not included last week on an initial LAUSD list of applicants to the Public School Choice program, is Phoenix-based American Charter Schools Foundation.

Like UTLA and Synesi, American Charter Schools Foundation applied to run all 30 campuses available under the initiative.

A school district spokeswoman said the foundation was not originally reported as an applicant because it had submitted letters of intent to an incorrect e-mail address.

 

The 11/20 memo from the superintendent

All the letters of intent from the applicants

NO UNIFORM SOLUTION: Uniforms make students look sharper and create a safer environment, but they can't raise a school's achievement level.

By: Erik Hayden  | News Blog: Miller-McCune Online Magazine

   | 

In assessing the pros and cons of school uniforms, it appears that one benefit is missing — better academic achievement.  Cathy Yeulet

 

  November 23, 2009  |  12:15 PM (PST) -- On Nov. 4, the Los Angeles City Council, looking to prod the city's school board into being proactive in addressing steep budget cuts, teacher unrest and chronic underachievement, unanimously passed a resolution recommending all students in L.A. public schools wear uniforms. Councilmember Jose Huizar (former president of the LAUSD's Board of Education) hailed this proposal as a harbinger for greater "order," "focus" and "higher achievement" in classrooms across the district.

Perhaps. The clothing company Classroom Uniforms certainly cheered — it announced a new line of uniforms the same week as the City Council vote.

It seems that ever since the surprising success of Long Beach Unified School District's 1994 mandatory school uniform policy — the first large urban school district to institute such a requirement — educators and administrators have been clamoring to announce the astounding benefits that uniforms can bring to struggling districts. In Long Beach, which is part of the Los Angeles metro area, the U.S. Department of Education found that school crime decreased 36 percent, sexual offenses fell 74 percent and fights between students dropped 51 percent after the policy went into effect. Is correlation, as the scientists say, causation?

About 14 percent of all public schools mandate their students wear school uniforms. While there's been some uncertainty and controversy regarding these uniform policies, the often bland outfits have made some schools safer, toned down excessive gang aggression and set a "business-like" tone for academic study. They've also eliminated the need for students to one-up each other with fashionable clothing (easing the strain on poorer families), easily identified trespassers on school property and helped foster community identity and school spirit.

But it's these benefits that have administrators and desperate school boards (like L.A.'s) believing that school uniforms can not only raise achievement levels but act as a panacea for deeply rooted problems.

New research published in the November issue of Educational Policy muddles this perception.

The study, authored by Ryan Yeung, suggests that school uniforms have little to no effect on boosting achievement levels and, in some cases, can hurt them.

The data analyzed was culled from the National Center for Educational Statistic's National Education Longitudinal Survey and Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. These surveyed both primary and secondary school students in waves dating from 1988 to 2004. Econometric analyses performed on these studies are the first to investigate the effects of school uniforms on achievement.

The research found that while some scores were higher in schools that had uniform policies — most notably in the reading portion for eighth- and 10th-graders — the vast majority of the data led to inconsistent and inconclusive results. The regression results from the National Education Longitudinal Survey study found that uniformed public school students, on every other examination other than reading, scored worse than their uniform-free counterparts.

In the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, children in private schools with uniform policies scored below their counterparts with no uniform policy in reading and math examinations. In public schools, uniform policies were found to have little or no effect on mathematics achievement. And, surprisingly, Catholic schools with required uniform policies scored lower in reading, science and history than their counterparts with no uniform mandate.

On first glance, these seem like head-scratching results. After all, most of the schools with strict uniform policies are clustered in poorer, mostly urban, districts that historically performed poorly anyway. But Yeung notes that both sets of data support one general conclusion: "Once I control for a number of factors, including race, sex and socioeconomic status, none of the regressions for the NELS and the ECLS-K are significant, leading me to conclude that there is little evidence that school uniforms have an impact on student outcomes."

Simply put: Even if teachers and administrators perceive that students look sharper, more disciplined and attentive in spiffy uniforms, they don't actually perform any better academically.

 

Are School Uniforms a Good Fit?

Results From the ECLS-K and the NELS

Ryan Yeung

Syracuse University, New York

One of the most common proposals put forth for reform of the American system of education is to require school uniforms. Proponents argue that uniforms can make schools safer and also improve school attendance and increase student achievement. Opponents contend that uniforms have not been proven to work and may be an infringement on the freedom of speech of young people. Within an econometric framework, this study examines the effect of school uniforms on student achievement. It tackles methodological challenges through the use of a value-added functional form and the use of multiple data sets. The results do not suggest any significant association between school uniform policies and achievement. Although the results do not definitely support or reject either side of the uniform argument, they do strongly intimate that uniforms are not the solution to all of American education’s ills.

Key Words: achievement • education reform • educational policy • educational reform • policy • elementary education • secondary education

Educational Policy, Vol. 23, No. 6, 847-874 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0895904808330170

Full Text (PDF) [fee]

LA SCHOOLS CHIEF ORDERS HIRING FREEZE: Ramon Cortinez (sic) also announced other expense cuts.

LAUSD Superintendent of Schools Ramon Cortines.

Text Story by City News Service | MyFoxNewsLA.com Posted by: Scott Coppersmith

Monday, 23 Nov 2009, 2:54 PM PST -- Los Angeles - In the face of a multimillion-dollar budget deficit, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines ordered an immediate hiring freeze today and cut other expenses, including travel, conferences and food at district meetings.

Cortines said the district is facing an estimated $50 million to $60 million deficit this year and a possible $480 million deficit for the 2010-11 school year.

"As a result of the financial challenges that we are facing, it is imperative that we ensure that every dollar we spend is essential to the operation of this district, and more importantly, supports our instructional mission," he said. "Therefore, effective immediately, I am placing a freeze on the hiring and filling of vacancies; travel, conference and convention attendance; procurement of contracted professional development services; the rental of non-district facilities and the purchase of catering or refreshments to be served at employee meetings."

The only exceptions to the hiring freeze will be for classroom teachers, principals, assistant principals, cafeteria managers, school police officers, bus drivers teachers' assistants, education aides, special education assistants and plant managers.

According to the district, other exceptions will only be considered for requests that are considered essential to school and district operations.

Cortines said he ordered the cuts in response to the state's dire financial outlook, which will likely result in further reductions in the district's budget. The state Legislative Analyst's Office released a report last week indicating that California would be facing a $20.7 billion budget shortfall next year.

Cortines, who came under fire in the past year when the district issued thousands of layoff notices to teachers and other employees to help balance the budget, said LAUSD will again have to tighten its belt. The district is required to submit a 2010-11 budget to the county Office of Education by Dec. 15.

The LAUSD board is expected to meet Dec. 8 to vote on the district's budget.

"Despite the pressure of a severely curtailed budget, despite the challenge of meeting our education mandate, we will live up to our responsibility to educate the children of LAUSD," Cortines said. "We owe it to our students to provide them with the best instruction and support possible no matter the obstacles. Students are the core of our existence and we will not be distracted from our mission."

CHOICES ROILING VALLEY SCHOOL: Competition causes apprehension at San Fernando campus.

By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News

11/23 -- The last two months have been a whirlwind of meetings and deadlines for Eduardo Solorzano, principal of San Fernando Middle School.

Visibly exhausted, the first-year principal has been working 12-hour days and weekends since his school was chosen as one of 36 Los Angeles Unified campuses that are up for grabs this year under a new district reform effort that lets both outsiders and insiders compete to run schools.

The School Choice plan is meant to breed better academic results at the district's new and failing schools through competition. This week it was announced that more than 200 bidders answered the district's call and submitted bids for the three dozen schools.

With so many in the ring, tensions are running high for administrators, teachers, students and parents who worry about the future of their schools while they sort through the competing visions, with little time to settle differences as the Jan. 11 deadline approaches.

"Based on the history of this community and this school, we can't afford to have our school given away," Solorzano said.

"The next two weeks will be crucial for us."

Solorzano, like most principals of existing campuses selected for School Choice, had to submit his own proposal to operate the school.

His was among eight bids for the 100-year-old campus. Other bidders include a local tutoring provider, a community nonprofit group and out-of-state organizations that have never worked with LAUSD before.

One of the applicants was ABC Learn Inc., a San Fernando-based tutoring service that serves students under a No Child Left Behind Act clause that allows kids at failing schools to get free academic help.

Debbie Greenfield, president and CEO of ABC Learn Inc., said her vision for San Fernando could include converting it to a charter and making it a "teaching school" similar to a "teaching hospital" where college students would shadow credentialed teachers.

"The school would have a major focus on literacy and would allow teachers to bring creativity and a joy of learning to the classroom," Greenfield said.

Also bidding for the school are Synesi Foundation and American Charter Foundation, neither of which has worked with LAUSD in the past.

Synesi Foundation is the non-profit arm of Synesi Associates, a school-management consulting firm based in Illinois. Gary Solomon, president of Synesi Associates, said his organization bid on all but one of the 36 schools as a way of developing a relationship with LAUSD, but ultimately may withdraw the bids and work with the district through other means.

Ted Frederick, a board member of the American Charter School Foundation, said his group placed bids on San Fernando and every other available district school just to seek out a "great opportunity." He said his Arizona-based organization is looking to expand and is seeking growth opportunities in other states as well.

But the worries by staff and parents at San Fernando don't just involve outside bidders.

From within the school two groups of teachers submitted applications to launch pilot schools - small schools that grant teachers more power over curriculum, staffing and budget - within San Fernando.

Speaking to a small gathering of parents and teachers recently, Pearl Arredondo, a multi-media teacher at San Fernando, explained that she submitted the independent application to benefit her students.

"We found something that works and we want to move ahead with it and continue the success of our kids," she said.

Before Arredondo could finish describing her proposal to take over only a section of the school, hands in the audience shot up as parents prodded her with questions about "dividing" the campus.

"Our kids are stressed about next year. ... If you say it's about the kids then keep your adult agendas away from them," said Christine Provencio, an LAUSD parent representative who has one child at San Fernando.

Ana Maria Barroso, mother of seventh- and eighth-grade students, said her children told her that kids were teasing each other about which schools they would end up at if several small schools opened at San Fernando next fall.

"Kids are saying `Oh you're dumb so you're going to go to the dumb school,"' Barroso said.

But even as tensions grow, so has the creativity, with plans for the future of San Fernando Middle getting more and more elaborate.

Solorzano's plan calls for joining forces with Project GRAD, a nonprofit that promotes college attendance among students in the Northeast Valley.

The proposal would also bring in California State University, Northridge, UCLA and the Los Angeles Educational Partnership to provide professional development to teachers and enrichment to students.

The Youth Policy Institute, a local nonprofit that brings educational and training programs to the Northeast Valley, has also applied to take over day-to-day operations at San Fernando.

The organization, currently operating under an annual budget of $28million, wants to enrich San Fernando with the same kind of resources that have allowed the group to give away 400 computers with a year's worth of Internet access to local families.

While the organization currently operates two charter schools - public schools that are free from most state regulations and don't have to hire district staff - it is not interested in converting San Fernando to a charter, said Iris Zuniga-Corona, YPI's director of youth services.

Instead the plan would be to work with teachers and parents to design the best model for the school. Currently, YPI is collaborating with some of the teachers who have submitted pilot-school plans, to see if they can devise a joint proposal.

The misinformation among parents has been especially frustrating for Zuniga-Corona, who also questioned the fairness of a process that naturally favors proposals from the school's current staff because they have the most interaction with students and parents.

"At the end of the day this is about choices and competition, and it's good because it puts everyone on their best game," Zuniga-Corona said.

"What I am not comfortable with is inaccurate information being spread to parents, and things need to be fair."

So much remains uncertain for San Fernando, just as it does for the other 35 schools, which in two months will learn who stays and who goes.

Final applications are due by Jan.11. They will then be reviewed by two panels, and teachers and parents will also vote on their favorite plan.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines will then submit his recommendations to the Board of Education, which will make its final decision by Feb. 23.

The quick process is scary for nearly everyone involved, but change is inevitable.

"Things are never going to be the same as they have been in the past," said Maria Reza, a former LAUSD administrator and former principal of San Fernando Middle School.

However, Reza said she would remind the community that some things always stay the same.

"The best things for kids are always the same," she said. "It's the best teachers, with a supportive administrative staff and supportive parents that will make them successful. There is no magic there."

CELLPHONES IN SCHOOLS: FLIP 'EM OPEN

EdWeek Commentary By Matt Levinson

Published Online: November 20, 2009 | Cheating in school is not a new phenomenon. The game has just changed a bit with the advent of cellphones and texting. Marc Prensky, an author on technology and a game designer himself, loves to share the story of a talk he once had with high school students. When he suggested that schools should have open-phone tests, as a measure to combat cellphone cheating, one of the students responded, “Dude, we already have open-phone tests. The teachers just don’t know it.”

Cellphone use among teenagers is rampant and growing at an exponential rate. Common Sense Media, a national, independent nonprofit organization that helps educators and parents teach kids how to be safe and smart in today’s 24/7 media world, worked with the Benenson Strategy Group to conduct over 2,000 interviews with teenagers about cellphone use. What they unearthed is staggering.

More than eight in 10 teenagers have cellphones, and more than half have had them since they were 12 years old or younger. On average, they send 440 text messages a week, 110 of which are sent during class. Restrictive school policies hardly matter, as 65 percent of young people use their phones on campus despite school policies. Parents are in the dark as well. Only 23 percent of those whose kids have cellphones think their children are using them during school, while 65 percent of kids say they use the devices in school.

In the area of cheating, the findings grow more alarming. More than a third of those questioned—35 percent—admit to having cheated at least once with their cellphones. The teenagers appear more likely to say that their friends are cheating than they are, with 65 percent in the survey saying they have seen or heard about other people in their school cheating with cellphones.

How do kids do it? They store information on their phone to look at during a quiz or exam. They text friends about answers during quizzes and tests (a practice that 57 percent of teenagers in the survey said others at their school had done). And they take pictures of test questions with a cellphone to send to friends.

How do they feel about it? Only 41 percent of young people say that storing notes or information on a cellphone to look at during a test is a serious cheating offense. Almost one in four (23 percent) say they don’t think it’s cheating at all. Similarly, only 45 percent say texting friends about answers during tests is cheating and “a serious offense,” while 20 percent say it’s not cheating at all.

Interestingly, kids consider cheating via the Internet to be more of a serious offense than cellphone cheating. But although teenagers in the survey viewed plagiarism more seriously than other types of cheating, a third of them (36 percent) said that downloading a paper from the Internet was not a serious offense, and 42 percent said copying text from Web sites was either a minor offense or not cheating at all.

Based on these findings, educators and parents are in trouble if schools keep doing business as usual. They won’t have control, because they won’t know what’s happening.

A cartoon I saw recently in The New York Times captures their dilemma. A teacher stands in front of a classroom presenting the time-honored assignment of having students write an essay about their summer vacation. One bold student pipes up with, “What, didn’t you follow me on Twitter this summer?” The message is clear: Students are using different tools to learn, and classrooms need to change to catch up with the times.

For teachers, it’s a matter of drastically overhauling the mind-set. In his book The Art of Possibility, Boston Philharmonic conductor Benjamin Zander offers a wonderful parable to illustrate how a shift in perspective can turn despair to opportunity. Two shoe salesmen head to a part of rural Africa to explore the viability of establishing a new market for their shoes. One writes back to the company: “Situation hopeless. No one wears shoes. Abandon project.” The other sees the flip side and writes, “No one is wearing shoes. Opportunity abounds. Huge market awaits. Send resources immediately.”

This is the situation teachers and schools face with mobile technologies. They can continue to fight a losing battle and draw harsh lines in the sand, confiscating cellphones or banning their use during school hours. Or, they can seize the teachable moment, and shift their approaches to embrace technology and engage students with these devices. One thing is very clear. Schools cannot continue to operate as if nothing is changing, with students or with technology.

Test design has to be reconsidered, of course. But beyond that, teachers need to think about ways to incorporate mobile technologies into their instruction. One creative foreign-languages teacher in California has seen the possibilities. She designs scavenger hunts in which her students need to call a number to get instructions (in Spanish) on where to go. Once there (ideally in a Spanish-speaking environment), they have to complete a task, perhaps buying something, using only Spanish, then call the next number to get further instructions. Each student has slightly different instructions, to differentiate the assignment.

School culture is shifting, and students are dictating the terms of this new culture. Schools need to meet them halfway and acknowledge the ubiquitous use of mobile technologies. Otherwise, students will find new and novel ways to skirt school rules, sneak texts under a desk during a test, and continue to bypass the trust of their teachers and schools.

We educators can alter these terms of engagement, however, by crafting creative uses for mobile devices in learning, and by designing testing situations that lend themselves less to multiple-choice copying and more to intellectual problem-solving.

• Matt Levinson is the head of the middle school and an assistant director at the Nueva School, in Hillsborough, Calif.

Hiltzik on WWLA/KCRW: CALIFORNIA SCHOOL FUNDING SYSTEM 'RIDICULOUSLY COMPLEX'

LA Times LA Now Blog | November 20, 2009 |  2:21 pm

Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik took measure of California's system for funding education this week and found it lacking … to put it mildly. Here's an excerpt from Thursday's column:

Anyone who has spent time in or around government, from the deeply embedded bureaucrat to the young policy wonk, knows that there are two important issues in funding a public program.

One, is it getting enough money? Two, is the money being spent wisely?

On both counts, California's method of financing its schools gets a big fat F. On a per-pupil basis, our schools are among the most poorly funded in the country, and no one can be sure that the money they do get serves its purpose.

Ask those who have devoted time to examining the system: The way this state doles out money to K-12 education isn't merely inefficient and ineffective, it's insane.

Hiltzik spoke about the issue with Warren Olney on KCRW-FM's "Which Way, L.A.?" Thursday. Click link below to listen.

Michael Hiltzik on "Which Way, L.A.?"

wsj: THE EDSEL OF EDUCATION REFORM - The Ford Foundation finds a needy cause: teachers unions.

Wall Street Journal Editorial

NOVEMBER 17, 2009 -- We hate to say it, but don't be misled by headlines. The biggest headline in education circles last week was that the Ford Foundation is making a whopping $100 million grant "to transform secondary education in the nation's most disadvantaged schools."

Our eyes raced to see which piece of the vibrant school-reform movement Ford was going to support. Would it be America's 4,600 charters schools, many outperforming their traditional school peers and some even closing the race gap? Maybe it would be Teach for America, busting at the seams and turning down Ivy League applicants by the hundreds. Or, who knows, maybe Ford's really on the leading edge, and would want to support voucher programs in cities like Washington.

Would you believe the recipients of Ford's largesse are the teachers unions? Yup. The folks at Ford are giving new meaning to the word "retro."

Ballyhooing the $100 million, the foundation's president Luis Ubinas said, "Improving our schools, and giving the most vulnerable young people real educational opportunities, benefits all of us. With this initiative we want to shake up the conversations surrounding school reform and help spur some truly imaginative thinking and partnerships."

And yet the Ford press release contains not one mention of charter schools, vouchers, merit pay or even Teach for America. Literally speaking, this really does shake up, not to say shock, "the conversations surrounding school reform."

Ford's formula for reform involves more money, less accountability and a bigger role for the unions. "Many state finance systems fail to allocate enough resources to provide quality schooling for all students," Ford's daring analysts write. And, "standardized tests are a blunt and inadequate tool by which to gauge student learning and school effectiveness."

But one of the screaming ironies of public education, known to all, is that some of the worst school districts in the country spend the most money on students. Standardized tests may be a "blunt" instrument, but they are also the only way that parents have had of holding bad teachers and terrible students accountable. This is why the unions dislike student testing, as well as teacher pay based on student performance.

One of Ford's first grants will go to the new American Federation of Teachers Innovation Fund, a "union-led initiative to make grants to AFT affiliates nationwide for innovative efforts established jointly by teachers, administrators, and parents." Here's guessing the main such innovation will be more money for everyone regardless of results.

The fact that Ford is supporting the unions—the biggest barrier to school reform in America—is no surprise. The foundation has funded just about every major failed liberal establishment program since the Great Society. Head Start, Job Corps and the Community Development Corporation were launched from Ford templates. In the 1970s, the foundation supported forced sterilization programs to curb overpopulation in the third world. A few years ago it gave money to an Arab NGO that wanted to wipe Israel off the map. It also largely paid for the University of Michigan's defense of affirmative action at the Supreme Court.

Last Wednesday, by contrast, the Gates Foundation offered $10 million to help the wildly successful KIPP charter schools expand in Houston. One might have hoped that Ford's administrators would have looked at some of the real innovation being done by philanthropies such as Gates or the Walton Foundation and seen how truly far behind the times Ford's ideas are.

Oh, well, another $100 million for education down the drain.

REPUBLICANS CRITICIZE DISMISSAL OF AMERICORPS WATCHDOG: A GOP report contends that the Obama White House was politically motivated when it fired inspector general Gerald Walpin after his 2008 investigation of Kevin Johnson, now Sacramento's mayor.

●● If Public Education is Tragedy and LAUSD is Farce, the goings-on in the US Dept of Ed approach Soap Opera: Bi-coastal Romance… Intrigue… Basketball.

By Tom Hamburger and Alexander C. Hart | LA Times

<< Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a self-described friend and supporter of President Obama, was accused of misusing federal AmeriCorps funds and of inappropriate behavior with volunteers. (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times / May 14, 2008)

 

November 20, 2009 - Reporting from Washington - When Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, was under investigation last year for alleged financial misdeeds and inappropriate behavior with female students, he had an important ally behind the scenes.

Michelle Rhee, the nationally known education reformer who is now head of the Washington, D.C., public schools, had several conversations with a federal inspector general in which she made the case for Johnson and the school he ran in Sacramento, according to the inspector general. Rhee, who had served on the board of the school and is now engaged to marry Johnson, said he was "a good guy."

Rhee's position had little effect on the inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who filed a criminal referral to the U.S. attorney on Johnson, a self-described friend and supporter of President Obama. But both the Sacramento police and federal attorneys declined to pursue charges. Walpin, who protested the prosecutors' handling of the case, was ultimately fired by the Obama White House in June.

Rhee's previously undisclosed role and the Walpin firing are now part of an unfolding drama in which outspoken Republicans contend that the Obama administration has not faithfully adhered to a law designed to protect executive-branch investigators from political interference.

The White House said Walpin was fired simply because he had lost the confidence of the president and the board of the Corp. for National and Community Service (which includes AmeriCorps), the agency he oversaw.

Republicans are skeptical.

"The claim that Gerald Walpin was removed for legitimate, nonpolitical reasons is unsupported and unpersuasive," says a 62-page joint staff report on the firing, to be released today by Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, Calif., and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

Some Democrats are complaining as well. "I think the Obama administration made a mistake here," said Bernard Nussbaum, a White House counsel under President Clinton and a longtime acquaintance of Walpin.

The report, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, includes previously undisclosed documents and details, including the 30-page criminal referral Walpin prepared for the U.S. attorney in Sacramento in August 2008, and sworn statements from witnesses.

Click here to read the full 62 page report: The Firing of the Inspector General for The Corporation for National and Community Service Click here for the appended documents

 

Walpin, who is receiving free help from a conservative public relations firm associated with the Swift boat ads that opposed Democrat John F. Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, is convinced his firing was directly related to his investigation of Johnson.

"There is no doubt in my mind," Walpin said in an interview this week. "You'd have to be a babe in the woods not to see the link."

The White House denies any political motivation to the firing, contending that Walpin, 78, was unfit for service.

White House Counsel Greg Craig said the bipartisan board unanimously requested a White House review of Walpin after a May board meeting at which Walpin "was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the board to question his capacity to serve."

Walpin began his investigation in 2008, seeking to discover what happened to $848,000 in grants and payments to Johnson's charter school, St. Hope Academy, from AmeriCorps, the federally funded national service organization.

The funds were to be used to pay for tutoring and other community programs at St. Hope. Walpin said he found that there was little or no tutoring at the school, and that many of the young AmeriCorps volunteers who went to St. Hope in lieu of a first year of college were assigned other tasks, including washing Johnson's car.

The final four pages of the criminal referral discussed three instances of alleged inappropriate actions by Johnson involving a minor, who had reported she was fondled, and two young volunteers, who reported that Johnson went to their apartment and climbed into bed with one of them. The criminal referral notes that the two educators who reported the allegations left the charter school upset with the way the complaints had been handled.

As federal and local officials declined to follow Walpin's suggestions for criminal prosecution and lifted a ban on Johnson receiving federal grants -- a ban the inspector general had fought to have imposed -- Walpin became only more adamant, irrationally so according to critics.

A spokesman for the mayor said it was "sad and unfortunate that these allegations are being rehashed. There is no merit to them, as the Sacramento Police Department confirmed after their review. In addition, the U.S. attorney also has independently verified that this report by [the] inspector general was misleading. Professional prosecutors, the police and federal officials have closed the books on this case and moved on because there is no merit to these charges, period."

Walpin, a former federal prosecutor who was appointed the corporation's inspector general by President Bush in 2007, said he learned he was being fired June 10 in a telephone call from White House special counsel Norman Eisen.

In response to congressional questions on the firing, the White House cited concern from the service organization board about Walpin's behavior at the board meeting in May.

In an interview, Walpin acknowledged feeling unwell that day but denied any loss of cognitive power. Members of the board declined to be interviewed Thursday, but notes obtained from the board indicate widespread concern over Walpin's demeanor that day.

The Grassley-Issa report criticizes Eisen, who also serves as White House ethics counsel, for not examining what Walpin had been investigating at the time of his dismissal, including the allegations of sexual misconduct by Johnson.

According to the report, Rhee met with Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez, a teacher at St. Hope, after hearing about the allegations, and promised she would "take care of the situation."

At first, Wong-Hernandez said she felt relieved. But she said her relief turned to a chill when she was called to a meeting with Johnson and one of the alleged victims and was told by Johnson that he and the 18-year-old girl had spoken privately and "everything was OK between them."

A few months later, in June 2007, Wong-Hernandez left the school, telling Rhee that the handling of that incident was the major reason.

Rhee did not comment Thursday on the allegations in the Grassley-Issa report. In response to questions, her spokesman said Rhee had not asked Walpin to drop his investigation.

Her role in the incident may have repercussions among city officials in Washington, where she has developed the profile of a contentious and controversial schools chief.

By picking public battles with school employees and laying off 250 teachers after the school year was underway, Rhee has found herself at odds with the District of Columbia Council, education labor unions, the philanthropic community and many parents.

tom.hamburger@latimes.com

alex.hart@latimes.com

 

MORE: Kevin Johnson is currently the Mayor of Sacramento, this is how the SacBee is covering this story:

• Kevin Johnson's accuser says he offered to pay her $1,000 a month Fri Nov 20, 2009

  Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson offered to pay $1,000 a month to one of three girls who had accused him of inappropriately touching her while... more...

• Phoenix police sex-crime unit investigation report of Kevin Johnson from 1995 Fri Nov 20, 2009

• Ex-official wants job back as FBI shuts St. HOPE probe Wednesday Nov 11, 2009

  The FBI probe into whether e-mails were deleted during a separate federal investigation of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's St. HOPE Academy has been closed... read entire article

• Figure fired during probe of Kevin Johnson is cleared Tuesday Nov 10, 2009

  Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general fired by the White House in July during his probe of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, has been cleared... read entire article

• Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, D.C. schools chancellor are engaged Saturday Nov 7, 2009

  Do we call them Rhee-J? The bicoastal power couple of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee made it official... read entire article

BRIEFLY: Education Headlines from L.A. Now

• UCLA students end a day of protest over fee hikes 11/19/2009, 8:14 p.m.
• Castaic finally closing in on getting its own high school 11/19/2009, 3:34 p.m.
• Inglewood school board member charged with embezzlement 11/19/2009, 2:47 p.m.
• UC regents approve fee hike amid loud student protests [Updated] 11/19/2009, 1:06 p.m.
• Hundreds rally at UCLA to protest expected 32% increase in student fees 11/19/2009, 10:41 a.m.
• L.A. charter schools win Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant 11/19/2009, 10:15 a.m.
• Veteran substitute teachers win back seniority rights in L.A. Unified 11/19/2009, 8:41 a.m.

PARCELING PAIN: The ghost of proposed parcel tax returns to haunt L.A. homeowners

LA Daily News Editorial

20 November 2009 -- THE Los Angeles Unified School District has taken its lumps from the current recession - teachers and other workers have been laid off, class sizes have been increased and still the district must cut $480 million to balance its 2010-2011 budget.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines sent a letter to his employees and their unions late last week saying, here's your choices: a 12 percent pay cut next year and four furlough days this year, or the layoff of up to 8,500 employees.

Up jumped A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, and fires off a letter to his union members saying this is an outrage - 2,000 teachers have been laid off, class sizes increased and a "host of other serious challenges caused by LAUSD actions." He's entirely correct.

Duffy said the district needs to work with all the unions involved and consider other cuts and alternative sources of funding - such as a parcel tax.

We were with Duffy, right up to the black magical words: parcel tax.

Draw back for a moment from the school district's troubles and look around. Unemployment in Los Angeles County is officially at 12.7 percent, which means it's really at 17.5 percent because of the many laid-off workers who have run out of benefits or just given up. Foreclosure rates are at highs not seen since the Great Depression. The cost of health care and insurance have climbed to a point where it is unaffordable to many Americans.

Things are tough all over - for teachers and everyone else. The last thing people need right now is a tax increase, no matter how righteous the cause.

Duffy's note wasn't the first time the idea of a new parcel tax came up. Last January, two months after the district officials and their high-paid consultants persuaded Los Angeles voters to approve a $7 billion construction bond - the fifth one so far - paid for by homeowners in their tax bills, Cortines floated the idea of asking for a parcel tax increase to supplement ongoing operational costs. The idea was so abhorrent in the bleak depths of the recession that it didn't go anywhere. But clearly it hasn't been forgotten, as it should be.

Those of us outside government have been living with reduced money since this recession began. Private enterprise can't just say to its customers, this is just too hard, you'll have to give us more money. It doesn't work that way for us. It shouldn't for public enterprises, either. Government has to be weaned from the idea that when times get tough, you just ask for more money.

And certainly other government entities have had to grin and bear it. State workers are absorbing up to 26 furloughed days this year and will probably get hit again now that the state's budget deficit is heading toward $21 billion.

Even beyond the issue of taxing people when they're down, using parcel taxes to pay for ongoing education costs is unfair to individual homeowners. They aren't the only ones with kids in public schools, but they are the only ones hit by property taxes, especially with incomes flattened. Yes, renters pay through increases in the rent, but the rental market is a buyer's market right now and rents are going down, not up.

We sympathize with teachers and other LAUSD workers, but that's the way it works in this economy. Only bank executives and workers at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power seem to be exempt from pay cuts. The really big guys are recovering and per worker production has risen so they are making more money from a reduced work force. But for the people who do the actual work, salaries are flat or have fallen.

Duffy was right in his assessment that the teachers and other workers shouldn't have to absorb to all. Reductions should be heavier outside the classrooms all the way up to political offices, before they strip mine the teaching staff. The district should look at cutting new programs and take a harder examination of the management structure of LAUSD.

And if it comes down to pay reductions and forced days off, the high as well as the low should bear the burden equally - not the hapless taxpayers.

GROUP CALLS FOR PILOT SCHOOL SYSTEM ON THE EASTSIDE

Grupo Quiere Nueva Tradición de Rendimiento Excelente, Comenzando con la Nueva Preparatoria Torres

By Gloria Angelina Castillo, EGP Staff Writer (Eastside Sun / Northeast Sun / Mexican American Sun / Bell Gardens Sun / City Terrace Comet / Commerce Comet / Montebello Comet / Monterey Park Comet / ELA Brookyln Belvedere Comet / Wyvernwood Chronicle / Vernon Sun)

20 November 2009 -- Meeting near the fenced entrance to the new Esteban E. Torres High School in East Los Angeles, parents, students, organizers, educators and former Congressman Torres himself on Nov. 13 called on the community to embrace empowerment and expand Pilot Schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Members of 'La Causa Youth Build' are ready to be empowered through choice. EGP Photo by Gloria Angelina Castillo

The Torres high school in unincorporated East Los Angeles is scheduled to open in September 2010. Some Eastside residents want it to be modeled after the Belmont Zone of Choice, Lizette Patron of InnerCity Struggle told EGP.

The group, in addition to InnerCity Struggle, included La Causa Youth Build, SEIU 99, Volunteers of East LA (VELA), and Father Rigoberto Rodriguez of Guadalupe Church. They say they want both Torres and Garfield high school campuses to become “East Los Angeles Education Empowerment Zones of Choice,” thereby allowing students and their parents the choose the school that better suits their aspirations, rather than district imposed attendance areas.

“This zone will give parents and students the choice to decide what school they would like to attend in East LA,” Maria Brenes, executive director of InnerCity Struggle, said. “This zone will give all students access to the classes they need to go to college. This zone will give parents, students and teachers a stronger voice in our schools.”

The Belmont Zone of Choice schools are proof that pilot schools work to improve academic achievement and they want the same for East LA, said Brenes.

Belmont Zone of Choice Schools are theme based college prep schools based on the Boston Pilot School Network. Some of the Belmont Zone of Choice Schools are: the Los Angeles High School of the Arts (LAHSA) on the Belmont campus, the Civitas School of Leadership (Civitas Sol) on the Roybal Learning Complex campus, the Academic Leadership Community High School (ALC) on the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex campus, and the Los Angeles Teacher Preparatory High School (LATP) on the Belmont campus.

Those present called for collaboration between LAUSD and the teachers’ union to make sure East LA gets pilot schools.

“We want to start a new tradition at Esteban E. Torres High School of academic excellence,” Brenes said.

Former Congressman Esteban E. Torres, who the new high school is named after, supports pilots schools in East LA. EGP Photo by Gloria Angelina Castillo

A retired congressman and Garfield High School alum, Torres told the audience he supports the pilot system being implemented at the school named after him, and encouraged the crowd to continue fighting for change.

“This empowerment zone is key to bringing about a pilot school here and at other places still organizing themselves,” Torres said in Spanish. “But you, as parents, as teachers, and as students need to work together, unite to bring about this vision, because the programming and planning for this school is in your hands.”

In an editorial, published on Nov. 5 in EGP newspapers, Torres said he supports Empowerment Zones at eastside schools, because he remembers when California was known for having one of the best educational systems in the country. Today, they rank 50th. Making matters worse, in East LA only 45 percent of incoming freshmen graduate within four years, he said.

LAUSD School Board Vice President Yolie Flores Aguilar, who authored the Small School Resolution, also supports the effort.

“It [the educational model] should be what the community asks for and it should be what’s in the best interest of the students. If a pilot presents to this community the best educational model than that’s what they should have. But if a charter school presents to the parents and to the students what they believe will help them achieve and excel and go on to college and have a great career, than that should be the option. This is about creating more choices and more options for parents and not limiting for them what’s available to their children. Every parent wants the absolute best for their child so lets open up the world of possibilities, demand excellence, and have the community’s voice be part of the process,” Flores Aguilar told EGP.

She noted that just like LAUSD has failing and good schools, there are also charters that have failing and excelling schools.

“My hope is that we look past what the institution is and to what is going to be offered to students. To me, that’s the most important thing,” she said.

Alejandra Muñoz, who has a student at Griffith Middle School, said everyone should support the pilot schools.

“Our community dreams of having a new educational system that guarantees our children will graduate prepared for college and good jobs. An Educational Empowerment Zone for East Los Angeles offers new hope for the future of our children and our community, said Muñoz.

Muñoz said this is the first time parents and students are being given an opportunity to choose the school of their dreams.

The plan calls for five schools, each with less than 500 students, located on the Torres high school campus, as well as a series of small learning communities at Garfield.

María León, a local mother, said the pilot schools will help prepare students to go to college.
“[We have to] work with the school district to move ahead. We already see that traditional schools aren’t working, and we want to work with those schools to improve them, … said León.

Headlines that say it all: MIAMI-DADE SCHOOL BOARD BANS SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS FROM TEXTING WHILE DRIVING

…just like that; they looked up from answering e-mails and twttering amongst themselves and voted!  Imagine.  - smf

THE PLAYERS ARE REVEALED FOR REFORMING SAN FERNANDO MIDDLE SCHOOL

Written by Diana Martinez, Editor | San Fernando Valley Sun

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Ford Roosevelt from Project Grad submitted a letter of intent with San Fernando Middle School Principal Solorzano and other partners to submit a collaborative plan to reform the school.

The LAUSD website indicates that five letters of intent have been submitted by various groups interested in operating and reforming San Fernando Middle School.

Letters were received from the Synesi Foundation, the San Fernando Middle School Collaborative, Youth Policy Institute,ABC Learn, Inc. and the San Fernando Visual & Performing Arts Academy. They now have until Jan. 11 to submit their specific plan to the district under the school choice reform plan. After reviewing the plans, Superintendent Cortines will make his final recommendations to the school board that is expected to make the final decision to select one of the five plans as the model to run the school.

The Synesi Foundation [according to the Daily Breeze formed by Illinois-based education  consultancy Synesi Associates]  submitted letters of intent for every available school in the district not just for San Fernando Middle School.  [smf notes that UTLA submitted letters of intent for every school except SFMS]   A group of teachers currently working at the school submitted a letter as The San Fernando Visual & Performing Arts Academy and the school itself is partnering with Project Grad under the name San Fernando Middle School Collaborative.

District-wide LAUSD received 181 letters of intent to submit plans to run the 36 either new or underperforming "focus" schools under the district's new reform plan. Because of poor test scores, San Fernando Middle School has been put of the list of "focus schools" now available to be run by an external group.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines said meetings are planned near schools that are available for external operations, "LAUSD, in collaboration with Families in Schools and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, will facilitate meetings of parents and community members at 20 regional sites near or at each focus school and new school participating in the Public School Choice (PSC) Resolution process."

San Fernando Middle School Principal Solorzano said meetings to discuss what he called "the new vision for the school," are being held on Dec. 1 and Dec. 5.

Ford Roosevelt President of Project Grad said his organization has been working with the San Fernando Middle School Principal to develop a collaborative plan between Project Grad Los Angles Educational Partnership, CSUN, UCLA Graduate School of Education and San Fernando Middle school.

They submitted their letter of intent under the name, The San Fernando Middle School collaborative.

"With a collaborative partnership Principal Solórzano agreed that this would be the best approach for him," said Roosevelt.

He cites the success Project Grad has had working with a professor from CSUN who has achieved positive results working with math students at San Fernando High School and with middle school teachers and students at San Fernando Middle School during the summer.

The collaborative plan, Roosevelt describes as, "A kind of a way at creating change from within, I'm not interested in running a school, I'm interested in collaborating with the leadership of the school, the Principal, working with the district and the other community partners."

Roosevelt said through a collaborative model, the community could come together to create a community school as he said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan describes in an interview with Charlie Rose on Utube.

"If San Fernando Middle School was the hub of community activities from morning all the way into the evening with classes for parents and classes for kids with after school programs and ESL and other classes for parents," said Roosevelt.

"Imagine the school serving as a hub for the community with people really engaged there and that's how we envision the collaborative effort over time in San Fernando and Pacoima as serving students and their families in a real enriching way."

Newly-elected school board member, Nury Martinez said community meetings should be held during evening and weekend hours for working parents and she said in the end, whatever model is selected, change and accountability is needed at San Fernando Middle School.

Meetings at San Fernando Middle School will be held on Dec. 1 from 1:45 to 4 p.m. and Dec. 5 from 9 a.m. to noon.

ADVOCATING PUBLIC EDUCATION ROUNDUP

from the solidaridad blog by Robert D. Skeels

Monday, November 16, 2009 -- I recently interviewed Peri Lynn Turnbull of the California Charter Schools Association, who maintained the CCSA and its constituents believe in the obligation to educate every child. She stated that even though the charters are negotiating with LAUSD over this requirement in the current RFP, that CCSA is committed to Special Education. We can take Ms. Turnbull at her word, that this is the official position of the CCSA.

In practice however, the corporate charter-voucher establishment perpetrates something completely different. The recent documents from the Modified Consent Decree expose corporate CMO charter-voucher school discrimination and exclusivity. Very telling is the statement that children with disabilities are "significantly underrepresented" at CMO run charter schools. The executive summary of the report, and the data tables from the report. Marco Petruzzi's concerns that special education programs cut into his massive salary aside, even these corporate run schools should be obligated legally, ethically, and morally to educate every child! The easy solution is to just keep schools public and ditch the failed CMO experiment altogether, but that's a battle that will take some time.

My little missive to the LAUSD Board President about aligning with and co-signing the outrageous lies about UTLA coming from highly paid corporate charter-voucher proxies including Veronica Melvin, Maria Casillas, and Jarad Sanchez has proved popular. Let's say it caused some real consternation on the board. If you haven't seen it: Open letter to LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia regarding the press conference.

Brian Jones is his usual brilliant self in The charter school charade. This is one of those articles that you want to print out tons of copies and give to everyone you know! New York has a vibrant parent-teacher-student movement fighting back against the corporate charter-voucher establishment called the Grassroots Education Movement (NYC).

In 'Market Share' as a goal for privatization attacks on public schools... Charter master plan targets gaining 'market share' in urban districts Kenneth Libby and George Schmidt expose Arne Duncan's strong ties to the reactionary right wing extremist firm "John Galt Solutions, Inc." modeled on the bankrupt ideologies of Ayn Rand, who George pegs perfectly as a "right wing fundamentalist." Make no mistake, the Andy Smarick Ken discusses in the article works with range of right wing think tanks and is the ideological muse of Steve Barr and other DLC/DFER disciples of public school destruction. We've mentioned the Smarick article published in a journal from The Hoover Institution used by Green Dot Schools and their front group LAPU/PR to implement their hostile takeover plans before in the notes of a recent article here.

Jeff Bleich unknowingly spells out the racist priorities of empire in California's higher-education debacle:

"California's public universities and community colleges have half as much to spend today as they did in 1990 in real dollars. In the 1980s, 17% of the state budget went to higher education and 3% went to prisons. Today, only 9% goes to universities and 10% goes to prisons."

Adam Sanchez looks at this administration's reactionary education policies in Race to the top or to the bottom? I'd be remiss not to reprint this quote:

"One study reviewed in the book showed that family income supplements as low as $4,000 a year improved children's school achievement by 10-15 percent. So what would a real "Race to the Top" program look like? We could start by taking the largely taxpayer-funded $23 billion in bonuses that Goldman Sachs is giving out this year, and put that money toward giving nearly 6 million families that $4,000 income supplement."

For more on the infamous Vielka McFarlane self-colonization (aka teach civil rights at a charter school -- loose your job) incident, there's a much older, but well thought out piece on Firedoglake L.A. Charter School: Emmett Till Deserved to Die.

More math and mendacity lessons from Green Dot Public Schools. The corporate hacks at Green Dot love to crow about their ability to place their graduates in college. Well, it sure isn't because of their proficiency levels. There are tables published by the CSU system for all schools available, with a wealth of statistics. I choose one of Green Dot's better performing corporate CMO schools, since they recently accused me of just picking on their Animo Watts II campus.

Let's look at Animo Venice Charter High School. Of the Green Dot students admitted to the CSU system in 2008 67% WERE NOT PROFICIENT IN MATHEMATICS. This is compared to just 49% of the much maligned LAUSD students. Moreover, only 33% of the children graduating the Green Dot corporate factory school were proficient, while children attending public schools comprised a much more respectable 51%. More evidence of the Silverlake snake oil salesman Steve Barr's exceedingly arrogant, but obviously erroneous statement "our model should work in any educational context, because the principles are embodied in all high-performing schools." I'm sure the right wing corporate charter-voucher apologists Jarad Sanchez and Veronica Melvin of the so called Alliance for a Better Community could find a way to spin Green Dot's abysmal numbers, but maybe instead of listening to washed up businessmen, Wall Street hucksters, and political hacks like Barr et al, we should have educators leading the way for education.

This Green Dot Math and Mendacity theme is going to be a continuing series on this blog, since Green Dot is constantly guilty of the most egregious manipulation of facts and statistics.

Posted by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene at 13:45

THE CALIFORNIA MODEL …as seen by the students of Arizona State University

By: Editorial Board of The State Press - An independent daily serving Arizona State University

Thursday, November 19, 2009 – The cost of education is something students care deeply about.

Fee hikes have rallied the masses at ASU in the past, and recently, they have caused a huge uproar in our neighbor school to the west, the University of California.

Eight students were arrested Tuesday after singing several rounds of “We Shall Overcome” to protest proposed heightened fees, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The UC Board of Regents discussed a 32 percent increase in fees for UC students. A 32 percent increase would up undergraduate tuition by nearly $3,000 annually, costing students more than $10,000.

ASU students know all too well what these types of fees can do to our pocketbooks and our drive to pursue higher education.

California’s proposed hike makes our Board of Regents look like nice fluffy kittens with their surcharge.

And though we’d like to thank California for once again improving Arizona’s outlook by comparison, we shouldn’t be too quick to sympathize and move on.

For the first time in the state’s history, Arizona is being forced to take out a loan. The state has already borrowed more than $500 million against internal accounts, but the stack of IOUs is becoming too much to handle without the help of institutional lenders.

While in straits this dire, we would not be surprised if Arizona students were soon in the same position that our compatriots and friendly rivals in California are experiencing.

A proposal like UC’s not only makes a mockery of college affordability, it does little to encourage an influx of educated people — something that the ailing state could use a lot of right now.

But before we start desperately looking for songs to protest a one-third tuition increase, we might start looking at the benefits California’s problem could bring to us.

We hate to be to Darwinian, but Arizona universities might start benefiting from the overwhelming UC costs.

Arizona schools, and ASU in particular, have a lot to offer students looking for a good education in a warm climate. If the price of a California education shoots dramatically upward, ASU may start seeing an influx of out-of-state students who are willing to give up a beach for a bit more cash in their coffers.

And out-of-state tuition dollars mean benefits for all students. When the University succeeds, so do the students. If ASU can attract students who are wary of seeing costs spike, it could mean big strides for the New American University.

Despite the potential benefits a dumb decision from the UC governing board of regents could give Arizona, we are still very much on the side of the students.

Educated people don’t only benefit themselves, they benefit society. Keeping education funding a priority will go a long way to improving the economies of both states.

Both California and Arizona could stand to remember that.

STUDENTS STORM UCLA BUILDING TO PROTEST FEE HIKE "Education should be a priority for California and not 'sold' off to the highest bidder like LAUSD is doing with charter schools."

by My-Thuan Tran – LA Times LA Now Blog

November 19, 2009 |  7:17 am Updated 8:39 am

About 30 students stormed UCLA’s Campbell Hall and barricaded the doors with chains and bike locks early this morning to protest a student fee increase that is expected to be endorsed by the University of California’s Board of Regents today.

[Updated at 8:39 a.m.: The UC Regents have started to meet, and hundreds of students have surrounded the building, protesting the proposed fee hike.]

Students who spent the night were sprawled outside Campbell Hall in sleeping bags. They carried posters and signs that read, “Don’t take our education away” and “Don’t privatize, democratize.” Many wore bandannas over their faces.

Dozens of other students spent the night camped out in tents on top of Parking Structure 4. Hundreds of other students are expected to join the protesters and demonstrate at the UC Regents meeting that will take place later today.

The proposed two-step student fee increase would raise UC undergraduate education costs more than $2,500, or 32%.The annual cost of a UC education, not including campus-based fees would rise to $10,302.

Kyle Tramberly, a junior at UC San Diego, said he did not sleep since arriving at UCLA late Wednesday night.

“I’m here in solidarity with people across the state of California that are being subjugated to these outrageous fee increases,” he said. “I can’t afford the fee increases, personally. I have to take out private loans in order to cover this. It’s completely unjust to put the burden on students.”

[from previous version of story]  "Education should be a priority for California and not "sold" off to the highest bidder like LAUSD is doing with charter schools. I support these students ..."

A key committee of the UC Regents backed the two-step hike Wednesday, despite appeals from students who urged the board to at least postpone a vote. About 500 student and labor-union activists demonstrated outside the meeting. Fourteen were arrested.

 

Photo: Students march in front of Covel Commons at UCLA, where regents will be voting on a fee increase later in the day. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

from Google News:

Students storm UCLA building to protest expected UC system fee increase

Los Angeles Times - ‎3 hours ago‎ (@11 am 11/19)

Education should be a priority for California and not "sold" off to the highest bidder like LAUSD is doing with charter schools. I support these students ...

VETERAN SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS WIN BACK SENIORITY RIGHTS IN L.A. UNIFIED

by Howard Blume | LA Times Online

November 19, 2009 |  8:41 am

Veteran substitute teachers in Los Angeles will get more work and a shot at keeping their health benefits after the teachers union approved an agreement restoring their seniority rights.

The agreement approved Wednesday night puts back in place a system that gives the most experienced substitutes the first shot at jobs when regular teachers call in sick within the Los Angeles Unified School District. That traditional system had been altered in June under a one-year pact between district officials and A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the district’s teachers union.

That pact gave priority in substitute assignments to former full-time teachers who had been laid off July 1 because of budget cuts. About 1,800 laid-off teachers signed on as substitutes; the district uses about 2,200 substitutes per day. The specifics of the deal, which came to light two months later, caused immediate outrage among veteran substitutes and also among many full-time teachers. They said they objected both to the treatment of their part-time colleagues and to the idea that seniority rights could be so easily and quickly abrogated.

Duffy insisted that he signed the June pact to benefit district students. The laid-off teachers would have incentive to remain with L.A. Unified as substitutes, he said, stabilizing school staffs that were subject to massive turnover because of the layoffs. But Duffy also said he would abide by the decision of the union if it wished to restore seniority.

When UTLA’s governing House of Representatives did just that in October, Duffy asked the school district to reopen negotiations. After some initial resistance, the district agreed to tear up the June deal. And last night, the union’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly ratified the restoration of seniority.

The laid-off teachers are still likely to get work because full-time teachers can request any substitute by name. The veteran substitutes now hope there’s enough time and opportunity for them to work at least 100 days this year -- that’s the minimum required to earn health benefits.

Overall work opportunities are down for a number of reasons: the larger pool of substitutes, larger class sizes (and thus fewer classes), fewer year-round schools and shrinking enrollment.

For now, at least, the veteran substitutes are celebrating.

“This is a landmark decision,” substitute Audrey Linden wrote in an e-mail.  “A handful of substitutes, since the end of August, worked diligently without ceasing and we got back the rights for all the substitute teachers.” She added: “I will not complain about being woken up at 5:30 a.m. ever again.”