Schools: July 2008 Archives

If Los Angeles Unified officials decide Thursday to place a $7 billion bond on the fall ballot, they are expected to campaign on a plan to build small schools of 500 students or less. George Sanchez in the Daily News.

But while the district has been talking up the need for smaller schools for at least five years, it has continued to build mammoth campuses to warehouse thousands of students.

District officials defend their construction program, saying they may be developing large school sites, but they are trying to break them down into several mini-schools on each campus.

And some say it's too late and costly to redesign already-built or under-construction mega-schools, even though they acknowledge the LAUSD should have never gotten to the place it finds itself now.

"We have just built all these schools. We can't deconstruct them," said LAUSD Board of Education member Yolie Flores Aguilar.

"If I had my dr

Los Angeles Unified School District officials are considering asking voters to approve a $7 billion bond measure in November, more than twice as big as previously discussed and nearly half of it set aside for unspecified future projects. George Sanchez in the Daily News.

LAUSD's board is set to vote Thursday on whether to support the bond measure, which allocates more than $3.2 billion for future "repair and safety," "modernization, repair and technology," "green technology" and to "attract, retain and graduate more students," according to a draft summary of the bond funding distribution.

Meanwhile, district and charter officials are wrangling over exactly how much charter schools would get from the bond measure and whether the charters would own any properties and schools that are developed with the funds.

Los Angeles voters support another school bond, but don't trust Los Angeles Unified School District leadership, according to a limited poll conducted for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. George Sanchez in the Daily News.

The survey of likely voters found that 60 percent to more than 70 percent of respondents were willing to support bonds in amounts of $3.2 billion, $6 billion or $10 billion.

(The school board has yet to decide on an exact figure.)

The poll also found that 73 percent believe the school board is doing a poor or "just fair" job overseeing the district, while 55 percent rated Superintendent David Brewer III as poor or just fair.

Amid concerns that voters may hesitate to approve a fifth multibillion-dollar school construction bond in a decade, Los Angeles Unified officials and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have crafted a proposal to woo the public with promises to fund charter schools and small learning communities. Kerry Cavanaugh and George Sanchez in the Daily News.

At a hastily called news conference Friday afternoon, Villaraigosa and LAUSD leaders provided few details of the proposed bond measure but said a portion would be dedicated to developing charter schools and breaking up behemoth public schools into independent, mini-campuses.

"This is not about slapping another coat of paint on a problem," Villaraigosa said. "This reform-minded bond will create smaller, independent schools rooted in community and free from downtown bureaucracy."

With seemingly about as much thought as one of those old movies where kids came together to put on a show, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, School Board President Monica Garcia and a bunch of other folks came out Friday for a new multi-billion dollar bond issued to go on the November ballot.
The announcement came at a hastily called news conference -- less than an hour's notice was given -- and on a Friday afternoon, a move seen as guaranteeing little news coverage.
The purpose of the measure is to help create small charter schools as part of the new initiative at th Los Angeles Unified School District _ a program yet to be put into practice to even see if it works.
The bond measure is for an undetermined amount. The cost to taxpayers is not known. The language of the measure and what it would actually do is not available.
Local officials are fond of saying the devil is in the details. It would be nice to see them.

Sharply disputing a state report, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday said he believes the dropout rate at Los Angeles schools is even worse than the dismal 33 percent estimated by state officials. Daily News.

Villaraigosa, who previously used the dropout rate issue as leverage to take control of a handful of schools, said the new state figures released Wednesday did not take into account all relevant factors.

For example, he said, the state report did not count students who dropped out before ninth grade.

A proposed new admissions policy for the University of California system could give thousands of students a better chance of getting into the elite state schools, but critics say the changes threaten to weaken educational quality.Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

The proposal, to be discussed today by the Board of Regents, would reduce the grades, classes and admissions tests required of high school students before their applications are fully reviewed.

"All we are doing is guaranteeing more students a shot," said Mark Rashid, chairman of UC's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, which proposed the change.

Los Angeles Unified officials are considering opening as many as five long-closed school sites in the San Fernando Valley to house hundreds of charter school students. George Sanchez in the Daily News.

The sites have been closed since the early 1980s because of declining enrollment, but growing demand for charter space has prompted officials to renew a plan that drew heated debate six years ago and is again drawing community resistance.

But with the LAUSD required to accommodate charters under state law, despite continuing strains on classroom space, district officials said they are eyeing all options.

The contractor for software that left Los Angeles Unified School District with massive payroll problems is now bidding on a $1.5 billion contract to run California's court-case management system. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

And the bid has created an outcry after an oversight official said Deloitte Consulting LLP failed to disclose in its bid documents that it is in the middle of a dispute with LAUSD over the system that left thousands of teachers with inaccurate paychecks.

"I was surprised they didn't mention the LAUSD issue," said J. Stephen Czuleger, presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court system.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa takes on one of the biggest challenges of his career today as his partnership to reform education formally begins working with some of Los Angeles' worst-performing schools. Daily News.

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools initially will team up with Roosevelt High School and the Santee Education Complex as about 20,000 students return for the summer session.

But they will soon be followed by students at Hollenbeck, Stevenson, Gompers and Markham middle schools and Ritter, 99th, Figueroa and Sunrise elementary schools.

And the stakes are high for the five-year pilot reform effort to prove that urban school districts can succeed in a move that could further escalate calls to break up the nation's second-largest district.