March 2009 Archives

The Los Angeles school board heard budget-cut recommendations Tuesday from Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who didn't go for any sugar-coating.

"We are not going to be the same. I am not going to sit here and lie to you and say everything will the same," Cortines said. "Schools will suffer."

He later continued: "I would say that these (cuts) are not in the best interest of our children, but you don't have any choice. ... You tell me where to get the money to fill that bucket. I've taken everything I can take. What I am recommending negatively affects every aspect of this district."

The district, which has already this year cut $427 million from its $6 billion budget, needs to slice off another $140 million by the end of the year. In the 2009-10 school year, the district needs to cut $596 million -- and another $156 million in 2010-11, according to a presentation by district CFO Megan Reilly.

To reduce spending for next year's budget, Cortines had recommended laying off about 8,500 employees, including 3,600 teachers. His recommendations included:

--layoffs and reassignments of one-quarter of headquarters staff
--cutting in half the budgets of local district offices, which will be moved onto campuses
--layoffs of nearly 500 counselors
--increased class sizes across K-12
--one-day furloughs for all employees

Cortines said the avoidance of midyear cuts made more dramatic reductions now necessary. Board members will vote on his proposed cuts March 31.

Here's the take from Daily News reporter George Sanchez, who talked to some parents who protested outside the board meeting.

Also of note: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez today continues his focus on local schools with a critical look at UTLA's 347-page contract, which requires the newest teachers to be laid off first, regardless of talent. (The teachers union and LAUSD came to a tentative contract extension through 2011 yesterday.)

The Board of Education voted today to make March 31 "Cesar E. Chavez Day" -- a paid holiday across Los Angeles Unified.

The board vote was marked by student comments and performances that celebrated the Mexican-American activist leader of farm workers. Students have marched in support of the holiday, and many walked out in 2007 (the same year as the massive immigration rally in downtown LA).

A board resolution from Yolie Flores Aguilar directed Superintendent Ramon Cortines to negotiate with unions to have Chavez Day replace Admissions Day or another paid holiday.

A 2000 state law established Chavez Day as a state holiday, authorizing schools to close for the day.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines will today present budget recommendations that include laying off nearly 8,400 employees and cutting valued programs, it's being reported.

With his budget update, Cortines will tell the Los Angeles Unified board that there is already a $140 million deficit for the current school year. He'll try to patch that up by shifting funds from categorical programs, according to an LAUSD memo to board members. (It's at the end of the meeting materials -- a big download.)

The potential closure of small campuses, including Sellery Special Education Center in Gardena will be discussed as part of Cortines' budget proposals today. A decision on that will be made next week, district officials said.

(To watch the meeting, which begins at 1 p.m., go here.)

Cortines' budget recommendations will include giving schools more freedom to use their own funding as campus administrators see fit. Making preliminary budget decision so early in the year means the district is "entering new waters," Cortines wrote. He wants decisions made early so that schools can plan to "buy back" eliminated jobs with freed-up funding.

He also notes: "[L]et me be clear, we will not be receiving enough federal stimulus funding to offset the reductions that we are facing from the State and there will be reductions in personnel at our schools."

In today's papers, the Daily News writer Connie Llanos reports that class sizes could increase under the plans -- up to 42 students per instructor in some high school classes.

The Los Angeles Times' Howard Blume writes that a dropout prevention program is on the chopping block. He writes that the budget crisis has given Cortines a an opportunity to make some reforms though a chance to "trim or gut some of the central bureaucracy."

"I'm dealing with a budget deficit over three years and five years. Not everybody will be saved, and," Cortines said, "everybody shouldn't be saved."

The Palos Verdes Peninsula school board this evening approved taking its planned parcel tax election to voters on a mail-only ballot.

The board voted 4-0 to approved the plan, with Barbara Lucky absent. Ballots will be due June 23.

The move follows a March 11 board vote to rescind its earlier approval of a regular go-to-the-polls parcel tax election. Voters will weigh a four-year $165 parcel tax, which will come on top of an existing $209 tax that was originally approved by voters in 2003 and extended in 2007.

Superintendent Walker Williams said county elections officials informed the school district that the regular election would have cost about $600,000, while a mail-only ballot would cost about a quarter of that.

The new tax would cover about half of a $6 million shortfall that the district faces over the next 16 months.

Two local sixth-graders took first and second place at Wednesday's Los Angeles County Spelling Bee.

Catherine Velardez of Lawndale's Will Rogers Middle School won the 35-student competition on the words "lithosphere" and "procumbent."

Second place went to Carina Kan from Palos Verdes Intermediate School in Palos Verdes Estates.

Congrats, girls! Both will go to the statewide spelling bee at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park on May 16.

The Wednesday event, held at an Alhambra conference center, was the fourth annual countywide spelling contest. Students from grades 4 through 6 competed.

Other local students who participated: Jesse Torres of Bud Carson Middle School in Hawthorne, Danielle Woodcock of Torrance Unified's Magruder Middle School, and DeAndre Young of Dana Middle in Wiseburn School District.

Four of our high schools went to Sacramento for the weekend's statewide competition in the 30th annual California Academic Decathlon. Here's how they did:

• West High, 14th overall


• Torrance High, 16th overall


• South High, 26th overall


• Redondo Union High, 31st overall

Moorpark High from Ventura County won first place. LAUSD's El Camino Real from Woodland Hills came in second.

West, South and Redondo students scooped up some individual medals. Students can medal in each of seven subject-based tests plus speech, interview and essay competition. Nine-member teams are divided into three subsets by GPA and each subset has medals.

West High medals (from coach Ann Cortina)
--Patrick Xiao, gold in math
--Albert Lee, bronze in math
--Daniel Beckmann, gold in social science

South High medals (from coach Deborah Maculey)
--Jamie Chang, gold in art, bronze in music
--Luxas Hahn, gold in economics, silver in social science
--Esther Kim, silver in economics, bronze in social science
--Danny Dai, bronze in social science
--Neelofer Shaikh, bronze in social science

Redondo Union High medals (from coach Julie Ferron)
--Ryan Mendias, gold in essay
--Veronica Romeo, gold in interview, silver in speech
--Michael Wood, silver in math, silver in interview
--Stephanie Crowley, silver in language/lit, silver in art
--Lori Rodriguez, bronze in math, bronze in Super Quiz

(Please note that these are subject to correction once the state's Academic Decathlon organization posts final results on Tuesday.)

*OK, results are up (PDF) listing all the individual awards. Two big local achievements that we didn't know about Monday: Daniel Naphas of Torrance High came in third out of all participants and Patrick Xiao of West High came in 10th. Congrats, guys!

If you see teachers at your local South Bay school marching around the campus, waving signs and wearing various shades of mauve, fuchsia and rose, that's because today is "Pink Friday."

Public school instructors across the state are taking today to protest the potential layoff of some 25,000 teachers in California.

Since the state budget came out last month, slashing billions of dollars in education funding, school districts have been sending out preliminary layoff letters to teachers before the statewide March 15 notification deadline.

(School districts will have a better sense of their budget situations -- and the number of layoffs they'll have to actually follow through with -- after voters weigh in on budget ballot measures May 19, and after the governor issues and revised budget in June.)

The California Teachers Association, the statewide union, is leading spearheading today's rally. In a press release, CTA highlighted four of our local school districts -- Hawthorne, Lennox, El Segundo and Lawndale -- which have teachers unions that will be protesting from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Hawthorne Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue.

United Teachers Los Angeles, LAUSD's union, held a press conference this morning and a dramatic protest at Tuesday's board meeting.

Teachers at schools elsewhere across the South Bay will be taking action as well.

We'll have a compilation later today of number of layoff notices issued thus far by local school districts. More layoffs of non-teaching staff will likely be coming in the next weeks.

The first thing that struck me upon arriving at today's LAUSD board meeting -- where almost 9,000 initial layoff notices were on the agenda -- was the LA Schools Police officer with the handheld metal detector.

Every single parent, teacher, employee and journalist got the once-over with a wand before entering the board room. Wow.

Then, once the meeting began, board President Monica Garcia read a statement blaming the state budget for the votes board members were about to take.

"This year Sacramento put schools first in line on the chopping block and it will do it again in May," Garcia said.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines started his report on the cuts when United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy approached the lectern, refusing to leave.

"What is going on here is a travesty," Duffy said, speaking over Garcia, who attempted to restore order.

Teachers, waving anti-layoff signs, chanted "We won't let you cut our future" and "Shame on you."

Garcia took the meeting to an adjacent room that's usually used for closed sessions.

(Board member Julie Korenstein, a big union supporter, stood looking sadly at the chanting audience with her hand on her heart. "Don't go, Julie!" union members chanted until she left.)

Then ... a verbal skirmish broke out between a set of well-dressed district mothers and Duffy.

"Why are they disrupting this to the point that we can't hear what's going on?" one mom cried. "This is about communication. You guys are preventing communication."

Teachers then went in for another round of chanting, led by UTLA organizer and Carson Councilman Mike Gipson: "You say cut back, we say fight back!"

What theater.

I went to the press room and then the cafeteria to watch the meeting at that point, leaving a board meeting room full of protesters.

Anyway, as you probably know by now, the board voted to send out the notices. Cortines stressed that he hoped he would not have to actually lay off the number of people who would receive preliminary notices.

Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar focused her anger at Sacramento: "This is what we have been handed by the state of California," she said. "there needs to be outrage, but the outrage is misplaced. It needs to be at the state level."

Much of the board debate centered on questions about seniority and "bumping rights," perhaps prompted by today's LA Times story on the cuts.

The district faces $718 million budget shortfall over the next 17 months. Through the end of the school year, the district has a negative $140 million balance, officials said.

NOTE: I was at the meeting to report on plans for a 128-unit apartment complex that may get built on the north end of Gardena High School's campus. It was approved, and I'll have more on that later this week.

Happy Monday! Here's some linkage, catching up from the weekend:

Torrance Unified officials found an unhappy surprise this morning: Four district vehicles had had their windshields smashed.

Vu has a story today about Mira Costa High's successful media arts program.

And ... all of the short items that ran on today's School Notebook page (in the paper) can be found here.

We also have some great photos from Point Vicente Elementary School's visit to White Point on Friday. It was part of an educational program run by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy.

My story ran on Saturday about the possible closure of LAUSD's Sellery Special Education Center in Gardena. In a related story, Connie Llanos at the Daily News writes about the potential shut-down of West Valley Special Education Center in Van Nuys, with some interesting background on special ed centers.

Officials have said the two campuses are the furthest along the path toward "consolidation." We should have an idea of how many other small campuses will be closed by the March 24 board meeting.

The Daily News' George Sanchez has a story about the nearly 9,000 layoff warnings that the LAUSD board will weigh on Tuesday.

Also Saturday, I reported on Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District's move to place a $165 parcel tax on the June 2 ballot. (* FYI: This tax would require a two-thirds approval to pass.)

L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez on Sunday wrote about administrators are asking parents for $1,000 (each) at his daughter's LAUSD elementary school in LAUSD.

If parents can come up with $327,000, the school will be able to keep three academic coaches who, among other things, take the pressure off teachers in the overcrowded fourth and fifth grades. It would also pay for P.E. coaches, three kindergarten aides, library resources, computer replacement and technology support.

As I heard the pitch, along with the testaments to Ivanhoe and how lucky we are to have a great school that's been a neighborhood institution since 1889 -- yes, I said 1889 -- I was thinking the same thing I thought when I heard the pitch a year ago:

We really are lucky, because the school is so good, and because many of us are able to fork over a little extra, even in a recession. But what about the vast majority of schools that aren't as good and don't have as many parents who can write checks?

Del Amo Elementary School today will host a lunch to promote literacy at the campus, 21228 Water St. in Carson.

The event begins at 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. and parents can read to their children or to a group of students as part of the festivities. Information: 310-830-5351.

Leuzinger High School Alumni Committee on Saturday is hosting the 12th annual "Memorabilia Day" at the campus, 4118 West Rosecrans Ave. in Lawndale.
The free event is begins at 9 a.m. and is open to former students looking to reconnect with former classmates and teachers.
Food and other items will be on sale by current Leuzinger students to raise money for the campus. Information: 310-973-6169.

The Los Angeles school district today published its agenda for the March 10 Board of Education meeting at which staff cuts will be weighed.

The board will decide whether the following groups should get notices that they may be laid off, effective June 30:

• 1,996 elementary school teachers


• 3,477 nonpermanent certificated teachers


• 498 support staff

The board will also vote to notify all administrators, supervisors, staff lawyers (and a few other Beaudry-type groups) that they "released or reassigned" in the 2009-10 school year.

Note: The agenda was sent to media, but hasn't been published online yet. When it is, it should be here.

Ben Austin, who last year was forced out of the race for the Los Angeles school board's Westside seat, has sued the political consultant he blamed when he was booted from the ballot.

Austin filed suit against Sue Burnside and her company Burnside & Associates on Tuesday -- election day -- alleging breach of oral contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation.

In the complaint, Austin calls himself the "leading candidate for a position on the Los Angeles School Board, who had already amassed a healthy war chest of campaign funds, and a 'who's who' list of endorsements."

Austin had been expected to be a front-runner for the seat that Steve Zimmer has apparently won. As head of Green Dot-affiliated Los Angeles Parents Union, Austin would have been a reform-focused candidate. He has said he expected the endorsement on L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- and the complaint states that he had the mayor's backing, among that of other heavy-hitters.

He alleges that Burnside farmed out signature-gathering work to Robert Urteaga, a consultant and Montebello councilman with a felony conviction who is currently the target of a recall campaign. The signatures were gathered in the incorrect board district, disqualifying Austin, Los Angeles officials have said.

"It was a stinging defeat that has tarnished the plaintiff's reputation," the complaint reads.

Urteaga, who according to the suit told Austin that he had in turn farmed out signatures gathering, was also a target of the suit. He could not immediately be reach for comment.

Burnside has said that Austin was not her client, she never agreed to a contract with him and has never met him.

"An independent contractor misrepresented himself - without my knowledge or approval - as an employee of Burnside & Associates when he agreed to collect the signatures for Mr. Austin," Burnside wrote in an email to friends and media when Austin was disqualified in December.

She said this morning that she had not been served with the complaint and thus would not comment on the lawsuit.

Austin is seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial.

Zimmer wrapped it up, with the generous help of United Teacher Los Angeles.

Unofficial results from the Los Angeles City Clerk show Zimmer with 56.13 percent to Mike Stryer's 43.87 percent in the election for Los Angeles Unified's Westside board seat.

Those figures do not include results from the city of West Hollywood or the small portions of Calabasas and Beverly Hills that vote in District 4. Los Angeles officials are also still counting provisional ballots, mail-in ballots that arrived on Tuesday and ballots with "snags."

In a post-mortem posted online this morning, the Los Aneles Times' Howard Blume takes a look at conflicts among the groups that supported Zimmer - especially UTLA, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the charter school contingent.

The union, in other words, accepted Zimmer's efforts to collect supporters whose priorities conflict with those of the union. With about 150 charter schools in Los Angeles -- and more on the way -- Zimmer was responding to a new political reality.

"In this campaign, every time someone would come on board, it would send some shock waves to other folks," Zimmer said, "because they weren't folks that usually worked together. But if this district is going to make it, everybody has got to pull together."

On this round, the real political tug of war was destined not to occur at the ballot box but in the aftermath.

Dana Middle School on Saturday will host a community technology festival at the campus, 5504 West 135th St. in Hawthorne.
The daylong event begins at 8 a.m. and will offer more than a dozen technology workshops on subjects that include Microsoft Office, digital cameras, and getting the most of your Blackberry.
Workshop costs $33 and all proceeds will go to technology programs at the Wiseburn School District. Information: info@it4kids.org or 310-920-0107.

South Shores Magnet School for the Visual and Performing Arts in San Pedro today will see the play "Cinderella" at the Santa Monica Playhouse.

The campus will pay for the field trip through an $800 grant from the Target Corporation.

In the race to replace Marlene Canter on Los Angeles Unified's Board of Education, Steve Zimmer is leading by about 19 percentage points in early results.

Zimmer was bolstered by some $287,000 in independent spending on his behalf by United Teachers Los Angeles.

He sounded both exuberant and exhausted on the phone tonight. "It's going to be a long night," he said.

It's certainly not over yet. Zimmer's lead has narrowed with each new report since the first results came out around 8:45 p.m.

His opponent, Mike Stryer, wasn't ready to give up, saying he wouldn't comment until more numbers were released.

Follow the results from the Los Angeles City Clerk here.

*In the last dispatch of the night, I want to note that Stryer continues to close the gap. The eighth update from L.A. shows him with 42.5 percent and Zimmer with 57.5 percent. It's hard to know what percentage of the votes are in since the city doesn't break the school board districts down by precinct.

Tuvia School of Temple on Tuesday will host a kindergarten open house at the campus, 1101 Camino Real in Redondo Beach.

The event begins at 7 p.m. and will give parents an opportunity to find out about the school's full-day kindergarten program. Information: 310-316-8997 or lackermann@templemenorah.org.