Recently in EL SEGUNDO Category

In a blog post I stumbled upon this afternoon, journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan muses briefly on the meaning of a neighbor's interdistrict transfer from Inglewood to El Segundo Unified.

Kaplan says, in her post on KCET's SoCal Connected blog, that she felt a bit confused by her friend's triumphant announcement of having finally received a transfer permit.

We're in Inglewood. For months, Christina and her husband had been trying to enroll their teenage kids in El Segundo High School; El Segundo is not far west of us, but it's essentially another universe. A very pleasant town that, ethnically speaking, is about as hermetically sealed as they come in Southern California. I've been there countless times (just to visit, of course) and can count the number of black faces I've seen on two hands (and they were probably visiting too). I could count the number Asians and Latinos on maybe three. It was kind of astounding.

According to state figures, the 3,200-student district this year had just 109 black students, or about 3.4 percent. Still, it's not as monochromatic as Kaplan suggests. The district is only about 55 percent white and more than 22 percent Latino.

But that's the school district, which welcomes students from outside its boundaries. The city population itself is whiter, with about 78 percent of residents identified as white, according to U.S. Census data.

Anyway, Kaplan's friend Christina struggled with a bureacratic transfer process but ultimately got spots in El Segundo High for her children, whom Kaplan describes as "exactly the kind of students the community at large needs to thrive as a community."

What does this loss mean for Inglewood schools?

I applauded her triumph, gave her a fist pump. But after I got home and thought about it, the triumph felt hollow. My garden looked less lovely. It was the old paradox of integration that was best expressed by a black oldtimer from the Eastside who put it this way after racial housing covenants were struck down in 1948: we got what we wanted, but lost what we had. We're still losing.

Read it.

Pictured above, from left to right, are: El Segundo Middle School Principal Renee DeVore, Center Street School Principal Marisa Janicek, Richmond Street School Principal Dickie Van Breene, Jayne Pimlott and Michele Rogers, of the El Segundo Education Foundation, Chevron's Lily Craig,Richard Lundquist and Chris Sherrill of the El Segundo Education Foundation and El Segundo High School Princpial Jim Garza.

(Photo courtesy of El Segundo Unified School District)

Got this press release today from Janice Hickey, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services for El Segundo Unified:

For the community of El Segundo the saying "when the going gets tough the tough get going" really resonates. Tuesday night at the El Segundo Unified School District School Board Meeting the El Segundo Educational Foundation made a startling announcement - in a good way - when Community Giving Chair Mrs. Chris Sherrill announced the amount of dollars raised by concerned parents and community members to contribute to ESEF to help augment programs slashed and burned by state budget cuts.

To thunderous applause Mrs. Sherrill announced that the community had poured $171,000 into Richmond Street, Center Street, El Segundo Middle and High Schools - and for the first time ever the Eagles' Nest preschool parents had joined in the fundraising effort due to their enthusiastic Parent Board. Mrs. Sherrill gave a special thanks to the Chevron Corporation who through their tireless philanthropy pledged $75,000 to match parent donations. "And when I called Lily Craig at Chevron and told her the good news/bad news - we had surpassed the $75,000 so soon into the fundraising, Lily was able to up the amount of Chevron's matching funds to $85,000!" Sherrill said.

ESEF President Richard Lundquist smiled broadly as Mrs. Sherrill also made it clear that the $85,000 pledge from Chevron was over-and-above the amount raised by the community for a grand total of $256,000 - by far a record for the El Segundo Educational Foundation.

Special mention was made of the "school captains" who worked so hard spearheading the fundraising drives at each of the sites: Julie Stolnack at Center Street, Tom Forsythe at Richmond Street, Laura Kigawa at the Middle School and Jayne Pimlott at the High School. Every year a participation percentage is set for each school to hit for the number of families contributing to the Educational Foundation - a target of 50% for the elementary schools and 25% for the middle and high schools (due to their higher enrollment). Special mention was also made of the El Segundo Middle School for far surpassing any previous records of percentage participation -- and who for their efforts earned a $500 bonus.

Mrs. Sherrill was thrilled to award each of the site principals their "Boost Your School" bonuses because as she acknowledged "in these tough times it's important that each site has a little extra money to spend on programs or projects that are important to them." Both Richmond Street and Center Street received $3500 bonuses, while the Middle School got a $2000 bonus with an additional $500 for participation, while the High School received $2000. The Eagles' Nest Preschool also received a $500 bonus due to their parent efforts as well.

 

 

 The El Segundo Chamber Choir, directed by Gianna Summer, peformed at Carnegie Hall earlier this month.

Here's the press release:

On February 14, the Distinguished Concerts Orchestra International and Distinguished Concerts Singers International, comprised of auditioned chorus members from across the country, including the El Segundo High School Chamber Choir (Mrs. Gianna Summers, Director), presented a Sold-Out concert event at legendary Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium entitled Love, Lust and Light - A Valentine's Day Concert.

 

The performance opened with DCINY Conductor Laureate Vance George, who conducted Carl Orff's most famous work, Carmina Burana and featured soloists Penelope Shumate, soprano, Dillon McCartney, tenor and Stephen Swanson, baritone. The Distinguished

Singers/Orchestra International then performed Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna under the baton of DCINY Guest Conductor Nancy Menk. These pieces communicate directly with the human heart and provided a fitting celebration of Valentine's Day.

 

This concert marked a stunning achievement for the performers, and was made even more special with every seat filled in world famous Carnegie Hall. We at DCINY would like to congratulate Mrs. Gianna Summers and the El Segundo High School Chamber Choir. We look forward to words of their future success and to welcoming them on the DCINY Concert Series whenever they wish to return.

 

 

Three of El Segundo's four schools were recognized for their academic excellence during the 2008-09 school year by the California Business for Education Excellence Foundation, a non-profit policy institute based in Sacramento.

El Segundo High School, El Segundo Middle School and Center Street Elementary School were named as 2009 California Business for Education Excellence Honor Roll Schools. It is the second year in a row Center Street Elementary has made the list.

"It has become part of the culture of the school to address the needs of all students," said Linal Harada, Co-Principal of El Segundo High School, in a statement.  "Closing the achievement gap requires on-going data analysis and intervention by teachers in and out of the classroom.  As administrators, we are pleased to support this effort, and we appreciate the acknowledgement by California Business for Education Excellence."

Statewide, 1,317 schools made the list, which is announced annually.

From El Segundo Unified's press release:

Schools receiving this distinction from California's business community have demonstrated consistent high student academic achievement and have made significant progress toward closing achievement gaps among all their students. The CBEE or the "California Business for Educational Excellence" Honor Roll is made up of two different awards, the Star Schools Award (395 schools) and Scholar Schools Award (909 schools). CBEE crunches data on schools statewide to bestow honors on schools.  STAR schools are those with high poverty levels that prove adroit at closing the achievement gap whereas SCHOLAR schools are those high performing schools without a significant number of poverty level students.  All three of El Segundo's schools have been designated SCHOLAR schools. 

 

 

Students from El Segundo High School continued a five-year holiday tradition by collecting toys to donate to pediatric cancer patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Students spent several weeks donating stuffed animals, toys, gift certificates, board games, movies, DVDs and CDs.

All said, the students collected enough toys to fill 175 bags, said student Jaime Bell, who helped organize the donation drive. 

Skin care company Murad, Inc. announced today that it will join the El Segundo Chamber of Commerce to offer grants to area teachers for classroom materials. Previous grants have been used for items like computer projectors, graphing calculators, books for classroom libraries, computer software, art supplies and physical education equipment. The grants are eligible to educators at any school in the El Segundo School District and will doled out for the current school year. Information: 949-916-6880

School across the South Bay are preparing for the big one today as part of a statewide earthquake drill. Torrance Unified and El Segundo Unified will be among the districts planning a simultaneous duck-and-cover exercise to be followed by an evacuation.

El Segundo superintendent Geoff Yantz said individual campuses at the district usually schedule monthly earthquake drills but the organized effort, planned since last spring, will allow officials to test district wide communications in case of an emergency.

"We have the system in place," he said. "It's about testing and coordination and understanding protocol and procedures at this point."

There are 23 school bonds on the ballot across Los Angeles County. Statewide, there are 96 local school bonds and 21 local parcel tax proposals.

In the Daily Breeze's coverage area, there are six school bonds before voters today.

• Centinela Valley Union HS District, Measure CV, $98 million
• El Segundo USD's Measure M, $14 million
• Los Angeles Unified's Measure Q, $7 billion
• Manhattan Beach USD's Measure BB, $67.5 million
• Torrance USD's Measures Y and Z, total $355 million
• Los Angeles Community College District's Measure J, $3.5 billion

For those of you that want a primer on school facilities funding in California (come on, people, it's fun!), always useful EdSource has a good rundown.

California voters have also approved $35.4 billion in bonds for statewide funding of school facilities since 1998 (most recently in 2006). That money gets distributed on a monthly basis to districts and individual schools by the State Allocation Board.

The El Segundo Unified School District school board on Tuesday appointed a bond oversight committee for the $14 million Measure M. The members are Tom Forsythe, Richard Reaser, Edd Davies, Tina Harrell, Richard Croxall, Jim Boulgarides, Lawrence Robinson and alternate David Burns. If Measure M passes on Nov. 4, the committee will monitor costs, make sure the money will be used as intended and report to the community on construction progress.

Federal officials announced today that smaller school buses will be required to have harness-style seat belts and larger buses will phase in taller and safer seatbacks.

The Associated Press reports the seat belt mandate begins in 2011 and is directed to buses weighing 5 tons or less.

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said she stopped short of requiring seat belts for larger buses because that could limit the number of children that can squeeze into seats, forcing some children to travel in ways that aren't as safe as school buses.

School districts sometimes expect as many as three younger children to share a bus seat, but if there are only two belts installed per seat then fewer children can ride the bus.

"We wanted to make sure that any measures we put forth don't needlessly limit the capacity of the buses and then force that school or that school district to have more children walking, riding with parents, biking, etcetera," Peters told The Associated Press in an interview.

The AP also reports the height of seatbacks on buses will move up to 24 inches from 20 inches which keep taller, heavier children from being thrown over seats in a crash. The rule will likely be phased in the fall of 2009 and become fully effective in 2011.

A UCLA study reports nearly three in four teenagers say they were bullied online within a year but only 10 percent of them reported it to parents or other adults.

Reachers said the most prevalent forms of bullying online include name-calling, password thefts, threats, sending embarrassing pictures, sharing private information without permission and spreading nasty rumors.

According to UCLA:

Of those who were bullied online, 85 percent also have been bullied at school, the psychologists found. The probability of getting bullied online was substantially higher for those who have been the victims of school bullying.

The study used a survey of 1,454 between the ages of 12 and 17, who were recruited through a popular teen website. Nearly half the teens said they didn't tell anyone about the online bullying because they believed they "need to learn to deal with it" and 31 percent didn't for fear that doing so would restrict their Internet access.

They're baaack. Well, not exactly. Lawmakers might consider a plan to call everyone back to Sacramento to discuss the state's need for a short term $7 billion loan, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Because of the credit crunch and less state revenues Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could declare a special session where legislators may look at different ways to make up the budget hole, including cuts to schools.

Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Association, said lawmakers "might as well stay home" if they are planning to make up the latest shortfall with cuts alone. His group and other school organizations believe the state should use tax increases to balance the budget.

"If they come back into a special session because revenue projections are in decline for the current year budget, it probably could only mean bad news for schools unless they're inclined to have a conversation about new revenues," Plotkin said.

Maybe, according to the Sacramento Bee.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned this week that Congress needs to put the nation's finances in order so the state can pay its bills in November for critical needs like teacher salaries.

Lockyer said the fiscal crisis may drain California's reserves by the end of October because the state can't sell bonds and short-term securities for cash flow needs.

"The credit market is frozen because financial institutions are afraid to commit capital amid enormous uncertainty," the treasurer said in a written statement.

"More urgently, because the state budget was so late, we have only four short weeks to complete what otherwise would be a routine revenue anticipation note sale to meet the state's cash-flow needs," Lockyer said.

Exhausting California's cash reserves would have dire consequences, he said.

"Payments for teachers' salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and every other state-funded service would stop or be significantly delayed," Lockyer said.

"And California's 5,000 cities, counties, school districts and special districts would face the same fate."

Education Week reports rising federal academic standards is a growing concern among the nation's educators and state policy makers but not in the presidential campaign.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain have rarely touched the subject of No Child Left Behind.

According to Ed Week:

In their education proposals, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain have outlined specific plans to address provisions of the almost 7-year-old federal education law. Both would refocus the teacher-quality section to bolster the recruitment of new teachers and to experiment with new forms of teacher pay. Sen. McCain promises to make school choice and tutoring available to students in struggling schools sooner than the current law allows.

But neither candidate has said what he would do to address significant questions about the NCLB law's future, such as whether to keep its goal of universal student proficiency in reading and mathematics by the end of the 2013-14 school year, how to increase the rigor of states' academic standards, and how to improve the interventions in schools failing to meet achievement goals.

A lot of people out there have called me about the glut of negative news about education and said they want to read something nice for a change. That's a good idea. So I am considering writing a story each week that takes me and a photographer into the K-12 classroom, where the actual business of learning happens.

I want the community of parents, teachers, principals, district types and students to email me at vu.nguyen@dailybreeze.com and tell me why I should visit your school and write about it. I'll probably focus on one subject so if there is an amazing math teacher or an interesting science instructor out there, let me know what they're doing right.

P.S. Make sure the principal of your school or district official gives us the okay.

A UC Riverside study concludes the majority elementary schools in the state won't meet No Child Left Behind standards by 2014, when all students are required to show proficiency in math and English.

The study reports about half of the state's elementary schools will fail to meet federal academic guidelines by 2011.

According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise:

The English proficiency standard is likely to trip up more schools than math, according to the study. Low-income students and English language learners are the two groups of students least likely to meet the proficiency standards.

And

Schools and districts in California had to have about one-fourth of students proficient in 2007. This year, the standard is 32 percent or higher, depending on the school and type of test. The required proficiency level will go up by about 10 percentage points each year from now until 2014, unless the law is changed.

Researchers and safety experts in Maryland don't seem to think so. They said lowering the drinking age to 18 will cause more car accidents and deaths.

The experts told state legislators to keep the drinking age 21 and that they should consider tougher penalties for teens who break the law.

According to the Washington Post:

"The risk of a fatal crash increases with the first drink, especially for drivers aged 16 to 20," said James Fell, a senior program director at Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

The announcement is a response to college leaders' calls for a discussion on lowering the drinking age to 18 because it could promote moderation.

The Arizona Republic:

The reasoning behind the proposal, known as the Amethyst Initiative, is that the higher drinking age actually encourages binge drinking, a major problem on many college campuses. Nearly 100 college presidents from schools ranging from Duke University to Ohio State (but not Arizona or Arizona State) are in favor of the idea.

What do you think? Is lowering the drinking age to 18 a good or bad idea. I'd like to hear from teens on this idea.

If you liked this year's record-long budget impasse, you'll love the one that's expected to happen nine months from now.

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger likely signs a spending bill for this year's budget, the San Francisco Chronicle reports officials warn "a crisis of equal magnitude looms next year because of the weakened economy, uncertainties about the use of future lottery revenue and political gridlock among state legislators."

Until then, schools can finally exhale for now and collect $58.1 billion in state dollars that have been held up for nearly three months. The amount is an uptick from last year's $56 billion but it amounts to a 0.7 cost-of-living increase --- a drop in the bucket of the 5.66 percent increase school districts hoped to get, or about $3 billion less than educators would like to see, according to Jennifer Kuhn, analyst at the state Legislative Analyst's Office.

Education leaders last week slammed the plan, saying it doesn't help local school districts pay for the rising costs.

State Superintendent of Instruction Jack O'Connell called the plan a "gimmick," while California Teachers Association President David Sanchez and California PTA President Pam Brady each urged Schwarzenegger to use his veto power to leverage a more education-friendly budget.

"The proposed budget includes a reduction of the cost-of-living adjustment that will further tighten the vise on local school budgets as districts across the state face increased costs for supplies, food, transportation and employee health care costs," O'Connell said in a statement. "These reductions are a disservice to California's 6 million school children and the thousands of educators across the state."

The San Francisco Chronicle has a pretty good breakdown of what the budget means to the average person.

WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU: The new money doesn't cover inflation - yet the cost of salaries, benefits, books and more is rising. Students and teachers will feel the impact as teaching positions remain vacant, class size grows and even bus routes are cut back. Yet many programs - from special education to gifted education - were spared.

Stay tuned to see if lawmakers can magically fix the way public schools are funded by the summer.

The California State PTA wants parents to lobby lawmakers for a new budget deal that brings a more stable revenue stream to education. The legislature argues there is enough money for schools in the proposal --- at about $58.1 billion, up from $56.7 billion last year.

But the group backs Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plan to veto the current budget saying it only puts a short-term bandage on school finances. The proposed budget has about $9.3 billion coming through early tax collections.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune:

Critics complained that the tax speedups are gimmicks that "borrow from taxpayers" and push a chronic deficit into next year. Schwarzenegger called them "tax increases" with a "smoke screen" when he made his initial veto threat Tuesday.

Schwarzenegger and legislators don't seem to be backing down at this point. So is backing the Governor's impending budget veto a good idea as school programs continue to run without state dollars for nearly three months?

One reason behind Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's likely veto of the legislative-approved budget is because of what it would mean to state education dollars.

According to the L.A. Times:

SCHWARZENEGGER: "The way this budget is right now we will need a huge tax increase next year or will have to cut education severely. It's one or the other. That's why I say we should fix the budget this year and realize there's a structural problem, create the extra revenues and then fix the system once and for all so that we have a system in place so that it doesn't happen again. That is the most important thing."

But the State Assembly and the Senate contend deep cuts to education are avoided under the plan, giving schools $58.1 billion, up from last year's $56.7 billion.

The gridlock has nearly reached the historic 80-day mark, forcing nervous school district administrators to dip into their reserves. But California schools superintendent Jack O'Connell agrees the governor should hold off until the budget addresses the state's cash problems.

"The lack of a state budget is causing real pain to businesses, schools, child care providers, and many others. We cannot allow this pain to continue. However, signing a bad budget that shortchanges schools, exacerbates California's fiscal problems, and puts off the day of reckoning would be worse than extending the short-term pain while taking the time now to do the job right.

So what's the right thing to do? Should lawmakers continue the budget standoff until schools are funded correctly or pay for mandated services like special education now?