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LAUSD has set a new date for the board hearing on a controversial proposal to covert Westchester High to a district-wide magnet school. It's next Tuesday, April 12.
The item was postponed last week.
The agenda is here. It's Item 31, but there's no board report yet.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared this morning at Kentwood Elementary School in Westchester to announce that more than 1.3 million students have signed up for his 2010 fitness challenge.
Getting kids to participate was one of the governor's goals at a 2010 summit on health, nutrition and obesity. A release from the governor's press office said the 1.3 million far surpasses similar efforts in other states.
The event took place at Kentwood because the school's students have logged 57,000 days of physical activity so far in this year's challenge, beating out all other LAUSD campuses.The percentage of Kentwood students that scored in the "healthy fitness zone" on all categories of the state's fitness test increased 14 points to 63 percent.
The Governor's Challenge, begun in 2006, encourages participants to exercise 30-60 minutes for at least three days a week for a month. The program is free for schools, which can win exercise equipment.
At Wednesday's event, the Coca-Cola Co. announced its funding of eight new fitness centers planned for eight California schools excel in the challenge. The school sites will be announced in September, based on location and the level of activity students, parents and teachers. LAUSD will get two centers, the governor's press office said.
Loyola Marymount University President Robert B. Lawton announced today that he would leave his post at the end of the school year.
An email Lawton sent to students at the Westchester-based university is after the jump.
A group of six school librarians in the Westchester cluster of Los Angeles Unified campuses has crafted a list of book recommendations for young adult readers.
2009 was the first year that the Westchester Fiction Award Committee read, evaluated, and awarded five titles in three age group categories: elementary, middle school, and high school.
Elementary:
Middle School
High School
In 2010, the group will focus exclusively on high school-age readers -- and it will include staff from across LAUSD's eight local districts. Five of the seven members are now high school teacher librarians, one is a middle school teacher librarian, and one is a secondary literacy coach, the organization reported in a press release.
Also, the final awards this year will include student evaluations.
Contact chairwoman and founder Suzanne Osman at sosman@lausd.net if you have any questions regarding this award or if you would like to submit a nomination.
Three local Los Angeles Unified schools are among those where parents and members of the campus community may have purchased baked goods that were later recalled by a food supplier, the district said this week.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced July 10 that the company, Colorado-based Country Creations, was recalling frosting packets that were included with its braided bread and cinnamon rolls, which were sold as school fundraiser items last spring.
The frosting may be contaminated with salmonella, the FDA said. Consumers are urged to destroy any packets that have not been eaten.
The items were sold at three elementary schools in the South Bay: Lomita Math/Science Magnet, Westport Heights and Carson Street. Three other LAUSD campuses also held fundraisers with the frozen bread products.
The district was last week notified by the California Department of Education which campuses were affected by the recall. There have been no reports of illness, a district official said.
More information is available at the Country Creations website.
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.
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.
Los Angeles Unified board candidate Steve Zimmer has confirmed that he's received L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's endorsement.
Zimmer's website already lists the mayor's endorsement, though the announcement won't be made until after Inauguration festivities, the candidate said in an email.
Zimmer has been vying with fellow LAUSD high school teacher Mike Stryer for Villaraigosa's nod. Both men said last month that they were seeking the mayor's endorsement in their race to replace Marlene Canter representing diverse Westside/Hollywood/Woodland Hills District 4.
Just over $85,000 was raised in the race through Dec. 31.
Some observers had thought the mayor's endorsement would go to Ben Austin, a Green Dot-connected former deputy mayor under Richard Riordan. Austin dropped out of the race in December after saying a political consulting firm had incorrectly collected nominating signatures in the wrong board district.
As Daily News politics writer/blogger Rick Orlov reported Thursday, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party has endorsed Steve Zimmer in the two-teacher race for LAUSD's District 4 board seat.
The Dems also backed San Fernando Mayor Nury Martinez in another board contest; unchallenged incumbent Board President Monica Garcia got the nod too.
The Zimmer endorsement is interesting because his challenger, Mike Stryer, has been active in Westside Democratic circles. The Palisades Democratic Club, where he's a VP, gave him $1,000.
But Zimmer has long been involved in L.A. politics, having worked on a number of local campaigns, including L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's run for Assembly in 1994.
Villaraigosa is expected to name endorsements in LAUSD board races soon.
Marlene Canter, currently in her second term on Los Angeles Unified's Board of Education, has announced she will not run for a third term in next spring's election.
Canter represents Board District 4 -- the Westside, including Westchester, Playa Vista and Marina del Rey. She was first elected in 2001 and served as president from 2005 to 2007.
Her statement follows:
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.
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.
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?
