Out Like a Lamb

LA’S SCHOOLS AND OTHER MUSINGS-“Now, in a perfect world, sarcasm would come in little yellow packets you could pour in your coffee. Hope would come in little pink ones. On any given morning, you'd have your choice: hope or sarcasm. Some days you might have both.” - Chris Erskine, LA Times Columnis.

As weeks go, it was one of them.

IT STARTED WITH GRANADA HILLS' VICTORY IN THE STATE ACA DECA - and LAUSD's continued extraordinarily strong showing! Congrats to all the Academic Decathletes from up-and-down the state! Last year the national competition was in Honolulu. Woo woo! This year it's in Garden Grove. Maybe not so woo woo, but woo woo nonetheless. Good job!

THE CONGRESS TALKED about reauthorizing the ESEA/NCLB, thought better of it and left town. The talk did produce the second-best quote o’ th’ week from Bobby Scott (D) VA “No bill is better than a bad bill.” True that. The Congress also narrowly avoided funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). They say they’ll get around to it when they come back from Spring Break. The President says he’ll sign it if they do.

WEEK BEFORE LAST the Charter School Association had their big annual convention up in Sacramento. There were about 3000 charter school bigwigs, operators and whatnot up there – taking up all the hotel rooms, restaurant reservations and convention hall. There was this big tent on the Capitol lawn. Maybe I’m jumping to confusion; maybe it wasn’t their tent - maybe the circus was in town also. There were probably some parents, but Monday thru Friday during March is hard on parents and teachers and administrators and students – they have other stuff on their calendars. Like parenting and working and teaching and learning and the Smarter Balanced test.

Charter schools are funded with public money. Maybe I wasn’t seeing public-money-at-work in the hotels and convention hall and the concourses of the airport. Maybe they had a bake sale; maybe everyone paid from their own pockets. But I don’t recall a midweek Chautauqua of 3000 traditional public school senior leadership+whatnot from across the state.

LAST WEEK there was a report about how some charter schools lacked proper accountability for their public funds. The Charter School Association didn’t exactly refute this – they said it was old news.

Also last week the legislature started working on bills to make charter schools more accountable, more answerable to the public for their public funding. The Charter School Association is not happy with that; either the sky is falling or the goose that lays the golden eggs is in danger – I’m not sure which.

Locally parents at traditional schools are wary of charter schools coming onto their campuses to co-locate. On Wednesday, April 1st (no foolin’!) the District will make offers to charter schools for surplus space, take-it-or-leave-it (…or sue) by May 1. Mayday! My e-mailbox is starting to fill with grumbling from Emerson Middle School; there will be more+others. Stay tuned.

The LAUSD/UTLA CONTRACT NEGOTIATION PROCESS WENT INTO MEDIATION and the first meeting with the mediator took place on Thursday. Mediation is one of those things that best happens within a media blackout …and nothing is quite as aggravating to the press and the curious as a “cone-of-silence”. Luckily for us, gentle readers, all kinds of interesting things happened before the blackout to write and speculate upon.

The District released a statement on the current state-of-negotiations that described a $774 million separation between the sides, totaling up every point of disagreement between Labor+Management –compounded with every difference-of-opinion between LAUSD and the California Department of Ed over MiSiS Crisis attendance numbers ($47 million) – and the Federal Department of Ed over the Core California/NCLB Waiver and teacher evaluations ($171 million). [John Deasy: the gift that never stops costing.]

This was reported in the Daily News and LASR as a report on mediation; it was not.

If anyone has an expectation that the labor mediator is going to negotiate a solution to MiSiS, iPads, the CORE CA NCLB Waiver, the graduation rate or declining enrollment they’ve put too many pink packets in their morning coffee.

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UTLA PRESIDENT Alex Caputo Pearl has proposed to fly up to Sacramento with Superintendent Cortines, take a meeting with State Superintendent Tom Torlakson and fly back – hopefully with $47 million in their carry-ons to adjust for the MiSiS/ADA discrepancy.

Maybe they can chat on the airplane and resolve some other issues they have outstanding. Class size? Salaries? One nurse in every nurse’s office? I have a couple of Southwest drink coupons I’m willing to commit to the effort if that would help.

SUPERINTENDENT CORTINES HAS ANNOUNCED HIS RESTRUCTURING of the local districts/ESC’s. [The name “Educational Service Centers/ESC” is gone; they are called “Districts” in Cortines’ memo, “Organization Areas” in the attached map.]

As was anticipated ISIC is gone and the Valley is split into two – other lines are moved. There is also a bit of a realignment at Beaudry, including things like Facilities Procurement being consolidated into the main procurement department.

MUCH OF THIS is streamlining+right-sizing for fiscal and/or operational efficiency, some is cleaning up the Deasy mess; some is internal bureaucratic politics+score-settling - and some is rearranging the deckchairs. I have heard complaints that it simply increases the numbers of high paid bureaucrats and expensive offices …more meddlesome folks who run the show far from the classroom.

My concerns are two:

1. If the central and satellite offices are preoccupied with oversight and second guessing, insisting on compliance+enforcement rather than supporting the work at the school site we may as well hand out the steamer blankets and the sheet music to “Nearer My God to Thee”.

2. Superintendent Cortines is not ‘interim’ in title, but his role is transitional. Whoever the next superintendent is is going to want to arrange the org chart that way it works for them – or perhaps I should say “the way it best works for children as he or she sees it”.

Change is a constant. Reform is a process, not an outcome. The Next Supe will see him-or-herself as a change agent; if they don’t they shouldn’t apply for the job. If the Board of Ed doesn’t see them as a connector/catalyst they shouldn’t hire them. Starting the search is critically more important than paving the way for change.

One year contracts. One year leases. Paper signs on the door. Take your old stapler with you, don’t throw the boxes away. Don’t print too many business cards. Stay tuned.

Have a great Spring Break,

¡Onward/Adelante!

 

(Scott Folsom is a parent and parent leader in LAUSD. He is the former President of Los Angeles 10th District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. Scott is a member of the California State PTA Board on Managers. He blogs at the excellent 4 LA Kids … where this perspective was originally posted.)

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 27

Pub: Mar 31, 2015