Office of Inspector General Lays Out Plan For 2012-2013

In the coming year the Office of the Inspector General will audit and analyze dozens of offices and processes at the Los Angeles Unified School District, including the pros and cons of synthetic turf fields, whether the district has implemented necessary programs to keep schools clean, and whether charter schools are complying with the Charter School Act of 1992.

The Office of the Inspector General presented their work plan for the 2012-2013 school year at Tuesday’s Budget, Facilities and Audit meeting, which Tamar chairs.

The hope is that the audits will help the district streamline, work more effectively, weed out fraud, and form the basis for future policies, resolutions and action.

The Office of the Inspector General is composed of the Internal Audit Unit, the Contract Audit Unit and an Investigations Unit. The Internal Audit Unit focuses on District-wide performance audits, and the Contract Audit Unit examines contracts that are funded by school bond measures.

The upcoming year’s work plan includes an analysis of 60 projects with a total contract value of over $962 million.

To come up with their list of projects the OIG’s office conducted interviews with top district management, including the head of facilities, technology, maintenance and operations, procurement and others. They also took requests from Board offices.

Projects range from the esoteric—looking at whether businesses who say they are small business contractors really are small businesses (thus entitling them to a 4% preference in the procurement process), and a closer examination of change orders of over $500,000 on construction projects, and whether they are justified—to the straightforward: does the district have programs in place to ensure that students and faculty have a clean, safe environment at schools?

One audit will focus on the effectiveness of the district’s physical education programs, and will include a survey of community stakeholders, including parents.

The OIG may also look at the cost of wiring a school in LAUSD, the comparative cost of computers, products and other services when purchased through the district vs. outside the district, and the level of functioning and completeness of schools that are already considered wired.

“These audits perform an invaluable service for our district,” said Tamar. “They help us to see what we are doing right, what we are doing wrong, and what we need to do better.”

Los Angeles Students Shine at Beyond the Bell's "Spotlight on Success"

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s “Beyond the Bell” branch, who provide all before and after school programs for LAUSD students, hosted over 3,000 students this Saturday at Paramount Studios New York City back lot for the culmination of the “Take Action” campaign. The campaign trains students on how to be leaders in their school communities. The year concluded with Saturday’s event giving students free rein of the Paramount back lot and no lack of entertainment options. Talented students from across LAUSD’s expansive 710 square mile district performed on three stages set up around the lot. Event sponsors like Office Depot, skateboard companies and MetroPCS set up booths and gave away freebies to students. Latin fusion band Ozomatli – founded in 1995 by LAUSD students – performed a couple of hits to the enthusiastic crowd. To finish the day’s events over $40,000 in scholarships were awarded amid a special appearance by America’s Got Talent host Nick Cannon.

Technology Grant Application Closed - Results Coming in June

 

Thank you to all the educators who applied for the school technology grants. The response was overwhelming, speaking to the intense passion of LAUSD educators, but also to the incredible need during these especially trying times. 

Technology grant awardees will be announced in June. Exact date TBD. 

Stay tuned for more information. Thank you again to all applicants.

Tamar Fights to Save Adult Education Through A Pilot Program

In the face of devastating cuts to public education, faculty and students from the West Valley Occupational Center met with Tamar Tuesday night and agreed to devise a pilot program that would raise student fees in an effort to keep adult education programs alive.

In the meeting with more than 20 staff and students, those present pledged to come up with a plan that would evaluate course offerings based on industry needs, limit courses to those who live within LAUSD boundaries, increase attendance, and charge students more in an effort to cover operating costs. They also said they would look into operating as an Expanded School-Based Management Model (ESBMM) which would grant the school more local control.

For her part, Tamar pledged to present their pilot plan to Superintendent John Deasy, as an option to save portions of Adult Education across the district.

The group met with Tamar in a small conference room on the West Valley Occupational Center campus. While the center—the largest in LAUSD, serving 12,000 students-- is technically in School Board Member Steve Zimmer’s Board District, many of Tamar’s constituents attend the West Valley campus.

The group vented their frustrations and threw out ideas. Tamar encouraged them to come up with solutions.

“You do not have to be a charter school to be innovative,” she reminded them.

Getting the ball rolling, WVOC asked Tamar if their school and programs could be saved if they charged their students. Tamar said if student fees covered operating costs, then the courses could likely be saved. The room erupted in applause.

“Students are begging to pay, otherwise they cannot take the courses,” said teacher Steve Rosen, who proposed the increased student fee plan.

Under the current system, some programs do not charge at all for courses (ESL and adult high school students), although they could, under state code. Other programs, including career tech training courses, require students to pay, but at a rate far below other trade schools.

For example, a West Valley Occupational Center cosmotology student would pay about $6,000 to do coursework leading to a license, while private institutions charge closer to $20,000 for the same courses. Nevermind, WVOC  boasts a higher pass rate on the cosmetology exam than other occupational schools.

West Valley Occupational Center students and faculty requested to meet with Tamar following LAUSD’s announcement earlier this year that all Adult Education programs would be shut down due to the state’s dire budget situation. All Adult Education staff received lay-off notices. After months of protests, a round of successful Labor negotiations, and some additional revenue from the state, some Adult Education programs have since been restored.

Those include career tech education programs to 46,000 high school students through the Regional Occupational Program.

Additional credit recovery, career and tech education, English as a Second Language, Parent Education and GED courses are also likely to be restored if negotiations go well with the district’s bargaining partners.

Still, even under a best-case scenario, state cuts to education are so deep it is unlikely the entire Adult Education Program will survive in its current form.

Those present Tuesday night pledged to come up with a draft plan by early next week.

“This is a ray of hope,” said John Mears, teacher at West Valley Occupational Center and UTLA chair.

Tamar expressed her hope that if successful, the plan could be duplicated elsewhere in the district.

“I get letters every day asking me not to cut programs,” said Tamar. “It is not often that they have a plan to keep those programs.”

Long-Distance Benefactor Helps Canoga Park Science Class

With just weeks left to fund his classroom project on DonorsChoose.org, Canoga Park High School science teacher Mr. McGee was starting to lose hope that he would ever get the tools he needed to teach his students electrical engineering.

Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away, an electrical engineer in Washington state was browsing the internet searching for a way to help students.  (Really!) He quickly found DonorsChoose.org—a non-profit that allows teachers to solicit money for classroom projects on-line. But choosing from over 20,000 projects on the website proved more challenging.

“I knew I wanted to help out a school and I was interested in classrooms teaching electrical engineering,” said Nicholas Seeley, the Good Samaritan engineer from Washington. 

Seeley winnowed the field to those teaching engineering, and clicked on one that piqued his interest: “Physics + The Right Tools = Success”. As he read through the project description, Seeley knew he had found a winner.

“Physics can be difficult to visualize, especially in the topics of electricity, light, and waves,” Teacher McGee, said in his description of his project request. “These are very abstract ideas and difficult to explain in drawings and discussions.”

And then teacher McGee’s humble ask:  “My students need two Electricity Kits, one Light and Optics kit, and one Introduction to Sound kit to be successful in Physics.”

Electrical engineering is Seeley’s passion. He also counts audio engineering as a hobby. Seeley whipped out his wallet and pledged to pay for the rest of the money needed to fund McGee’s classroom project - $736!

“I hope this helps others gain an interest in the field [of engineering],” said Seeley. “Electricity and acoustics are fascinating and few people really understand their principles. Hopefully this will help.”

In an email McGee thanked Seeley and other supporters of the project.

“We have needed this type of hands on material for a long time to increase the knowledge and comprehension of our students,” Seeley wrote. “In these times especially, I know funds for education are hard to come by. This makes your gift to our school and science department that much more appreciated. Thanks.”

Statement from LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy Regarding Governor Brown's Revised Budget

“The Governor’s May Revise assumes that voters will pass his tax initiative in November. This makes all the numbers in the budget dependent on an election that has not happened yet, and thus makes final local budget decisions, extremely difficult if not impossible. If, the measure passes, this will give schools some badly needed funds that have been promised over the past several years. If voters do not pass the initiative, the results are so catastrophic it is simply untenable. I am deeply concerned about the cash disbursements required to run the District. This issue is absent from the current budget conversation. This budget signals an increased reliance by the state on local districts to solve cash flow, which the state is deferring. Secondly, I am deeply concerned that yet another major program has been moved into the Prop. 98 Constitutional guarantees as a way to “fund” the mandated formula. This time, the supplemental Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) is switched from additional funding to Prop. 98 funding. We appreciate the state is trying to live within its means while protecting education, but it is painfully clear that schools are not going to get better until the state gets better fiscally. As a state, our youth will determine our future. They are the next innovators, small business owners and members of the 21st century workforce. It is vital that we invest in our future today and tomorrow.”

Schools Brace for Worst as State Deficit Skyrockets

Despite a soaring budget deficit, K-12 education in California won’t face any additional cuts next year – with the caveat that voters approve Governor Jerry Brown’s tax hike proposal this November.

In a video released over the weekend, Governor Brown announced that lower than expected tax revenues and higher than expected government spending pushed the state budget deficit to $15.7 billion — nearly seven billion higher than projected in January.

At a press conference Monday, Brown unveiled his plan to close the gargantuan budget shortfall with $4.1 billion in new cuts including a 5% compensation cut to state workers, recovering funds from redevelopment agencies and adjustments to Proposition 98 funding. K-12 education escapes the budget ax for now, but could face “Armageddon” according to a Los Angeles Unified School District official if the Governor’s tax hike proposal fails.  

The tax proposal, set to appear on the November ballot, would raise state sales tax by a quarter of a cent and impose additional income taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year. If it passes, Brown’s plan would bring in an additional $9 billion in tax revenue. If it fails, California schools face an unprecedented level of mid-year cuts that could slice as much as 3 weeks from the academic year.

California’s economy, which is larger than Russia’s, has suffered since the recession hit. Job losses exceed 1 million, unemployment remains high and attempts to wrangle the unruly budget have frustrated state officials for years now.

"It's a difficult budget, and it reflects the fact that revenues are less than expected,” said Governor Brown. “This is our day of reckoning.”

Cleveland Humanities Magnet Celebrates 30th Anniversary

Pictured, left to right, are Board Member Tamar Galatzan, Superintendent John Deasy, Cleveland Humanities Magnet Creator Neil Anstead, Cleveland Humanities Coordinator Jennifer Macon, Los Angeles Deputy Mayor of Education Joan Sullivan, Cleveland High School Principal Herman Clay. Photo by Paola Prato, Photography and Art History Teacher Cleveland Magnet Program

On Thursday morning hundreds of students, faculty, parents and local officials gathered in a grassy courtyard to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the nationally esteemed Cleveland Humanities Magnet, and to honor the man who created it.

Three decades ago a teacher named Neil Anstead had a vision: he wanted to start a high school that would take a group of dedicated teachers and allow them to teach to their passions.

The school has an interdisciplinary, thematic, team-based approach that was created to serve two purposes: to promote teachers professional growth, and to improve humanities education for the full range of students.

The school’s core curriculum has changed with the times, but today the Cleveland Humanities Magnet lives on, as one of the most successful and high-performing programs in all of Los Angeles.

“When I think of the kind of student I want to see graduate from LAUSD, I think of a student like a Cleveland Humanities Graduate: a young person who can think critically, and who is a life-long learner,” said Tamar. “In a world changing as fast as ours, is there anything more valuable?”

Today, Cleveland Humanities Magnet is the model curriculum for over 31 humanities programs throughout LAUSD. In collaboration with the Los Angeles Education Partnership, hundreds of teachers have participated in seminars and institutes led by the Cleveland Magnet teachers.

Anstead taught at the school from 1959 to 2004, when he retired. He taught English, art history, government and economics. After retirement he continued to come back and substitute. Many of today’s students, though, had never met him.

But as they baked under the hot sun, colleagues and friends paid tribute to the man who dreamed up an educational curriculum that demanded that every teacher be a student first, and required that all students learn to write well, debate eloquently, and think critically. Tamar addresses Cleveland students and faculty at Cleveland Humanities Magnet 30th Anniversary Celebration. Photo by Paola Prato.

Dressed in a rainbow shirt, rainbow shoes and a wacky hat that made him look like a living relic of the Sixties, 12^th Grade Coordinator and Philosophy teacher Ray Linn dazzled students with his speech cum performance.

One of the original core members, Linn told how Anstead regarded any teacher that used a textbook as a “herd animal,” and how Anstead deeply distrusted any centralized players, or experts, especially in education. He said Anstead had five core beliefs: 1) teachers should be forced to come up with their own materials 2) teachers should be asked to reach for the top, to bring their students difficult materials and difficult books. 3) Teachers should use essay exams to evaluate student performance rather than multiple choice and 4) students should be exposed to a diversity of viewpoints and 5) rather than focusing just on basic skills, teachers should work on language themselves to allow students to discuss the most complex concepts.  He highlighted the importance of collaborative teaching.

“It is easy to get tenure and shut your door,” Linn said. “When you are face to face with other teachers, you have to think much more critically about what you are doing.”

Colleagues praised Anstead as a Renaissance man comfortable discussing Karl Marx and Adam Smith, philosophy or art, red wine, African masks, or Greek history. He loved Shakespeare. He could fill a class on opera with high school students at 7 a.m. or 3 p.m..

Anstead demanded that his staff generate new ideas, and then that they go out and share them at workshops and seminars.

“He would say, ‘I’m going to make you famous,’” said teacher Donna Hill, who will retire this year. “He pushed us to be more than we thought we could be. He fed my intellect and my soul.”

Anstead himself took the podium and greeted the students, apologizing for not knowing each of their names—as he once did.

“You have had the best there is of education,” he said. “Don’t sell yourself short. One of the great tragedies of education is that we sell students short. Students can do anything.”

The school named the “Core” building after Anstead, and put up a plaque with the following inscription:

In honor of his visionary leadership and commitment to the humanities and education, with profound respect and gratitude for inspiring educators and students to teach and learn to their passions and for expecting greatness in others while modeling greatness in himself.

After the ceremony students swarmed Anstead like he was a rock star, and guests repaired to the refreshment tables to partake in Anstead’s trademark snack—Hot Flaming Cheetos.

A Wave of Affiliated Charters: What Does it Mean?

Several years ago, when the state budget crisis began, we saw the first of the Valley Schools applying to become affiliated charters. Yesterday, at the Charter meeting, a whopping 24 schools had public hearings to become affiliated charter schools—nearly all of them from my own Board District 3 and the San Fernando Valley.

They represent some of the highest performing schools in my district, and some of the last schools with a significant middle class population in the city.

They represent a tidal wave of change, and I wonder what it means for the Los Angeles Unified School District and for public education.

Is this the birth of a new system? Will traditional public schools become a repository for the poor and the special education students of our city, with everyone else fleeing the traditional public school system? What does that mean for the future of California?

Affiliated charter schools are a peculiar hybrid. Schools apply to become affiliated charter schools seeking freedom and funding. Affiliated charters remain on their LAUSD campus, keep their LAUSD union teachers, but write a charter that can allow them curricular and decision-making freedoms not available to traditional public schools. Historically, schools that went affiliated also received a charter school block grant, which often meant they received more money than they would have as traditional public schools.

Deep budget cuts no longer guarantee schools receive more money; finances vary school by school. But going affiliated charter means a school has the latitude to decide for themselves how they spend their money. Instead of receiving money earmarked for specific programs, a school receives a lump sum. This gives a principal, and a campus, the freedom to design a curriculum and a budget.

I applaud the move to transfer decision-making power to school sites. 

Schools that have gone affiliated charter report not just greater fiscal and academic freedoms, but also surprising and positive side- effects. Teachers must work more cohesively as a team. A new governance model must be put in place. Parents and community members are forced to take on a larger role at the school. All of this changes the culture of the school and encourages more accountability and investment by community members. Principals report increased enrollment numbers -apparently having “charter” in your name lends some cachet among parents.

All this is good. Any school that offers students a great education should be encouraged, lauded, duplicated. But as the district splinters, I find myself wondering: If a campus with innovators has to become a charter to best serve our kids, have we succeeded? If every middle class family decides that only charters or affiliated charters suit their needs, does that deprive public education of its strongest advocates?

For a state that is already 46th in the nation in per pupil spending, I worry. Where will we obtain the political pressure to reform and improve public education when fewer and fewer of our voters are part of the traditional public education system? Will traditional public schools become like a charity, underfunded, but supplemented by grants from philanthropists who regard helping the poor and undereducated as a virtue?

But maybe this is what change looks like. As an old system refuses to change, a new system is born. The new system will retain students and families, move more nimbly and quickly to improve, and keep more students in some form of public school.

Though I have been talking publicly about this trend for several years, the speed with which this is happening astounds me. But when families, schools and community members leap in to make changes themselves, I also know something good is happening. I only wish reform could happen quickly enough for every child in this district to benefit—not just those lucky enough to be in schools where site leaders take charge and parents step in to support them.

-Tamar

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