LAUSD's REVOLUTIONARY REFORM PASSED THIS WEEK: COULD IT WIND UP A DISASTER?

By Diana L. Chapman

I predict disaster.

And lawsuits.

At a contentious Los Angeles Unified School Board meeting Tuesday, I believe an old grizzly escaped out of the bag when the board voted 6-1 to approve a resolution – allowing organizations outside the district, charters or non-profits, to compete for 50 new schools and scores of struggling campuses in the district.

In a nutshell, Los Angeles Unified will have to compete to run its own schools, which some people are calling the “privatization of public schools.”

I call it more than that. I call it a give-away.

Only one school board member opposed it, Maugeritte LaMotte, who asked some serious questions that this resolution does not answer; The actual “the devils in the details” will come from School Superintendent Ramon Cortines.

Proponents are calling this “school choices” for families. Now, I will say this upfront, David Kooper, chief of staff for Board Member Richard Vladovic, has tried pretty much everything to convince me this is a good thing – and has had a hard time at it.

He’s debated with me repeatedly that this is exactly what the district needs to buck up and do the hard-core work necessary to take care of kids in the district. The competition, he says, will force the district to just get better – where the test scores have been dismal and dropout rate has ranged as high as 50 percent.

But it leaves my mind boggled. The district – yes, it’s been trouble-plagued as the second largest in the nation – but that’s because we, as a society, believe it should take over the mom, dad, cousin, aunt, uncle role – and become the family.

That’s next-to-impossible – and while I agree, yes, the district could do so much better, what I saw yesterday was a divorce. And I will be surprised if it’s not an ugly one at that. We all know who pays the most in divorces – the kids.

Unfortunately, board member Steve Zimmer, a teacher and counselor on the board, voted for the proposal, saying even though he had concerns, he needed to keep a voice in the process to protect those who truly care about kids. LaMotte, on the other hand, said she was still a member of the board, would voice her opinion – and voted forcefully against the decision.

At least LaMotte voted for what she believed.

Kooper keeps pointing out that this allows Cortines to add more restrictions and requests and contends this gives the district a better way to get a handle on the flourishing charter movement and some controls they wouldn’t have otherwise. Maybe he’s right. Actually, I hope to God he is.

But I still can’t get over the fact that it puts about a third of the district’s schools up for grabs.

What I don’t believe the public really understands is that while choices are good, the charters and non-profits will likely proliferate (currently they are running just like Los Angeles schools – a mixed bag of good and bad) and not have the intense state regulations the district faces, which makes me even more nervous.

Besides, Kooper said, the school board will get the chance to look at each and every proposal – and decide which best suits the school, adding more controls.

But I still have fears.

I will spell them out and maybe Cortines can respond to some of these:

-- For one: I want to know what will happen to all the children who are emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped, have speech impediments or any learning disabilities and such – because any private organization, charter or non-profit, that can show that they don’t have the resources to help those students are off the hook.

--For two: who is going to take care of those children who are delinquent juveniles and will test the system to extremes? Charters can toss them out, and they wind up at the public schools.

--For three: over the years, I’ve seen various organizations take over the parklands of Los Angeles, saying they will pay for the upkeep. They do - - and then they have control over who uses it. For example, in San Pedro, the Boy Scouts took over some Los Angeles port property, tucked right on a harbor inlet. They pay some ridiculous fee like $1 a year lease – and guess who does not get to use it: Most of the children in San Pedro. In fact, the white elephant building sits there unused on a daily basis – because a non-profit literally holds the keys to its doors.

--For four: parents who think they are in the picture might want to think again. While legally, parents can push their way into public schools, that can be next-to- impossible at a charter who doesn’t want parents there. Thus, charters can operate with their own rules and initiatives, not really accountable to anyone but their own board.

--For five: what happens when charters fire teachers – like Celerity Nascent charters did – when two junior high teachers decided to instruct about the hanging of 14-yearold Emmett Till, an African-American boy who was hanged in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. The lessons were part of Black History month. Or for instance, charter’s that decide to teach only in Spanish, even though this America. The answer: nothing.

And that’s where the whole issue falls into a giant black hole for me. Hopefully, I’m 100 percent wrong and the approving board is right. The resolution didn’t take up any of these questions.

People keep saying that the district is not accountable. But now that hundreds of schools will be privately operated on public funds, we might learn what “not accountable” really means.

Instead of having a spider under the same umbrella we can run checks on – using district policy whether its good or not – we will have hundreds of baby spiders running all over the place.

And those spiders, I fear, will remain unchecked and unaccountable, virtually to anyone.

Proponents Explain Why LAUSD Should Allow Charters and Non-Profits to Compete – and Potentially Take Over New Schools and Failing Schools; The School Board Will Consider This Proposal Tuesday

Dear Readers: Please read the opposition this plan in an earlier posted story.



By Diana L. Chapman

The chief-of-staff e-mailed a few weeks back and queried – after reading my anti-resolution article against outside operators taking over some Los Angeles schools –whether I understood how hard he and his boss were doggedly working to move Los Angeles Schools forward for all children.

David Kooper, who heads Los Angeles School Board Member Richard Vladovic’s staff, asked if he could share why the resolution – which would alter the fate of LAUSD’s newly constructed schools and those currently failing – was a necessary move to fix the trouble-plagued school system, the second largest in the nation.

“Charters are flourishing all over the place,” Kooper explained. “To keep our schools, we will have to compete and be better. We need the competition. It’s not meant to give away the district.”

If the motion passes, those campuses will be up on the block – so to speak – and will force Los Angeles Unified to compete against non-profits and charter schools to operate newly constructed schools or those that continually fail. This includes Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s partnership for schools.

It’s hard for me to quibble with Kooper’s request for fairness – and since the resolution will be on the school board’s table on Aug. 25, it seemed right to put Vladovic’s arguments forward for the healthy debate – despite my feelings that the district needs to break up.

“The district needs to shrink and inevitably it will need to de-centralize,” David Kooper wrote. “ However, you can't just rip out the cord. You have to plan and empower and train those who will be left to run the districts long after we leave.

“Trust me when I say I am not even a fan of charter schools. I
taught in this district for five years and I loved it and despite everything, I
still believe that we can do great things. But we also need competition or the
threat of competition to get what we need to ensure that we are hiring and
retaining the best teachers and removing the bad ones.”

For example, district officials point to the newly constructed Los Angeles Santee High School – which was failing prior to receiving a spanking new school – and continued to fail afterward.

“I am so tired of accepting failure and our system currently accepts it,” Kooper emailed. “We accept high drop-out rates in some schools and promote excellence in others. I believe the answer is about being accountable. The intent is to make ourselves better, not to sell off our problems. Having said that, we can learn a lot from successful charters and from our own best practices across the district. We
have Harbor Teacher Preparatory High School with a drop-out rate of 1.5 percent and Banning High which is over 30 percent.”

In addition, school officials working closely with the process say it will force the actions of school takeovers to be more “transparent,” and even the mayor’s partnership for schools will have to compete – and not just snatch away schools, as it did recently of with the new, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center, which is to open this fall in the Boyle Heights area.

While I got few emails in support of this resolution, I was surprised when former LAUSD school board member, Mike Lansing, who Vladovic replaced, agreed that the resolution might be a refreshing approach to make the district operate better.

His only caveat was to make sure LAUSD – which has reflected test scores improvement each year –remain continually part of the competition. The district, he said, must have a plan to ensure that the staff of each school runs at an optimum level.

“I believe it was Einstein who said "Idiocy is doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting a different outcome,"” wrote Lansing, the executive director of the Los Angeles Harbor Area Boys and Girls Club. “Therefore, I am for initiatives that challenge the status quo and put competition in the mix
when it comes to public education.

“Everyone should be allowed to "apply" including LAUSD - but there has to be a "plan" that includes ways to better motivate all employees to provide improved instruction and support of the children in their charge.

“Although I am supportive of Charter schools as a whole, the same expectation up front for charters or whomever else is applying - don't just hand over the keys because not all charter school operators do a good job. Also, there must be a level of "expertise" and capacity for any organization that wants to operate one of these schools - if you think it can't be worse - think again.”

Granted, despite these debates, I’m still running scared. I just can’t help myself.

There are still so many unanswered questions. As they always say, the devil is in the details. And many kids, will remain as they already are, still guinea pigs.

Proponents Explain Why LAUSD Should Allow Charters and Non-Profits to Compete – and Potentially Take Over New Schools and Failing Schools; The School Board Will Consider This Proposal Tuesday

Dear Readers: Please read the opposition this plan in an earlier posted story.


By Diana L. Chapman

The chief-of-staff e-mailed a few weeks back and queried – after reading my anti-resolution article against outside operators taking over some Los Angeles schools –whether I understood how hard he and his boss were doggedly working to move Los Angeles Schools forward for all children.

David Kooper, who heads Los Angeles School Board Member Richard Vladovic’s staff, asked if he could share why the resolution – which would alter the fate of LAUSD’s newly constructed schools and those currently failing – was a necessary move to fix the trouble-plagued school system, the second largest in the nation.

“Charters are flourishing all over the place,” Kooper explained. “To keep our schools, we will have to compete and be better. We need the competition. It’s not meant to give away the district.”

If the motion passes, those campuses will be up on the block – so to speak – and will force Los Angeles Unified to compete against non-profits and charter schools to operate newly constructed schools or those that continually fail. This includes Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s partnership for schools.

It’s hard for me to quibble with Kooper’s request for fairness – and since the resolution will be on the school board’s table on Aug. 25, it seemed right to put Vladovic’s arguments forward for the healthy debate – despite my feelings that the district needs to break up.

“The district needs to shrink and inevitably it will need to de-centralize,” David Kooper wrote. “ However, you can't just rip out the cord. You have to plan and empower and train those who will be left to run the districts long after we leave.

“Trust me when I say I am not even a fan of charter schools. I
taught in this district for five years and I loved it and despite everything, I
still believe that we can do great things. But we also need competition or the
threat of competition to get what we need to ensure that we are hiring and
retaining the best teachers and removing the bad ones.”

For example, district officials point to the newly constructed Los Angeles Santee High School – which was failing prior to receiving a spanking new school – and continued to fail afterward.

“I am so tired of accepting failure and our system currently accepts it,” Kooper emailed. “We accept high drop-out rates in some schools and promote excellence in others. I believe the answer is about being accountable. The intent is to make ourselves better, not to sell off our problems. Having said that, we can learn a lot from successful charters and from our own best practices across the district. We have Harbor Teacher Preparatory High School with a drop-out rate of 1.5 percent and Banning High which is over 30 percent.”

In addition, school officials working closely with the process say it will force the actions of school takeovers to be more “transparent,” and even the mayor’s partnership for schools will have to compete – and not just snatch away schools, as it did recently of with the new, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center, which is to open this fall in the Boyle Heights area.

While I got few emails in support of this resolution, I was surprised when former LAUSD school board member, Mike Lansing, who Vladovic replaced, agreed that the resolution might be a refreshing approach to make the district operate better.

His only caveat was to make sure LAUSD – which has reflected test scores improvement each year –remain continually part of the competition. The district, he said, must have a plan to ensure that the staff of each school runs at an optimum level.

“I believe it was Einstein who said "Idiocy is doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting a different outcome,"” wrote Lansing, the executive director of the Los Angeles Harbor Area Boys and Girls Club. “Therefore, I am for initiatives that challenge the status quo and put competition in the mix when it comes to public education

“Everyone should be allowed to "apply" including LAUSD - but there has to be a "plan" that includes ways to better motivate all employees to provide improved instruction and support of the children in their charge.

“ Although I am supportive of Charter schools as a whole, the same expectation up front for charters or whomever else is applying - don't just hand over the keys because not all charter school operators do a good job. Also, there must be a level of "expertise" and capacity for any organization that wants to operate one of these schools - if you think it can't be worse - think again.”

Granted, despite these debates, I’m still running scared. I just can’t help myself.
There are still so many unanswered questions. As they always say, the devil is in the details. And many kids, will remain as they already are, still guinea pigs.

What Some Parents and Education Administrators Have to Say Regarding LA Unified Allowing Charters and Other Organizations to Possibly Take Over Failing Schools/and Newly Constructed Campuses; The Proposal Goes to the LA School Board Aug. 25

Dear Readers: A motion that comes before the LA Unified School Board next Tuesday has plenty of critics. Here are what some have to say about the motion. In the next few days, I'll post a story showing why LA School Board Member, Richard Vladovic, supports the proposal and surprisingly from former Board Member Mike Lansing, who Vladovic replaced...

Today's story is what the critics of the plan have to say. Diana

By Diana L. Chapman

I remember it clearly. It was a pupil free day for Los Angeles schools and my son and his friends wanted to play a pick-up game of soccer. As other parents had done before, I drove them over to Bogdanovich Park in San Pedro and left.

As soon as I got home, Ryan was calling to come back and get them. The soccer field, despite it being a public Los Angeles park, could not be used unless the non-profit, AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) cleared it.

No one was allowed to play there, accept for organized soccer games.

We left sadly: and a soccer field sat virtually empty for the rest of the day – despite that thousands of children were out of school across Los Angeles.

As I wrote before, this same issue nags at me with the resolution to pack off our LAUSD schools to other organizations, such as charter schools, and non-profits – including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s partnership for schools. Despite repeated steps upward in test scores, our public schools – in order to remain in charge– will now have to compete with these other organizations.

This will include all newly built campuses and any school that has failed to make the state/nation standards. LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines should have a defined resolution by the Aug. 25, a school official said, to take to the school board that will clarify some of the concerns.

I’ll confess right up front. I’m nervous – and so are many others who emailed me after I wrote about the proposal. Only two emailed support of this plan, and that was from LAUSD Board Member’s Chief of Staff, David Kooper and surprisingly, Former School Board Member Mike Lansing, who believes it’s time for change.

But many others, mostly parents, sent in a variety of concerns. I know fear is not a reason to turn down a potential concept – but more than ever – I believe this needs a good, healthy debate. My fear is will we give away the store? And if it doesn’t work, what do we have to do to get schools back?

Here are a series of comments I received:

--“Thank you for your article on the resolution before LAUSD,”emailed Zella Knight, a parent of a gifted 16-year-old. “I have found that LAUSD has the tenacity with its varied leaders to author plans for change.... all of which still emphasize that "Houston we have a problem."

“The core element to this plan is that parents will not have a viable

mechanism for input and accountability. LAUSD remains a program improvement

district, with schools in varied areas that are not improving in their programs.

We still have a disconnect with the parents relative to addressing their needs

and alignment with the law for parent involvement. We can develop or morph plan after plan, the question and challenge is when will parents take charge with

their children and what happens to them?”

--John Mattson, who is fed up with the city after living initially in El Segundo where he felt his needs were met and later moved to San Pedro, said the resolution confirms what he already believed – both the district and the city need to be broken up.

“Right on the mark,” wrote Mattson, an advocate for all the suburbs to secede from LA, or at least splitting it into boroughs. “I compare LA and LAUSD to Frankenstein’s monster. It was created as a “good idea,” but turned into something with a mind of its own which no one can control. …It’s very scary to think that NY seems to run better than LA.

“It is time that local government is returned to the locals.”

--Teresa Feldman, a parent whose children attend LAUSD schools and who serves on the

Mid City West Neighborhood Council and works as a district aide,  contends that the

district was not mandated to build new schools through ballot measures to hand them

over to charters and non-profits. Bond measures were passed to construct new schools

for some of the neediest populations and she wonders if this action is even legal.

Charters, she argued, may refuse some students who live in surrounding neighborhoods

and are likely to “cherry pick” and “skew data.”

If the district votes for the proposal, they should force the charters to serve all

neighborhood children first – and if the district had intended to hand the newly

constructed schools over to charters, they should have spelled that out

in the bond measures.

“I never voted to take prime sites away from the neediest and give 

them to a group that just "wants" the space,” Feldman wrote. “This is a terrible

disservice to the neediest families in the district. Imagine being a child in one of

these neighborhoods; you watch the construction for years, and then you find out

that it's being given away to some outside organization, and they may or may not

take you.”

Further, Feldman argued, Cortines should go back to an initial plan that existed when

he first worked for the district and had a report done to break the district up into smaller, autonomous divisions.

--Lastly, Neal Kleiner, a former LAUSD principal who, in a contentious campaign ran against but lost to Vladovic in the school board race, said he too has many concerns about where this resolution is headed.

“I sincerely believe it's not whether the school is a "charter" or not, that makes the difference. It is the leadership at the school and the willingness of the stakeholders to work together for the benefit of the students. Yes, there are failing schools (and failing charters) and there are some excellent schools (and charters). You can spend time walking through a school/classrooms and you can tell if the place is functional or not.

“The School Board turning over 50 new schools to a variety of charters/mayor's schools, etc. is just a way to placate the mayor. It is NOT in the best interest of the public.”

The Lemon and Character Writing Exercise; What a Scent and Taste Can Bring to Young Writers or Observation of Characters They See; Here are Two San Pedro High School Pieces From Students Doing This Mind-Bending Tool That Opens Thought Waves to O000h, So Many Possibilities….

Try This Yourself and With Your Kids at Home;

Dear Readers: I always like to give kids weird exercises to stretch their brains and make them think outside the box – or even somewhere out there – in the universe. These two girls rose to the occasion with this fun exercise and it brought out their genuine writing abilities.

The lemon exercise was first. The writers tasted and smelled lemon and were asked to write whatever came to mind. The second exercise was to write about a character spotted at a local coffee house. I included samples of each exercise. Diana

The Lemon Exercise:

Bio: My name is Kelsi Johnson, 17. I grew up in San Pedro and plan to be an editor at a magazine while working on publishing short stories. I like things from hundreds of years ago. Here is Kelsi’s story:

Lemons make me think of those men on the sides of the road who sell fruit to people. The sun is hot and they just stand there for hours, staring down corporate America driving by in their cars, off to pull a Madoff and buy three houses and a boat, while this man has to stand there and barely get by on selling fruit. I wonder what he thinks about us, if he's secretly filled with rage and would do anything to get into our positions. I would like to talk to the man, selling fruit. But I'm scared. I know that it's true- I don't even know how he feels. Maybe he loves selling produce. Maybe everyone should live his life for a day, stand in the hot Rialto sun and stare down corporate America. Sweat bullets and fill yourself with rage. This man, barely getting by, is probably 100 times happier than any of us. He knows, he sees, he understands. And he forgives.

The Character Exercise:

Bio: My full name is Lauren Myles Akiyama Watson. I'm a 17 year old self-taught artist. I was born in Tokyo, Japan, and spent a greater portion of my life living in Los Angeles, California. The environment is ideal for creative inspiration but the public schools are ghastly.  In my spare time, I hunt for odd musical instruments (and spend even less time playing them), eat with hysterical vigor, and write stories while firmly denying that they're autobiographical. Despite my terrible work ethic and severe insouciance, I like to imagine that one day I'll attend RISD (Rhode Island School of Design).

Here is Lauren’s short piece:

“Mustang didn't know that his left pocket was unturned, nor that he needed a 

pedicure. He was a conventional man's man, counting his receipts and checking

his blood pressure - oh wait, that’s an I-pod.

He scratched his hairy arms and snuffed out of his fluffy, fifty year-old

nostrils and wondered why Starbucks was such a popular place for pansy writing

clubs and sewing circles. The girls sitting adjacent to his table were clucking

about poems and giggling themselves senseless and - suddenly CRYING! Roy didn't

understand women too well. They were a strange luxury; organisms with one happy and a million mad..

He rubbed his neck in dismay and stared off at a distant wall, shook his head to

the music, basked in what little sun was magnified through the window. There was a silent symphony in whatever fragments that light bent through, and Roy liked to imagine he was piece of sun.

He carefully placed the receipts in order of date. On top of that, his wallet

that belonged to his father. On top of that, he placed his tiny account book that he loved for it's scent of old library books. Around all this, he tied a stout rubber

band. He crushed a leftover receipt between his thumb and forefinger until it

was gritty and thin near the middle. The sun dragged itself over the hill and

Roy sighed to shoo away the blubbering young woman’s gurgled sobs.