The Ides of March … Educationwise

LA’S SCHOOLS AND OTHER MUSINGS-The Board of Ed met Tuesday and decided upon a number of things.

1. Like Caesar they set a calendar – a compromise that nobody likes.

2. They agreed upon a Second Interim Budget – a fairly unimportant thing in itself, it really is only the first and last budget that matters.

3. They agreed to send out RIF notices to 2400+ employees. The press mostly reported there were “only” 609 employees noticed – the other 1800 or so RIFs were only ‘routine’ RIF notices …routinely sent to administrators.

Routine: a. (noun) A set of customary or unchanging and often mechanically performed activities or procedures. b. (noun) A series of dance steps, a piece of scripted entertainment. C. (adj.) Having no special quality; ordinary

Tuesday’s was lovely routine, totally supportive of the staff (especially those in Early Childhood and Adult Ed … plus Assistant Principals everywhere)– notifying them that their services may not be required next year. There goes the old employee morale – and the old credit rating!

The published cost for processing and serving a RIF notice is $700. 2400 x $700 = $1,680.000. The average teacher salary including benefits is $70,139. $1.68 million = 24 teachers’ salary+benefits.

♫ “We have a little list …and they’ll none of ‘em be missed.” ♪

(The above action took the Bd of Ed 56 seconds; they voted 5-2 to send the notices – thank you gentle reader for taking at least that long to think about it!)

4. The Board settled with the Magnolia Charter Schools and the allegations of fiscal mismanagement/misuse of public funds at three schools behind closed doors. All is well and no further discussion needed. We will probably never know what happened.

5. They agreed on the need for third party oversight of Information Technology projects – but I suspect there are seven different interpretations of what “third party oversight” is.

6. They approved identification of the first eleven schools most needy/soonest of modernization. There was enough drama+time spent here for Shakespeare himself - with voices raised and allegations hurled and documents withheld - creating a brief popular sentiment to pull the plug on the whole wretched mess! (In fairness probably too much time+effort and too many rubrics+scoring algorithms had previously been applied in the selection+identification process. 

Nobody disputes the need for modernization at almost all of our schools. The superintendent wrote: “The 11 school sites were identified based on their actual, physical condition and needs, and without political influence” …but are these eleven (none of them elementary schools and four of them in a single board district) – really the most needy right now? That was the question!

I AM NOT GOING TO GO INTO what came to light at Rosewood Elementary School or Venice High on Friday; due process will work its course. Quoting a Venice student who was not involved: “It's embarrassing," she said while standing under the shade of a tree, waiting for a ride home. "The whole world knows about this school and for this. It's really awful.”
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LAST WEEK I MISQUOTED Casey Stengel, giving him credit for words Leo Durocher said. Or, more correctly: Was misquoted as saying.
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TESTING TESTING TESTING: Do not pick up your pencils until told to do so!

• The California State Board of Ed ruled that the test scores will not count for school accountability (the API) this year, parents and students will be given individual student scores – but because scores weren’t recorded last year there will be nothing to compare them to

• We have new tests in California but the state will be keeping the same testing contractor. (Pearson was in the running but didn’t get the gig!)

• Some schools in California and LAUSD began administering the new “Smarter Balanced” Common Core aligned/computer-based test last week.

• The Common Core are not national standards and do not represent a national curriculum – and we don’t have national testing – but the two giant testing consortia (Smarter Balanced & PARCC) began testing nationwide last week. And outside California there seems to be a whole lot of resistance and a very robust+noisy “Opt-Out” movement. Stay tuned.

• On Friday there appeared to be some shenanigans in New Jersey (I know!) over Pearson’s administration of the PARCC test there – including alleged invasion of student privacy and perhaps denial-of-service attacks on Pearson critics. See: “We’re from Pearson, we’re here to help!”: PEARSON MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SECURITY BREACHES DURING PARCC TESTING …and California’s been doing it for years 

In California the monitoring is done by the Dept. of Education, not the self-declared “World’s Largest Education Company”. We teach youngsters to share in kindergarten; it’s a lesson that doesn’t always take. But if we tell them not to share, as in “Don’t discuss the test or the questions with your classmates – especially on social media,” they always will!
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UPDATE: Tommy Chang will be paid $257,000 annually to be superintendent in Boston.
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AND LEST I BE ACCUSED of being a technophobic Luddite, I am endorsing an interactive online learning tool– an “App” – as a potential solution to the “How Do We Get Parents and the Community Involved in the Great LCFF Kerfuffle?” (Maybe it’s a “Challenge”…but until we get some folks in there asking+insisting+pushing-the-edge-of-the-envelope the address of “Local” in “Local Control” will continue to be 333 S. Beaudry!)

Please read about ED 100 following. Sign Up, Tune In, and Get Engaged!

You may now pick up your pencils and open your test booklets. Or log into the secure state server.

¡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 23

Pub: Mar 17, 2015