California's Children

The tip of the iceberg lettuce: separate but unequal school lunches

Problem: poverty and hunger; solution: federal funds for food. Reality: 30% of the kids eligible for lunch, don't eat it; and ditto for 70% of the kids eligible for breakfast. The numbers are available, county by county, kid by kid, from Oakland's nonprofit Food Policy Advocates.

We're worried about test scores? Guess what: hungry kids can't learn. We're counting the pennies? The lack of participation, Food Policy Advocates tell us, is costing the state more than $351 million in additional federal funds.

So: there is such a thing as a free lunch, but nobody wants it. Why?

*Lousy foo d. Cold, fat-congealed French fries are lethal weapons, one LA student told the Times yesterday. Nutritionists would agree with him. As Jill, Thomas, left, an English teacher at the Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in the F ruitvale section of Oakland, wrote in a January 2011 essay in "Teaching Tolerance":

...students would embrace their meals if those meals seemed more like food. No ill intent is meant for the hard-working employees of school cafeterias who have no control over the menu. But students are hard pressed to believe that school lunch is any healthier than the fast food options they prefer. This year I’ve seen more and more students skip lunch altogether. Even worse, they stock up on junk food from the corner store before coming to school. At least there they have choice over what junk they put in their body. 

The seniors at our school have become so fed up with lunchtime that they have begun selling homemade food. Some days there’s posole. Other days papusas. We’ve seen tostadas and agua frescas, fresh fruit with chile. They know that in nearby Berkeley, a district with many low-income students as  well, schools have a much better school lunch program piloted by the mother of California cuisine Alice Waters herself. A few years ago I took a group of students on a field trip to the Edible Schoolyard garden at Martin Luther King Middle School. My students wandered the grounds of the lush and beautiful garden, saw the outdoor wood-fired pizza oven and toured the immaculate kitchen stations used for food preparation and instruction. “Why can’t we have this,” they asked.

*Timing and distribution. LAUSD, for example (see yesterday's story), has 30 minutes for lunch, and long line s that shut out kids before the bell. (Lousy food is an issue the district is addressing with dispatch.) As California Watch noted, school breakfasts are usually served before classes start, which can result in not enough time to eat for kids who rely on busses or their families to bring them to school. 

  '*Stigma: Jill E. Thomas again, describing the separation and shame students feel about free lunches -- as well as the blatant discrepancies in school lunches between wealthy public schools and Title I schools:

Early federal aid for school lunches states that "the children who could not pay for their meals would not be segregated or discriminated against and would not be identified to their peers." But there's a difference between what kids eat at affluent schools and wht they eat at Title I schools like the one where I teach. At nearby Piedmont High School... the students hae the option of eating at the Pipe Cafe. One of the daily options is a spinach salad with dried cranberries, red onion, feta cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette. At our school, students can have an iceberg lettuce salads with ranch dressing. Food discrimination is alive and well.

[Full disclosure: the great line about the tip of the iceberg lettuce that we've used as a headline came from one of the comments on Thomas's essay.]

In the continuation, statistics from KidsData and Food Policy Advocates; county by county. Bring it home.

Fresno's Larry Powell steers $830K of personal salary to PreK/K

Fresno Unified School District Superintendent Larry Powell, 63, long considered a superstar among California's public education administrators, is retiring tomorrow morning and will be re-hired, in the same position, tomorrow afternoon. As Think Progress reports:

...Leaving behind a $288,241 annual salary, Powell will voluntarily work for $31,020 — $10,000 less than a first-year teacher’s salary — with no benefits.  (He will go on his wife's medical plan and has given up a $250K life insurance policy; he also plans to donate that salary to charity, according to the Huffington Post, as he technically retired and will be able to collect about $200K a year in retirement.) This, Powell says, ensures that the $830,000 he would have earned for the remainder of his term will go toward the county schools’ budget for the next three years.

Characterized as exceedingly humble, Powell — also a Baptist minister — said his motivation for the unconventional move was to do what he can to counter budget cuts to his beleaguered school system  [that serves 195,000 children]:

“My wife and I are very well compensated. We’ve been very blessed,” he told [ABC News].

“These are tight budget times in California for public schools,” [Powell] said, noting over the past three years, [Fresno] has lost $1,600 to $1,900 in funding per student. “My wife and I thought, what can we do that might help change the dynamic ...”...

“Our goal has never been to have things,” he said almost sheepishly when word spread about his unselfish act. “(Pat, my wife, and I) want to give back. Fresno … has been labeled the Appalachia of the West. We are like a bar bell, we have extreme wealth and extreme poverty …. There is no shortage of need locally.”

The unprecedented move was Powell’s idea. "It's a unique arrangement that I'm in and it allows me to give something back to the community in a tangible way and I don't think of it as being a hero at all. It was a perfect opportunity to do something where the public benefits, the taxpayer benefits…the taxpayer saves between $150,000 and $160,000 in reduced costs, the county receives $830,000."

Because his salary comes out of the district’s discretionary budget, Powell will be able “to steer the money he is giving up where he wants: to programs for kindergarten and preschool, the arts and a pet project that steers B and C students into college by teaching them how to take notes and develop strategy skills.” As ABC’s David Wright notes, Powell’s $830,000 is enough to hire 20 new teachers, fund 16 pre-school classes, or pay for 11 art programs for the entire year.

The Break Room: Mom punches kid's (female) principal

 
California's Children was two years old this month, and our long-standing policy for all of those two years has been: no unncessary sensationalism, stay away from outrageous stories that may have some "hook" to a child, but are not helpful to the health/education/welfare/juvenile justice professional...but now, we've changed our minds. Wild tales told around the water cooler can sometimes lead to thoughtful disussions and, occasionally, wise policy.

 Pami Gibbs, 29, is the mother of a third-grade son who, on the first day of school at Stockton's Fillmore Elementary School, wore a tee shirt with skulls on it (see below). A dress code violation. Principal Evangelina Ramos (at right on right) said the child could not wear the shirt. The Associated Press reported that Gibbs "suddenly began punching Ramos in the face," according to witnesses. Gibbs left the school and went home, where police arrested her (mug shot, at left) two hours later on two felony charges of battery and criminal threats, and three misdemeanors, including a hate crime (Ramos is a Latina).  Gibbs is being held in the San Joaquin County Jail. The Stockton Record reported:

  One of the misdemeanor charges is for inflicting “injury based at least partly on race.”

West said Gibbs, who is white, made reference to the ethnicity of Ramos, who is a Latina. A bleeding Ramos was taken by ambulance to Dameron Hospital. Wright said she is in stable condition.

Pami Gibbs and her husband, Michael, have two other children. Their side of the story:

...[the Gibbs famly]...claims it was Ramos who had become increasingly hostile in recent weeks over the school dress code.  The Gibbs say dress code changed for a third time in three years; and they are being forced to buy uniforms when other families weren’t.  ...  Fillmore Elementary is heavily Hispanic and the Gibbs say their children have been bullied repeatedly because they are white.  They’ve complained; but [the child's great-grandfather] says Principal Ramos...challenged [Gibbs's] frustration.  ”She said are your threatening me, are you threatening me.  She just kept it up, are you threatening me.  She aggravated Pami is the way it came across to me.”

 The Record also noted that because of budget cuts in the Stockton school district, school security has been reduced on all campuses.

 

 

"Never look bored" & 9 other top tips for would-be panelists

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo's daily e-mailing of the best websites, blogs & other 'net info for educators, we have Guy Kawasaki's "How to Kick Butt on A Panel." Just in time for the peak of the conference season. If you're not scheduled to be on a panel, anywhere for any reason, you can help a panicked friend [emphases are ours]. Guy Kawasaki (at left) refers to himself as the "former chief evangelist at Apple."

At any given conference, there are about three keynote speakers and twenty five panelists, so the odds are much higher that you'll be a panelist than a keynote speaker. Thus, I hope this entry appeals to a broader audience.

Superficially, a panel looks easy. There are four or five other people on it--all of whom you think you're smarter than--and it only lasts sixty minutes. How hard could it be? Herein lies the problem: everyone thinks a panel is easy so they don't take it seriously. A panel is actually a better opportunity to position yourself than a keynote because you are juxtaposed to four or five people in real time--whereas keynotes are sequential. If you want to stand head and shoulders above the other panelists, here's what to do:

1. Know the subject. I hope you're getting as tired of duhisms as I am, but this needs to be said. If you're invited to a panel on wireless security, and you don't know much about the subject, then you should decline. I don't care how wonderful the opportunity seems to be. If you can help it, never provide an audience the opportunity to truly know that you're clueless.

2. Control your introduction. The first mistake that most panelists make is that they assume the moderator has an up-to-date and accurate bio. Odds are that the moderator either knows nothing about you or has done a Google search and printed a bio that is inaccurate. Before the panel starts, hand the moderator a three sentence description of who you are and tell her to read it verbatim.

3. Speak up. The optimal distance between your lips and the microphone is one inch. You're sitting down. You're hunched over. You're not projecting. So get close to the mike and speak up. Assume there's a fifty-one years old geezer in the back with a hearing aid like me.

4. Entertain, don't just inform. As in keynotes, the your goal is to entertain, not only inform. The funnier you are, the more people will think you're smart because it takes great intelligence to be funny. I'd go so far as to pick a friendly fight with the moderator or another panelist. Let it rip. Have fun. Think of a panel as friendly, though emotional, conversation in front of 500 of your closest friends.

5. Tell the truth, especially when the truth is obvious. If you're lucky, and there's a good moderator, that moderator will try to pin you to the wall with tough, embarrassing questions. This is a good thing because it provides an opportunity to (a) be funny and (b) show that you're a straight shooter. “The truth will get you glee.” If everybody knows the truth, don't even try to fudge. It would be far better to say, “I take the 5th amendment.” That will get a laugh.

6. Answer the question that's posed, but never limit yourself to the question that's posed. When asked a question, answer the question (unless you have to take the 5th). Answer it as fast as possible, but then feel free to take the conversation in a direction that you want. For example, let's say that the moderator asks, “Do you think cell phones will get viruses soon?” It's perfectly okay to answer, “Yes, I think this is an issue, but the real issue that faces most of use is the lack of good cell phone coverage,” if that's what you really want to talk about.

7. Be plain, simple, and short. Let's assume you are on a panel of experts. Let's further assume the moderator is an expert. The moderator asks a question. You think that you're answering her and the other panelists--all experts, so you launch into alphabet soup, acronym du jour. Big mistake. The audience is, well, the audience. Not the moderator nor the panelists. Reduce the most complex and technical issues to something plain, simple, and short, and you'll position yourself as (a) unselfish and (b) a star.

8. Never look bored. This may be one of the hardest aspects of a panel. Let's say the other panelists launch into a long, boring, jargon-filled response. The temptation is to whip out a Blackberry at worst or to look bored at best. Don't do it. Fake rapt interest because the moment you look bored, a photographer is going to snap a picture or the camera man is going to put your face on the ten foot screen. You've go it made if you can fake sincerity. :-)

9. Never look at the moderator. The moderator is asking the questions, but he is merely a proxy for the audience. When you answer, don't look at the moderator. Look at the audience because the audience doesn't want to see the side of your head. (FYI, a good moderator will not make eye contact with you--forcing you to look away from him and look at the audience.) (Someday I may write an entry about how to be a good moderator because most people incorrectly think it's so easy to be one.)

10. Never say, “I agree with (name of previous panelist).” A moderator will often ask everyone to answer the same question. If you're not the first one to answer, there's the temptation to say, “I agree with what my colleague just said...” That's a dumbass response. Come up with something different, and if you're not quick enough on your feet to do this, don't go on the panel. At the very least say, “I think that question has been answered. For the audience's sake, let's move on.”

Aquino takes over from ousted LAUSD chief academic officer Elliott

 Judy Elliott, chief academic officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District, has resigned at the behest of Superintendent John Deasy. Elliott, who had been an appointee of Deasy's predecessor Ramon Cortines, will receive "the salary and benefits she would have earned by completing the final yhear of a contract ending June 30, 2012 [and]...be compensated for unused vacation days. The package totals $231,164 according to the Los Angeles Times. Elliott was hired by LAUSD in June 2008.

The buyout of Elliott's contract was paid for out of a reserve fund "for such purposes" that some members of the LAUSD school board didn't know existed, according to Howard Blume's story in the Times.

Elliott was instrumental in adopting a new reading program and pushing for rapid and more tailored intervention for struggling students. She also spearheaded a new homework policy that Deasy shelved, according to the Times.

In a letter to board members, Elliott wrote that, “at the request of Supt. Deasy, I have resigned to allow him to assemble his own team.”

As Howard Blume reported in the LA Times on Thursday, August 25, Deasy, in a back-to-school speech before LAUSD administrators, "...made it plain he would push principals and other managers out of comfort zones, demanding that they take responsibility as never before for hiring teachers and evaluating their performances. He will also direct principals to take greater responsibility for whether individual students are on track for graduation and college....

In this case, the team member replacing Elliott will be Deputy Superintendent Jaime Aquino, above left, who was hired in April for $250,000, less that two weeks after Deasy took over; beginning then, Elliott reported to Aquino.

As the Santa Monica Daily Breeze then reported:

Some union leaders expressed concern that the district is adding well-paid administrators while struggling with a $408 million deficit.

"These hires come at a time when more than 5,000 teachers and health and human services professionals have been (notified of potential layoffs) and when teachers are being asked to give up furlough days," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Union leaders also expressed concern over the district's increased reliance on outside funding.

Since 2009, the district has accepted millions in grant funding from philanthropic organizations to pay for executive positions.

Grants have included at least $4.4 million from The Wasserman Foundation, founded by entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, and at least $1.2 million from the Walton Foundation, started by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen.

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad has also paid for the salaries of key district staff and he contributed $775,000 for Deasy's transition work, including $500,000 for an audit to find budget efficiencies at LAUSD.

Aquino was chief academic officer for the Denver Public School system from 2005-2008; in 2008, he was a participant in the [Eli] Broad Center for the Management of School Systems's Superintendents Academy. Below is Aquino's CV as published the Denver Public Schools in 2005. Since 2008, he has been affiliated with America's Choice, a "new kind of educational organization...a solution provider...the creator of research-based school improvement solutions." America's Choice is owned by UK-based Pearson, "the world's leading learning company." 

Below is Aquino's CV as published by Denver Public Schools.