California's Children

LAUSD board unanimously says "yes" to classroom breakfasts

 UPDATE, May 15, 2013: The Los Angeles Unified School District board voted unanimously at its meeting yesterday to keep breakfast in the classroom -- a political wrangle between the teachers' union and the service employees' union that district superintendent had told the board to solve, specifically and intentionally, and not as part of a larger packaged of programs. 

 Speaking to the press, board member Steve Zimmer said, “We know we cannot turn away and pretend for a moment longer that [hunger] is someone else’s problem. This is not instead of education. This is education.”

SFUSD: 3-yr investigation leads to 6 staff arrests in $15mil thefts

UPDATE, May 14, 2013: Jill Tucker and Will Kane reporting in today's San Francisco Chronicle: Six current and former San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) employees, including an ex-associate superintendent, are facing a total of 205 felony charges for allegedly misappropriating $15 million in public funds, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The defendants redirected government grants for a variety of illegal purposes, including lining their own pockets, prosecutors said. The six allegedly diverted a total of $250,000 over 10 years for their personal use...

The defendants include Trish Bascom, above left, who was associate superintendent of student support services, and former members of her management team. Bascom retired in June 2010, a few months before district officials publicly disclosed the "irregularities in accounting practices." [Read history of story below the jump.]

Bascom faces 94 felony charges,[District Attorney George] Gascón said.

The other defendants include Linda Sue Lovelace, a former senior exec

utive director in the student support services division; Meyla Ruwin, a senior executive director who is on long-term leave; Lilian Capuli, a former principal administrative analyst; and Betty Chuey Wong, a senior clerk who is on leave...Also facing charges is Mychel Navales, a former assistant principal at Marina Middle School who is Lovelace's romantic partner. Prosecutors say Lovelace paid her $12,700 for work she never performed for the district, and that separately, Navales embezzled $5,800 from the middle school.

Arrest warrants for the six defendants were issued Monday...Prosecutors said Bascom and her employees diverted federal and state grant money to slush-fund accounts at three community organizations that hold contracts with the district - Edgewood Center for Children and Families, Bay Area Community Resources and the San Francisco School Alliance.

The nonprofits' involvement in the case is still under investigation...

Ass'bly Dem Caucus: No on LCF formula; Yes on child dev/early ed

May 9, 2013: Assembly Speaker John Perez, at left, introduced the Democratic Caucus's "Blueprint for a Responsible Budget" yesterday, which takes aim at Governor Brown's Local Control Funding Formula for public education in readiness for the Governor's submission of the "May revise" of the '13-'14 budget next week. The Blueprint also advocates for increased accessibility and quality in early education/child development, a position that is being lauded by Early Edge California and other child advocates (emphases ours):

"I still have my Head Start diploma. There was an expectation of a certain amount of parental involvement. A good education absolutely begins at home." -- John Perez, Speaker, California State Assembly.

1. Increasing school funding alone will not be enough to give low income students and English Language learners a fair shot at success and joining the middle class.
   
   
   • The children of the working poor need access to quality early education and development programs from a very early age, including preschool. Providing nurturing, educational programs for low income children helps them enter school prepared to learn and avoids the "start behind-stay behind" challenge to faces too many students today.
     
     
   • California has the highest child poverty rate in the country. Academic findings tell us that children living in poverty experience physiological brain changes and delay that severely impair their ability to learn. So, if the state is serious about improving the educational results of low income children, then more must be done to reduce child poverty.
     
     
2. All school districts must benefit from the economic recovery and increased funding for schools. 
   
   
   • All school districts have suffered from massive cuts during the Great Recession, and the voters passed Proposition 30 on the promise that funding would go to their schools. Restoring funding to pre-recession levels for all school districts must be a top priority.
     
     
3. Low income and English learner students throughout the state must benefit from funds targeted for these populations, regardless of the overall economic make-up of their school district.
   
   
   • Every school district in the state has low income students and English learners that need the additional resources. Even if a district is an overall more affluent community, their low income and English learners cannot be overlooked.

Heavy hitters in public ed at tomorrow's EdSource Symposium (sorry, sold out)

May 3, 2013: John Fensterwald, editor of EdSource Today, will moderate tomorrow's panel "Local, Local, Local: The Impact of Governor Brown's 'Local Control Funding Formula' (Will It Lead to Higher Quality Education for All)?" at the 2013 EdSource Symposium at the San Jose Convention Center. On the panel will be Michael Kirst, president of the State Board of Education; Liz Guillen, director of legislative and community affiars for Public Advocates; Richard Carranza, superintendent of the San Francisco USD, and Robert Miyashiro, vp of School Services of California.

The symposium, which has closed registration, will be keynoted by Linda Darling-Hammond, chair of the state commission on Teacher Credentialing and a professor of education at Stanford. Jennifer Kuhn of the Legislative Analyst's Office will present the LAO's outlook on the economoy and its implications for public education. The afternoon's featured speak will be Martha J. Kanter, under-secretary of education, U.S. Dept. of Education, at left.

EdSource's executive director, Louis Freedberg, will moderate the afternoon panel ("If We Watn Higher Quality Teaching, Are We Talking About the Right Changes?") with Darling-Hammond; Ramona Bishop, superintendent of the Vallejo City USD; Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, chair of the Assembly Education Committee; and Tim Melton, vp of legislative affairs for Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst. 

Excerpts from recent Martha Kanter speeches:

 “Never has the endeavor to build a world-class education system mattered more to the vitality of our country, the prosperity of our states, and the ability of individual students to succeed. Never has the call to transform education meant more for our democracy. President Obama calls this the drive to 'win the future.' The 'north star' of our education agenda is the President’s goal that, by 2020, America will once again have the most college graduates in the world. To achieve this goal, we must focus relentlessly on improving access, quality and completion throughout our education pipeline and we must strengthen all of the transitions to postsecondary education from early learning, K-12, adult education, workforce training and community-based programs. Doing so will enable more and more Americans to have the knowledge, skills, creativity, ethics and support to live, work, solve our most pressing problems, and contribute positively to society for generations to come.”

"Social stratification continues...the past 5 decades have produced a society 
where 47% of adult Americans cannot read or write at a high school level of 
competency. Further, an estimated one-third of our nation’s children are not prepared 
for kindergarten and we lose a quarter of high school students on the pathway to 
graduation, postsecondary education and the workforce. What’s more, 40% of first-time, 
full-time college students don’t complete their degrees in six years..."

 

The end of STAR tests is in sight: Ass'bly comm approves AB 484

UPDATE, May 1, 2013: The Assembly Education Committee approved Assembly Bill 484 (Bonilla), which would limit the use of outdated Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) system tests for the 2013-14 school year and begin statewide use of new assessments aligned to California’s Common Core State Standards in 2014-15. (See story below.)

May 1, 2013: This afternoon's meeting of the Assembly Education Committee, chaired by Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), will hear testimony from state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, speaking on behalf of AB 484, legislation he has sponsored (it was introducted by Assemblymember Susan Bonilla, D-Concord) that will create a new, state-wide assessment system to use computer-based exams to measure and promote student progress.

AB 484 would suspend the use of many current Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) tests for the '14-'15 school year and begin the new programs -- which are aligned to the California Common Core Standards -- in school year '14-'15. 

Addressing the general issue yesterday at the American Educational Research Association conference in San Francisco, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledged that the introduction of the Common Core standards, as well as new assessment tools, are going to create “a couple of choppy years” for schools, according to a report by Jane Meredith Adams on EdSource. [Duncan] said he had been talking at length with educators, including Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, about how to help schools navigate the change...When an audience member asked if Duncan would consider a moratorium on standardized testing until teachers get up to speed on the Common Core and the assessment tools prove to be effective, Duncan said, “We understand this is a difficult tough time of transition..." 

Yesterday, Camille Maben, executive director of  First 5 California, and First 5's deputy director of programs, Diane Levin, joined Duncan during a tour of San Francisco's Cross Cultural Family Center, a site that is modeling universal preschool. A roundtable discussion there discussed providing quality care and early ed with a blend of local, state, and federal monies. (The Cross Cultural Family Center receives funding fromFirst 5,  the California Department of Education, local funding as a San Francisco Universal Preschool site and federal funds as a San Francisco Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant site.)

Today, Duncan joined Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) to meet at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale with members of the Equity and Excellence Commission to discuss recommendations in the Commission's report, "For Each and Every Child." At noon, he will speak on the Obama Administration's second-term education agenda  at the NewSchools Venture Fund's annual summit at the SFO Marriott, and will engage in a question-and-answer session moderated by NewSchools Venture Fund board member, Laurene Powell Jobs. That event will be streamed live. 

Duncan will remain in the Bay Area to speak at the national conference of the Education Writers Association at Stanford tomorrow.