California's Children

Illegal fees, school budgets, tech ed needs & ACLU: what is fair?

May 22, 2012: A technology program to provide iPads (or a similar device) for every 4th and 5th grader at Tierra Bonita Elementary school in the Poway Unified School District (San Diego County) may violate the state constitution guaranteeing every student the right to a free education, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that district officials received a letter from ACLU lawyer David Loy, at left, questioning the intent of a survey and follow-up email sent earlier this month by the Tierra Bonita principal Joe Erpelding (below, left).

The survey outlines 4 options for parents and caregivers: using the family's own device; buying one from the district ($379 plus extras); renting (to own) one ($53 a month for 10 months); or borrowing one from the district free of charge. The survey clearly states that only 10% of students can borrow a device for the program to be viable.

The ACLU quotes the principal as telling parents on May 2:

“We are just 15 commitments [on options 1,2, or 3] away from being the first school in Poway to equip all students in 4th and 5th grade next year with a digital device. If you have not turned in a response, we need you.” the letter, Loy wrote that the survey and email “go far beyond assessing interest in the program or willingness to make a voluntary contribution.”

“Instead, they exert significant pressure on families to either provide or pay for a digital device. This pressure is dangerously close if not tantamount to directly charging an illegal fee...,” Loy wrote.

Poway Unified Superintendent John Collins said in a statement that he is arranging a meeting with the ACLU to address its concerns.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

The DQ: Torlakson on teacher accountability & federal $

“It’s time to leave behind No Child Left Behind." --  State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, in a written statement to the US Dept. of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The comment was attached to California's request for specific waivers from the federal requirements of the  Elementary and Secondary Education Act (known, since the G.W.Bush Administration, as "No Child Left Behind"). “This request capitalizes on our strengths – our well-established accountability system. It also provides school districts an opportunity to get the relief they deserve now, and the flexibility they need to direct limited funds where they will do the most good," Torlakson added.

As Kathryn Baron reports in today's Educated Guess:

...the State Board approved submitting a “state-defined waiver” through the general waiver provision written into ESEA that allows the Secretary to approve waivers if states show that they will:

1. Increase the quality of instruction for students, and
2. improve the academic achievement of students. 

California proposes to achieve those goals primarily by dumping No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress assessment system in favor of a single system using the state’s Academic Performance Index (API), and sharpening the focus of the API to concentrate on improving instruction in schools with the absolute lowest scores and largest achievement gaps.

Editorial: Houston juvvie justice puts LA to shame: Ridley-Thomas

April 28, 2012: From City Watch LA, written by Mark Ridley-Thomas, at left, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. This piece first appeared in Zocalo Public Square.

VOICES FROM PUBLIC SQUARE - Several weeks ago, I was a spectator in a remarkable classroom. An instructor from India was teaching a group of African-American, Latino, and white high school students about religion in South Asia and showing them pictures of Krishna, Vishnu, and Ganesha on a multimedia “smart board” she controlled with a laptop computer. 
As a former teacher and a career civil rights advocate interested in improving education for minority youths, I found the scene heartwarming. But the visit was also heartbreaking. 

The class was taking place in a juvenile detention facility in Houston. Of course, seeing young men incarcerated is always tragic. But what hurt most was realizing that this everyday ritual in Texas—in which students gathered in an innovative, engaging class in a youth probation camp—was something I’d rarely see in Los Angeles. 

Kids on farms: US Labor Dept. gives up child labor revisions

UPDATE, April 28, 2012: Evidently, enough already for the U.S. Department of Labor: last Thursday, the department, which had been conducting public comments for months on its overdue (first in 40 years) revision to the child labor laws, announced it was withdrawing from the fray, which has pitted the vocational education/family farm needs against the advocates for an underage rural poor and migrant labor force -- two different populations, each with legitimate concerns and needs, and for whom no legislative language could reconcile.

In its official statement, the Department of Labor said the “decision to withdraw this rule — including provisions to define the ‘parental exemption’ — was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of the proposed rules on small family-owned farms. Instead, the Departments of Labor and Agriculture will work with rural stakeholders – such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union, the FFA, and 4-H – to develop an educational program to reduce accidents to young workers and promote safer agricultural working practices.”

See full story as covered here, below.

UPDATE, April 23, 2012:  The upgrade to the child labor laws -- the first in 40 years -- from the U.S. Department of Labor, is generating a "war of words," that, as reporter Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio [New York's Hudson Valley] put it, "could reshape the way Americans think about farms and farm work."

8,197 teacher projects funded by 143K people thru donorschoose.org: LAUSD

February 15, 2012: The Wasserman Foundation, a family educational charity established in 1952 by Lew Wasserman, a movie studio mogul, and his wife Edie, in partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District, has donated $4 million to fund classroom projects in the district through donorschoose.org, an online charity where public school teachers can submit requests for supplies for classroom projects, and donors can choose which to support.

The Wasserman Foundation, currently run by grandson Casey Wasserman, at left, donated $5.3 million to LAUSD in 2009; the recent campaign brings the total donation to $9.3 million.

Wasserman's $4 million donation funded a total of 8,197 LAUSD classroom projects in less than 3 months.