California's Children

188 CA school districts (2.6M students) are broke

UPDATE, May 23, 2012: The list of school districts unable to meet its financial obligations has grown to 188, up from 127 since February, breaking the records for the number of children -- 2.6 million (41% of CA students) --  attending schools with insecure financial futures. These districts include the state's two largest:  Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified.

"This is the kind of record no one wants to set. Across California, parents, teachers, and administrators are increasingly wondering how to keep their schools' lights on, their bills paid, and their doors open," [CA Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom] Torlakson said. 

The California Department of Education released the numbers Monday in its Second Interim Status Report: 12 school districts were assigned a "negative certification," meaning they are unable to meet financial obligations for this school year; 176 school districts were given " qualified certification," indicating there are serious concerns about this year and the following two fiscal years ('12-'13 and '13-'14).

Districts with negative certifications:

1	Los Angeles	Inglewood Unified	124.9
2	Monterey	South Monterey County Joint Union High	18.8
3	Nevada	Nevada City Elementary	8.2
4	San Luis Obispo	Paso Robles Joint Unified	56.2
5	San Mateo	Portola Valley Elementary	11.4
6	Shasta	Cottonwood Union Elementary	7.7
7	Shasta	Pacheco Union Elementary	4.7
8	Solano	Travis Unified	41.4
9	Solano	Vallejo City Unified	139.6
10	Sonoma	Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified	46.4
11	Stanislaus	La Grange Elementary	0.3
12	Tulare	Hot Springs Elementary	0.5

 The record-setting trend may continue, writes Kathryn Baron for Thoughts on Public Education (TOPed): 

The list of districts on the negative and qualified lists may continue to set somber new records depending on what happens in November.  "Second interim certifications are assuming a better budget environment than realistically may be there after November,” Joel Montero, CEO of the state’s fiscal crisis management and assistance team (FCMAT), at left, told TOPed.  ”Without that assumption, it is likely the numbers of qualified and negative districts would have been higher.”

Montero told a state Assembly committee two weeks ago that small and rural districts face the largest impact from another round of midyear cuts. “Small and tiny rural districts don’t really have an economy of scale,” said Montero. They don’t have enough money or students to absorb any additional losses, particularly when those losses come in the form of deferrals, the $9 billion-plus that the state owes to school districts.

...Two of the districts, Vallejo City Unified and South Monterey Joint Union High School, have already been bailed out by the state and are under a state-appointed administrator. 

 The district is seeking to lower the interest rate on its state loan from 5.44% to 1% through legislation, but so far Senate bill 1240 and Assembly bill 1858 are on the suspense files in the appropriations committees of their respective houses.

Previously reported on the First Interim Status Report:

Oh, whoops: US News fails Data Correlation 101

 UPDATE, May 22, 2012: Two high schools in California may have been erroneously placed in the top 10 for the US News and World Report 2012 Best High School Rankings due to under-reporting of class sizes; further, one school may have lost its high ranking due to an error in the International Baccalaureate (IB) data, reports Matt Clark for the San Diego Union Tribune.

 The School of International Studies at San Diego High School was ranked #678, much lower than previous years (#11), due a federal ID coding error by the Swiss IB organization, wrote U.S. News director of Data Research, Robert Morse, in an email to the district.

San Marcos High (San Diego) and Dublin High (Alameda), ranked #3 and #4 in California respectively (#11 and #12 in the nation), were reported to have significantly lower senior class numbers, making the number of Advanced Placement (AP) and IB tests per student seem disproportionately high.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the federal agency from which the publication obtained the senior class size data, said it is reviewing the data of all the schools used in the rankings. The center said it has only noticed ranking-affecting errors with those three schools.

Previously reported: 

May 17, 2012: The 2012 Best High Schools, a list compiled by the magazine, US News & World Report, was released yesterday; 577 CA high schools made the list; four are in the national top 12. Six of the CA schools are public charters.

Stress fractures in big districts: schools are poor, kids are poorer

May 9, 2012: Eight "stress factors" affect California's 30 largest school districts (with a combined population of nearly 2 million students, a third of the state's enrollment) and threaten the ability of these districts to provide a quality education.

These stresses and their effect are analyzed in an EdSource report, "Schools Under Stress: Pressures Mount on California's Largest School Districts," written and researched by EdSource executive director Louis Freedberg, at left, with program assistant Susan Frey. Freedberg, announcing the results of the report yesterday, tied the data to the tax initiatives that California voters will vote on in November. The data was gathered by three EdSource surveys, conducted between July 2011 and March 2012; the purpose was to provide an overview to how districts are responding to "the cascading impacts of the Great Recession on schools and the children they serve."

"...most voters have no way of objectively assessing the extent of the challenges facing these schools," said Freedberg. "We hope this report can help fill that gap." The report is free; the PDF can be downloaded here.

The big picture that emerges from the data is grim. The key findings are summarized by John Fensterwald in today's Educated Guess:

Childhood poverty: Rates of childhood poverty increased since 2007 in 26 of the 30 largest districts. Poverty rates, as defined by federal guidelines, approached 50% in districts hardest hit by the recession: Fresno (49%) and Stockton (46%). In San Bernadino City Unified, the childhood poverty rate rose 60%, to 43% from 2007-2008.

Fewer Summer Programs: Most districts have cut back their summer programs drastically since the recession,  compounding problems for students struggling to advance to the next grade or considering dropping out. Enrichment summer programs have all but disappeared. This year, Los Angeles Unified will restrict summer offerings to a handful of high schools.

Fewer Instructional Days: Twelve of the 30 districts have fewer than 180 instructional days, the norm until a few years ago. While three districts – Fontana, Long Beach, and San Jose – restored the week they had lost, three more – San Bernadino City, Moreno Valley and Chino Valley – joined another half-dozen districts at 175 days.

Larger classes: Only Stockton of the 30 districts has an average class size of 20 or fewer, and only in kindergarten. Half of the districts now report more than 30 students per class in one or more elementary grades, while two (San Francisco and Los Angeles have kept K-3 below 23). The Legislature began to relax the state’s class-size reduction rules three years ago; Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to remove all limits (subject to local bargaining) next year.

Fewer counselors: California already had the nation’s highest rate of counselors to students  (1,810 to 1, 50% higher than the national average as of two years ago). There are on average 20% fewer counselors in 22 of 30 districts than pre-recession.

Teacher layoffs: Of 96,000 teachers in the 30 districts in 2010-11, nearly 11,000 received notices; of those 20% or 2,213 were laid off last year. This year, with uncertainty over the November tax initiative looming, Los Angeles alone issued 9,507 layoff notices in March and San Diego 1,655. What cannot be quantified is the impact on teacher and school morale of massive notices. But the uncertainty is distracting and dispiriting, with teachers focusing much of their attention on job searches.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

Asperger's kids most bullied; 5th grade is worst time

April 2, 2012: Preliminary findings from a survey conducted by the Interactive Autism Network (IAN) at the Kennedy Kreiger Institute, John Hopkin's University, suggest that 63% of children diagnosed with autism or a related disorder (the generic term is autistic spectrum disorder (ASD)) reported being bullied...39% of the children who attend school (i.e., are not home-schooled)... in the past month, a rate 3 times higher than their siblings, reports Yahoo's Healthday News.

Children with Aspergers syndrome, the highest functioning disorder on the autism spectrum, were bullied at twice the rate of children diagnosed with other forms of ASD; the problem was the most pervasive during 5th grade ....

"These survey results show the urgent need to increase awareness, influence school policies and provide families and children with effective strategies ..." Paul Law M.D., director of the IAN Project, said in an institute news release.

IAN researchers, in partnership with Benjamin Zablotsky, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Catherine Bradshaw, Ph.D., deputy director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence and co-director of the Johns Hopkin's Center for Prevention and Early Intervention, surveyed a total of 1,200 parents of children with ASD, ages 6 to 15.

The survey examined whether the child had ever been bullied, was bullied in the past month, or had ever behaved as a bully; it also asked whether the child had ever been triggered into aggressive behavior on purpose, the type of school the child attended, what behaviors the child displayed (e.g., rocking, hand flapping, talking endlessly about a favorite topic), and whether the child had any co-occurring conditions, such as anxiety or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

900 LA kids live in "inappropriate" DCFS placements, audit finds

UPDATE, March 30, 2012:  The state auditor, Elaine M. Howle, at left, released her report on the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services on Thursday, and the results, as reported in the Los Angeles Times by Garrett Therolf, are not flattering. Among some of the expected concerns, such as lags between reports of suspected neglect or abuse and social worker investigations, were some new problems:

...The audit also uncovered fresh problems at the Department of Children and Family Services and reported that the thousands of cembers do not have proper safety measures in place.

 The department failed to perform all required assessments and criminal background checks before placing children in homes for nine of the 20 placements with a relative reviewed by the auditor.

Between 2008 and 2010, the department assessed and approved fewer than a third of the homes and caregivers before placing children with relatives, the auditor said.

Nearly 900 children lived in homes of relatives that -- once assessed by the department -- were determined to be unsafe or inappropriate. It typically took 43 days to either remove these children from the placements or reassess and approve the homes, the auditor said.

Previously reported:

October 27, 2011: State Auditor Elaine M. Howle said child welfare officials failed to check the sex offender registry even after her office advised them to do so in 2008, according to a story that broke today in the Los Angeles Times from reporter and child welfare advocate Garrett Therolf. In a report released from Howle's department, the audit notes over 1,000 addresses of California foster homes matched that of registered sex offenders in the state's Dept. of Justice Sex and Arson Registry. The Associated Press quoted Howle as saying that 600 of the addresses were "tied to high-risk offenders."