Antonio Sanchez, 31, and Monica Ratliff, 43,  are vying for one of seven seats on the Los Angeles Board of Education. Ratliff has strong appeal to educators with her background as a legal aid attorney and as a successful teacher at a high-performing school, but what Sanchez lacks in experience he makes up for in financial support thanks to his background in campaigns and connections to political figures.

According to Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times, Sanchez earned 44% of the vote in the March 5 primary. Ratliff came next and pulled in 34% of the vote.

 The campaign spending has been lopsided for Sanchez. The Coalition for School Reform, the mayor’s group, amassed more than $1 million for the runoff, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and L.A. philanthropist Eli Broad the largest donors. To date, independent groups, including the L.A. County Federation of Labor and Local 99 of Service Employees International, have spent nearly $1.9 million for Sanchez.

Sanchez’s fundraising has earned him about $132,000, while Ratliff has raised $42,000 with no outside help.

Sanchez is praised for his political instincts. He has the blessing of a phalanx of labor allies already in office. He is known by the county labor federation for his work defeating Proposition 32 as a mid-level aide. While completing his master’s degree in urban and regional planning at UCLA he served as field representative for a a state legislator and LA Mayor Villaraigosa.

He also has a personal connection to many of the students in the district, having entered into school without being able to speak English.

Even with all of the financial backing and likability factor, some have doubts about his lack of experience:

 ”We liked him, but his response to our questions lacked depth,” said Judith Perez, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents district administrators. Ratliff “had a deep knowledge of teaching and learning. She was clear on the priorities of students in the district.”

Ratliff is set apart by her experience of over a decade in the classroom at a school that is similar to ones in the constituency, and it achieved high test scores despite the student population coming mostly from low income families.

Many teachers are upset that the United Teachers Los Angeles did not back Ratliff 100%. This was partly because the union depleted its funds to back Steve Zimmer in the March primary and the union was hesitant to borrow funds since it looked inevitable that Sanchez would win before the primary.

Even though many teachers volunteered individually for Ratliff, the union’s neutrality has helped Sanchez.

In union meetings, the leadership has said that Sanchez was being groomed for higher office by officials they needed to appease, especially if they wanted to prevail in the Legislature on laws affecting teaching evaluations and tenure rules, said members who were present.

Some high-level union members alleged that there was a deal for Sanchez to let UTLA choose his chief of staff — which top officials and Sanchez deny.

The post LA Board of Education Election Pits Teacher Against Upstart Politician appeared first on Education News.

by Matthew K. Tabor

At Weigand Elementary in Los Angeles, parents were so dissatisfied with the leadership of the school’s principal that they used the state’s parent trigger law to send that principal packing. It’s the third parent trigger victory in California, with two districts aided by Parent Revolution winning the right to be turned around by a non-profit charter network — but this is the first time a school’s administration has been singled out for change.

Matthew K. Tabor

Weigand parents claimed that the school’s principal fostered a culture of intimidation with teachers and was anything but friendly to parents. 61% of Weigand parents signed on to force reform that will see a new principal — and hopefully a more effective leader – step in.

This is a significant development because it testifies to how historically difficult it has been for parents and the community to change their schools.

Anyone well-versed in the dark arts of parent and community involvement in schools understands the ‘Parent Involvement Paradox’: Schools constantly ask you to be involved, but they make it very difficult to help in a meaningful way.

Schools tend to want parent and community help — as long as it’s on the school’s terms. They’re most welcome to offer their charity, whether it’s money or time, as long as their contribution matches up exactly with what the school will let you do.

Volunteers can generally serve refreshments at a dance or campaign for the passage of a school budget with the full support of your local school board, but try to involve yourself in the operations of a school or district — say, a finance expert wanting to weigh in on a fiscal plan, a tech entrepreneur offering to lend his expertise about digital media, or a CEO helping out on management or leadership — and in an instant a gauntlet of obstacles appear that would make an Olympic 3,000m steeplechase runner nervous. Personnel is a virtually untouchable issue, especially when it comes to specific school leaders.

When community members choose involvement that doesn’t fit a school’s modus operandi, a school becomes a bridezilla who screams at a guest for giving a wedding gift that isn’t from her registry. That guest tends not to be welcome at her future functions until they step in line and perform as commanded.

It’s not uncommon for a community to try to reform a school, though. Parents and community members unhappy with a school’s leadership frequently try to make a change, but they have little power and the deck is stacked against them. Parents worry about retribution against their kids for making an issue (and that happens); they clash with well-organized, well-funded unions; they can be labeled divisive members of their community, which can bring terrible fallout personally and professionally.

And that’s all for a years-long battle with an abysmal success rate. In the end they usually hear, “If you don’t like it, run for the school board” (which most folks aren’t able to do for a host of reasons). Sometimes these movements field a candidate or two who are successful — and who then clash with a board majority frequently backed by school loyalists keen to put down their rebellion.

As this happens, years go by as schools can be run into the ground. Performance declines, new and often expensive problems pop up, and thousands of students are ill-served.

Non-parents speak out here and there, but parents tend to grit their teeth and bear a bad situation, which can include high private tutoring costs and a tremendous investment of time (as they continue to pay taxes for an ineffective school), until their child is out of the system. Then they breathe a sigh of relief and wash their hands of school politics and a new generation of parents further down the road are left to kick the can.

Many years, tremendous personal costs, little hope of meaningful success. One can understand why community members don’t think of themselves as David and why they think it takes more than a sling and a stone to fell a school Goliath.

But the parent trigger, whether it’s used for addressing leadership problems or for forcing an overhaul of an entire school, is a game-changer. It allows parents and communities to organize and become involved in a way that a school has to take seriously — and on a reasonable timeline.

The parent trigger is a solution to part of that ‘Parent Involvement Paradox.’ It’s a shame that we need a law to force schools to take community input seriously, but generations of frustrated parents and taxpayers are reading about Weigand and Parent Revolution and saying, “Can you imagine if we had this so many years ago?”

Now more parents will be able to look across the dinner table and say, “Look what we did.”

Matthew K. Tabor is the editor of EducationNews.org. He can be reached at editor@educationnews.org.

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Tuesday the Los Angeles Unified District School Board voted to ban suspensions for “willful defiance”. Starting next year alternative disciplinary measures will be taken for infractions such as dress code violations, eating in the classroom and mouthing off to teachers instead of the traditional suspension, reports Vanessa Romo on Takepart.com.

This change is being instituted with the knowledge that taking kids out of the classroom does not prove to be an effective method when disciplining students with behavioral issues. LAUSD officials also hope that it will help eliminate racial profiling in the classroom.

The U.S. Department of Education conducted a study that showed African-American students are suspended over three times as often as white students.

 “In LAUSD, African-American children make up nine percent of the student body, but they account for 26 percent of all suspensions, nearly half of which are for willful defiance offenses.”

The district has yet to outline a budget, causing administrators to worry about the reality of the plan. In order to have effective support for students, the schools would likely need to hire addition personnel.

Lack of staff in schools is already a problem:

 “Currently in LAUSD, the school personnel-to-students ratio is at an all-time high. Public elementary schools must have more than 1,150 students before an assistant principal is assigned. Ideally, said Perez, there should be one for every 700 students. She calls the counselor ratio “horrendous.” The average high school counselor is responsible for 500 students.”

Despite the fact that it will require a lot of work from the schools, the benefits are well worth it, as demonstrated in East Los Angeles at Garfield High School. The students, faculty and community groups all signed “promise letters” to do whatever it takes to turn the school around and avoid a district take over. After three years with long hours put in by teachers developing behavioral plans for individual students, as well as alternative disciplinary methods in the classroom, the school was able to raise its API score by 114 points and keep control.

Takepart.com’s Kristen Kloberdanz reports another successful switch from traditional suspensions to a restorative justice system in the Oakland Unified School District.

The system includes a three tier model including prevention, repairing harm and alternatives to suspension with support for re-entry. The first tier ensures that the students are made to feel they are important and that they are learning in a caring environment. The second replaces suspension with counseling, peer circle groups, and peer mediation. The third welcomes students back to school with open arms who have been expelled from other schools or previously incarcerated.

“In 2007, restorative justice was tested at an Oakland middle school that had a high expulsion and suspension rates. Within three years, suspensions were reduced by 87 percent and there were no more expulsions. This year a three-tiered model of whole school restorative justice, which includes professional development and coaching, is being provided to 13 OESD pilot sites.”

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Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy came under heavy fire in the wake of a sex abuse scandal that revealed elementary teacher Mark Berndt’s years of sexual misconduct in an LAUSD school. After February, 2012′s revelation that the district had a serious problem with identifying and dealing with potential abuse, LAUSD increased its efforts to remove offending teachers from their classrooms.

And now approximately 600 Los Angeles teachers are seeing those efforts bear fruit. Barbara Jones of The Mendocino Beacon reports that LAUSD has fired 100 teachers, forced 200 to resign and removed 300 more from the classroom as allegations of abuse are investigated.

The mass effort appears to be the result of a culture change in LAUSD. In the past, as in nearly all major school systems nationwide, dealing with allegations of misconduct in Los Angeles were difficult and expensive. It could take several years of hearings and appeals — all of which cost the district — to fire a teacher. Principals who took the necessary steps to remove teachers from classrooms rarely had their requests honored by boards, which meant that teachers would be returned to the school and often instigated a negative professional climate.

But now that administrators have the support of LAUSD, they’re coming forth in droves to deal with complaints about teacher misconduct that include sexual contact, emotional/mental abuse and corporal abuse — and some of the allegations are nothing short of outrageous:

“God, how do I even explain this?” Deasy asked, before recounting that a Westside elementary teacher in his early 60s “trained” his students to give him a full-body massage for 20 minutes every day while he “rested.” Youngsters, including some special-education students, later told officials that he shouted profanities, spanked them and hit them with rolled-up papers when they misbehaved.

Not everyone is pleased with the crackdown, though. United Teachers Los Angeles, the city’s teachers union, has called it a “witch hunt” and charged the district with hasty, poorly-conducted investigations and a mood of guilty until proven innocent. A lawyer for UTLA summed up the union’s position:

“Every case must be judged on its own merits,” Schwab said. “But in a number of cases, the nature of the charges haven’t been appropriately investigated or have been too vigorously pursued and the evidence never supported such allegations.”

44 teachers have been investigated and cleared of allegations.

Legislators have also worked to streamline the process of investigating allegations, filing charges and dismissing teachers. AB 375, a bill introduced to the California Assembly, could fare better than previous attempts:

Assembly Bill 375 would set a deadline of seven months for the administrative appeal, start to finish. It has the support of UTLA and the California Teachers Association, which last year lobbied strongly against a bill that would have given a school board the final say in firing a teacher. Under heavy lobbying by the unions, that measure died in committee.

Despite the uncertain future of LAUSD’s aggressive project to end teacher misconduct, Deasy has expressed a solid commitment to deal with the issue. Of the prior practice of paying accused teachers to drop their appeals, Deasy said, “Not on my watch.”

The post Housecleaning in Los Angeles: Hundreds of Teachers Shuffled Out appeared first on Education News.

Three years before Los Angeles Unified School District teacher Robert Pimentel was arrested for inappropriate contact with students, district officials had a number of complaints from parents about his behavior. A newly released internal document shows that parents complained about Pimentel as early as 2009, yet there is no indication that district officials moved to investigate the claims.

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has promised a full investigation and four district administrators have been placed on leave pending its outcome.

The memo reads that parents complained about Pimentel inappropriately touching and caressing female students, offering them candy and photographing them without permission. The document was released by attorney Lois Carrillo, who is suing the district on behalf of more than a dozen clients alleging sexual misconduct by LAUSD teachers at a number of schools.

Pimentel, who prior to his arrest in January was teaching at De La Torre Elementary School in Wilmington, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he inappropriately touched 12 children under the age of 14. He is facing 14 felony counts covering the 2011-12 academic year and two more from years prior.

Carrillo said the document came from sources outside the school system. L.A. Unified, he alleged, has refused to provide materials relevant to the case. Deasy had no comment on the document itself, which has the word “confidential” typed across the top. Its letterhead is the “Office of Human Relations, Diversity and Equity” within “School Operations.”

The superintendent said he learned in detail about prior allegations against Pimentel in the weeks after the teacher’s arrest. Deasy previously had singled out former De La Torre Principal Irene L. Hinojosa for apparently not reporting allegations against Pimentel in 2002 and 2008.

In a tense mediated meeting between Deasy and district parents, the Superintendent said that in 2009, complaints about Pimentel reached senior administrator levels at the LAUSD for the first time. He added that he personally turned over documents relating to these complaints to the Los Angeles Police Department in February and that there’s an ongoing investigation into everyone who is employed by the district who was aware of the allegations.

The administrators on leave are: Linda Del Cueto, who was most recently the senior instructional leader in the San Fernando Valley; Mike Romero, head of the adult education division; David Kooper, principal at Gulf Elementary in Wilmington; and Valerie Moses, principal at Los Angeles Elementary in Harvard Heights.

The document states that “there was a parent who was too afraid to give the name of her niece who was inappropriately touched by this teacher. One parent stated that during culmination last year, [Pimentel] rubbed a student’s back several times, stroking her bra strap. The parents reported this behavior to the principal without any response. The parents stated that [Hinojosa] is friends with this teacher from their last school and this is why she is protecting him.”

The post Did LAUSD Know About Allegedly Abusive Teacher as Early as 2009? appeared first on Education News.

The classroom breakfast program in Los Angeles that was in danger of being axed following criticism from the teachers union has been given a reprieve – one imagines much to the relief of the 200,000 children that it feeds.

United Teachers Los Angeles complained that serving breakfast in the classroom wasted instructional time and created a mess, so LA Superintendent John Deasy declared that it would be eliminated without explicit board direction to retain it.

The threat of elimination didn’t solely affect the students who utilize the program; the Service Employees International Union Local 99 said that loss of the program would cost 900 school cafeteria worker jobs. The Union planned to rally at Hooper Avenue Elementary but that became unnecessary with the reprieve.

At least four of the seven LA Unified School Board members have explicitly come out in favor of the program, according to Teresa Watanabe of the LA Times: Monica Garcia, Bennett Kayser, Nury Martinez and Steve Zimmer. Tamar Galatzan is still undecided with Richard Vladovic and Marguerite LaMotte unavailable for comment.

“I am thrilled,” Deasy said Monday of the support for the program, which is set for a board vote May 14. “This is very good news for students who live in circumstances of poverty and need to eat.”

Nury Martinez said that the program was vital to the improvement of academic performance as hungry students had poorer attention spans and were at higher risk of absenteeism. She reiterated her support for any initiative that ensured students were able to begin the day in a suitable condition to learn and that their being well-nourished was a significant aspect of that.

The data appears to back her assertion:

So far, the classroom program has increased participation from 29% to 89% and this year brought in $6.1 million in federal school breakfast reimbursements, according to David Binkle, the district’s food services director. That figure is projected to increase to $20 million if the program is expanded to more than 680 schools as has been planned.

While the classroom breakfast program was the most publicized item set to be axed without explicit board approval there are several others on the list Deasy sent out in mid-April.

Deasy said he expected the board to back funding for other items, such as more school police. He said last week he would give “maximum responsibility” to the board to decide between those programs and the teachers union’s demands for more jobs and higher pay.

The post Los Angeles Classroom Breakfast Program Stays Despite Union Gripes appeared first on Education News.

Members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) teachers union have expressed “no confidence” in the performance the district superintendent John Deasy in a formal vote. More than 90% of those casting a ballot said that they did not agree with Deasy’s handling of his professional responsibilities.

More than 17,000 of the union’s 32,000 members voted in the referendum. The vote is non-binding on Deasy, but union leadership says that the outcome means that their members approve of the aggressive stance they have taken against policies promoted by Deasy and other district official.

Even before the outcome of the vote was made public, Deasy called the whole enterprise “nonsense,” including the campaign waged on the union website to sway the member votes via poorly photoshopped pictures of the Superintendent in various unflattering settings.

Still, a no confidence vote was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. The referendum came soon after union members overwhelmingly approved a new teacher evaluation agreement and after L.A. Unified School District restored unpaid furlough days. The confidence vote was placed before teachers by the union’s House of Representatives, which contains many new delegates and younger teachers, who were presumed to be more supportive of Deasy.

Teachers who expressed dissatisfaction with Deasy chiefly complained about the new focus on standardized exams, saying that this has made the classroom a less enjoyable place for both students and instructors.

Yet the opprobrium wasn’t universal. Chris Records, who voted in support of Deasy, said that he was encouraged by the stances he took in support of both school leaders and teachers themselves — especially when he showed the willingness to work with the union on the teacher evaluation issue.

Anticipating the outcome, Deasy’s defenders rallied Thursday with a letter to the L.A. Board of Education.

“Although we have a long journey ahead of us, we believe that LAUSD leadership is taking the appropriate and productive steps to achieve success for all of its students,” the letter states, citing rising test scores and graduation rates and few student suspensions. “During his tenure Dr. Deasy has proven himself a more than capable leader.”

Those signing the letter included James Cuno, head of the J. Paul Getty Trust; Antonia Hernandez, chief executive of the California Community Foundation; Monica Lozano, publisher of La Opinion; and Gary Toebben, president of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce.

The vote of no confidence on Deasy did overshadow the other issue on the ballot, which asked the voters to evaluate the performance of the current union leadership — a measure that gained 77% approval.

The post Los Angeles Teachers Union Votes No Confidence on Deasy appeared first on Education News.

If John Deasy cares about the outcome of the Los Angeles teachers union’s upcoming no-confidence vote, he isn’t showing it by acting less decisively. While appearing with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Deasy spoke about doing away with the notorious district practice called the ‘Dance of the Lemons’ – where underperforming teachers are transferred from school to unsuspecting school – by announcing that the district has taken steps to get rid of ineffective teachers much more quickly.

Although it’s easy to believe that the vast majority of LAUSD teachers are competent and good at their jobs, there are still reasons to suspect that a bad apple can hide in the district a lot longer than a similarly poorly-performing employee in a private sector might. Across the United States, between 2 and 6% of all employees are fired annually, yet in LA schools, only about .001% lose their jobs in any given year.

United Teachers Los Angeles and the California Teachers Association, with their enormous political influence at the state and district level, had fixed things so that even the worst teacher could tap a multistep appeals process that on average took more than a year and cost schools hundreds of thousands of dollars per case. Terrible teachers often were reinstated, so for decades, principals quietly transferred them to other L.A. schools — the “dance” that, when finally detailed by L.A. Weekly and other media, spawned intense criticism.

The difference is in the numbers. In 2005-06, a total of 6 teachers were fired in the district with an additional 10 persuaded to resign. The following year only three were let go outright, with 15 tendering their resignations under duress. But in the first full academic year after Deasy took over as head of the LAUSD in 2010, 99 tenured teachers were let go and 122 were convinced to resign.

Many were fired for misconduct — say, for sleeping in class, showing movies every day or touching a child inappropriately. Many others were let go for incompetence. Deasy, in his clipped way, calls it “dismissals for unsatisfactory performance.”

Vivian Ekchian, head of LAUSD’s human resources division, has worked under four superintendents — Deasy, Cortines, David Brewer and Roy Romer. She says they all cared about holding teachers to competency standards, but Deasy’s sheer intensity and willingness to put money behind it moved the ball forward for the first time.

The high numbers are thanks to a policy put into effect by Deasy while he was still the district’s #2 in October 2010. The new policy would submit for dismissals any teacher who was deemed unsatisfactory after two years.

The post Deasy Putting a Stop to the ‘Dance of the Lemons’ in LA appeared first on Education News.

The Los Angeles teachers union is to hold a confidence vote on Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy, the Los Angeles Times reports. Although the outcome of the vote will have no direct impact on Deasy’s job, it will serve as an indicator of the strength of the relationship between the head of the district and teachers it employs.

The chief issue in front of union members is the performance pay system championed by Deasy which will have up to 30% of pay determined by student standardized test scores and other objective achievement measures. Although the union voted to accept the usage of those metrics in pay determinations, they did so only after being forced by the courts.

The union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has been at odds with Deasy over various issues, such as his efforts to base layoffs on a merit system rather than seniority. Deasy also has moved quickly to remove and fire teachers suspected of serious misconduct — and is seeking authority from the state to move faster still.

Deasy’s own job security was an issue in the March school board election, which ended with mixed results for his supporters.

Voting is set to begin next week and will conclude on April 11th, and members will be asked to decide on the question of whether they have confidence in how Deasy is performing his job. In addition to voting on Deasy, teachers will also be asked to commit or reject the new Initiative for the Schools LA Students Deserve? which calls for working together with the community to negotiate with education officials over issues like class sizes, extra-curricular programs and limits on standardized testing.

The referendum resulted from a petition with 1,130 valid member signatures. The Deasy question was added later, as a result of a vote by UTLA’s House of Representatives, which is the union’s governing body.

Union President Warren Fletcher has endorsed the organizing initiative. He said he is choosing not to state a position on the no-confidence vote. But the union’s newspaper, which is substantially under Fletcher’s control, has promoted the no-confidence vote with doctored photos of Deasy and lists of his alleged failings.

Although union president Warren Fletcher declined to state a position on the no-confidence vote, the union newspaper – which is generally considered to be under the president’s editorial control – did publish a photoshopped photo of Deasy wearing a chef’s hat and a soiled apron accusing him of serving substandard fare to children participating in the classroom breakfast program.

The post Deasy Faces Confidence Vote from Los Angeles Teachers Union appeared first on Education News.

Former Senator Martha Escutia is calling for an investigation of the Los Angeles Unified School District into what she sees as a pattern of teacher abuse against Latino students. Escutia made the announcement at the Wilmington Elementary School earlier this week, saying that among the recent rash of abuse scandals coming to light, there appears to be a prevalence of cases where teachers transgressed against Latino kids, especially in low-income parts of the city.

Escutia is part of the legal team that is representing the nearly 30 abuse victims of the Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt. She also called out district administrators for withholding information on up to 600 other suspected cases of abuse at Miramonte and elsewhere.

Escutia compared LAUSD’s actions to that of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, whose leaders famously stonewalled government investigations into sexual abuse allegations as well as kept information from victims seeking restitution.

Escutia’s comments come several days after law enforcement officials announced the arrest of former LAUSD teacher Robert Pimentel on charges he sexually abused at least 20 children at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary School in Wilmington, where Escutia held her press conference.

In that case, the school’s principal at the time took no action when similar allegations were leveled against the same teacher at another school, according to LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. Pimentel and the principal, Irene Hinojosa, both retired on the same day as Deasy was moving to fire them, he told the Los Angeles News Group, which includes the Daily Breeze.

Still, Escutia found Deasy’s response inadequate, saying that the LAUSD was keeping mum on the pervasive problem of sexual abuse in its schools. The district responded to her allegations by issuing a statement outlining the steps it has taken to uncover, investigate and punish those guilty of misconduct with students.

David Holmquist, LAUSD’s general counsel, said that not only has the district been more vigorous in its actions against teachers accused of serious misconduct, but they’ve also implemented policies that would make it easier for people to report incidents and get action on them from those in authority.

Holmquist said the district is working with state Sen. Alex Padilla, a San Fernando Valley Democrat, on a bill that would speed the process of firing teachers accused of serious misconduct.

He also cited reforms that have already occurred within the district, such as a new policy mandating that parents be notified within 72 hours of any misconduct allegations at a school where their children attend.

The Miramonte Elementary scandal erupted a year ago, when police arrested teacher Mark Berndt at his Torrance residence on suspicion of lewd acts, such as taking photos of kids eating spoonfuls of his semen.

The post Is an Investigation into Los Angeles Abuse Scandals Warranted? appeared first on Education News.