Wednesday, Larry Mantle’s AirTalk on KPCC focused on a new strategy that the LAPD plans to take for a test drive as a experimental program. The strategy is called predictive policing and it is already being tried out by the Santa Cruz PD, reportedly with some success. Now Los Angeles wants to give it a try—at least in the form of a pilot program.

Here are some clips from the show:

Police departments have been providing years of historic crime data to mathematicians, who’ve created algorithms to analyze and determine crime patterns. The results are predictions of where and when similar crimes are likely to occur.

Zach Friend, a crime analyst for the Santa Cruz Police Department, says the crime-fighting system is modeled on methods for predicting earthquake aftershocks. The tool comes from Santa Clara University Professor George Mohler who believes crimes follow similar patterns. Friend, who helped to launch the program in Santa Cruz, says the system works because crimes tend to occur in time and place-based patterns. Santa Cruz officials became interested in the program after the success of a similar pilot by the LAPD.

“You have a crime and there will be after-crimes that occur after that,” said Friend. The technology, he says, has helped Santa Cruz prevent crimes before they happen. Thus far his department has focused on burglaries and vehicle theft.

“The arrests are not the goal here,” says Friend, of how the program is working in Santa Cruz. Preventing crime is the goal.

In L.A., LAPD Captain Sean Malinowski says he’d like to push the envelope further; and next year use the technology to predict violent crimes. Each morning officers using the program enter crime reports into the system, which is already packed with eight years worth of data. The program then predicts 10 potential crime hot spots.

Malinowski says the technology represents a vast improvement to what the department currently uses.

“The instruments we are using seem blunt now, in terms of the kind of specificity we can get with data analysis,” he says. Malinowski says he believes the computer model helps to remove biases.

Marjorie Cohn, Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of law, worried that the program would lead to additional profiling and would provide an excuse for harassment.

My pal George Tita, criminologist from UC Irvine countered Professor Cohn’s concerns with down to earth information.

And, yes, Cohn’s fears could come to pass, but it would be up to LAPD management to keep an eye out for any such Minority Report-like problems.

In truth, on first bounce, the model sounds very promising.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Listen and see what you think.

DEAR SUPERVISORS: YOU’RE WORRYING ABOUT THE WRONG THING

The LA Times’ Rong-Gong Lin II has a story about the LA County Supervisors opining that crime will go up if, as Governor Brown intends, short-timer offenders (people given months-long sentences) serve out their time at the various county jails, rather than being sent to state prison for, say, 3 or 6 months, which is grossly inefficient and needlessly expensive.

The Sups also say that crime will go up if the lower-level offenders who are paroled from prison report, not to a state parole officer, but to a county probation officer (as it was decided would happen last month).

This last, especially, is ridiculous.

Currently, when inmates are released from state prison and transferred to the state parole system, they are given $200 so they can buy themselves a bus ticket home with instructions to contact a state parole officer within two business days.

But county authorities say that system [requiring them to instead contact a probation officer] could allow just-released prisoners to flee without making contact with a county probation officer.

Huh???

Lin notes that the supervisors also expressed some concern that the state won’t fork over enough money to pay for the County’s added responsibility with the short time prisoners and the parolees.

That, my dears, is the one legit worry out of this whole The Sky is Falling and Criminals are Coming to Get Us! routine.. Heck, if the state fails to pay up, we should all march on Sacramento, then plant ourselves outside the governor’s office and refuse to leave until he gets out his metaphorical wallet.

But until and unless we find out that Jerry plans to welsh on his promise to pay the cost incurred by the 58 counties when they shoulder the burden of some of the state’s prisoners and parolees, how about we dial back the crime wave scare tactics.

THE SISTER OF A MURDER VICTIM WORKS FOR JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM

Rebecca Weiker’s essay on the Juvenile Justice Exchange speaks eloquently for itself. Here’s how it opens:

A few months ago I spent the day meeting with a group of family members who have had their lives changed forever by acts of violence. Nobody there would have chosen to be a member of this group — all of us had either lost a loved one to murder, or had lost a loved one in an entirely different way. Many brothers, sisters, sons and daughters were sentenced to die in prison for a crime committed in their youth.

My sister Wendy was a therapist who was passionate about supporting young people with mental health problems. Almost 20 years ago she was murdered by one of her patients. All these years later, I only now am at a place where I can consider this crime from a position of empathy. I understand that I can choose what meaning to make of this experience.

I will never “get over” her death nor do I expect to shed the feeling of loss and deep sadness that comes from not having her in the world. She was truly a bright light in the world. She was my big sister and I looked up to her. I admired her commitment to justice, her warmth, her seemingly endless energy.

But, I believe it dishonors my sister’s memory every time a young person is sentenced to die in prison. In California prisons, nearly 300 youth have been sentenced to life in prison without parole. How can we decide that a young person’s life is entirely without worth when they are still unformed and immature?

Our broken system is far from offering real justice to either victims or offenders…

Note: Weiker is strongly in favor of passing Senate Bill 9, a California law that would give young people sentenced to life without parole the possibility of a hearing to determine if they deserve to be re-sentenced to a minimum sentence of 25-years-to-life.

Photo by Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times prognosticate

SCOTUS REVIEW IS SOUGHT FOR 2 ONLINE FREE SPEECH CASES, ONE INVOLVING STUDENTS AND “DOUCHEBAGS”

(Yes, you’re right, my inner 9-year-old does think it’s funny each time I type the word “douchebag.”)

Ahem…

The Student Press Law Center reports that the lawyers for two cases that involve online communication by students, and First Amendment rights, hope that the US Supremes will agree to hear their cases. Both address similar issues and have the potential to set precedent. Here are the rundowns on the cases, as reported by SPLC:

CASE 1: The Right to Mock in MySpace

“J.S.” was a student at Blue Mountain Middle School in Pennsylvania in 2007 when she was suspended for 10 days after creating a MySpace profile mocking the school principal, James McGonigle. Her parents sued the school district on her behalf for violating her First Amendment rights and their due process rights to discipline their child as they wished.

Both the district court and a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit found in favor of the school district. However, when the full Third Circuit court reheard the case along with an extremely similar one, Layshock v. Hermitage School District, it found in favor of the students in both cases.

CASE 2: The…er….Douchebag Matter

On April 25, a panel of judges from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Connecticut student Avery Doninger’s First Amendment rights were not violated when she was prevented from running for class office, and later prevented from accepting the office she was elected to by write-in ballot, after calling school administrators “douchebags” on her blog in 2007.

The Second Circuit determined that the district had been “objectively reasonable” in their decision to punish her for her blog post. It granted the district immunity from the lawsuit but did not address whether Doninger’s rights were violated.

Doninger attorney John Schoenhorn wrote in an email that he intends to ask the Supreme Court to hear an appeal in this case as well because the conflict between the Second Circuit and Third Circuit’s decisions could create confusion.

Here’s a more detailed account of the Doninger case.

Let us hope that the Supremes take on or both cases as the arguments will be interesting.

LAUSD AND THE NEW HOMEWORK POLICY

The LA Times Howard Blume writes about the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new homework policy, and how it is not a simple wrong/right matter.

Here’s how it opens:

Vanessa Perez was a homework scofflaw. The Marshall High School senior didn’t finish all of it — largely because she worked 24 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop.

Alvaro Ramirez, a junior at the Santee Education Complex, doesn’t have his own room and his mother baby-sits young children at night. “They’re always there and they’re always loud,” he said, explaining his challenges with homework.

The nation’s second-largest school system has decided to give students like these a break. A new policy decrees that homework can count for only 10% of a student’s grade.

Critics — mostly teachers — worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.

Some educators also object to a one-size-fits-all mandate they said could hamstring teaching or homogenize it. They say, too, that students who do their homework perform significantly better than those who don’t — a view supported by research.

But Los Angeles Unified is pressing forward.….

IS THE LOCKE TAKEOVER BY GREEN DOT WORKING? A REPORT CARD

It’s been three years since Green Dot Charter Schools fought for and won the right to take over and try to transform LAUSD’s desperately failing Locke High School. So how is the grand experiment doing?

An LA Times editorial says the progress is not exactly dramatic, yet it is slow, steady and in small increments.

That’s what I’ve heard too. In my experience, however, some miracles occur, not in a blinding flash of light, but in slow motion. Yet they are miracles nonetheless. Maybe the changes at Locke could be said to fall in that category.

Let us hope so.

The editorial is a good one. Here’s a clip. But read it all.

How did Green Dot do at stemming the tide of students who disappear from campus into lives usually plagued by high unemployment and low wages? Solidly better, but not the quick and extraordinary transformation everyone had hoped for. Not yet, anyway.

Charter schools are not the ultimate solution to bad public schools; rather, the solution lies in improving public schools so that they have adequate resources, good teachers and a stimulating curriculum. Like many charter operators, Green Dot has had financial help from outside foundations, help that isn’t available to most public schools.

Still, well-run charter schools have played a valuable role in pressuring public schools to improve, and they can be a lifeline to students who are sinking in crummy neighborhood schools or, in many cases, leaving school far too soon. In the case of Locke, the switch appears to be working, albeit more slowly and haltingly than Green Dot expected.

The charter operator deserves praise for its massive and earnest effort at Locke. It was the first charter school in Los Angeles to accept all of the students within its attendance boundaries, just as public schools do, rather than restricting enrollment and accepting students through a lottery. Students who choose their charter schools are motivated to follow the rules and achieve; public schools take all comers. The Locke takeover served as the model for L.A. Unified’s Public School Choice initiative, in which new schools and some failing schools were turned over to outside groups that filed the most promising applications. Some of those were groups of teachers, others were charter schools. All had to follow Green Dot’s example and admit all students within their enrollment boundaries.

BILL WANTS TO ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY IN CALIFORNIA

Don Thompson of the AP has the story. Here’s how it opens:

A state lawmaker on Monday introduced a bill seeking a public vote on whether California should abolish capital punishment and convert death sentences to life in prison, citing a study that said most condemned inmates die of suicide or old age despite billions in taxpayer costs.

Democratic Sen. Loni Hancock, of Berkeley, said the state can no longer afford the cost of trying capital cases, defending them through a lengthy appeals process and housing inmates in the nation’s most populous death row.

She cited a study prepared by Judge Arthur L. Alarcon of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell that calls the capital punishment system “a multibillion-dollar fraud on California taxpayers.”

Their analysis, to be published next month, estimates California has spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. In that time, California has executed just 13 inmates, which works out to $308 million per execution.

“Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons,” Hancock said in a statement. “California’s death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our state; it is helping to bankrupt us.”

Yeah. What she said.

NBC San Diego also has a report on the bill.

EVEN DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, CALIFORNIA KEPT ITS PARKS OPEN, BUT ALL THAT CHANGES IN SEPTEMBER

Speaking personally, I am still having a hard time believing that the state’s scheduled parks closure will truly occur, but Timothy Egan’s NY Times Op-ed brings home the mind-numbing reality that California may really shutter some of its most irreplaceable and historic sites.

For a few months, still, you can see the sunlit room where the author of “Call of the Wild” wrote his daily thousand words before noon, and walk under redwoods and wild oaks on his 1,400-acre Beauty Ranch, where he pioneered “sustainability” before anyone was pushing $20 plates of arugula with a such a claim.

It belongs to you and me — the ranch, the cottage, the pond, the stone scraps of an old winery — an inheritance that is now being dismantled. California created the state park idea with Yosemite in 1864, before it was a federal reserve; it is destroying it in 2011 with a plan to permanently close one-fourth of its parks.

Along with 69 other sites, Jack London State Historic Park will be shuttered, gates locked, and left to meth labs, garbage outlaws and assorted feral predators. Nearly 50 percent of all of California’s historic parks are on the closure list. This is not a scare tactic from the state. Parks go dark starting in September.

Even during the Great Depression, when this state had 30 million fewer people, California somehow found a way to keep its parks and heritage sites open.

The nuclear option is being executed to reach a budget cut of $22 million mandated by a failed state that is forcing lethal whacks for all, even with an improved budget forecast. That’s right, $22 million — one-fifth the price of a recent sale of a single private mansion in Los Altos….

(Meanwhile, though, the feds say that closing some of our parks may be illegal. May it be so.)

THE PSYCHOPATH TEST, REDUX

Last month we learned that there was such a thing as a Psychopath test, and that it was being administered in American prisons (California prisons included) to help determine if an inmate should ever be granted parole—a use that has horrified the test’s inventor.

With all this in mind, naturally, Ira Glass and his This American Life team figured they all oughta take the test. In this week’s show, they have the results—plus a lot more on this whole testing-for-psychopathy issue.

Listen to the show here.

GOVERNOR JERRY ASKS THREE-JUDGE PANEL FOR MORE TIME THAN THE MANDATED 2 YEARS TO LOWER THE STATE’S PRISON POPULATION

As long as Jerry has a concrete plan and a solid timetable—which he seems to—he will likely get the extension.

The LA Times has the rest of the story.

PS: On the topic of the Brown v. Plata Supreme Court decision, the NY times’ Linda Greenhouse has an interesting take on the ruling and where it fist into an historical context.

DEAR OC D.A TONY RACKAUKAS, THE US CONSTITUTION IS YOUR FRIEND (AT LEAST IT BETTER BE IN THE FUTURE)

Last month a federal judge slapped some stringent limitations on Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas’s use of gang injunctions—an issue that is generally hard for average person to understand or care about.

But with an editorial this past weekend, the LA Times skillfully outlined the issue, and why it should matter to the rest of us. I understand that the LAT’s Sandra Hernandez was the primary author of the unsigned editorial. Brava, Sandra!

Here’s a clip:

Earlier this month, a federal judge put the brakes on Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas’ reckless attempt to enforce an anti-gang injunction against dozens of men and women who never had the opportunity to challenge his designation of them as gang members.

Injunctions are a unique kind of restraining order that bar gang members from engaging in certain activities, such as congregating, wearing particular clothes or going out after 10 p.m. Their goal is to reduce a gang’s ability to control the streets by putting limits on its members’ behavior — generally activities that would be legal if done by anyone else. In some cases, injunctions can be a highly effective tool in loosening a gang’s grip on a neighborhood. But because they impose harsh limits on an individual’s freedom, such restrictions must be subject to court review.

[SNIP]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California sued on behalf of the alleged gang members and won. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank put it bluntly: “In sum, their constitutional rights were violated.”

At the very least, Rackauckas’ office failed to follow the law. If prosecutors believe suspected members of a gang pose a danger to the community, they have an obligation to present evidence of that to the court before limiting people’s lawful activities. Instead, prosecutors made a unilateral determination of guilt.

DON’T SHOOT THE NEIGHBOR’S CAT UNLESS YOU’RE PREPARED TO PAY THE VET BILL SAYS STATE APPEALS COURT

The SF Chron has the story:

The market value of a stray cat with a crippling pellet wound is zero, or close to it. But for his devoted owner in Brentwood, a male tabby named Pumkin was well worth the tens of thousands of dollars it took to save his life and restore some of his mobility.

Now a state appeals court has issued a first-of-its-kind decision in California, ruling that whoever shot Pumkin can be required to pay his medical expenses.

(MY NOTE: One would think so! You mean prior to this ruling, if someone deliberately shot my cat—or very nice wolf-dog— I couldn’t sue???)

“The people that perpetrate these crimes against domesticated animals are going to have to pay,” said Kevin Kimes, whose lawsuit against his backyard neighbors was revived by the ruling. “Maybe, over time, people will start to think twice.”

Colin Hatcher, a lawyer for the neighbors, said Kimes has no evidence that they shot his cat and they’re prepared to go to trial.

Read the rest here.

PRISON INDUSTRIAL NATION?

The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)—the nation’s largest private prison provider—announced some very healthy first quarter profits on Wednesday.

(Second quarter is expected to be higher.)

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MEANWHILE…LAUSD TELLS TEACHERS TO TAKE DAY OFF AND PROTEST

GOOD Magazine has the story. Here’s a clip:

Just how bad is California’s education budget crisis? In an unprecedented move, the Los Angeles Unified School District plans to dismiss students early on Friday, May 13 so that teachers and other school staff can protest proposed cuts to education. In fact, the nation’s second largest school district is in such a financial crisis that they’re actually working with the local teacher’s union, UTLA, to make the protest happen—a very rare thing.

Teachers originally planned to hold their anti-cut demonstrations in the morning before school and during the first hour of classes. But Superintendent John Deasy and other district officials suggested shortening the school day and moving the protests to the afternoon so that the administration of state standardized tests won’t be affected. Deasy has also pledged that teachers can protest the state cuts to schools “without loss of pay or other consequences.”

Why is LAUSD being so accommodating? California’s schools have already endured almost $20 billion in cuts over the past three years. If state legislators don’t agree to put a measure on an upcoming election ballot to extend the taxes that fund schools, there will be an additional $2.3 billion in cuts. LAUSD alone is looking at a deficit of almost $408 million this year. This spring more than 5,000 teachers and 2,000 other district staff received layoff notices.

The LA Times’ Jason Song has more.

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AND IN A TANGENTIALLY RELATED STORY, EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS IN PRISONS ARE FEW EVEN THOUGH BENEFITS ARE MANY

Research has repeatedly shown that prisoners who obtain post-secondary degrees are much less likely to recidivate or to commit crimes on their release—and more likely to get jobs. (Inmates in educational programs are also less violent when on the inside.)

However, a study released Wednesday by the Institute for Higher Education and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that only 6 percent of those incarcerated in the US were enrolled in vocational or academic post secondary programs last year.

California is one of the the 13 states that is listed as having such programs, but after talking with the CDCR head, Matthew Cate earlier this week, it became clear that, whatever the state’ may have once had in the way of ed programs, nearly all have now been cut.

The Wall Street Journal has more on the survey.

THE REAL COST OF CALIFORNIA’S BUDGET CUTS: WHO IS HARDEST HIT?

Annenberg’s Neon Tommy has begun a series on the specific effects of some of the California state budget It offers precisely the kind of reporting we need in order to assess what the state’s proposed budget cuts specifically in human terms.

For instance, if we hear that Governor Jerry Brown has as so far taken $861 million out of the Mental Health Services Act, what does that mean? Whom will that affect. And what do those cuts mean to the rest of us?

And what about the cuts to subsidized child care? If those subsidies are yanked, will people just make do? Or will some parents be unable to work without those subsidies?

These are precisely the kinds of questions that the Neon Tommy reporters and editors have attempted to answer in their series California in Crisis: How the Budget Debacle Screws Social Services.

For instance, there is a story by Ryan Faughnder about the effects of the cut on a Culver City mental health clinic.

And there is another story by Jennifer Whalen that shows how the cuts affect working poor parents in need of subsidized child care.

Good stories, all.

Let’s hope that Neon Tommy reporters continue to explore these crucial budgetary topics.

THE PROBLEM OF SCOTUS AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT
UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about the recent Supreme Court case that has declined to allow prisoners to recover damages when prosecutors withheld evidence that likely resulted in their conviction.

FINALLY, A CLASS ACTION SUIT ABOUT EXCESSIVE, RACE-BASED PRISON LOCKDOWNS

Mass, extended lockdowns in California prisons have been getting more and more frequent. And yet there was no reporting on the matter and, it seems, no legal action.

Until now. On Wednesday a class action lawsuit was filed. KPCC’s Julie Small reports:

Here’s how it opens:

Attorneys for prison inmates sued California Wednesday in federal court to end race-based lockdowns in state penitentiaries. Prisons lock down inmates after riots to quell the violence, investigate the cause – and isolate the inmates involved. The law gives prison officials a lot of discretion to use lockdowns – but there are limits. KPCC’s Julie Small reports the class action lawsuit alleges that race-based lockdowns violate inmate rights.

California’s High Desert State Prison in north eastern Lassen County, is a maximum security facility. Following a violent incident there in the warden locked down a group of African-American inmates for 18 months. One of them, Robert Mitchell, stayed in the double-bunked cell he shared with another inmate–24 hours a day – seven days a week. Prison Law Office attorney Rebekah Evenson who is representing Mitchell says the type of discriminatory deprivation the inmate suffered is common in California prisons—and illegal.

This week the Pew Center on the States delivered another of its large and important reports on the state of incarceration in America.

it’s called State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of American Prisons.

(In the past, the Pew Center has looked at how many Americans are behind bars, and who those Americans were in terms of age and ethnicity.)

This time, Pew focused on the frequency with which those who are imprisoned and later released into American communities return to prison.

PEW broke out the figures state by state, in order to look at which states had the highest return rate.

The two winners—if you can call them that—are Minnesota and, of course, our own prison benighted state. But, while both Minnesota and California have return rates that hover around 60 percent, MN has a prison population of slightly over 5,000, we have close to 120,000 men and women behind bars.

Also, as Pew notes, the majority of those Californians who return to prison, don’t go back for a new crime, but for a technical violation of their parole.

It doesn’t help, said Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project, that many states, California among them, do not incentivize parolees making a successful transition from prison to becoming a productive community member.

Here’s what Gelb told CNN:

Right now, incentives are mostly backwards. When offenders are breaking rules, supervising agencies win by sending them back to prison and getting them off their caseloads. That needs to be flipped so agencies get rewarded with a share of savings when they reduce returns to prison,” Gelb said.

YES, BUT DOES IT MAKE US SAFER?

One of the things the PEW researchers looked at with this report is public safety. Are we safer because we send so many people back to prison over and over again? PEW says no. Those states like New York and Oregon that have worked to provide the kind of programs, interventions and alternative sentencing that decreases recidivism, have seen their crime rates drop.

And of course there is the money savings. According to PEW, if California cut its recidivism rate by 10 percent, it would save the state at least $233 million. (Likely the savings would be substantially more since PEWs was working with 2005 prison prices.)

Prisons are often the forgotten
element of the criminal justice
system until things go badly. Catching the
guy and prosecuting him is really important
work, but if we don’t do anything with that
individual after we’ve got him, then shame
on us. If all that effort goes to waste and
we just open the doors five years later, and
it’s the same guy walking out the door and
the same criminal thinking, we’ve failed in
our mission.”

Minnesota Commissioner of Corrections Tom Roy
April 7, 2011

CAN OREGON’S MODEL BE….WELL….A MODEL?

The PEW study points to Oregon as being one the states that has been the most successful at intelligently addressing the recidivism problem. But can methods used in a less populous, less diverse state like Oregon be re-tailored to fit places like Florida and California?

If our lawmakers had the will it would be nice to find out. In any case, here’s an overview of Oregon’s strategy:

Read the rest of this entry »

The California budget situation is anything but easy. Yet, at least we finally have a clear-eyed governor who is taking hold of the problem in a tough, even handed manner.

Still many of those in the legislature—specifically the Republican leadership— insist on playing party politics, rather than coming together to do what is best for the state in these dire times.

Brown has warned that without the additional taxes he hopes to get on the ballot (and hopes that California voters will pass into law), the already draconian cuts he has proposed will go far deeper than most Californians have really grasped.

On Wednesday, we saw a preview of the future that Brown is describing with the news that, in addition to the drastic fiscal surgery already in Brown’s budget, a startling $800 million more must be slashed out of the state’s community college system.

The LA Times’ Carla Rivera has some of the specifics:

Facing a state funding cut of up to 10%, California’s community colleges will enroll 400,000 fewer students next fall and slash thousands of classes to contend with budget shortfalls that threaten to reshape their mission, officials said Wednesday.

The dire prognosis was in response to the breakdown in budget talks in Sacramento and the likelihood that the state’s 112 community colleges will be asked to absorb an $800-million funding reduction for the coming school year — double the amount suggested in Gov. Jerry Brown’s current budget proposal.

As it now stands, the budget plan would raise community college student fees from $26 to $36 per unit. The fees may go even higher if a budget compromise is not reached.

During a telephone news briefing, California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott said the funding cuts, under either scenario, would be a tragedy for students and a deep blow to the state’s economy….

MEANWHILE….. the San Francisco Chronicle reports that, even without Brown’s budget cuts—or the bigger, badder cuts that no additional taxes could bring—a new study found that nearly half of the state’s community college students reported being unable to enroll in courses because classes were full — nearly twice the rate of community college students nationwide.

Additional details are here.

If the class situation is that bad now, how in the world can the system function with the new cuts coming its way?

GREEN DOT CHARTER SCHOOLS’ FOUNDER, STEVE BARR, GOES A NEW DIRECTION

I’m not sure why no LA media seem to have reported on this story since Barr has been such a significant figure in LA’s education reform movement, but….in any case, this story from the NY Times has the basics on Barr’s parting of the ways with Green Dot. He’d stepped down as head of Green Dot a couple of years ago, but had remained on the board of directors. But now, it seems, the divorce is complete.

It sounds like it would be a good time for WLA to check in with Steve and find out more. But until then, here are some clips from the NY Times article.

On Friday, Mr. Barr and Shane Martin, the college dean who succeeded him as chairman of the Green Dot board in 2009, issued a joint statement announcing that Mr. Barr would no longer use the Green Dot name as he sought to open charter schools in New York and elsewhere.

The Green Dot organization will continue, under the leaders who have replaced Mr. Barr, to run its network of 16 charter schools in Los Angeles.

[SNIP]

Alexander Russo, the author of a coming book on the efforts of Mr. Barr and Green Dot to overhaul the troubled Locke High School in Los Angeles, said, “Steve is a hard-charging visionary, as many founders are, and as Green Dot got bigger, people struggled to find an appropriate place for him in the organization.”

[SNIP]

For more than a year, Mr. Barr has been in discussions with school and union officials in several cities, exploring ways of extending his vision of overhauling schools nationwide.

He has been operating as Green Dot America, and recruited a six-member board for that organization that includes two other directors who also sit on Green Dot’s board: Susan Estrich, the prominent Los Angeles lawyer, and Jeff Shell, the president of programming for Comcast.

On Friday, Green Dot America changed its name to Future is Now Schools. [Not the most felicitous of names, IMHO, especially with its acronym of "FINS." But maybe it'll grown on me.] Mr. Barr said the name was inspired by President Obama’s call in the State of the Union address to “win the future” by improving American education.

In an interview, Mr. Barr said that the use of the Green Dot name had become confusing as he sought to build the new organization, which he said would explore using a lot of technology in classrooms to augment traditional instruction in what he called a “hybrid model.”

Read more here.

As always, it will be intriguing to track what becomes of Barr’s newest venture.

SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS ARE PRESSING REPUBS HARD ON A JUNE TAX VOTE

Let’s hope that it works. The Fresno Bee has the story.

Here’s a clip:

With time running out for a budget deal, a group of California school superintendents is pressing for a tax vote, saying that the state’s schools will see debilitating cuts if tax extensions are not approved in June.

The superintendents told reporters Monday at the Capitol that they have urged Republican lawmakers to accept Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax election, a big part of his budget plan.

If the measure fails, Fresno Unified School District Superintendent Michael Hanson said, “We will spend the ‘11-’12 school year decimating, devastating and tearing down programs … across this entire state.”

THE LA TIMES HAS A RUNDOWN ON VALUE ADDED TEACHER RATINGS STRUGGLES ACROSS THE NATION AS LAUSD GEARS UP

I’d still like to see a far more robust conversation about the advantages and pitfalls of the various approaches but Teresa Watanabe moved the ball down the field at least a bit, which is good.

It was slightly curious that the LA Times part in the controversy was so undermentioned. On the other hand, maybe that was a good thing as otherwise the Times part in the kerfuffle might have intentionally high-jacked the article.

(photo by Kris Krug, Flickr)

The gifted novelist Susan Straight (who teaches at UC Riverside) writes in the Huffington Post about the fact that, in California, and as a nation, we are willing to lay off a higher percentage of public school teachers than we are nearly any other profession. Straight questions why this seems like a sane practice, even in a bad economy.

Here are some snips from the essay, but do read the whole thing.

Last week was Pink Slip Week in California. All over the state, teachers got notices through certified mail that they might be laid off. Teachers around the nation have been getting pink slips for weeks, and this year, the possibility is even larger that they will lose their jobs.

The two words, in the American lexicon, are never good. Pink slip. The first time I ever heard it when I was young was when Kaiser Steel handed out pink slips to many of my neighbors and relatives. Layoffs were about efficiency, sales figures for raw materials or refrigerators. Kids might be “raw material,” in a strange sense, but they are not refrigerators.

Last year, federal stimulus money was used to plug holes in state budgets, and many teachers were actually rehired (23,000 pink slips were sent out in California during 2010.) But this year, with deeper and deeper budget cuts to education at every level — federal, state, and county — American schools will mostly likely lose teachers by the thousands. On March 15, more than 30,000 pink slips were mailed to teachers in California, according to the California Teachers Association, and last week, they arrived.

I know they arrived in my neighborhood because after work I saw my letter carrier, Randy, who carried a large sheaf of them. He was despondent about having to deliver the certified mail — “if it’s certified, and it’s today, I’m hoping they don’t answer the door,” he said. That way, he said, he wouldn’t have to see the faces of our neighbors who are getting the layoff notices.

Read the rest.

MEMORIES OF JAPAN, SOME INDELIBLE, SOME WASHED AWAY

The frightening news out of Japan cannot help but hold our attention, as heroic engineers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station continue to try to save the plant’s crippled nuclear reactors from meltdown.

But, in addition to the devastating TV news reports, please do yourself a favor and read Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s essay on her memories and reflections as the terrifying and heartbreaking news from Japan continues to unfold. It will be in Tuesday’s New York Times. Here is how it opens:

ON Aug. 9, 1945, my great-uncle was out fishing in the Pacific, far enough away from Nagasaki, Japan, that he missed the immediate impact of the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans that day. My great-aunt was in their new house outside Nagasaki; the entire family had only a few days earlier fled the city because my great-uncle feared a repeat of the bombing of Hiroshima.

I heard this story many times during my childhood. Back then, it made me feel that my great-uncle was a clever man. As an adult, I realized he was also very lucky, because cleverness alone cannot keep you safe.

For 36 hours after the earthquake and tsunami that eviscerated the east coast of Japan on Friday, I was unable to get any word from my relatives who oversee and live in our family’s Buddhist temple in Iwaki City, south of Sendai, the biggest city near the epicenter. I wondered if they too were lucky and smart.

I wanted to know, and I did not want to know. I dipped into the world of the Internet, with its videos of water raging over the farmland and crushed ferries, and then quickly backed out. Not looking at the videos kept reality at bay, because the images of the coastline do not match the Japan that I know….

JERRY NEEDS FOUR REPUBLICANS TO PASS THE BUDGET, BUT WILL THE CRP’S THREATS PREVENT IT

Madeleine Brand had Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters on her show Monday to talk about how bleak the chances are that any Republican legislators will vote for Brown’s proposed budget.

According to Cal Buzz, it is not so much that certain moderate Republicans wouldn’t cross over party lines, as it is the fact that the California Republican Party is out-and-out threatening any Repubs who vote with the governor. Specifically, if they do the California Republican Assembly has proposed a resolution that…..

“….censures these traitorous Republicans-in-Name-Only, ask(s) for their resignation(s) from their positions within the California Republican Party, pledges to endorse and support efforts to recall them from office, and directs the California Republican Party staff, agents and officers to refuse to provide them with funding or assistance in future elections.”

Nice. That’s really putting the good of the state first. Well done, guys.

THE ART OF THE POLICE REPORT & NONEXISTENT APOLOGIES

Both of these stories were linked by Kevin Roderick at LA Observed:

First there is LAPD crime analyst and fellow Bennington MFA graduate, Ellen Collett, who has written a delicious piece that appears in the Utne Reader about the art of writing a good crime report, and a South LA cop named Martinez who is her favorite practitioner.

Roderick also links to the “correction” run by the LA Weekly’s Simon Wilson pursuant to her creepy, insensitive and marginally assaultive coverage of the February Tahrir Square attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan, coverage that was criticized by a number of other women journalists, myself included.

Not only does Wilson fail to apologize (which was what was called for), but her correction, such as it is, also manages to be creepy and vaguely assaultive.

To wit:

The LA Weekly reported earlier in the day on February 15 that Logan had been raped, based on language in a press release from CBS. The CBS release said Logan had suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.”

But did the attack constitute rape? The legal definition of rape is penetration with any object, to any extent — the most extreme form of sexual assault. Experts on legal language have since informed us that CBS’ description of the incident implies repeated rape, but the Weekly has not been able to determine what occurred. CBS declines all further comment.

Therefore, we conclude that we erroneously interpreted CBS’ report of what happened to Logan on February 11, 2011.

Gee, thanks Simone, for the graphic “legal definition.” Very helpful.

Next time you have the desire to make things better, please don’t.

The photo of Sutter Brown, the state’s official First Dog, contemplating budgetary matters with the governor, was taken by Brown political adviser, Steve Glazer.