This week there was yet another instance of a teachers union using disinformation and fear tactics to try to intimidate parents who want to have an effect on their kids’ school.

See, it’s this sort of thing, by the way, that causes liberals, who are generally very pro union (and who are always pro teacher), to start feeling mighty grumpy toward California’s teachers unions—both the statewide union, CTA (California Teachers Association), and its branches, and such local unions as UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles)—all of which appear to have become so power-drunk by their decades-long vice grip on CA’s education policy that they actively want to assassinate any other person or group that has the nerve to want also to sit at the decision-making table (and sip a teensy bit of the wine of power too).

(By the way, I mean the word “assassinate” mostly in the metaphorical sense. Operative word: mostly.)

The most recent instance of attack-trained union behavior is occurring in Lynwood, where a group of local elementary school parents have organized as a “parents union” under the banner of the Parents Revolution, which is the group that was instrumental in getting passed the Parent Trigger law.

The Parent Trigger Law is the statute that gives parents the right to “trigger” reforms in schools that are chronically failing to meet minimum state improvement standards (chronic meaning for 4 years or more). In other words, these are the California schools that, year after year, for whatever reasons, give the kids in their care a substandard education. According to the law, when a school screws up to that degree, if at least half of the school’s parents sign a petition, the local school district must adopt one of a handful of reforms: 1. shut down school and let the students enroll in a higher-performing campus nearby; 2. convert the school to an independent charter, 3. fire half the teaching staff and replace the administration; 4. extend school hours and revise the curriculum under a federally recommended turnaround plan; or 5. adopt an “alternative governance” model, which is an option that has a lot of leeway.

In other words, the parent trigger law for the first time gives parents real power to advocate for change in behalf of their sons and daughters—power that previously was held only by the district and the unions, which for the past several decades have seemed more interested in maintaining their respective power bases—-than thinking about what might actually benefit…..you know….kids.

Wow! Bummer! Parents having a place at the bargaining table too! We certainly don’t want THAT!

As it turns out, other states DO want it, and the Trigger law has been spreading, as this Sept. 2011 MSNBC story outlines.

The fact that the dreaded parent-leaning statute might be catching on outside California caused the antipathy toward the Trigger Law to reach such a fever pitch that, this past summer, the American Federation of Teachers put out a power point presentation of how to undermine the law in California and in any other state where it might crop up. The document—which is a must read—openly talks about how the union’s goals are helped by the “Absence of…parents from the table.” (The Orange County Register has more on that shameless move.)

Since the Parent Revolution had its genesis during the rise of the LA charter school powerhouse, Green Dot, the unions have painted such parent groups as clueless dupes of charter school advocates, who cannot make their own decisions and are generally easily influenced idiots who certainly don’t know what their kids need.

The Lynwood union branch of CTA has reportedly used many of FTA’s tactics when they put out flyers and, more recently a newsletter to to try to squash any moves by frustrated Lynwood parents who are tired of sending their children to a school that doesn’t adequately educate them.

The LA Weekly has done a great job of reporting on this issue—both the Lynwood battle that has heated up this week, and an earlier battle over a Compton school, that blew up a year ago.

Here’s a clip from the Weekly’s Simone Wilson’s story on the press conference held Wednesday by Lynwood parents, who are pushing back against union pressure:

Education reformers in California have called Lynwood “ground zero for parent empowerment throughout the entire state.” For whatever reason, parents in the southeast L.A. County town have banded together with an extra sense of urgency, demanding a basic level of respect and competence from their kids’ teachers and administrators that should certainly, by now, be the standard statewide.

But even demands as basic as theirs have now, it seems, been twisted by the local teachers union into some kind of attack on public education as a whole.

Sigh. Fixing this state’s crap school system would sure be a lot easier if we could quit politicking and start discussing the needs of our children like civil human beings.

Uh, yeah. What she said.

IN OTHER NEWS…..ANOTHER CASE OF PROSECUTOR WITHHOLDING EVIDENCE IN TEXAS PUTS MAN IN PRISON FOR 31 YEARS

The Dallas Observer has the story of Rickey Dale Wyatt who was freed on Wednesday after serving 31 years on a rape that Innocence Project head, Barry Scheck says Wyatt did not commit. (The LA Times also reports.)

It seems that although the actual rape victim described a man much larger and taller than Wyatt, and also clean shaven, unlike the then-bearded Wyatt, prosecutors withheld the evidence that likely would have cleared the man.

Although Wyatt’s sentence has been vacated, he has not been declared innocent. He must next appear at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals where Scheck says he is confident that Wyatt will be cleared.

It is important to note that Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins has been instrumental in a string of such dramatic releases in Texas because, rather than fighting defense attorneys at every step, Watkins and his office has opened Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit, which has in many instances opened up files to the Innocence Project and others.

BILL BRATTON AND OTHERS TALK ON NPR ABOUT WHY THE CRIME RATE CONTINUES TO DROP IN THE U.S.

Oh, just listen. It’s a good story, even if Bratton has an ego the size of Wyoming.

Patrick Range McDonald and Simone Wilson at the LA Weekly are doing a great job of covering the precedent-setting fight that is going on at McKinley Elementary School in Compton where a group of activist parents, together with the activist school reform group, the Parent Revolution, are using a new and controversial law called The California Parent Trigger to transform their failing local school into a charter.

Now, however, reports the Weekly, some of McKinley’s teachers are fighting back and according to parent organizers—and a video—some of those teachers are fighting dirty—telling parents that if their kid is in special ed, he or she will no longer be able to attend school..

Similar tactics were used several years ago when Locke High School parents, together with the Green Dot charter schools, attempted to turn Locke into a charter, after which UTLA strafed the Locke parents with misinformation in an effort to block the charter conversion—which happened anyway, and academic life at Locke has been much the better for it, thank you very much.

To understand this story it is first important to understand how the Parent Trigger works. Here’s how the Weekly explains it:

The California Parent Trigger law was passed against huge odds by the Democratic-controlled, teacher union–friendly state Legislature, becoming law this year. The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers lobbied hard for its demise, but they were beaten by what one Sacramento insider later described as a “ragtag” bunch of minority parents and fierce reformers, who seemed to materialize from thin air.

The trigger gives parents the power to decide the fate of 75 failing California schools by petitioning the school district. It’s up to California parents to choose which schools.

Mothers and fathers who pull the Parent Trigger can pick four options:

1. Establish a charter school in the school buildings;
2. Bring in a new staff and exert some control over staffing and budgeting;
3. Keep the school intact but fire the principal; or
4. Shutter the school entirely and send the students to better, nearby schools.

But first, these hyperlocal reformers must get at least 51 percent of all parents whose children attend that school to join them in signing off on the idea.

The LA Times’ Carla Rivera also reports that parents say they are being intimidated by certain McKinley teachers:

Marlene Romero said that her son’s third-grade teacher asked to speak to her about his education and then spent an hour telling her why she shouldn’t support the petition drive.

“I want the principal and all the teachers to stop intimidating parents and especially our kids,” Romero said. “It’s really sad. My son told me he hated me for what I’m doing. I told him that I’m doing this for his future.”

The parents were joined by Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., public schools chancellor who heads the recently-formed reform group Students First. She urged district administrators to create ground rules for acceptable and unacceptable behavior by employees.

“If [educators] are saying that parents need to get more involved … we cannot create a hostile environment” when parents speak up, Rhee said.

However, by 8:40 p.m. Tuesday night, the Weekly’s Simone Wilson, blogging from the Compton school board meeting, reports that it is the anti-charter people who have come out in force.

And at the Wave, <a href="http://www.wavenewspapers.com/news/local/west-edition/McKinley-Elementary-School-principal-responds-to-parent-petition-111688429.html”>Leiloni du Gruy reports on the Parent Trigger situation from the perspective of McKinley’s school principal.

MEANWHILE JERRY BROWN TELLS UCLA CROWD THAT MORE EDUCATION CUTS ARE COMING

Westwood Patch has the story:

Brown told the roughly 200 people at the briefing that the state’s financial situation is worse than it was in the Great Depression.

”We’re at an unprecedented moment of reckoning,” Brown said. ”This perfect storm, I think, is the worst it’s ever been because we’re not quite in the same position in the Depression, where government played a small, much smaller role in the life of our communities as it does today.”

Photo by Leiloni De Gruy for The Wave

In case you missed it, this story on the $3 Million in fraud and mismanagement accusations leveled at the principal of a San Fernando Valley charter school, New Academy Canoga Park Elementary School, is a doozy. It seems that the man allegedly deposited more than $1 million in his own investment account, misplaced a million or so, and spent the rest on questionable items and phony expenses.

KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman Lopez has an audio version of the story.

And the LA Times’ Howard Blume reported on the jaw-dropping story as well.

Here’s a representative clip:

Among their findings, auditors contend that the school’s former principal, who isn’t named in the audit, withdrew cashier’s checks totaling $1,073,700 from school accounts to deposit in an investment account between July 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2009.

“The former principal claimed that funds deposited into his personal Ameritrade account were not withdrawn, but were deposited and repeatedly lost,” the auditors wrote.

The photo above doesn’t have a thing to do with the stories in this post. I took it on Friday afternoon when I stopped to talk to police at the scene of an attempted robbery of a West Los Angeles marijuana physician’s office on Pico Blvd., just west of Sawtelle, in which two people were shot, one of them critically. (The guy in the snazzy hat is the detective.) The shooting, which took place just after 4:30 p.m., was an odd and scary one according to the two witnesses with whom I spoke. (The witnesses were two young men in their early 20s.) They told me that a couple of guys walked into the doctor’s office, one dressed unaccountably in a yellow reflective traffic vest, the other dressed normally but with a back back strapped to his chest. The yellow vest guy signed in as if he was a patient, then the backpack guy reached into his pack, pulled out a pistol and shot the doctor’s receptionist and another office employee, a single shot fired at each. Just like that. No demand. No warning. A few seconds later, the shooter and friend ran out. It is not clear if they attempted to steal anything, or not.

STATE EDUCATION CUTS = 48 OR 50 KIDS IN A CLASSROOM

It is no shock to find out that this fall many LAUSD classes are absurdly large and crowded due to teacher cuts. On Sunday, the LA Times had a look into some of those classes and schools that are faring the worst.

As it was, every seat was taken. One young woman plopped on the floor, next to a microwave oven. A young man stood in the corner, shifting from one foot to the other. Three teens scrunched on top of a desk. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the slight, soft-spoken man pacing the small patch of bare linoleum in front of them….

But, hey, at least the state legislature avoided letting those prisoners out a few months early (and putting them on house arrest) Whew! .

OBAMA AND NEWSPAPERS

During his Sunday media blitz, Barack Obama said that he would be open to giving tax breaks to newspapers that restructured as nonprofits.

The Hill reports:

….“I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

[SNIP]

“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said

LEAK CONTROVERSY HOLDING UP FEDERAL SHIELD LAW

The Washington Post reports:

A congressional push to enact a federal shield law for journalists is being held up by disagreement with the Justice Department on how to deal with cases that involve leaked national security information, congressional and media sources say.

OPEN LETTER TO THE TEACHERS’ UNION….FROM A UNION REP

This open letter to UTLA President A.J. Duffy from on of the union’s chapter chairs, Jordan Henry, a well-liked teacher and union rep at Santee High School.

(The link was in one of last night’s tweets by another LAUSD teacher/union activist, Jose del Barrio.)

In the letter, Henry suggest that the union rethink its knee-jerk condemnation of the charter school movement—for its own benefit.

Here’s a clip:

At this critical juncture in our union’s history, with at least one third of our union at stake, it is imperative we learn from past mistakes with haste. In particular, we must undo the misunderstanding, mischaracterization, and underestimation of the charter movement in Los Angeles which has marked your term and fueled the coalition of forces behind the School Choice Motion.

47-YEAR OLD ESCAPE FROM THE ROCK, NOT YET A COLD CASE

Okay, well if the 1962 infamous escape from Alcatraz isn’t a cold case, it’s mighty chilly. But according to Monday’s NPR story, U.S. Marshall’s are still actively working the case.

The U.S. Marshals Service is still actively pursuing the case on the chance that the three men pulled off one of the most daring prison escapes in U.S. history.

“Leads still come in. I just got one a couple weeks ago,” U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke said recently in his office in Oakland, Calif., as he poured over a stack of old file folders from the case.

Okay, he gave it. It was pretty good. Antonio can be quite moving when he puts in the effort. The man does, after all, have skills. And, since he is planning to run for Governor, he did put in the effort.

The LA Times has a nice rundown on the main part of the speech, which had to do with what the city was going to do to help itself and its residents survive this economy. (You can find the speech in full after the jump.)

Apart from the economy et al, there was one other significant section of the speech. And that was the last big section, the stuff about education.

Antonio praised charter schools in a big way—in particular Green Dot and its takeover of Locke High School—which, now that it is eight months into its first school year, can be tentatively labeled a real and very heartening success, even though it is still early days.

AV also praised the new Alliance charter that has opened up to rave reviews on the Cal State LA campus.

Rather than fight the charters, Villaraigosa made clear that the district must actively partner with them—thus giving a loud message to the union leadership (We’re talking to you, Mr. Duffy) that they need to get over their charter aversion and start making some deals.

None of this was new. Antonio was just swaying to the popular music of the moment, educationally speaking, and telling us to sing along.

But he assuredly set the right tone. Charters are the reform leaders right now. Anybody paying attention knows that. But the mayor saying so gave it a nice official stamp.
Read the rest of this entry »

NOTE: Arrrggghhh. The lack of a post this morning was pure idiocy on my part. I wrote this story earlier than usual and figured I’d wait until midnight to actually put it online. Then I got busy and plum forgot that I never pushed the “PUBLISH” button. I’d like to blame this glitch on nefarious forces. But sadly it was me.

Look for additional stories over the weekend.

Happy Friday!

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This is a good news moment.

On Wednesday, the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, announced the state’s 2009 picks for the California Distinguished Schools Award. According to the State Department of Education, the award “identifies and honors those schools that have demonstrated educational excellence for all students and progress in narrowing the achievement gap.”

In other words, instead of simply flagging schools that are doing poorly under No Child Left Behind, since 2000, the state has endeavored to use a carrot along with the NCLB stick by honoring the schools that are doing well.

In even years, O’Connell’s office honors elementary schools. In odd years (like 2009), middle and high schools are given awards.

This year the area of Los Angeles covered by LAUSD had 12-schools honored, the most Distinguished School Award winners of any region in the state.

Given all the bad news we’ve been hearing lately—the budget problems, the proposed teacher layoffs (the overpaid consultants) it is cheering to have some good news.

Yet, here’s the interesting thing: out of the 12 LA schools named, 10 of them are charters.

Now, it is important to mention here that, according to the rules of the award, if a school was named “distinguished” in the last awards cycle—which for middle and high schools would be 2007—one cannot apply for the following year. By the same token, the schools that won this year, can’t apply until 2013.

That meant that a few of the great LAUSD magnet schools named last time, were not in the running this time.

But not many.

The LA Charters named were: Animo Pat Brown Charter High, California Academy for Liberal Studies, CALS Early College High School, College Ready Academy High #4, College Ready Academy High #6, Gertz-Ressler High School, Marc and Eva Stern Mass High School, New West Charter Middle School, Oscar De La Hoya Animo Charter High and Renaissance Arts Academy.

So what does this mean? That LAUSD sucks? Well, yes, probably, in certain ways. But we knew that already. We are looking to the future here.

(And, to be fair, LAUSD does much right too. . There are those magnets, and some great neighborhood elementary schools.)

Still, the awards configuration suggests that, despite the problems of the LA Unified School District, a new model—or series of models—is emerging.

“It means that the charter school movement is getting lots of traction right now,” Jed Wallace, the head of the California Charter School Association, told me when we chatted about what the awards signified. “It means that a lot of charter schools are figuring out an instructional model that makes sense, and that really includes the community in which they’re located.”

Wallace said that he felt there was far less resistance to charters among LA leadership—people like the mayor and Ray Cortines, the LAUSD sup. “Maybe I’m being optimistic,” he said. “but I think they sense that Los Angeles is being remade in terms of school reform, and that reform is being driven by charters.”

Okay. Maybe. Sort of. Last Thursday, when the Marc & Eva Stern Math and Science School—a state of the art charter—- opened on the campus of Cal State LA , the mad rush of the LA dignitaries was something to behold. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Dick Riordan, Ray Cortines, and State Sup, Jack O’Connell all were there and all gave effusive speeches. (As illustrated in the photo above.)

(NOTE: A Marc & Eva Stern sister school was one of the “distinguished” campuses named by the state.)

As one education policy watcher pal of mine put it after the ribbon cutting and the speeches, “Obama has opened the charter floodgates and everyone is tripping over him/herself to say that charters are great and we need to learn from them.”

Yep. Probably. But that isn’t a bad thing at all.

It’s good.

On Saturday, as promised, I went to have my hideously dirty Escape Hybrid washed by the kids at that new charter high school I wrote about late last week, FreeLA High.

As you remember, FreeLA was opened by a partnership headed by the Youth Justice Coalition. Its raison d’etre is to provide a high school education for kids who have dropped out or been tossed out of other LAUSD schools—and for kids who have had trouble being readmitted to school after they’ve returned from a probation camp or juvenile hall.

Saturday’s car wash was a fundraiser intended to earn money to pay for the school’s first graduation in June.

While my car was being washed, I toured the nearby school campus, which was located in a stucco and brick former office building across the street from where the car scrubbing was taking place. Inside the school building, I met a bunch of the students, including Maritza (below), the girl whom I’d interviewed for the earlier post.

My tour guide was a sixteen-year-old named Gabby who, like Maritza, said she had dropped out of Locke High School, which she described as a chaotic place in which overstressed teachers seemed unaware of their students’ needs and often allowed kids to simply walk out of class rooms and out of campus at will.

At FreeLA high, by contrast, the kids I met seemed to view the school with a sense of ownership. Even on a Saturday afternoon, there were quite a number of students in evidence. Some were there to help with the car wash, of course. Others were in classrooms working at computers. One guy was practicing drums in an upstairs space that had been set up as a music room. Other were simply chatting comfortably with couple of teachers.

In terms of the school site itself, FreeLA high had several unusual features. For instance it had a cinderblock “art room.”

“We have this room because a lot of our students like to write,” said Gabby when she brought me into what appeared to be some kind of large cement storage area, its wall covered with elaborate graffiti. .

“Write?” I asked, confused. The “art room” was a furniture-free space, the walls of which were covered with floor to ceiling graffiti. When we walked in, a couple of guys had just finished skateboarding.

I stared around me, perplexed. Then suddenly, I got it. By “writing” Gabby meant tagging.

In other words, since many of FreeLA’s kids had likely gotten in trouble for tagging in the past, the school wisely gave them a safe place to do it with gusto.

“There’s a lot we’re still trying to figure out,” said Kim McGill, Youth Justice Coalition’s founder and director, when I came to retrieve my newly clean car.

No doubt. But even my brief visit suggested that this atypical little school was also getting a lot exactly right.

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PS: When I asked Maritza if she had been back to Locke High School since the Green Dot takeover and, if so, what she thought of its new incarnation.

She said she hadn’t been back. But that, from what she’d heard, she had some concerns. “But me and Gabby could go over and do a report for you, if you want,” she volunteered. “We’ll write it up and then you can edit it or do whatever.”

Sold, I said. You have an assignment. We talked about some guidelines she and Gabby should use when reporting, and set a deadline.

Last night after the Super Bowl, I talked to Green Dot’s Steve Barr and told him there might be a couple of student reporters taking a critical look at the Locke transformation.

“Great,” he said. “Bring ‘em on! I want to hear what they have to say.”

Me too.

I’ll let you know as soon as I know.

The Rosebowl is on as I type (Go Trojans! Fight on!), so I want to draw your attention to a rather winningly encouraging commercial that will be running at some point during said bowl game.

(Pete Carroll rules! Trojan defense is awsome! Must stop Derrick Williams! In the nicest possible way, of course. Fight on! ….ahem. Sorry.)

The commercial features students from ICEF Public Schools, a South LA charter school group that operates 13 schools serving 3000 of LA’s minority kids. Founded in 1999, ICEF—which stands for Inner City Education Foundation—takes kids from low-performing urban areas, and has an impressive record of academic success.

For instance, in 2007, ICEF graduated its first senior class from the View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter High School and sent 100% of its graduating class of 71 kids to college—-This in our fair city where the LA-wide public school graduation rate hovers at a dismal 50 percent and only 10 percent of south LA seniors go on to college. Actor Don Cheadle gave the keynote address at the graduation.

According to its statement of purpose, ICEF Public Schools “will transform South Los Angeles into a stable, economically vibrant community by providing first-rate educational opportunities and annually graduating 2,000 high school students.”

In other words, ICEF along with Green Dot and others are working to remake the education possibilities in Los Angeles, inspite of the ongoing blockades thrown up by LAUSD.

After years and years of so many of LA’s children being allowed—to our shame and heartbreak—to slip through the educational cracks, these break-throughs in the charter school world this past year, are a source of much welcomed good news.

The bad news is that the lovely 30-second commercial is funded by Citigroup. In other words, some part of our $326 billion in tax dollars bailout of the self-same Citi-folks was used to buy this high ticket commercial. (A Super Bowl spot costs $3 mil these days. I’m sure a Rose Bowl spot is cheaper, but still…..)

Interestingly, originally the commercial was going to be billed as a “Chairman’s message,” but Citigroup wisely decided to back-out of the limelight and merely let the schools and the kids shine, rightly deducing I suspect, that otherwise the spot would draw exactly the criticism I am leveling.

A better use of bucks than executive bonuses, I suppose. (I notice that on Wednesday, new Citigroup chairman, Vikrim Pandit announced that the companies top executives would be forgoing bonuses this year. Nice of them. A little late, since in 2007, the year in which many of the decisions were made that led Citigroup into this year’s trillion dollar catastrophe, the companies top executive officers earned more that $70 million in compensation.)

Citigroup aside, looking into the faces of these smart, beautiful kids—-who represent all the kids nationwide whom our future rides—-seems like an excellent way to begin 2009. They remind us what is possible—-and what, in the end, really matters.

Happy New Year, everyone!

(7-0 7-7 14-7 24-7 31-7 38-24! Go Trojans. Go Mark Sanchez! Woo-hooo!!!

Also, Go OU, and then let’s take a long hard look at who should be declared the national champions damn-it! Fight on!)

THIS MORNING AND THE WEEKEND PRODUCED a pile of Must Reads. Here are 5 from the list:

1. FRANK RICH TALKS ABOUT BLOGOJEVICH, ACCOUNTABITY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

Yeah, Rod Blagojevich is creepily amusing, writes Rich, but this scandal, while loathsome and deserving of a trip to the slammer, is nothing….comparitively speaking, to a few of the games we’ve seen in the past 8 years.

Here are some clips.

What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have been the calling cards of power. Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

[SNIP]

Bush had arrived in Washington vowing to inaugurate a new, post-Clinton era of “personal responsibility” in which “people are accountable for their actions.” Eight years later he holds himself accountable for nothing. In his recent exit interview with Charles Gibson, he presented himself as a passive witness to disastrous events, the Forrest Gump of his own White House. He wishes “the intelligence had been different” about W.M.D. in Iraq — as if his administration hadn’t hyped and manipulated that intelligence. As for the economic meltdown, he had this to say: “I’m sorry it’s happening, of course.”

2. TIM RUTTEN CALLS FOR A RESCUE OF HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES

On Saturday, Tim Rutten used his column to call, in very strong terms (and using hard numbers), for the wealthy in Los Angeles to step in to rescue Homeboy Industries.

Here are some clips:

Homeboy is one of this too-often-heedless city’s unambiguous municipal treasures — and it’s in trouble. We need to do something about that, and we need to do it now. The problem is simple: The economic catastrophe rolling across our country has dramatically pushed up demand for the kind of help only Homeboy provides. Despite the numbers of young men and women the community employs, and despite the others it has placed with private employers, its lobby is crowded with new applicants every morning. At the same time, the government and the private sources of funding on which Homeboy relies for most of its budget are cutting back as a consequence of the same downturn.

[BIG SNIP]

Here’s the point: We all need to step up and assist Homeboy Industries because it’s the right thing to do, and those who have more to give need to do it now. The rest of us can make contributions by going to the website — www.homeboy-industries.org– or by sending checks to 130 W. Bruno St., Los Angeles, 90012.

As Boyle said this week, “We’re located in the heart of the city, but we represent this city’s heart — a belief that everybody deserves a second chance and a faith that redemption is always possible.”

These are hard times for everybody, but what price can a city put on its heart?

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3. THE COACH IN THE HOOD

The final story on last night’s 60 Minutes profiled USC football coach, Pete Carroll. The segment talked about a lot more than Carroll’s success with Trojan football. The show also showed the coach’s committment to trying to help/stimulateinspire former gang members and gang wanna-be’s to turn their live’s around with his organization, A Better LA.

Carroll was a close friend of gang intervention leader, Bo Taylor, who died last summer, and whom he credits with inspiring him to start reaching out, and ultimately to put his own money into opening A Better LA.

It’s a nice segment and worth watching.

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4. D.C. CHARTERS LEADING REGULAR PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

As in LA and other American cities, Washington DC charter schools are looking more successful than conventional public schools, according to this morning’s Washington Post.

Students in the District’s charter schools have opened a solid academic lead over those in its traditional public schools, adding momentum to a movement that is recasting public education in the city.

Students in the District’s charter schools have opened a solid academic lead over those in its traditional public schools, adding momentum to a movement that is recasting public education in the city.

[SNIP]

District children in both systems still fall short of national averages on standardized tests. But students in charter schools have been more successful at closing the gap. According to a Washington Post analysis of recent national test results for economically disadvantaged students, D.C. middle-school charters scored 19 points higher than the regular public schools in reading and 20 points higher in math.

On the city’s standardized tests, the passing rate for charter middle schools was 13 percent higher on average.

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5. ONE MURDER, TWO MOTHERS GRIEVE

In the LA Times this morning, Al Martinez writes about what happens for a mother when her child kills someone.
For parents living in high crime communities, the news that there has been a fatal shooting causes residents to pray that the dead won’t be anyone they know. Many also pray that the shooter won’t be someone they know.

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A successful charter school organization named ICEF Public Schools announced an intriguing plan today to expand its existing network of 13 public schools to 35 schools in the next four years, all of them located in South LA. The plan is that, once the 35 schools gear up, the ICEF charters will enroll one in four public school students in South Los Angeles, thus creating an “education corridor” that founder, Michael D. Piscal, hopes will be part of the a part of “economic and social transformation of South Los Angeles.”

To accomplish this, Piscal intends to use a variation on the theme being famously employed by Geoffrey Canada in Harlem Children’s Zone. Canada is working to change the educational outcomes for 8,600 low-income children on 60 New York City blocks, by providing social services for the kids from pre-school through their enrollment in college, giving guidance even at a university level, until the Harlem kids get their college diplomas.

In much this same way, Piscal’s schools will take a child from kindergarten through high school and on to college. The hope is to give lower income South LA kids the same kind of social/educational support that a middle class student would get, thereby producing generations of college graduates rather than the 50 percent dropout rate that is plaguing the area at present.

It will be an important project to monitor.

In the meantime, the Los Angeles Times has more:

“These students . . . are going to come back to the community and become the middle class and the leadership class,” [Piscal] said in an interview. “That’s going to change everything! Where the Crips were born, where crack cocaine was invented and spread throughout the country, we’re going to start spreading something good.”