A song for May Day, 2012, “Jack of All Trades”

THE FBI HEROICALLY STINGS, THEN LOCKS UP INEPT AND RIDICULOUS ANARCHISTS ON MAY DAY

This is from Alex Pareen at Salon. It will make you very sad for the FBI, very sad for the idiotic anarchists, very, VERY sad for the rest of us who are paying our hard earned tax dollars to fund this nonsense. A clip:

Happy May Day, fellow travelers! If you’re not currently disrupting capitalism and/or having your wrists zip-tied for exercising your right to freely assemble, you probably read about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s latest, not-at-all suspiciously timed terror sting. The Bureau, in an inspired bit of early-20th century nostalgia, has railroaded a bunch of dangerous anarchists. (Or “dangerous” “anarchists.”) America will not waver in the face of the Galleanist threat!

Five young men from Cleveland are now in jail, accused of plotting to “blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area,” according to the FBI’s triumphant press release/criminal complaint. As is always the case with FBI terror stings, the “sting” part involved the bureau’s informant/agent provocateur mostly inventing the plot the accused have now been arrested for. In this case, the five planned to detonate smoke bombs as a distraction as they “topple[d] financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland.” But the informant (as usual, a sketchy unnamed character with a checkered past) strongly pushed the group to seriously consider different, more extreme plots. At the end, some or all of them were going to plant C-4 on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park….

To give you an idea of the…um.. ept-ness of the group: among their discussed strategies to avoid capture was to get tacks to throw in the road behind them in the event of a chase.

The LA Times also reports on the arrest, albeit in a more serious tone.

PEW CENTER FINDS WARM & TRUSTING FEELINGS ABOUT SCOTUS REACH A QUARTER CENTURY LOW

Yeah, now that’s a shocker. (cough) Bush v. Gore, Citizens United (cough, cough).

Actually, the interesting part is that the grim view of the Supremes is shared almost identically by Democrats, Republicans and independents. Moreover the survey was taken right after the health care hearings in the high court. So where ever you fell ideologically on the matter, it seems you were mighty disgruntled. Or at least half of those surveyed were.

Check out the rest here.

ADULT ED: SHOULD LAUSD REALLY TURN ITS BACK ON A QUARTER MILLION STUDENTS?

Former Adult Ed teacher John McCormick challenges the wisdom of eviscerating adult education in Los Angeles in an LA Times Op Ed. Here’s a clip from the center of the essay:

….The repercussions of cutting or losing adult education would extend far beyond the staffs and students at the schools. Many local businesses, such as pharmacies, hire students who have been certified by adult school skill centers. High school dropouts return to adult school to get their diplomas. Eliminating adult schools would diminish the workforce. And people who make less money pay less in taxes, they spend less, and they often have to depend more on government to meet their basic needs.

Closing adult schools would also result in collateral damage to K-12 children. My students often attended the same schools at night that their children attended during the day. Because kids usually pick up English faster than their parents, if the parents don’t learn the language, they become marginalized in their own families. They cannot communicate with teachers, help with homework or even understand what their kids are saying. So instead of being able to help their kids assimilate, parents are more likely to remain isolated.

THE OTHER BIG SUPREME COURT CASE: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin writes about another potentially far reaching US Supreme Court case that we should all be tracking. As usual everything rests on Justice Kennedy. Here’ a clip from Toobin’s story:

As the legal and political worlds await the Supreme Court’s verdict on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the Justices have another case in the near future which may prove nearly as significant. The health-care case will be decided by June, but next fall the Court will return, perhaps for the last time, to the fraught subject of affirmative action in university admissions.

The facts of the new case are straightforward. Abigail Fisher, a white high-school student in Sugar Land, Texas, was rejected for admission to the University of Texas-Austin. The state requires all students in the top ten per cent of their high-school classes to be admitted to state universities, but students who fall just short of that threshold, like Fisher, are admitted according to a formula; race is one factor in the equation. Fisher’s lawsuit is based on a claim that any consideration of race by a university in admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case amounts to a direct challenge to the most famous decision authored by Sandra Day O’Connor during her long and consequential service on the Court. In 2003, the Court held, by a vote of five to four, that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race as one factor among many in determining whom to admit. In Grutter v. Bollinger, O’Connor said that diversity was such an important goal in American life that universities could engage in some level of race-consciousness in screening candidates. But O’Connor’s opinion imposed a time limit:

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

Now, less than a decade after her ruling, the Court appears poised to throw it out….

“SAVING OUR SONS: A COMMUNITY CONVERSATION” WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT LA TRADE TECH

This is from the press release on the event, which is sponsored by a bunch of good folks:

California Community Foundation invites parents, educators, employers, community, civic and religious leaders, and all concerned members of the public to participate in a historic town hall on the need to change and improve conditions for Black male youth in Los Angeles that are adversely affecting their futures.

Twenty years after the civil unrest in Los Angeles, Black male youth have significant challenges related to their educational and employment prospects. Additionally, while Black male youth make up 10 percent of L.A. County’s youth population, they comprise approximately 33 percent of all youth under probation supervision.

The event on May 2 is supported by Brotherhood Crusade, Community Coalition, Liberty Hill Foundation, Los Angeles Urban league, Youth Justice Coalition, Youth Mentoring Connection, and the Office of the Mayor, City of Los Angeles, and will feature a personal appearance by actor and activist Larenz Tate (TV’s “Rescue Me”, and films such as, “Ray”, “Love Jones”, “Crash”, and “Menace II Society”).

The event will take place on Wednesday, May 2, at 6 p.m., in the North Tent at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College, 1937 Grand Ave., Los Angeles 90015

Photo by David Maxwell, European Pressphoto Agency / May 1, 2012

LYRICS FOR “A JACK OF ALL TRADES”

…after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

GARDENING INMATES LESS LIKELY TO COME BACK TO LOCK UP

A growing number of corrections facilities across the US are surprised to find that inmates who participate in gardening programs are significantly less likely to return to prison than the national average predicts.

Pattie Baker writing for Youth Today, has the rest of this terrifically cheering story. Here’s a clip:

The most recent study by the Pew Center for the States and the Association of State Correctional Administrators found the [national] rate of recidivism (percentage of people released from prisons who are rearrested, convicted, or returned to custody within three years) to be 43.3 percent. What may be surprising, however, is that correctional facilities with a few years under their belt with a garden are finding not just reduced recidivism rates, but significantly reduced rates. According to the WorldWatch Institute, Sandusky County Jail in Ohio finds a recidivism rate of only 18 percent from those inmates who participate in its garden program, as opposed to 40 percent for those who don’t. Graduates of the Greenhouse Program at Rikers Island in New York City experience a 5-10 percent recidivism rate, as opposed to 65 percent in the general inmate population. Participants in The Garden Project at the San Francisco County Jail have a 24 percent recidivism rate, rather than 55 percent otherwise.

Jail gardening programs that involve people at even younger ages show promising positive effects in not only reducing recidivism but also helping youth avoid first-time offenses. Sidney Morgan, the Community Works Leader for the Department of Community Justice in Multnomah County, Ore., sees big changes in youth when they work in a garden. Morgan runs Project Sega (which means “to grow”) which provides youth on probation the opportunity to work on a quarter-acre garden to pay restitution for their offenses. Produce from this garden is sold at New Seasons supermarkets in the metro-Portland area, and the participating youth get the opportunity to plant, maintain, harvest from the garden, prep the food, and bring it to market. Morgan says New Seasons will even offer jobs to youth in Project Sega after they are done with probation. Through Project Sega, Morgan claims they learn that they can be successful, and that crime is not their only option.

“I’ve been doing probation work for seven years, and I’ve never seen anything like the reaction and results we get from kids who participate in gardening,” Morgan exclaimed.

STATE SUES OC TO PROTECT SCHOOL MONEY

The State of California filed a lawsuit against Orange County on Thursday to prevent the budget-strapped OC from using education funds ($73.5M worth) to pay other bills, leaving the state to foot the bill for schools. While California would be held to a constitutional requirement for funding K-12, if the court ruled in favor of the OC, community colleges could take a big hit with the loss of county funding.

The LA Times has the story.

Ted Guest at The Crime Report writes about a new DOJ and MacArthur Foundation-funded study, “Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration,” headed by eighteen corrections experts, will study the the nation’s 2.3M prison population (roughly six times that of most other countries). Research will explore possible low-cost, high-social benefit alternatives to current prison policies.

The panel of scholars, chaired by Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, will examine the reasons for the dramatic increases in U.S. incarceration rates since the 1970s, which have produced one of the world’s highest incarceration levels—with more than 2.3 million people behind bars in U.S. prisons and jails at any time

The topic has been widely discussed and analyzed for years by advocacy groups on the left and right, as well as by individual scholars. But the two-year, $1.5 million project, convened by the National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences) represents the first time in recent memory that these issues have been subject to wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary research.

“It now is time to review the state of knowledge—to look at the causes of the high rate of incarceration and the consequences for society,” said Travis, author of But They All Came Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005).

Warren Olney’s Which Way LA has a good line up of people talking about the pepper spray incident that occurred Tuesday night when a crowd of student protesters—extremely upset by the huge jump in fees for certain classes— attempted to gain access to the trustees meeting that was, at the time, reportedly already full—and got pepper sprayed.

Here’s the promo from their story:

Last night at Santa Monica College — where this radio station is located — about 100 protesters crowded a hallway outside a meeting of the Board of Trustees. Video of the incident has been posted on YouTube by the Corsair, Santa Monica College’s newspaper. College President Chui Tsang says that when bystanders overran the door “there was one discharge of pepper spray by a [college] police officer… [and] a number of bystanders were affected.” He also said that the incident is being investigated, but that the college will pay the medical bills even of those it feels were breaking the law. No arrests were made, but the protest itself raises the broader issue of declining funds for public education in California.

You can listen right here.

Chronic truancy is a daunting problem in districts all over California, but it’s far worse in the Los Angeles Unified School District where nearly one fourth of the district’s middle-school students are chronically absent from school.

What is even more alarming is that an identical number of LA’s kindergartners— 22.7 percent—are also chronically absent from their classrooms.

(Chronic absence” is defined as missing 10 percent of the school year for excused or unexcused reasons.)

Fortunately, not every school district in the state has those miserably high truancy numbers.

In fact, earlier this week, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced that 11 districts have been designated as models of attendance improvement and dropout prevention by the State School Attendance Review Board. The 11 model districts, which include Alhambra, Montebello, San Bernardino and San Diego, will be given awards at a conference in April.

““There’s a very basic fact that is often overlooked: Even the best teacher can’t help students who don’t make it to school,” Torlakson said in a written statement. “These [districts] are proving that there are highly effective strategies for improving attendance and reducing the dropout rate”

After new research pointed to chronic absence as a key indicator of a kid’s academic future, reducing absenteeism became a major focus for Torlakson’s administration, which is trying to find low coast ways to motivate districts to identify students who are are missing too much school, and then intervene early.

“And by early, that means kindergarten, says David Kopperud, the chairperson of the state’s School Attendance Review Board. “We thought the problem began in middle school and high school,” Kopperud told me. “But it starts way before that. It turns out that even kindergarten is important because that’s when students learn beginning reading skills.” Once kids fall behind in their first three years, he said, the slide can all too easily become cumulative until, by middle school they’re in trouble.

“Now they’re too far behind to catch up, and so the next thing is, they start to misbehave.”

School suspensions follow the misbehavior, which means more classwork in missed.

“In a lot of schools,” Kopperud said, “20 percent of their absences are due to suspensions. And we find that schools with high suspension rates, have a high drop out rate.” It’s what other experts call the push out factor. And pretty soon you have this really large population that is lost to law enforcement.”

So what to do?

“We’re learning that the best kind of drop-out intervention, is prevention,” said Kopperud. “But that means analyzing the school attendance data so that you have a good early warning system to tell you when kids are missing too much school, and then intervening aggressively.”

But aggressive and timely intervention requires the personnel to do the intervening—at a time when districts like LAUSD are in a frenzy of cutbacks.

So that’s where the awards come in..

Kopperud said that he and his board members hope that the other districts will look at the honorees and think, hey, if those guys over there can improve , we can too. “So we’re handing out certificates and plaques,” he said.

“It’s a reminder that there are places where, despite the odds, they’re beating them,” said Kopperud. “So it can be done. Even in this economy, it can be done.”

Let’s hope LAUSD takes note. So far what they’ve done districtwide is….not much. (Unless you count paying consultants fat fees to produce this and that report and analysis, without any appreciable follow-up that would change outcomes for actual kids.)

AND IN OTHER KID-RELATED NEWS…… AN OPPONENT OF OPENING OF JUVENILE DEPENDENCY COURT SLAMS LA TIMES COVERAGE OF COURT HEARINGS AS HARMING KIDS

Whittier Law School professor William Wesley Patton evidently slammed LA Times editor-at-large Jim Newton for his coverage of LA’s newly-opened child dependency court in an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Daily Journal (which is hidden behind a hefty pay wall, or I’d link to it).

Newton, who wrote two excellent columns about his visits to court in the weeks since Judge Michael Nash ordered the opening of the long-secret proceedings to the press (here and here), decided not to simply ignore the slam, but to point out its truthiness. Here’s a clip:

The shift from holding almost all Dependency Court hearings in private to declaring a presumptive openness of those proceedings to the press is understandably upsetting to those accustomed to working in private. It is hard to have prying eyes where once there were none.

And yet, what is often lost in the resistance to change is what is most important. The interests of children are, of course, paramount in all of this, but those who side with Patton, in my view, see those interests too narrowly. Secrecy in Dependency Court has protected social workers, lawyers and even judges who perform poorly from being held to answer for their work. We would never tolerate such immunity from scrutiny in our adult and family courts, nor should we when the stakes are even higher — the preservation of an opportunity for children who have done no wrong. In the end, the victims of secrecy in Dependency Court are children whose caretakers are allowed to fail them without consequence; the beneficiaries of a more open system would be children as well.

So far, the experiment in Los Angeles Dependency Court is bearing out that argument. Perhaps that’s why Patton distorts it.

What Jim said.

COMMENTARY AFTER WATCHING SIX HOURS OF HEALTH TESTIMONY AT SCOTUS.….

Dalia Lithwick of Slate sounds stunned and depressed after Wednesday’s round of arguments….

Amid all the three-day psychodrama, it’s easy to get confused about what’s happened and what hasn’t. Court watchers seem to generally agree that the individual mandate is in real peril and will rise or fall with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy. Court watchers also agree that 19th-century tax law—while generally adorable—will not prevent the justices from deciding the case by July. And they also agree that they may have counted five justices who appear willing to take the whole law down, along with the mandate, and the Medicaid expansion as well.

But the longer they talked, the harder it was to say. A lot of today’s discussion started to sound like justices just free-associating about things in the law they didn’t like. That doesn’t reveal all that much about the interplay between the four separate challenges—what happens when they all have to be looked at together—or anything at all about what will happen at conference or in the drafting of opinions. Could the five conservative justices strike down the entire health care law, and take us into what Kagan described this morning as a “revolution”? They could. Will they? I honestly have no idea anymore. As silent retreats go, this one was a lot less enlightening than I’d hoped.

While Adam Teicholz at the Atlantic wonders morosely…but interestingly…. if bloggers killed the health care mandate before it got to court…

Back in early 2010, before the 26 state attorneys general, before the angry protests and the breathless headlines, before the six hours of oral argument at the nation’s highest court, the legal challenge to the individual mandate was greeted with head-scratching skepticism. The constitutional argument was dismissed by many Court-watchers. A week after the first challenge was filed, one liberal scholar suggested the claims were so frivolous that the lawyers could face sanctions.

Now, however, the atmosphere has changed, “and that,” Adam Liptak, Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, told me last week, is in part “a testament” to the persistence of a small group of conservative and libertarian attorneys. In the last few days, Politico and the New York Times have shone a light on Randy Barnett, the Georgetown Law professor who has taken on the dual role, unusual for an appellate lawyer, of spearheading advocacy both in court and in more public forums.

[BIG SNIP]

Blogs — particularly a blog of big legal ideas called Volokh Conspiracy — have been central to shifting the conversation about the mandate challenges. At Volokh, Barnett and other libertarian academics have been debating and refining their arguments against the mandate since before the ACA was signed. At the beginning, law professor Jonathan Adler fleshed out the approach that came to typify the elite conservative response for the first months of the public debate: the Founders never intended for the Constitution to permit such broad federal power, but given New Deal-era precedent, the mandate, if it became law, would pass muster. Things changed on Volokh around the time that it became clear that an insurance mandate would be part of whichever health care reform package passed into law.

One congressional floor speech seemed to mark a tonal turning point for Volokh, the moment its writers realized their power to shape debate…..

AND IN GOOD LASD NEWS…..A DRAMATIC AIR-5 RESCUE SAVES WOMAN’S LIFE AFTER CRASH

Amid the Aero Bureau controversies, it’s important to remember the great work LASD pilots do day in and day out, both in patrol and rescue. Here’s a KTLA report of the most recent dramatic example of Air-5’s rescue work. (Scroll down for the video.)

LAUSD BOARD GRITS TEETH….THEN SLASHES AND BURNS: VOTES TO CUT ALL ADULT SCHOOLS….AND A LOT MORE, HOPES THAT A PARCEL TAX & UNION CONCESSIONS WILL SAVE ALL

The LA Times Stephen Ceasar reports:

The Los Angeles Board of Education approved a preliminary, worst-case $6-billion budget Tuesday, a plan that would eliminate thousands of jobs, close all of the district’s adult schools and cut some after-school and arts programs.

But Supt. John Deasy presented a less severe deficit than initially expected to the board and several scenarios that would restore millions in funding and save some programs from either elimination or partial cuts before the budget is finalized. Much of that, however, is contingent on voters’ passing the governor’s tax initiative in November, which he hopes would stave off more education cuts.

“I can say that this budget, even with its clear and present dangers, remains a budget of hope,” said board member Steve Zimmer. Deasy then interjected, “I don’t want to hope, I want to plan.”

The very excellent Tami Abdollah of KPCC has LOTS more.

KCET’S SO CAL CONNECTED GOES INSIDE CHILDREN’S DEPENDENCY COURT, FINDS POTENTIAL DISASTERS

KCET’s So Cal Connected (which has been on a roll in the past year) brought cameras inside LA’s children’s dependency court, and saw a lot that alarmed producer Karen Foshay, and correspondent Jennifer London.

The first of the resulting episodes aired last Friday. The second will air this coming Friday, March 16.

Both episodes demonstrate why Judge Michael Nash’s controversial order to open the court to the press is so important—despite the loud protests by those who thought reporters would trample on the rights of the children whose lives were being decided at these formerly closed proceedings.

Here’s what KCET had to say about episode 2, titled Courting Disaster.

Los Angeles County’s Dependency Court is the largest in the nation, handling 25,000 children. For the first time television cameras were granted access, revealing in graphic detail how deep budget cuts are devastating our justice system and putting our most vulnerable citizens at risk. We profile Judge Amy Pellman who is scheduled to hear 33 family cases in six hours, sometimes deciding a child’s fate in as little as three minutes. We meet parents who have completed counseling programs and are hoping the judge will grant them custody of their son. But other parents are stuck, unable to get into overcrowded programs that are required in order to get their children back.

We see how judges and attorneys often learn the facts of a case only minutes before the case is heard; how attorneys who are supposed to represent 160 children are burdened with 240 cases. More delays and backlogs are inevitable as 300 layoffs and 50 courtroom closures are scheduled to occur in L.A. County, following a statewide $650 million slash in funding.

California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakaueye says “I think its devastating to be told to come back in four months and that we’ll hear your case on child custody. What’s a person to do in four months?”

Hell, we certainly wouldn’t want reporters looking into any of that.

And, by the way, So Cal Connected focused on exactly the sort of thing that has rarely been adequately reported. We will hear about the ghastly tragedy of a child dying at the hands of abusive parents, but we rarely hear about the everyday tragedies that occur when a system with the power to save or ruin the lives of children and families is overburdened.

CA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS OUTLINES NEW POLICIES FOR HANDLING PRISON GANGS, AND FOR CLASSIFYING PRISONERS AS TO RISK

As the CDCR rightly states, California prisons manage “the most violent and sophisticated prison gangs in the nation.” Sadly, yes. That’s about right. And much of that management in the past has been to crack down hard, and then crack down some more.

How has this strategy worked out? Not all that well, actually—at least in the long term. Or as the CDCR put it, “Although this [suppression only] strategy reduced violence in prisons, it lacked prevention, deterrent and interdiction components.”

So what did the CDCR do? To their great credit, after 25 years of ever-more aggressive crack downs, they decided to stop and really examine the problem, and then try to institute the most effective methods to solve it, rather than the methods they’d always used.

Here is the report on the new methods that have resulted.

I’ll tell you about the report in more detail in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that it’s quite smart—and, among other things, gives gang members who are willing, a step-by-step road out that is rehabilitative rather than punitive.

It is also good news to note that, in a separate but related report, the CDCR has redone it’s risk classification system. In short, they found that they were overclassifying and/or misclassifying prisoners, which they discovered did greater damage to the prisoners and to public safety, then did underclassing them. Research showed that prisoners who were overclassified—i.e. put in more restrictive units than their behavior warranted—were more likely to act out, more likely to learn criminal behavior from the truly hard cases, and more likely to do poorly when they paroled. (Here’s the report.)

More on this too at another time. In any case, it’s really, really good to see the CDCR stepping up and doing the right thing in these crucial but difficult areas.

Go CDCR!

PS: It’s important to note that many of these reform elements were requested by the prison hunger strikers of last year, during the hunger strike that began at Pelican Bay’s SHU (Secure Housing Unit) and then spread throughout the system.

PPS: As the CDCR points out, these changes are made possible by the population relief brought by realignment, which is exactly right. Despite all the wailing, realignment is wise and necessary. Change is painful in the beginning, but under Jerry Brown’s governorship, Matt Cate and the CDCR is actually starting to slowly but steadily make genuine progress.

ANIMAL ADOPTIONS UPS—AND SO IS EUTHANASIA IN LA’S SHELTERS

Commissioners resigning, euthanasia is up, three of the five commissioners who oversee the Department of Animal Services have recently resigned thus paralyzing the department, a million dogs are running around LA unlicensed, is LA’s critter oversight a mess? Warren Olney with Which Way LA? wades into the issue.

AUTOPSY SHOWS JAIL INMATE’S DEATH LIKELY CAUSED BY DRUGS GIVEN HIM FOR MENTAL ILLNESS

LAT’S Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard report.

CALIF. PRISON INMATE FINDS HE HAS TALENT FOR SCHOLARSHIP IN HIEROGLYPHICS

Read this very cool Column One story in the LA Times by Thomas H. Maugh II.

Photo by KPCC’s new education reporter Tami Abdollah

SHUTTING DOWN ADULT ED WILL MEAN A TEN PERCENT HIGHER HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT RATE, SAYS LAUSD’S OWN PROJECTIONS.

BUT IT WILL ALSO AFFECT THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF LA RESIDENTS TRYING TO REACH FOR A NEW FUTURE

On Tuesday, March 13, the Los Angeles Unified School board will vote on the question of whether or not the district’s Adult Education program will continue to exist.

Right now the odds against Adult Ed surviving are not considered to be good.

In the newest draft of the district’s so-called worst case budget, which WitnessLA has obtained, all 24 of the district’s adult ad schools are scheduled to have their doors slammed closed.

There are also huge cuts schedule for the district’s arts education and LAUSD’s gifted and talented programs (GATE). The ranks of school nurses and librarians are decimated. And a bunch of continuation schools are marked for shuttering.

But it is the approximately 300,000 adult school students and their teachers who have been the most active in protesting the truly ruinous slashing of their adult ed programs. While the ongoing demonstrations (like the one above at West Valley Occupational Center) have surprised and rattled the board, in the end it still appears that adult ed will be hit by some of the most crippling cuts, which will, in turn, affect thousands and thousands of worried students.

Supt. John Deasy has said repeatedly that he’ll do whatever he needs to do in order not to not raise class sizes in the K-12 grades.

Never mind that in in a recent report sent to the LAUSD board by the Superintendent’s office (that WLA has obtained), according to the district’s own calculations one of the impacts in cutting adult ed is that “the district’s drop out rate would increase by approximately ten percent as students who have fallen behind would not be able to attend adult schools for credit recovery and therefor not graduate.”

[You can read the report yourself here. Scroll to p. 48 for the Impact Statement.]

An increased drop out rate is, however, just one of the impacts that closing adult ed would have on its students, present and future—as evidenced by the stories below.

A FORMER HOMEGIRL EXPLAINS WHY ADULT SCHOOLS MUST STAY OPEN

“See, everybody’s freaked, because of how much this school means to us,” said a 34-year old mother named Rosa, who is a student at West Valley Occupational Center, where approximately 20,000 students a year take classes in ESL, GED prep, various job training and vocational programs…and more.

Rosa (who asked me not to use her last name) said that her adult school classes have changed her life.

Rosa explained that she is a former gang member who grew up in an abusive household and who, during the early years of her life, thought very little about her future.

She managed to leave her gang with the help of a boyfriend whom she eventually married. But her new husband had his own problems; he was addicted to rock cocaine, which gradually led to a spiral downward. “He didn’t know how to fit into society,” she said.
Rosa was three months pregnant with her second child when her husband was shot dead on the street.

After her husband’s death, Rosa kept the household together the best she could for the sake of her kids. But then in 2009, she was fired from her job. Her boss liked her, she said, but told Rosa that her skills weren’t up to par.

“I didn’t know how to type or use the computer. I mean, I was typing with one finger,” Rosa said with a small laugh.

For the next two years, while Rosa searched for employment, she lived at her mom’s house, got by on public assistance, and tried to be a good mother. But she felt terrible about herself. “After the kids went to school, and I cleaned up the house, I’d just sleep. I didn’t want to do anything. Finally I realized, I was really depressed, you know?”

Rosa understood she had to make a change—if not for herself then for her children. A man who was mentoring her son (as part of the mayor’s GRYD program), gave her some advice. Go back to school, he said.

“I told him I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough to go to school.” she said. “And I meant it.”

But the mentor pushed her. So in September of last year, she enrolled in three classes: office Procedures. Business English, and computer basics.

“I took business English because I needed to learn to talk better to be in the business world.”

Now she’s taking another three: Typing, and Computer Software Application, and Physical Therapy. She goes to class for four hours in the morning and four at night.

“I know if I keep working, I can really make something of myself. And I want to give my kids a better future,” said Rosa.

“This school has changed my life. It changes a lot of people’s lives. That’s why it’s so important they don’t close it down.

“We’re the future,” Rosa said. “Our kids are the future. But to get to that future we need the help that we get from these schools.

“If they close down, what will people like me do? Where will we go to get the skills we need? Really, where?”

THE LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN

Students from West Valley and other adult ed schools have been writing piles of letters to Supt. Deasy, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and anyone else whom they could think of who might have some influence on the future of adult ed.

Rosa’s letter is below along with that of a woman named Nancy who, like Rosa, is taking classes to “meet employers’ requirements”….”so that I can show my daughter and everyone in my life that I’ve made it, after 10 years of being out of school.”

Her story is also a compelling one, as you’ll see when you read her letter.

[CLICK TWICE ON THUMBNAILS TO MAKE LARGE ENOUGH TO READ]

NOTE: Aaron Liu writing for Neon Tommy has an excellent story on the proposed adult ed cuts and student reaction.

THE ADULT EDUCATION DRAMA CONTINUES AS SUPT. DEASY MEETS WITH ADULT ED PRINCIPALS ON MONDAY

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has called a meeting with the principals of the district’s adult education schools, as Deasy continues to leave adult ed on the chopping block.

LAUSD has 35 adult education centers, which include 24 community adult schools, six regional occupational centers, and five skills centers, all of which have been threatened by Deasy’s proposed cuts.

Adult ed instructors as well as the approximately 300,000 Los Angeles residents who take the classes in the program, are waiting nervously to hear what news comes out of the closed door meeting.

Meanwhile there is no word about why Ed Morris, the man who was head of the Adult Ed program until last Wednesday was put on administrative leave on Wednesday afternoon as WitnessLA reported last week.

Expressions of dismay at his abrupt ouster continue to be expressed by those who worked with and around him.

MORE DEMONSTRATIONS PLANNED

The Adult Ed teachers and administrators, plus hundreds of students, have held a series of demonstrations since the threat of cutting the program altogether became public.

Sources tell us that district officials like Deasy and some of the school board members, have been stunned by the organizational skill with which the Adult Ed-ers have managed to turn people out again and again for demonstrations.

MAYOR HAS YET TO TAKE A STAND ON ADULT ED

One of the next pressure points the Adult-Ed-ers intend to hit is that of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa whom they hope to pressure/educate/cajole into becoming an ally.

The mayor has often told the story of how he nearly dropped out when he was a high school student and how a devoted teacher saved him. As of 2010, LAUSD had the second worst graduation rate in America and, as one former schoolboard member put it, “Adult ed is the single best dropout remediation program in the county. Period.”

It also offers a wide array of job training and skills classes, which help unemployed or under employed LA residents get back to work. Fees for courses range from $20 to slightly over $100, for certain kinds of higher level certification programs. So it is job training that is affordable for those who have lost their regular paychecks—making adult ed the best game in town when it comes to retraining and/or rebooting one’s skills soas to get back in the labor force.

Organizers intend to begin a Call Villaraigosa campaign today, Monday March 5.

Photo by Edwin Folven/Park La Brea News

Some adult eduction teachers with whom I’m acquainted sent me a link to this NPR story that explores whether a GED—or General Education Development test— is a valuable credential for people who have dropped out of school to acquire. In delving into the question, the story cited a study indicating that a high school diploma was better than a GED. (Duh!) NPR reporter Claudio Sanchez also talked to a management official from the GED testing service who told him they are working hard to improve the design of the test, to make it a better tool for both college and career readiness, and that a new and improved version will be out in 2014.

In addition to the above, however, the story had embedded in it interview clips with two Los Angeles educators. One of the interviews is with our own LAUSD Superintendent Dr. John Deasy, and the other features the head of LAUSD’s Adult Eduction program, Ed Morris.

Neither man had anything good to say about the GED. In fact, they were both fairly withering in their assessments.

“The GED is a credential. Is it adequate for gainful employment and a living wage in the United States of America today? I do not think so,” said Deasy.

Morris went still further.

“If I were prepared today with a GED,” he told NPR’s Sanchez, “and that’s what I had as an 18-year-old, I’d be scared to death of the future.”

My! What a helpful outlook.

The adult ed teachers with whom I spoke, and their colleagues who had also heard the interviews,- (some of whom have even taught those poor deluded adult students who still want GEDs)—-were utterly incensed to hear their two top bosses say publicly they saw little or no value in something they—the teachers—had seen hundreds of adult students sweat to achieve.

“Morris says he’d be ’scared to death’ if all he had was a GED,” one adult ed instructor wrote in an email. “How he would feel armed with nothing at all? How ironic that the NPR reporter interviewed the very men who [are] working to dismantle LAUSD’s once thriving adult education division.”

(It should be noted that since, every ten minutes, some official is carving yet another ghastly chunk out of the LAUSD adult ed budget, with near fatal cuts now immanently threatened, these teachers are not, by and large, in a good mood.)

As someone who has reported for two decades on populations for whom the GED is often a hugely important milestone, I too was stunned at the dismissive tone both these men used.

Of course a high school diploma is better than a GED, and a college education is much, much better still. (Despite what the ever more bizarre Mr. Santorum might opine.)

But for many of the men and women I have known who dropped out of high school because of gang membership, or pregnancy, or incarceration, or a family crisis, or any one of a number of other education-interrupting reasons, going back to high school in one’s 20’s or 30s no longer felt like a reasonable option. However, a GED felt doable, and the process of getting one did not feel humiliating.

Moreover, for many of those men and women, and others like them, while the acquisition of a GED doesn’t guarantee employment (far from it, but then neither does a Master’s degree in this employment climate), it is nonetheless often the psychological gateway that allows them the confidence to pound on doors until they find the decent job they might not otherwise have found, and then, from there, they are able to reach for the decent life that previously seemed to elude them. Even better, for a surprising number, a GED is the first step on the path to belatedly go to college.

Really, right off the top of my head, I can give you a dozen such examples of late college goers I have known—few of whom would have gotten on the college path were it not for the GED.

Sure, for some the certificate doesn’t count for a lot, but for many it does.

Thus it is more than a little dismaying to find that the two men who have the most power over GED prep programs in LA County, don’t appear to understand their value.

Or maybe they do. And this is just some creepily disingenuous way to rationalize the gutting of them.

The GED prep classes are, of course, only one of many reasons why Deasy and Morris must not to slash and burn Adult Education. There are all the job training programs, which have successfully helped thousands get back to work, and the English learner classes…. the list goes on and on.

Let us hope that Deasy and Morris hold the rest of the Adult Ed programs in higher regard than they hold the GED.

SUPREME COURT TOSSES OUT CASE AGAINST LOS ANGELES SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES

The AP has the story. Here’s a clip:

The Supreme Court said Wednesday that California police officers cannot be sued because they used a warrant that may have been defective to search a woman’s house.

The high court threw out the lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials, who were being sued personally by Augusta Millender for the search on her house and confiscation of her shotgun.

Police were looking for her foster son, Jerry Ray Bowen, who had recently shot at his ex-girlfriend Shelly Kelly with a black sawed-off shotgun. Kelly told police that he might be at his foster mother’s house, so Messerschmidt got a warrant to look for any weapons on the property and gang-related material, since Bowen was supposed to be a member of the Mona Park Crips and the Dodge Park Crips. The detective had his supervisors approve the warrant before submitting to the district attorney and a judge, who also approved the warrant.

Bowen and his shotgun were not found at Millender’s house, but police confiscated the 73-year-old Millender’s shotgun.

Millender, who is now deceased, sued saying the warrant was over broad and that the deputies had acted improperly. The 9th Circuit agreed, citing the fourth amendment. The Supremes did not—pointing out that the case did not, in fact, concern the validity of the warrant, but was about was whether a lawsuit against the officers was permitted. The court concluded that it was not, and that the officers acted reasonably, as they had every reason to think the warrant valid.

Read the rest. It’s interesting.

Plus, as David Savage of the LA Times points out the suit made for some unusual allies: The ACLU and the National Rifle Assn. backed plaintiff Millender, and the Obama administration joined in support of the deputies.

ILLINOIS GOVERNOR SUGGESTS CLOSING CONTROVERSIAL SUPERMAX PRISON AND GETS APPLAUSE AND CRITICISM

IF Governor Pat Quinn orders the closure of the Tamms supermax prison at in southern Illinois, it will be for fiscal reasons, but many experts across the country are applauding the possibility. As with California’s Pelican Bay and the Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado, Tamms utilizes the kind of extreme isolation that many believe constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. What is more, for those who are eventually released from prison, research suggests that supermax isolation causes psychological damage, which makes an individual’s behavior worse, not better. Thus human rights organizations would like to see Tamms and places like it close their doors, sooner rather than later..

Yet shutting down the facility is anything but simple. Prisons have become central to the economy of certain rural areas of the country, so the closure can wreak local havoc.

As the Chicago Tribune puts it:

From the moment it opened in 1998, the super-max Tamms prison has been controversial for its high costs and the harsh treatment of its inmates.

Gov.Pat Quinn’s plan to close Tamms to save millions of dollars did not end the controversy.

Critics say it is long past time to shutter a prison known for conditions that were often compared with those at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Opponents of Quinn’s proposal say closing Tamms would be devastating to the community in far southern Illinois where it is located, a place where jobs are hard to come by.

Other states may soon face similar dilemmas as a dropping crime rate meets tight budgets,

In California, however, the prisons are still so overcrowded, and our recidivism rate still so high, that despite a diving crime rate, closures are not close on the horizon.

LAUSD SUP DEASY SAYS THAT HE HAS ORDERED THE REFILING OF EVERY CASE OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT FROM THE LAST THREE YEARS WITH THE STATE CREDENTIALING COMMISSION

He’s doing all this refiling just to be on the safe side, Deasy told David Lazarus on the Patt Morrison Show on KPCC Wednesday.

Interestingly, Deasy also told Lazarus that more than 850 certificated employees had been “separated” from Los Angeles Unified in the 10 months since he took over as superintendent – not only for criminal activity but for failing to meet “standards of conduct.”

“We’re going to work very hard to keep good teachers. But we’re not going to tolerate the other,” Deasy said.

A good thing since, for a while there, the allegations of sexual misconduct seemed to keep on coming. After the arrest of Mark Berndt, the former Miramonte Elementary School teacher charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct with children, two more LAUSD teachers have been removed from schools due to charges of sexual misconduct.

Deasy told the LA Times:

“I’m horrified,” said Deasy, regarding recent revelations about the handling of past abuse allegations. “And the rest of my comments can’t be printed in the language that the L.A. Times uses. I don’t think I’m overreacting.”

The Los Angeles Unified School Board will vote on Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, on whether or not to cut nearly all funding from LA’s adult education program that serves 300,000 people with classes that, in many cases, make crucial differences in lives.

Adult ed teachers and students demonstrated at school sites all last week, but it is unclear if anyone is listening. The district is so budget strapped that board members are looking everywhere for cuts, and eyes have landed on adult ed.

Sunday’s Daily News ran a good story by Barbara Jones about the various sides of this important education issue.

Here’s a clip:

High-school dropouts can go there to earn a GED or diploma. Veterans, laid-off workers and young adults with vocational aspirations can learn a trade. Immigrant parents can acquire basic English and math skills so they can help their kids with homework.

At nearly three dozen adult education and occupational centers operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, nearly 300,000 students are enrolled in low-cost programs designed to help them better their lives.

Their fate now lies in the hands of the school board, which is set to vote Tuesday on a budget that would cut the program and divert most of the $200 million in state money earmarked for adult education to ease the district’s $557 million deficit.

While LAUSD leaders say they desperately need the money to fund core programs at K-12 campuses, adult education advocates say the program is essential to building an academic support system for LAUSD parents and training a skilled workforce for Southern California.

“Los Angeles Unified is the perfect storm,” said Chris Nelson, president of the 3,000-member California Council for Adult Education. “Ending all services for 300,000 students will have a huge impact — not only on the students, but on the community.”

There is no easy solution to the quandary facing the school district, which is wrestling with how to balance the $6 billion budget for 2012-13.

For the last five years, the cash-strapped state government has provided the district with just part of the money it is supposed to receive and has extended IOUs for the rest. This year, for instance, Los Angeles Unified got just $3,338 of the $6,506 it had been promised to educate each student, according to district officials.

[SNIP]

Kathrin Middleton of dropped out of high school more than 30 years ago to help raise her siblings. She kept her lack of education a secret until her own daughter entered kindergarten — a milestone that prompted the Encino homemaker to enroll in a diploma program at Rinaldi Adult Center in Granada Hills.

“I was living life in a box, a life filled with shame and limited by fear,” Middleton said. “I didn’t want that for my daughter. I wanted her to be brave and courageous, so I faced my demons.”

A dropout from Granada Hills Charter, Ashley Mu oz thought she’d closed the door on her future until a friend encouraged her to get her high-school equivalency certificate at Rinaldi.

“It gave me a second chance,” Mu oz said. “I’ve got my confidence back and I’m ready to face the world.”

There are countless success stories like these among the 10,500 students at Rinaldi, a satellite of the Kennedy-San Fernando Community Adult School.

Principal Kathy Javaheri said there’s a misperception that adult centers teach nonessential subjects like handicrafts or foreign language for travelers.

In reality, they’re designed to help students earning their GED or high school diploma, which helps LAUSD fulfill its goal of boosting its graduation rate. There are also basic English and math classes for parents of K-12 students so they can acquire the skills to help with homework and participate in their children’s education.

“We’re part of the fabric of LAUSD,” said Javaheri, who has been with the adult ed program for more than 30 years. “Taking away adult ed would be tearing away that fabric….”

I spoke to four Adult Ed teachers on Sunday afternoon, and they were not feeling optimistic about Tuesday’s meeting.

We’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Photo by Andy Holzman, Daily News Staff, of students in class at the West Valley Occupational Center in Woodland Hills