Funding Change Upsets Porter Ranch Parents
Porter Ranch Community School Expected to Receive More than $240,000 as a Pilot School; New Funding Formula Cut Those Funds
By Matt Thacker on June 4, 2014.
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"The regulations for implementing the new formula were approved in January, and Galatzan and LAUSD officials maintain they were not aware until then that pilot funding would be cut. Carl Petersen, who is running against Galatzan in next year’s election, said LAUSD never should have provided funding estimates to the school community when they knew changes were coming."
Read the full story at
http://www.postperiodical.com/funding-change-upsets-porter-ranch-parents/
Two Candidates File to Seek Galatzan School Board Seat
Posted on April 24, 2014 11:30 am by Michael Janofsky
"Petersen’s candidacy represents his first run for public office.
'I’ve been thinking about it for a year,' he said in an interview, explaining that his prime motivation was encountering obstacles in his quest for help for two of his daughters with autism.
'It’s such a bureaucratic process with all the hoops they make you jump through,' he said. 'There’s a feeling throughout the district that the board doesn’t listen to parents. You see it in Breakfast in the Classroom, the iPads. They have a deaf ear to parents. Parents are speaking, but the board doesn’t listen.'
Petersen, 46, said his interest in running was not necessarily in protest of Galatzan. Not initially, anyway.
'At first it was more general,' he said. 'But then, I attended one of her community meetings about the budget. After listening to her, I was not impressed.'"
Read the full story at
http://laschoolreport.com/carl-peterson-elizabeth-badger-seek-galatzan-school-board-seat
Opting In
My neighborhood school holds a “Summer Transition Academy” for all incoming Freshmen to help them “understand the school’s expectations both academically and behaviorally.” This two week program is mandatory to the point where anyone who misses more than four hours “will earn a grade of FAIL and will have to repeat STA next year…[and] THERE ARE NO PERMISSIBLE/EXCUSED TARDIES OR ABSENCES.” Students who are late for school are punished with detention. It is a program that establishes itself on paper as very serious and important one for setting the proper tone for a successful high school education.
Imagine my surprise when AFTER the academy was completed I received an email informing me that all ninth grade students completed “a computer based, adaptive test that helps identify a student’s individual learning level” with questions that “are aligned to the Common Core State Standards.” Instead of receiving her first experience in front of a high school teacher, my daughter was being tested by a computer that was classifying her and providing research material for the Northwest Evaluation Association. Welcome to the new world of “reformed” education.
It has been my experience that my children are unduly stressed by the administration of high stakes tests and I, therefore, signed the appropriate “opt-out” forms last year. Had I known that testing would also be part of the summer program I would have sent my daughter with a new form. This exposes a flaw in the system. Instead of parents having to work to exempt their children from a battery of tests that they consider to be harmful, they should have to give their permission for the tests to be administered.
Read moreUnlocking Potential
Too many of us with children enrolled in LAUSD’s special education programs are familiar with Rosanne Walden’s experience. As a parent, she knows what services her son, Adam, needs in order to unlock his full potential. The experts at the school Adam attends agree with her assessment. Unfortunately, some faceless bureaucrat with an office in the Beaudry headquarters has formulated a policy that prevents Adam from getting these services. That person has never met Adam or witnessed the progress that he has made, but that has not prevented him from enforcing a policy that stands in the way of unlocking Adam’s full potential.
At the last LAUSD board meeting, Ms. Walden testified about her experiences with the district’s bureaucracy. She explained that Adam is on the moderate to severe range of the autism spectrum and has severe communication issues. Despite these challenges, he is on an academic track to receive a high school diploma. In fact, in middle school he was even included on the honor roll. Adam’s mother gives a lot of credit to his Inclusion Specialist, Adrienne Johnston, for helping him to achieve this success.
Read moreBreakfast in the Cla$$room
We are taught from the time we are young that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and this is backed up by science. For example one study found that “the impact of breakfast was evidenced by the increase in positive mood and alertness, and a decrease in negative feelings.” Certainly the goal of making sure that every student has a nutritious breakfast every morning so that they “start the school day ready to learn” is a good one.
Unfortunately far too many children are growing up in poverty and may not have access to the nutritious breakfast that they require. Even in families where money is not an issue, mounting responsibilities outside the home have created a scarcity of time to prepare a nutritious breakfast. To compensate for both deficits, subsidized breakfast programs have been created to make sure that students have a chance to eat before they go to class. The LAUSD has decided that this is not enough and is rolling out a program to force all schools to serve breakfast in the classrooms.
Read moreAdmission Day?
With a national push to increase the amount of time that children spend in the classroom, it would have been understandable if the LAUSD had pushed back the start of the school year into August so that they could extend the school calendar. Unfortunately, the school year now also ends earlier. All they did was shift students into the classroom at a time of the year when temperatures are soaring and increased the costs for air conditioning.
Read moreWillful Defiance
Students returned to school on August 12, under the promise of a new year. While summer vacation always seemed like it was ending too soon, I do remember the excitement of a fresh start afforded by new school supplies, new teachers and new classes. Unfortunately, parents were confronted by the same old district policies and the LAUSD’s habit of ignoring laws that they find inconvenient.
In 2012, Governor Brown signed AB 1575 which reinforced “the Free School Guarantee which has been in our California constitution since 1879.” This law specifically prohibits schools from selling “gym clothing with school logo, if the specific uniform with logo is required in order to be considered properly dressed for class.” Despite the straightforward wording of this law, both of the district supervised schools that my children attend are still trying to sell gym uniforms and are taking advantage of parents who are not aware of the rules under this legislation.
Read moreThe Hidden Children
Nicole eased me into the challenges of her family during our first online conversation. First, she casually worked in the fact that she had triplets. When that did not chase me away she mentioned in passing that two of them were on the autism spectrum and waited to see if I would find a way to end the conversation. It did not end and six years ago I married the woman of my dreams. I was now a father of five.
Prior to meeting my daughters, only one child had been introduced to me as being on the autism spectrum. According to the Center for Disease Control autism now affects 1 in 68 children. With such a high rate of occurrence, how is it possible that I had only previously met one child with this disability? Part of the answer is ignorance; without knowledge of what autism is, I probably met a lot more people with this disability and did not realize it. Additional explanation is provided by the fact that included in the statistics are highly functioning individuals who do not present their symptoms in a casual encounter. Unfortunately, the final part of the answer is that many of these children are simply hidden from view.
Read moreWhy Don't We Jump?
When I was in the Boy Scouts, the organization introduced a Handicap Awareness Merit Badge. To promote this new badge, they gave campers at the National Jamboree a chance to try sports that had been modified so that they could be played by people with physical challenges. This included playing wheelchair basketball and trying to catch a beeping baseball while blindfolded. Participating campers, by temporarily stepping into another’s shoes, were given the opportunity to gain some empathy for those who deal with these challenges on a full time basis.
Unfortunately for those on the autism spectrum, it is not as easy to replicate their experiences for those who are neurotypical. The communication difficulties that people on the spectrum experience often prevents the most severely affected from even describing how they experience the world. However, advances in technology and understanding are helping to close the gap. One result is The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida and translated by KA Yoshida and David Mitchell.
Read moreEnabling The Jump
In The Reason I Jump, Naoki Higashida invites the reader to “a nice trip through our world.” However, the only reason that he was able to explain autism through his point of view is that he had a parent and an educator who had the perseverance to get him the tools that he needed to tell his story. Unfortunately, my experience with the LAUSD has shown that the district is not always willing to provide special education students or their teachers with the tools that they need to allow students to achieve their full potential.
Read more