(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Opt-Out)
-2016-17 GHCHS Parent/Student Handbook
It took almost a year, but Granada Hills Charter High School (GHCHS) has finally changed their Parent/Student Handbook so that it recognizes that “per California Education Code 60615, parents and guardians have the right to exempt their child from participating in the CAASPP program. California Education Code 60615 reads as follows: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent's or guardian's written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted.” Most importantly, they have removed the requirement that “all students must participate fully in California CAASPP” in order to participate in extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, this does nothing to change the fact that past students were coerced into taking these tests in the school’s effort “to ensure that enough students participate in both state mandated and Granada selected assessments”. The LAUSD Charter School Division (CSD) was given enough notice that these changes could have been made before last year’s testing season, but they chose to ignore the deadline.
Read moreLAUSD Law
The 14-year-old student “went to a motel in which she engaged in voluntary consensual sex with her teacher. Why shouldn’t she be responsible for that?”
- W. Keith Wyatt, representing the LAUSD
The LAUSD’s Office of the General Counsel (GC) employs a legal staff whose mission is to “provide effective and proactive legal advice and quality representation while creating an ethical environment in support of a high quality learning environment for all students.” Unfortunately, this department does not seem to be adequately staffed as they also hire outside law firms to handle litigation against the District. These outside firms do not seem to be held to the same ethical standards as described in the GC’s mission statement.
W. Keith Wyatt had “represented the District for 27 years” when he “advanced the argument that an 8th grader who has oral, vaginal, and anal sex with a teacher learns maturity from the experience and is unlikely to ever need counseling as a result” and that “minors can consent to sex with adults” so the court should “impose responsibility on minor students for their own sexual abuse by teachers.” While the GC David Holmquist did not intervene during the course of the trial or the appeal, he could not ignore the outcry after the lawyer stated in a radio interview that “it was a more dangerous decision for a 14-year-old to cross a street in traffic than to have sex with her middle-school teacher.” In November 2014, Wyatt was “barred from any further legal work with the district” - at least until things quieted down.
Read more#BLACKLIVESMATTER
- Jesse Williams
Complaints about policing in minority communities are not new, but changing technology has made it harder to ignore. When a bystander caught Rodney King’s beating on videotape, this violence was brought directly into our living rooms. Unfortunately, the video could not guarantee justice. The policemen involved were acquitted and the streets exploded.
Read moreDrinking A Charter School's Kool-Aid
“As key partners of our school community, I wanted you to be aware of a pending new story and offer an explanation of the situation. A reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News has approached El Camino Real Charter High School (ECRCHS) on multiple occasions. His focus: a request made by LAUSD last October to update our fiscal policies.”
- Dave Fehte, May 2016
El Camino Real Charter High School (ECRCHS) did not wait for the Daily News to release their first article about their investigation into the school to start employing a familiar defensive strategy. In a letter to parents at the beginning of May, Executive Director Dave Fehte stated that “because of the nature of the reporter’s questions, and his lack of interest in anything positive about the school, we believe this article is being crafted in a way that will put ECRCHS in a negative light”, as if the reporter has a responsibility to balance bad news with unrelated positive stories. I have encountered the same type of response in reaction to my investigations into Granada Hills Charter High School. Instead of countering the facts that I presented, I was attacked for having “an underlying agenda against” the school by a person who did “not appreciate [my] consistent negative spin.” Another suggested that I “criticize [when] criticism is due, but an occasional accolade might also be in order.” Left unexplained is why I was supposed to act as the school’s public relations agent.
Putting Lipstick on the Prop 39 Pig
On June 21, 2016, the LAUSD School Board debated a resolution co-sponsored by Ref Rodriguez and Monica Garcia that would establish an “impartial group of District and charter school leaders” to make recommendations on improving “the process around successful co-locations”. Under the Improving the Policies and Practices Impacting Co-Located Public Schools resolution, the Superintendent would be required to consider these recommendations “for implementation in the Fall of 2016”. The following is a copy of my comments to the Board before they began debate:
I’ve never heard a parent say “gee, I really hope that a charter co-locates at our campus next year.” Usually, when a parent finds out that there is going to be a charter looking at that campus, they look at it like a parasite is looking to move into a host. They are concerned that it is going to divide their school community. They are concerned about overcrowding. They are concerned that it is just going to ruin the feel of a neighborhood school. Yet this resolution says: “Proposition 39 presents an opportunity for charter schools and traditional District schools to collaborate by sharing resources that benefit all public school students.”
Spiking the Pension?
- Wikipedia
In March 2015, then LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines met with parents and educators to discuss their concerns about LAUSD’s special education programs. During this meeting, Cortines announced that the District’s head of Special Education, Sharyn Howell would be retiring. After the room erupted into applause, Cortines admonished the attendees for what he considered their rudeness. It seemed strange to me at the time that he was surprised by this expression of joy as it had already been made clear how the District’s leadership had lost the confidence of this group. Howell had steam-rolled over their concerns to implement changes, including moving towards the closure of special education centers, which those in the room felt harmed the most vulnerable students in the District.
Read moreMonica Garcia Votes to Continue Court Fight with Parents of Children with Special Needs
Last month, the 9th Circuit overruled a lower court and stated that parents did have the right to intervene on behalf of their children as they fight to keep special education centers as a choice available to them during the IEP process. While the LAUSD’s lawyers had reportedly already filed the paperwork, the Governing Board of the District was not set to vote on the action until yesterday’s meeting. As with any discussion involving litigation, the state’s open meeting laws allow the Board to meet behind closed doors before voting on this issue, but not before hearing public comment. At the 8:00 AM meeting, parents and other supporters of special education centers filled up the seven allotted speaking spots. I, along with other speakers, spilled over into the public comment portion of the meeting. The following is a transcript of my remarks:
My name is Carl Petersen and I am the father of two daughters who are on the autism spectrum. I am here to speak on behalf of the special education centers.
The LAUSD Empire Strikes Back
- Judge Carlos T. Bea
The LAUSD claims that “special education centers are unnecessary because the District can ‘provide all supports and services...at a general education site”, but there are parents of severely disabled students who disagree with this assessment, especially when “their children began coming home after school with bruises and other injuries” after their children were transferred away from special education centers. The mainstream environment also failed a student who is on the autism spectrum and was “found ‘walking alone a mile from the school’ due to understaffing in [his] classroom and the lack of special safety features at [his] new general education campus”. The Independent Monitor who oversees the District’s compliance with the 20 year old special education consent decree found that general education campuses had “areas designated for ‘[diaper changing, feeding and health care protocols’ [that] ‘were located inside classrooms that lacked running water and drainage’; [that] special education classrooms were placed ‘over 350 feet’ from bathrooms scheduled to be renovated to accommodate disabled children [and] the placement of bus drop-offs and lunch areas required blind children ‘to navigate slopes, uneven steps, tripping hazards and protruding objects’ to get to class”. Still, the District continues to fight parents in court so that they can forcibly transfer moderately to severely disabled students away from specially designed school environments and instead mainstream them in general education facilities.
Read moreEducation: It's time for a revolution
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world”
We can’t save the world,
But we can save the children for the world!
It’s time for a revolution in education.
It’s time for education to be for the students.
It’s time for education to be about learning,
Learning for their future, learning for the following school years.
It’s time for the testing oriented system to disappear,
It’s time for a return to an era when children learned and teachers taught without the pressure of test scores.
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Teaching in LAUSD: All The Fun Is Gone
Think of your fondest memories from elementary school.
Was it making a 3 dimensional map with mountains, or a school Olympics, or putting on a play, or sewing a frontier outfit, or classroom discussions, or many other things? Maybe it was May Day dances or working with tools.
They are gone. There are no replacements.
All academics all the time or very close to it.
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