Superintendent Deasy has said that a NCLB waiver would free up as much as $80 million in federal funding for other purposes.  Thus far, at least, neither Board members nor the local teachers union has been critical of the district’s pursuit of the NCLB waiver.

Publicly, at least, Obama’s education team has been signaling its support for the application, and the California Department of education is nominally supportive of the effort, too.

But there’s an unusually high level of conflict on education issues right now between Sacramento and Washington.  Conflicts between Washington and Sacramento — combined with objections from state and local teachers unions to certain requirements for waivers, and practical concerns  — could have some effects, direct or indirect, on whether LAUSD and eight other districts win approval from Washington to change some of the current NCLB requirements – or the final form of the waiver that is approved.

As Monday’s LA Times illustrated, State Superintendent Torlakson and Governor Brown have both been skeptical of the Obama education agenda, which includes evaluating teachers based in part on how students perform academically.  And Education Secretary Arne Duncan is increasingly frustrated with the state’s objections.

Torlakson and Brown aides “speak about the president’s teacher accountability plans with language a Texas official might use to describe Obama’s healthcare plan,” notes the Times.

Education Secretary Duncan is publicly critical of the state’s decision not to pursue a state-level NCLB waiver:

“There are about 300,000 teachers in California. The top 10 percent arguably are among the best in the world,” Duncan is quoted saying. “The bottom 10 percent maybe shouldn’t be teaching. No one in California that I have met can tell me who is in that top 10 percent and that bottom 10 percent.”

The first obstacle that LAUSD and the other California districts involved must overcome is the fact that what they’re proposing to do sets a precedent in which Washington gives a waiver directly to a district (or consortia of districts) instead of operating through state education agencies, as it usually does.

Washington bureaucrats generally hate creating precedents, and states generally object to having any of their power and oversight taken away from them.  It’s mainly for this reason that the national association of state education chiefs is opposed to district-level NCLB waivers, notes EdSource Today.

The second concern that must be addressed is the issue of creating two different sets of rules — and systems of oversight — for students in the same state.  It’s one thing for requirements to differ from one state to another, as they do under NCLB.  But under a district waiver like the one that’s being proposed, schools and teachers in LAUSD would be operating under a different set of federal rules than those in most of the rest of the state.

The creation of a two-tier system is the main reason that some civil rights groups have expressed concerns about a district-level NCLB waiver.

The third and most politically contentious issue is whether linking teacher evaluations and student achievement is a wise idea.  The Obama Administration thinks it is and has made it a requirement for states who seek approval for a NCLB waiver.  But state and local teachers unions generally oppose this approach, have heaped praise on Governor Brown and others who have joined them in their skepticism, and have criticized Deasy’s efforts to make student achievement part of teacher evaluation in LAUSD.

For the Obama education team, then, there are pragmatic and political considerations involved in its decision.

Giving LAUSD and other districts a waiver would show California what it’s missing by operating under the current version of NCLB, which most states have gotten waivered — and perhaps create pressure on the state to reconsider its decision not to continue to pursue a statewide waiver.

On the other hand, if Washington decides to give LAUSD and a handful of other districts their own waivers the White House runs the risk of worsening relations between Sacramento and DC. And approving LAUSD’s waiver application would anger state and local teachers unions, which are vehemently opposed to teacher evaluations linked to student achievement.

Obviously, Superintendent Deasy and his allies would love to return with a waiver approval in hand.  They have revised their application based on initial feedback from Washington, and somehow managed to keep a lid on objections from Sacramento.

But there are larger forces at play, and it’s possible that the Obama administration will decide against creating a new precedent — and angering powerful California forces — by giving LAUSD and the other districts a waiver.

Previous posts: CA Districts in DC for Final ‘No Child’ Waiver Pitch; Duncan Signals Support for LAUSD Waiver Proposal; New Concerns About LAUSD Waiver; Deasy’s Secret Mission to Washington

Hobart Elementary Teacher Rafe Esquith, via the Clarion Ledger

Rafe Esquith may or may not be LAUSD’s best classroom teacher, but he’s certainly one of the most well-known — at least outside of LA.

His familiarity comes largely thanks to his own writing (including a new book coming out this year) and others like Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews writing about him as he does again for the second time in a week.

According to Mathews, Esquith is “the most imaginative and productive classroom teacher I know,” tireless and dedicated to current and former teachers alike.  But he’s also critical of the coming Common Core push towards nonfiction, imagination-killing directives from administrators in the central office, and after 29 years in the classroom he’s increasingly aware of the dangers of burnout.

You can read the full Washington Post column here: Why top teacher ignores latest reform directives.

Previous posts:  LA Teacher’s New Book Coming Soon

Saugus School Board member Stephen Winkler was censured and then resigned last month.

More than a week after they first surfaced in the LA Daily News, we still don’t know very much about the harassment and employee abuse allegations being investigated against Board member Richard Vladovic.

According to LAUSD, Board members cannot “impeach” a colleague, but there is a 2003-approved code of conduct covering Board member behavior towards each other and others — and Board members have been censured in the past.

In nearby Saugus, Board member Stephen Winkler (pictured) was censured last month and subsequently resigned.

Enacted a decade ago, Board Rule 106 [“Professional Governance Standards”] calls on Board members to focus on student learning, operate with integrity, govern in “a dignified and professional manner,” and treat everyone with civility and respect.

A cursory Internet search reveals instances where Board members outside of LAUSD have been investigated for violating the district code of conduct and in some cases censured or forced to resign.

In nearby Saugus, Board member Stephen Winkler [pictured above] was censured for controversial remarks on social media just last month, according to SCPR. He resigned a few days later over charges he didn’t live within the district, according to the LA Times.

According to the Daily News, the charges against Vladovic include “employee intimidation and sexual harassment.”

The LA Times has since reported that Vladovic is being investigated for verbally abusing senior district staff such as Deputy Superintendent Jaime Aquino, and that Vladovic admitted yelling at Aquino.

In the meantime, Vladovic’s former Chief of Staff, David Kooper, has been reinstated as principal of Gulf Avenue Elementary School after an investigation into Kooper’s handling of sex abuse allegations, according to the LA Daily News.

Vladovic became School Board President last week by a vote of 5-2. There was no public discussion of the allegations against him. LA School Report and others have published concerns from Vladovic allies that the news of the accusations was leaked in an attempt to derail Vladovic’s candidacy.

Previous posts: Mild Reactions to Vladovic Victory; Harassment Allegations Could Hurt Vladovic’s Chances; Board Presidency Up for Grabs Tuesday; Vladovic the Frontrunner for President

In the days leading up to the vote, insiders generally thought that the vote would be between Vladovic and Steve Zimmer.  Just before the Board convened, rumors spread that Ratliff was the swing vote between the two.

However, during the meeting (see video below), Board member Marguerite LaMotte nominated Vladovic for the position, and Board member Monica Garcia nominated Tamar Galatzan. There were no additional nominations proposed.  The two nominated candidates were asked to describe why they should be President and who they would select as a Vice-President.  Then the Board voted.

Ratliff, who’d been thought to be the deciding vote between Vladovic and Zimmer, effectively blocked Zimmer from being considered, according to the LA Times. However, Garcia and Galatzan made a bad bet in pursuing the Presidency for Galatzan rather than making Ratliff choose between Vladovic and Zimmer, according to others.

David Tokofsky, a part-time consultant for the school administrators’ union and informal advisor to Board member Monica Ratliff during her campaign, told LA School Report that  it while it wasn’t surprising that Vladovic won but it was notable that there were only two nominations.

“It’s very surprising that Zimmer wasn’t even nominated,” Tokofsky told LA School Report. Zimmer “should have had a better chance.”

Zimmer wasn’t nominated in the first round — which produced an audible gasp from the audience — and kept his head down when Superintendent Deasy asked if there were any other nominations.

According to Howard Blume’s LA TImes account, Zimmer was precluded from getting his name into consideration by Board member Ratliff’s decisive vote for Vladovic.  Ratliff’s vote “ended any chance for Zimmer to jump in with a bid to become president,” wrote Blume, noting that Zimmer voted last, after Ratliff and Vladovic, when the outcome was already clear.

But it’s also possible that Garcia, Galatzan, and their allies miscalculated in deciding to nominate Galatzan, who needed votes from Zimmer and Ratliff in order to win (and had to second her own nomination in order to be considered).

“I think what happened was [Board members Monica] Garcia and [Tamar] Galatzan behaved like they were thrust into the minority and didn’t take advantage of the middle ground,” said Tokofsky.

Before the meeting, Garcia wouldn’t say publicly who she was going to support, according to a KPPC story. She and Galatzan may have been operating under the belief that Ratliff and/or Zimmer had been persuaded to support Galatzan, Mayor Garcetti’s apparent pick. Two high-level Garcetti staffers were in attendance at the Board meeting.

However, Zimmer might have had a better chance of winning the position, and would have been a compromise victory for Garcia, Galatzan, and their supporters. The teachers union is said to have strongly preferred Vladovic over Zimmer, who can be unpredictable and who represents a district with pro-reform leanings.

Indeed, nominating Galatzan may have done as much to win Vladovic the spot as Ratliff’s vote, according to at least one close observer: “It would have been awkward if they would have had nominated Zimmer on the spot after Galatzan accepted the nomination.”

Of course, Zimmer might have declined the nomination, or might conceivably only have won votes from the two reform allies and himself.  Vladovic was the front-runner, and his election is no real surprise.

But a Zimmer nomination would have created a more interesting decision for Ratliff than the Galatzan-Vladovic choice — which in the end was no choice at all.

In the future, Garcia and Galatzan and their advisors may have to be more imaginative and flexible if they want to have a strong voice in Board decisions going forward.  Zimmer and his team will have to decide whether he wants to be the union’s reliable 5th vote or to carve out a meaningful independent leadership role for himself.

Additional reporting by Brianna Sacks and Hillel Aron.

Monica Garcia

On Friday, School Board member Mónica García was scheduled to be sworn in for the 2013-2017 term at the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.

According to a press release sent out by LAUSD, Garcia is “only the third Latina in 155 years to serve on the Los Angeles City School Board of Education” and was slated to be sworn in by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Other VIPs scheduled to be in attendance were Gabriela Teissier, Univision News Anchor.

Tomorrow, Board member-elect Monica Ratliff will be sworn in and the Board is scheduled to pick a new President and approve the 2013-2014 calendar of meetings. Earlier in the week, Board member Steve Zimmer was sworn in at Hollywood High School.

Previous posts: Harassment Allegations Could Hurt Vladovic’s Chances; Board Presidency Up for Grabs Tuesday; Zimmer to Celebrate Re-Election at Hollywood High

Earlier today, veteran LAUSD teacher and Incubator School founder Sujata Bhatt posted some thoughts about the backlash against a set of new standards and tests called the Common Core: 

There’s been a lot of hullaballoo suddenly about the Common Core. Symptomatic of the strange political times we live in, the Tea Party Right and the social justice Left have found common ground on the purported dangers of Common Core standardization. What both sides miss, however, is the creative power of the Common Core: its potential to bring the professionalism in curricular creation and curation back to teachers.

In the past decade-plus of NCLB, teachers have lost much creative professional ground. States and districts have worked to ‘teacherproof’ curricula such that in many places administrators boasted of being able to leave one classroom mid-lesson and observe that very same lesson continue in an adjacent room. I still chafe at a note I received from an administrator after an Open Court observation: “Great job engaging the students with phonics, but you were supposed to be teaching short-vowel ‘ck’ spellings rather than short vowel ‘dge’” (actually, according to my scripted lesson plan, I wasn’t).

The more states and districts tried to control curriculum, the more power became concentrated in the hands of a few textbook publishers and the populous states whose standards dictated the content of those textbooks. And the less say teachers had in what was taking place in our classrooms. The less teachers were treated as professionals.

I believe the backlash to the Common Core is in part a holdover from these days of hyper-control. Teachers, beaten down by the regime of NCLB, continue to chafe under any threat of standardization. In doing so, however, we are in danger of overlooking its potential.

You can read the entire entry here.  Send guest commentary submissions to info@laschoolreport.com 

Previous guest commentaries:  Why Teachers Might Leave a Triggered School; Why Fixing Teacher Prep is So Difficult; Teachers’ Letter to Mayor Garcetti

We got a lot of responses and suggestions — keep them coming, we’ll do an update soon! — and then this week the kind folks at the College-Ready Promise (@CollegeRdyPrmse) turned it all into a Twitter list.

What’s a Twitter list?  It’s a collection of individual Twitter feeds gathered together so you can follow all 69 of them at once, without having to sign up for them individually.

What’s the College-Ready Promise? It’s a coalition of charter networks “committed to graduating all students college-ready through innovative teacher support.”

Previous posts: Top Education Tweeters; “Social Media? We Don’t Need No Social Media.”

Last Tuesday, the LAUSD Board debated and ultimately passed a resolution calling for a return to 2007 staffing levels — despite the fact that LAUSD has a budget deficit and has lost enrollment in the years since then.

According to folks like NYU school reform critic Diane Ravitch, the proposal is brilliant and its most impassioned defender — Zimmer — is to be greatly admired for his lengthy remarks on its behalf.

According to one observer, Zimmer’s performance was Pacino-esque.

Alas, not everyone would agree with such a kind view of the proposal, including the LA Times editorial page, which noted that the proposal Zimmer was advocating “made no sense” and LA Superintendent John Deasy, who mocked the teacher rehiring proposal as a “directive to hire every human being on the West Coast” (and in so doing committed an over-reach of his own).

Perhaps Deasy was a bit too caustic in his assessment , considering that the Board was already shooting itself in the foot on this one and the Superintendent is already facing a Board that isn’t going to be as amenable to his ideas as it was during his first two years.

Ever-impatient, Deasy has pulled rhetorical and procedural gambits like this before — remember his failed attempt to shove through the federal Race to the Top grant application earlier this year, or his maneuver to get Board members to vote to repeal the parent trigger at the most recent Board meeting?

Sometimes Deasy’s gambits work, and sometimes they don’t.  But the facts remain clear on the staffing / class size resolution itself: across the board re-staffing, which is what Zimmer et al have proposed, would bring back scads of positions and staff that schools don’t want or need any more.

Small-scale districtwide class size reductions like those being proposed by Kayser and Zimmer are also incredibly expensive and don’t show much academic benefit based on the research that’s out there.

If classroom discipline is the main concern, then perhaps folks should look back at Zimmer and Kayser’s votes on banning “willful defiance” suspensions without guaranteeing additional counselors and staff to deal with the costs of restorative justice and other suspension alternatives.

Put simply, LAUSD simply doesn’t need (and can’t afford) to hire all the laid-off teachers back.

Previous commentaries:  Why Teachers Might Leave a Triggered School; Why Fixing Teacher Prep is So Difficult; What Yesterday’s LAT Editorial Left Out

As you’ll see, the piece starts off with a few sentences about LAUSD’s challenges (high dropout rates, low scores compared to other big city school systems) and then moves on to Smith’s background (he’s a Native Angeleno) and views (very much in favor of parent organizing).   Some highlights from United Way’s director of education programs and policy:

As you may recall, Demissie’s Sacramento-based firm 50+1 was hired to field work during the LAUSD school board election primaries, in which the Coalition outspent the union-endorsed candidates but only won one of three races outright.   For the runoff, Demissie was brought on as spokesperson for the Coalition, whose candidate (a former Villaraigosa aide) lost to a 5th grade classroom teacher.

The Newark mayor is running for an open US Senate seat.

Previous posts: Reformers Try to Match Union “Ground Game”; Reform Coalition Hires New Spokesperson; Campaign Consultants Win — Either Way; A Good – But Not Great – Campaign

LAUSD has already begun to address the needs of transgendered students with its own student participation policy, and now there’s a proposed state law (AB 1266) that would call on every district in the state to take some similar steps.

According to this LA Weekly story (Born as a Boy, Play School Sports as a Girl?), the law being proposed by California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano requires districts to allow to play sports or do other student activities has been approved by the state Senate Education Committee.

“A bunch of grade school kids in Minneapolis, MN, decided to make a [suspiciously polished] rap song that makes their decidedly uncool uniforms look cool.” (Chris Hayes All In)

But is it up to them?  Hiring teachers and lowering class sizes is contractually required, according to LAUSD teacher Brent Smiley:

“I’m all in favor of getting a raise,” commented Smiley, who is also an officer of UTLA’s political action committee, known as PACE.  “But the Superintendent needs to understand that his predecessor negotiated a set class size level. If the good Doctor Deasy wants to use the money for something else, then he must go back to the negotiating table.”

Well, according to LAUSD General Counsel David Holmquist, Smiley is mistaken: “There is nothing in the current Collective Bargaining agreement between UTLA and the District requiring an automatic lowering of class sizes,” Holmquist told LA School Report.  Though, Holmquist added, “UTLA is certainly free to make such a proposal.”

Even if there’s nothing in the contract requiring restoration of certain staffing levels, Smiley and the teachers union may still get its through the class size resolution introduced by several Board members last week, endorsed by UTLA, and scheduled for a vote on Tuesday.

Previous posts: Board Likely Approves Call to Re-Hire Teachers; Deasy: Raises & Deficit Reduction Before New Hires; Special Board Meeting Not So Special After All

This is a guest commentary written by LAUSD math teacher (and Hope Change Choices blog host) Rustum Jacob about some teachers’ decision to transfer out of Weigand Avenue Elementary School:

As a teacher , if I’d been in the same shoes as the Weigand teachers, I would have left because of loyalty and respect for the kids and the community.When parents say they have no faith in the school you work at, then you should take the hint. When you have a principal that sticks around for 5 years in a low-income school, the principal becomes a symbol for the school.

When parents say they don’t want the principal, an engaged teacher should take that as a vote of no confidence. By all accounts, this principal is on the same page as Deasy, so the staff could expect the same type of leadership, the same parent outreach, and probably the same results.

There is no reason to stay at a school where you’ve been deemed (in part) a failure and the families are fighting each other to determine who best represents the school.

The logistics of launching a Parent Trigger demand chaos, resentment and frustration at any school site that goes through the process, making it nearly impossible for the original staff to stay on.

I don’t see how you get far into the trigger process without operating in the shadows. I know some schools in LAUSD house admin and/or teachers that don’t care about parents, but the vast majority are very excited to have parent engagement, especially in low-income schools.

Because of my faith in the responsiveness of teachers (my bias) I don’t see a trigger in the public view gaining much more than 30% of parent buy-in before a school would change its policies.

Given the stipulation that you would start a trigger in the shadows, imagine how the school site would feel when the trigger does come into the public view. You’ve been showing up for a several years in a hard to teach at school site, usually desperate for parent involvement, and now the parent’s want to pull a parent trigger.

I have yet to see this pan out, but I have no clue how parents are involved after they pull the trigger. No matter what option parents demand on a school, how are they involved in the direction of the change?

If it’s a restaff or principal change, the locus of control falls back on the same (unresponsive?) district. If the parents choose a charter, do parents get a seat on the Board? No matter what pathway parents take in pulling the trigger, I don’t see a system for including parents going forward.

I always saw the trigger as effective when loaded and pointed, but I don’t see it helping communities once its been fired.

I’m thinking specifically about the 2nd grade parent who was frustrated with the speed of getting an IEP. In general the district pressures every school site to doing an exhausting documentation trail before it certifies an IEP.

As a parent you experience the slow school and slow administration and don’t see the pressure the school feels on the other end. Who is going to advocate for a streamlined process for families (we know it’s not Parent Revolution)?.

Instead the next 1st grade parent who has a child with special needs, will have to wait throughout the same yearlong process that LAUSD will pressure any new administrator to follow before giving an IEP.

You can reach the author at rustum.jacob@hopechangechoices.org or on Twitter at @HCCLosAngeles

Written by LA School Report contributor HIllel Aron, The Woman Who May Change L.A. notes that Coalition for School Reform campaign veterans charged with defeating Ratliff in last month’s runoff may have been limited by “wildly naive” Coalition donors who didn’t want to attack Ratliff. They also believed erroneous poll projections putting Sanchez safely in the lead and ignored Ratliff’s controversial positions on teacher dismissal.

Of particular note are some juicy quotes from former Mayor Richard Riordan, who’s quoted saying the Coalition picked a political hack as its candidate (in large part because of SEIU opposition to another candidate, Iris Zuniga), “had the wrong people running our campaign” (a reference to losing campaign consultants SCN’s Ace Smith and Sean Clegg), and failed to focus on making losing candidate Antonio Sanchez more likable.

*Correction:  The original version of this post mis-identified the District 6 candidate who was opposed by SEIU as Nury Martinez.  See the corrected sentence above.

Previous posts: Board Member-Elect Highlights Vocational Training; Campaign 2013: What Next for the Coalition for School Reform?; Endorsements, Garcetti — and Race

However, as part of the continued growth of charter schools nationwide, some Los Angeles-area charter school networks are spreading to other parts of the country, either by starting new schools or helping turn around existing ones.

For example, Citizens of the World has expanded to New York City.  Future Is Now, started by Green Dot founder Steve Barr, is operating in New Orleans. Green Dot most recently announced it has been approved to operate in Memphis starting in 2014.

Dear Mayor-Elect Garcetti,

A few weeks ago, residents of Los Angeles made their voices heard by voting you into office. We’d like to congratulate you on your victory, thank you for your past leadership in the education space, and praise you for your willingness to take on the enormous responsibility of running the City of Los Angeles.

As you well know our city faces a number of challenges, none more important than how we improve the quality of education we offer our city’s children. As teachers in Los Angeles public schools, we know first-hand that this city has reached a crucial moment in public education; relations between the union and district have dipped to new lows, and thousands of teachers throughout the city are counting on your leadership to help us push through this impasse and refocus on our students.

For years now, Los Angeles has been trying – but largely failing—to attract more great teachers to our hardest to staff schools. At the same time, we’ve struggled to keep more families in our district schools. By working together—union and district— we can turn this around by putting professionalism back into the profession. Teachers need accountability as well as autonomy and control over their classrooms and the support to innovate for the betterment of our students.

We must work together and build more support and opportunity into a teacher’s classroom and career. If we do, great talent and eager families will flock to our public schools.

If we are unable to attract great teachers and thereby give students the world-class education they deserve, we will fail our students and fail to reach the promise of a more prosperous Los Angeles.

To that end, we’ve come up with a few ideas about how we can refocus the conversation about public education on progress and innovation for our classrooms and careers.

1.     Propose Long-Term Solutions. Explain to the city and community that we must stop over-examining symptoms and start fixing education problems. If we can focus on dealing with long-term solutions, rather than fixating on every short-term squabble, our students will be the beneficiaries.

2.     Encourage Collaboration and Community Investment. Teachers need to see our work as an integral part of the community, a center not simply of children’s education, but of community investment. You should work to plan our city and services to meet the needs of our students and their families by pushing for more local control and accountability for how school funds are used and more partnerships to provide schools with access to critical community input and services. Each child in this city deserves a quality public education, but there’s still too much of a disparity between those of us working in classrooms located in poorer neighborhoods and those in wealthier enclaves.

3.     Hold our District and Union Accountable for Innovation. With your bully pulpit as mayor, it is critical that you put pressure on our District and union to deliver for students. You have the opportunity to demand not only accountability for improvement, but also incentivize innovation. We need our union and District to move our classrooms and careers forward with new policies for attracting and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools and preparing students for success in the 21^st century. By building an agenda for improving our schools into a larger plan for our city’s future, you can take the reins of leadership and introduce the meaningful changes LAUSD desperately needs.

4.     Learn with Teachers. Most of all, education must be a priority and not an afterthought for our city. Our city is unique in that we have several pathways for teachers looking to elevate their voices and ideas. We invite you to begin engaging with teachers who, through Educators 4 Excellence and other organizations, are coming to the table with concrete ideas for raising student achievement and prestige of our profession.

Mayor-elect Garcetti, it is clear that the benefits of education don’t stop in the classroom. What young people learn in our schools directly shapes their future contributions to our city.  As mayor, you have an opportunity to elevate our city by elevating our classrooms and careers. By attracting and cultivating great teachers in LAUSD, we’ll do more than build a strong school system. We’ll build a stronger Los Angeles for decades to come.

Both Jeff Austin and Edward Kusell-Zigelman are teachers in Los Angeles Unified School District schools and members of Educators 4 Excellence-Los Angeles. Jeff Austin is a 12-year teaching veteran, teaching high school government and economics at Cesar E. Chavez Learning Academies in the Social Justice Humanitas Academy, and Edward Kusell-Zigelman has been teaching math and dance for three years at Dorsey High School 

Previous commentaries: Sad Educators vs. Poor Parents; Why Your Vote Matters in the East Valley; In Praise of the LA Times’ Karin Klein; Clear Choice for School Board Race

As reported by the Sacramento Bee, the legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo) and championed by the state teachers unions “would make it easier to discipline and fire teachers accused of misconduct” and passed 51-12. Designated “AB 375,” it now heads over to the Senate.

While the LAUSD Board of Education has voted in support of the goals and objectives of the legislation, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has expressed concerns about the legislation which remain despite a series of amendments that have been made.

“We still have some of the same issues,” said a LAUSD official familiar with the legislation, referring to the membership of the panel that oversees teacher dismissal cases and the timeframe under which cases must be resolved.  ‘We continue to feel that more could be done around the CPC panel.”

Former Democratic state lawmaker Gloria Romero, now head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) California, is even more critical of the current legislation, writing in the Orange County Register that AB 375 has some merit but “the underlying impetus of the bill remains protection of teachers’ due process rights” instead of protecting children. Romero derides LAUSD as being “desperate for any change” and declares that “now is not the time to settle for a disingenuous bill.”

Previous posts: Deasy Requests Changes to Teacher Dismissal Bill; State Teachers Union Rejects Criticism of Teacher Dismissal Bill; Villaraigosa Expresses Concerns About Teacher Dismissal Bill

One of the two highlights the laudable desire to make sure that teachers and parents are fully aware of what’s going on when a petition process is happening.  The other explains that the debate over the principal’s ouster and the teachers’ dismay is fundamentally about the different timeframes in which educators and parents operate (and suggests that relationships play as important a role as test scores).

The first, written by the newspaper’s editorial page, expresses concern that the trigger process that unfolded at Weigand prevented useful communication between parents and teachers (who were surprised and dismayed at the parents’ desire to remove the principal):

“Reformers might fear that a more open process would lead to more misinformation and even intimidation of parents by teachers or others with a vested interest in the status quo,” states the editorial page (The ‘parent trigger’ trap). “But a closed petition means that parents are shut off from debate and discussion that lead to truly empowered decision-making.”

The second piece, by columnist Jim Newton, explains that LAUSD parents at low-performing schools are understandably impatient for changes:

“Imagine being the parent of a second-grade student at the school. For the last several years, that student would have been enrolled in a struggling school that showed signs of getting worse,” according to Newton’s piece (In a hurry to pull the ‘parent trigger’). “The fight at Weigand is a contest between school authorities who believe change can only be accomplished over time against parents who have no time to waste.”

Previous posts: Teachers Union Turning Back Against Parent Trigger; Sad Educators vs. Poor Parents (commentary).