Carol Alexander, director of LA Unified’s A-G Intervention and Support

As part of College Awareness Month in October, LA Unified officials on Tuesday presented a new initiative designed to inspire and prepare the district’s students for college, starting at the pre-K and kindergarten level and continuing every year through 12th grade.

“The Division of Instruction wanted to begin a dialogue of specific activities by grade level, highlighting an activity by grade level that every child by grade level would have,” Carol Alexander, director of LA Unified’s A-G Intervention and Support, told the school board’s Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee.

The plan is one of several ways the district is looking to increase college awareness this month. Others include a new instructional video on the A through G graduation standards, which will be shown to students, and a personalized brochure that can be given to high school students on A-G in their native language. The district is also promoting upcoming college fairs, as well as partnering with Cash for College on upcoming workshops for parents and students on how to apply for financial aid.

The pre-K through 12th-grade plan isn’t required for schools but is a list of “suggested activities” that have been sent out to each school, Alexander said, and leaders at each site will decide how best to implement them. The activities include kindergarten students investigating and learning about different careers, researching a college or university in 5th grade, learning about the A-G course requirements and how to calculate their GPA in 8th grade and writing college essays in 10th grade.

Members of the school board on the committee reacted positively to the overall plan and added some suggestions of their own on how to get the district’s kids interested in and ready for college.

“I think every student should take a college-level class. Every high school student has a mandate to graduate,” said board member Richard Vladovic, who chairs the committee. “Back in 1963 — even if it has to be over television — I took from community college, Harbor College, an astronomy class over TV. And earned a grade. I took it. So we can do it, there are vehicles to do it.”

Alexander also played a six-minute video produced by the district about the A-G graduation requirements that will be shown to students. The standards, which were required for graduation for the first time last school year, call on students to take and pass a series of courses that would make them eligible for admission to California’s public universities if they earn all C grades or better, although D’s are allowed for graduation. The video featured a series of graphics and a voiceover highlighting the various classes students need to pass to qualify for graduation.

Board President Steve Zimmer offered what he called a “gentle critique” when he said the video could perhaps use a little more excitement.

“As I was watching the video, I was reminded a little bit and it felt a little bit like I was strapped into my airplane seat and I was watching the safety video of like — very important information, but I’m worried that people kind of tune it out,” Zimmer said.

Zimmer then recounted a time he flew on Virgin America and was surprised the company had produced a video that was so entertaining “you can’t help but watch it.”

College and Career Awareness month comes as the district enters the second year of its new A-G standards, and with the recent news that LA Unified broke its graduation record last school year. It also comes on the heels of the August announcement of the Los Angeles College Promise, in which every district graduate starting in 2017 will be offered a free year of tuition at any Los Angeles Community College District campus.

Described as the variations in academic performance among children entering kindergarten and first grade who are from low-income and diverse backgrounds compared to their wealthier and white counterparts, Zimmer reiterated in a recent interview with LA School Report that he believes the district can eliminate this gap. California and LA Unified have invested heavily in early childhood education programs like transitional kindergarten and preschool. But ultimately, King and the school board, including Zimmer, coalesced around a singular goal of 100 percent graduation, which King said would trickle down to all grade levels.

Here is the rest of our interview with Zimmer on topics like the school readiness gap, the school calendar and his opinion of King. Read the first part of the interview, which was on credit recovery, here.

Q: Your board office here in East Hollywood seems pretty robust with after-school programs, classes for homeless youth and computer courses for parents through your partnership with Youth Policy Institute. Do other board members run similar operations in their field offices, or is yours unique?

A: I think different board members have different operations. We’re the only one right now. We pay. We invest in this. Most field offices are at school sites. We have an office at Twain and we have an office at Taft. We have a huge district, so it’s important. But they are literally a tiny office or desk. It’s just so when I’m out there I don’t have to ask families to come all the way downtown or to east Hollywood to meet me. Or when we have staff, they can work out of the field. They’re not an office like this. This is the neighborhood I served as a teacher and counselor. This is the neighborhood where I live.

Q: How long have you lived here?

A: I’ve lived here in this area for about nine years. But I worked this area for about 15 years. They actually had me come over for the first week, this was 2007, when they opened Bernstein (high school). This whole area used to be Marshall. It’s hard to imagine now with the building program, what the world was like 10 to 15 years ago. And what the world was like before we built 131 schools. And the whole debate right now over the calendar is a very interesting debate because there’s a whole generation of us who only taught at year-round schools, what were known as Concept 6. 

Q: What is Concept 6?

A: Year-round schools is a misnomer because it implies that there was an academic or instructional reason why we had a year-round calendar. The only reason we had a year-round calendar was we didn’t build adequate facilities for children living in the most economically and racially segregated neighborhoods in the state or in the nation. And so, when we say Concept 6 that was how we designed a calendar so that we could meet, at the bare minimum, the state’s standards, the state’s requirement for days of instruction, while offering less days of instruction.

Q: What were the advantages of a year-round calendar?

A: I think for adults, there were things about that schedule that had advantages. There were even things unintentionally instructionally that had advantages when we had funding. Let’s say you were an immigrant student who came to this country in middle school and you went to a Concept 6 year-round school. You basically could go to school all year round, so you really had a chance actually to not have any gaps in your English language acquisition and your academic acquisition. So there were a few advantages, unintentional. But when you really parsed it out, if you went to a year-round school from kindergarten through 12th grade, you actually missed the equivalent of a year and a half of days of instruction, and that was ultimately what won out in court and I think ultimately what helped folks convince the voters that we should pass these (school construction) bonds.

Q: You are constantly asking Superintendent Michelle King to be bold and to take chances. Do you feel like there needs to be more of that? 

A: I think Superintendent King is genuinely collaborative in her leadership approach, and I think in the long run that’s going to be a good thing for the students of Los Angeles. I think the normative back and forth between a board and the superintendent should have some of that pushing back and forth. And that’s how districts move. It’s a precise nexus between the proper checks and balances in a system, but also the creative tensions in a democratic structure that has separation of powers that actually move an organization. I’m sure that the superintendent and her team will push us a lot on budget issues over the next few months. We may push for some more bold measures in terms of goals or aspirations or things like that. That’s appropriate.

If I didn’t believe that Ms. King has those for our students, I wouldn’t have voted for her to be superintendent. I just think there’s an incredible amount of balancing that takes place. And actually, I couldn’t imagine right now a better relationship between a board and a superintendent. We model in some ways what (former superintendent) Ray Cortines taught us in terms of a true partnership. But that doesn’t mean it’s not without creative tension. That doesn’t mean there is a 100 percent disagreement, nor should there be. We are sleeves rolled up and working on this, both literally and figuratively. 

And I believe it’s within our grasp to eradicate the school readiness gap, and I don’t understand why we would do anything else. If we make this investment on the front end and ensure that we have an equity lens to early childhood education and we invest heavily, all the research indicates that will pay dividends throughout. And so, do I want there to be a more aggressive, faster, bolder initiative around that? Of course. Is the administration really to roll that out tomorrow? Probably not. I think Dr. McKenna feels the same way about zero dropouts, and Dr. Vladovic right now is extremely concerned about re-classification, Ms. Garcia as it relates to graduation and the different things that we need to be doing now to make 100 percent a potential reality. Each board member has urgency about things that are absolutely driven by transforming outcomes for kids.

Q: What is your focus?

A: Today? Today it is eradicating the school readiness gap. Some of this is completely informed by research, some of this is informed by a lot more time spent with 3- and 4-year-olds recently. I’m just convinced that if we could say that for every child living in poverty in Los Angeles County, we are going to make sure they have access to a high-quality early-education program, with high-quality literacy, numeration skills and social emotional learning linked to an early elementary school literacy program. I actually believe it’s within our grasp to eradicate the third-grade reading gap. We saw last spring when we are focused on something, and when we resource it appropriately, and I don’t just mean resource it with funding, there’s the intellectual and emotional heart and mind resources that happens also, otherwise known as focus and mission.

I really believe that our kids can do amazing and remarkable things and I really do have an asset mindset. This has to be personal for each of us, we can’t think of EL as over there, those kids, who don’t know English. For a lot of us, English learners are our grandparents and it has to be that personal. We are very intentional in our office about what we do and how we approach the work to be very conscious and very intentional about making this personal.

And so when I approach the work as a policymaker and people say, ‘Why are you so concerned about labor rights as it relates to the largest public-sector food services contract west of the Mississippi?’ The most important part of it, the folks working in the field picking the vegetables or working in the slaughterhouses that’s someone’s mom or dad, brother or sisters, not mine, but someone’s, and we should approach the work as if it were our own. What labor conditions would we expect for our own parents? We are literally trained to not personalize this. What level of instruction do we expect for our own children? Why would we expect anything less for anyone’s child?

By Kyle Stokes

Superintendent Michelle King has asked managers in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s central offices to submit plans outlining how they would slash their departments’ budgets by 30 percent in the coming fiscal year, according to a memo obtained by KPCC.

For now, it’s just a planning exercise. But top district officials say the aggressive cost-cutting target — the reductions would total more than $112 million if fully implemented — falls in line with King’s vision for a slimmed-down headquarters and a district in which school sites are given greater control over their own budgets.

“It’s not just another 5 percent drill,” said L.A. Unified Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly. (Some central office departments took a 5 percent cut this year, saving a total of $11 million.)

For managers to hit their cost-saving targets of 30 percent, they couldn’t simply close open positions or pick off other similar low-hanging fruit in their budgets. The idea behind the exercise, Reilly said, is to prompt central office managers to completely rethink how they operate as declining enrollment in L.A. Unified kinks the district’s revenue stream.

“You can’t get to 30 percent without really reinventing yourself or basically talking about consolidation in other types of functions,” Reilly said.

“I call it an exercise,” Reilly added later, “but this is, in reality, something we will be going through … to look at how do we work effectively with a smaller, leaner kind of headquarters.”

L.A. Unified’s own projections show an operating shortfall of up to $663 million in the 2017-18 budget year. If that holds true, the long-term fiscal stabilization plan approved in June calls for $60 million in cuts to central office departments next year.

That grim projection, however, does not factor in new revenues the district could see from Proposition 55, a measure on the statewide ballot in November that would extend an income tax increase on the rich to benefit healthcare programs and schools.

The measure, which one poll showed as leading by a wide margin, could net L.A. Unified as much as $120 million in new revenues starting in 2018-19, district projections show.

To read the full article from KPCC, click here. 

Today, at 29, Imelda Padilla  joins the race for District 6, becoming the youngest person in recent memory to run for Los Angeles Unified School Board. She is seeking the seat being vacated by Monica Ratliff, who is running for Los Angeles City Council. Joanne Baltierrez-Fernandez and Araz Parseghian have also announced their intention to run for the seat.

“I am a true product of this community,” Padilla said. “I have walked every street in the district, I know every school, and I have teachers, principals and students urging me to run.”

One of those encouraging her is Ratliff herself, who is not yet fully endorsing anyone in the race but was impressed with Padilla and suggested in November that she run for the office. “I have watched some of the community organizing she has done, and heard her speak, and she is a very impressive young woman,” Ratliff said. “I think she would add an amazing voice to the school board.”

Ratliff said she may ask candidates to fill out a personal questionnaire for her before she endorses any candidate. The primary election is March 7.

A self-identified “Chicana,” Padilla said she is a first-generation politicized Mexican-American. She grew up in Sun Valley, where she still lives today. Her mother worked at an airplane factory, and her father was a gardener. She has two older sisters who have master’s degrees and a younger brother who has attended college but not yet finished. Her older brother, who protected her from being bullied when she had rickets, is now incarcerated because “he had very bad friends, but he was a big influence,” she said.

Imelda Padilla with some nieces and nephews in front of Roscoe Elementary, where she attended.

She attended Roscoe Elementary, then went to Byrd Middle School Magnet and Francis Polytechnic Senior High before it was a pilot school. Her sister now teaches there. Padilla graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in philosophy and Chicano studies.

For the past year and a half, Padilla worked for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, or LAANE, an advocacy organization. Padilla worked on the Raise the Wage campaign that led to the historic vote that will raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2020 in Los Angeles County.

She left what she calls “a lucrative job” to run for the school board. She doesn’t think it’s right to keep her job because LAANE is launching an educational campaign and it could be considered a conflict.

“I observed that there are teachers who would be perfect, and understood the policy and politics of the school board, but were not willing to leave the classroom,” Padilla said. “When people gave me the suggestion, I slept on it and thought that I would have a lot to contribute.”

Some assessments of LA Unified she refuses to believe: “One is that LAUSD schools are failures, period; and another is the conversation of neighborhood schools versus charter schools.” She doesn’t believe there has to be a battle.

She met with members of charter organizations and as well as unions, and she attended the Promising Practices forum over the summer where charter teachers and traditional school teachers shared best practices.

“This us-versus-them attitude I find personally offensive,” Padilla said. “Specifically, in my community, I find that parents have utilized both systems, where they like charters for middle school, but then prefer district high schools for the big sports facilities and other opportunities, like additional counselors and more federal money going to the schools.”

She has heard of many local successful charters and also ones that are noted for simply handing out worksheets without showing much educational improvement. She has also been told by some of her constituents that some charter schools have cherry-picked higher-performing students, and she wants to help figure out which schools may be giving charters a bad name.

She prefers to remain grassroots, like Ratliff did during her campaign even when facing big money being funneled to her competitors.

“I also plan to reach voters that don’t have kids in the schools, but they may live near the schools, and bad schools are bad neighbors,” Padilla said.

She has yet to meet Superintendent Michelle King but appreciates that King is also a product of LA Unified and understands the district. That’s comforting to Padilla, who has 12 nieces and nephews attending district schools.

Although Padilla could be working with school board members who are more than twice her age, she pointed out that she has worked with a diversity of people throughout her organizing career.

“I don’t think I’m too young; it’s about knowing what the job of a school board member does,” Padilla explained. Another school board candidate, in District 4, Nick Melvoin, is 30.

She added, “I’m good at dealing with complicated and controversial issues, like co-location of school sites.” She worked on labor issues for SEIU, environmental concerns for Pacoima Beautiful and community issues for the City of Los Angeles.

She is boning up on budget issues and said there are ideas in the findings of the Independent Financial Review Panel that should be implemented immediately. “I am shocked that we are losing so much money because teachers don’t want direct deposit,” Padilla said. “Get with the program, the technology is there. That may sound a little oppressive, but that sounds like something that can be addressed easily.”

She wants to take a realistic approach to technology and wants to reassess the one-to-one push for computers for every student.

“It is low-key kind of insulting and unrealistic, and we need to do a real assessment to (see) what the need is,” Padilla said. “Bottom line is families do have at least one computer, and they have phones, but they can’t always pay for the wireless connection every month. Maybe we should think of schools as wi-fi hubs.”

Padilla said she knows it could be a tough campaign, but she’s tough, as a P.E. teacher told her years ago.

“He told me he understood where my toughness came from,” Padilla said, but that “I could smile more. That stuck with me to this day.”

School board candidate facts

Name: Imelda Padilla

Age: 29

Job: Community organizer for Pacoima Beautiful, then with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and started her own non-profit called Together We Do More, which aims to help middle and high school students start to think about higher education and professional development at a young age.

Married: no

Children in LAUSD: none

Did candidate attend LAUSD: Roscoe Elementary, Byrd Middle School and Polytechnic High School

Lives: In childhood home in Sun Valley

Platform – key items: Fair funding for schools, improved academy performance and increased parental and community involvement.

Campaign money raised:

Key endorsements: UTLA, SEIU Local 99, Los Angeles County Democratic Party, Los Angeles School Police Association, International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Campaign website: imeldaforschoolboard.com

Board Member and Ass’t. City Attorney Galatzan

Via the Los Angeles Times

Running the schools was a lot simpler before there were federal standards and accountability tests and a commitment to closing the achievement gap for disadvantaged students. Back then, the Los Angeles Unified school board oversaw the district in much the same way as, say, the Police Commission now oversees the Police Department.

Education experts — the superintendent and administrative staff — directed the day-to-day operations of the district, while school board members put the stamp of approval on budgets, contracts, new hires and new curricula and got directly involved in particularly gnarly issues.