One frustrated LAUSD teacher at a middle school collected two days of wasted food from two classrooms.

With the third and final phase of LA Unified’s Breakfast in the Classroom rollout ending today, district officials are now assessing how to minimize the amount of wasted and uneaten food left behind.

Already, new procedures are in the works for the start of the new school year in August, said Laura Benavidez, the program’s project manager.

“We are hearing fewer complaints from the teachers, and we are addressing them as they come up,” she said.

But waste is still a concern. One teacher at a school that started the program earlier this year, said, “The students couldn’t pick what they wanted; they had to take it all or nothing, and it all had to go in this big plastic bag to get thrown away.”

So next year, the district plans to implement the “Save it For Later” program, “where a child can put an apple or string cheese in his backpack and save it for later,” Benavidez explained. “We don’t want them carrying around milk, though.”

Another possible pilot program will be to give the students four choices, and they can pick three. The “Offer Four, Choose Three” plan is similar to what some cafeterias do for lunch, but Benavidez said, “We want to make things easy for the teachers and want them to have minimal involvement.”

Carol Convey, a parent who is involved with three east Valley schools, said “When teachers check off what students take, then the next day they are given fewer supplies — and maybe it’s something the kids like — then some of them will go hungry. That’s not right.”

Benavidez said that the district is working with kitchen managers to make more accurate assessments of what students will eat.

“We have to train them to be better at looking to see what the classroom had the last time coffee cake was offered, not just how many took food the day before,” she said. “That is a site by site issue.”

Convey added, “Some teachers hate Breakfast in the Classroom, but it should not be ignored that it helps the kids a lot. They tell me they appreciate it.”

Milk is generally the most-tossed item, a problem Benavidez acknowledged.

“We are aware that a lot of milk is going to waste, and we are checking with the USDA representatives about that,” she said. The milk is required to be served, but given the choice, many students pick juice.

One disturbing trend that the district has noticed is that fewer lunches are being served. The district gets more federal money to serve lunches than breakfasts.

“We are still serving about 340,000 lunches a day while we are serving 350,000 breakfasts,” Benavidez said.

Every school that gets 70 percent of the students to eat breakfast earns 20 cents per day per student. Of the 630 schools that launched Breakfast in the Classroom over the past three years, 588 of them, or 93 percent, have reached the incentive level of getting 70 percent of their students to eat breakfast.

“As of March, we’ve provided over $3 million in incentive funds back to the school sites,” Benavidez said.

Nearly two-thirds of California voters support legislation requiring schools to integrate breakfast into the school day, according to the latest statewide Field Poll.

Four questions on breakfast in the classroom were included in the poll on behalf of California Food Policy Advocates, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the health and well-being of low-income Californians by increasing access to nutritious, affordable food.

Support was strong among all voters, regardless of ethnicity, age, gender or geography, the poll found.

“Californians see breakfast as essential to a child’s ability to learn in school,” Mark DiCamillo, senior vice president of the Field Research Corporation, which administers The Field Poll, said in a statement. “What’s striking in this poll is the magnitude of voter support for schools to proactively offer all kids an opportunity to eat breakfast, and this includes a breakfast after the bell requirement.”

In a telephone survey of 1,251 registered voters, 64 percent expressed support for legislation requiring public schools to offer breakfast after the start of the school day, either in homeroom or during a mid-morning break. Currently, most schools offering federally funded breakfast serve it only before the school day begins.

The poll also found that 77 percent of respondents believe that breakfast positively impacts student academic achievement. A recent national study links school breakfast participation with higher math, science and reading test scores, and other studies have shown that school breakfast improves attendance, behavior and student health.

The poll results contradict the view of many teachers, who oppose breakfast in the classroom. They argue that it deprives children of valuable instruction time, reducing their learning capabilities. Teachers also say the cleanup time, especially in classes of kindergartners and first graders, can stretch to as long as 45 minutes, further delaying the start of instruction. 

The poll found strong support, 78 percent, for using existing federal funding to ensure that more students start their day with breakfast.

Currently, up to $344 million in federal school breakfast funds go unused by California schools each year largely because almost 20 percent of California schools do not offer breakfast, and among schools that do offer breakfast, the majority only serve it before the start of the school day, according to California Food Policy Advocates. As a result, the federal School Breakfast Program (SBP) reaches only half the number of students served by the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).

In late February, Assemblymembers Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) and Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond) introduced AB 1240, the “Breakfast After the Bell” bill. The legislation would increase access to school breakfast and improve academic achievement statewide by implementing many of the changes strongly supported in this Field Poll.

“It is encouraging, but not surprising, to know that so many of our constituents stand behind this proposal,” Bonta said in a statement. “Any teacher will tell you that hungry kids struggle to stay focused. By ensuring more students have access to breakfast at school, AB 1240 offers a practical solution to help us close California’s achievement gap.”

A new partnership between a non-profit and the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation (LADF) is ensuring that more LAUSD students can look forward to eating healthier breakfasts at school during the 2014-2015 academic year.

The partnership comes as an efforts to bolster School Fuel, an initiative launched by the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education (The LA Fund), which reduces the stigma of receiving free or discounted breakfast from federal programs by bringing free breakfasts to LAUSD students, regardless of income. Now, more than 360,000 students participate in the federally subsidized program – a jump of 200,000 in under three years.

“We are so grateful for this partnership with the Dodgers Foundation, and we know that their involvement will give students another reason to be excited about sharing a meal in their classroom community,” said Megan Chernin, CEO of the LA Fund.

To celebrate the partnership, Dodgers outfielder, Andre Ethier, surprised 6th grade students at Nightingale Middle School last week during their breakfast. As they ate, Either discussed fitness habits and the importance of reading nutrition labels, which now feature him and his fellow Dodger players Carl Crawford and Clayton Kershaw on the sides of milk cartons served in LA Unified schools.

As a follow up to the celebration, the Dodgers will present a $200,000 check to LA fund before the Dodgers vs. Red Sox game on June 16.

That might be about to change.

In a presentation to the LA Unified School Board on Tuesday, SEIU local 99 Executive Director Courtni Pugh laid out a vision to better connect community services to schools. Dubbed OASIS, for Optimizing Access to Services, Inspiring Success, the plan aims to turn local schools sites into a hub of community services, such as park space, libraries, health care providers and technology.

“Not everyone enters the classroom in the morning with the same experiences the night before,” Pugh told LA School Report. “We have to recognize that a child’s day does not start and end in the classroom.”

It is, by her own admission, not a new idea. Earlier this year, the Youth Policy Institute launched an initiative called Los Angeles Promise Neighborhoods, which aims to fuse a variety of anti-poverty services into one program centered around a school. (The idea was inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone.)

Pugh’s goal is to set up six to 12 OASIS schools within LAUSD starting in the next school year. She hopes the project will get funding from a range of sources, including the City of Los Angeles, LA Unified and non-profits.

At Tuesday’s meeting, school board members were practically falling over themselves to praise Pugh’s idea.

“I love this,” said Steve Zimmer. “This is what we should be doing.” Even Monica Ratliff, against whom Local 99 campaigned heavily against last year, thought the plan was “fantastic.”

Pugh, a former political director of the powerful LA County Federation of Labor, has headed Local 99 for just over a year. She was also recently named the chair of SEIU International’s education council. From that platform, she is wading into the education reform debate, staking out a middle ground between charter school advocates and teachers unions.

“The debate on reform is false and silo-ed,” she said.

More than half of her members have children that go to LA Unified schools, she said, and the majority of them live within 2.5 miles of schools they work in. Not only will OASIS create jobs (some, presumably, for her members), but her members will benefit from the services it creates.

In a sense, OASIS grew out of Breakfast in the Classroom, an LA Unified program that provides, well, breakfast in the classroom. It has been heavily criticized by many teachers, who said it distracted students and left a mess. But when Superintendent John Deasy put the program to the board for a vote, hundreds of service workers rallied to support it, and the normally divided board unanimously voted to continue the service.

“That was a fight that we thought was for the moral good,” said Pugh. “Our members, many of them are part of the working poor that stood to move further down the food chain if they lost their jobs.”

Pugh expects getting OASIS off the ground to be even tougher.

“This is a humongous undertaking – very complex, multiple layers and a lot of red tape involved,” she said. “It’s a big step for us.”

Previous posts: Slideshow: Deasy’s Cafeteria Shift; Deasy’s School Breakfast Gambit Confuses Supporters; Campaign 2013: How Ratliff Won (& Reformers Lost)*; Local 99, LAUSD’s “Other” Labor Union

The SEIU local 99, which represents classified LAUSD employees, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians and teaching assistants, invited Superintendent John Deasy to spend a shift “walking in their shoes” — or in their hairnets, as it were.

Deasy spent the early Wednesday yesterday preparing and serving food at Esteban Torres High School in East Los Angeles.

“The thing that amazed me was how everyone in the cafeteria knew the students’ names and even encouraged them to eat,” Deasy told Barbara Jones of the LA Daily News. “They know each other on a personal level. The students are deeply respectful of the cafeteria workers, and the workers are very caring.”

Some of the food Deasy prepared went to LAUSD’s Breakfast in the Classroom, which serves breakfast to low-income students during class. The program became the subject of a pitched battle between SEIU and the teachers union, which said the in-class meals distracted students and left a mess. After Deasy put the program’s fate up for a vote, the School Board voted unanimously to keep and even expand it.

(above photos courtesy of the SEIU local 99)

Previous posts: Deasy & Allies Prevail at May Board Meeting; Deasy’s School Breakfast Gambit Confuses Supporters; Local 99, LAUSD’s “Other” Labor Union

Though the exchanges never quite rose to the level of outright acrimony, there were some dramatic moments as the Board members and speakers debated the latest parent trigger petition and the consequences of changing the district’s school discipline policies.

In the end, the Board voted to end suspensions for “willful defiance,” a cause championed by Superintendent John Deasy and Board President Monica Garcia, and to approve the latest parent trigger petition at Weigand Elementary. The Board also voted — unanimously — to continue and expand the controversial Breakfast in the Classroom program.

After several weeks of having his leadership and policies pummeled by the teachers union, Deasy and his allies on the Board prevailed on pretty much every one of their priorities.

The two demonstrations – students in blue, teachers in red – took hardly any notice of each other

Out in the Street

In the morning, cafeteria workers represented by the SEIU Local 99 rallied in favor of Breakfast in the classroom.

But later in the day, two other rallies were held concurrently: one by students, and another by teachers.

The students, clad in bright blue shirts reading “Every Student Matters,” were there to support Garcia’s proposal to reform school discipline and, among other things, ban suspensions for “willful defiance” (refusing a teacher’s instructions or complying with adminstrators’ orders).

A crowd of teachers, roughly the same size but dressed in UTLA red, held their own rally a mere twenty feet away. Their demands included the hiring of more teachers and higher salaries.

“We haven’t had a raise in 7 years!” cried UTLA President Warren Fletcher, addressed the crowd from a giant stage erected in the middle of the street. “We will not let them pour millions of dollars down a rabbit hole! We will not go without a fight!”

Fletcher exited the stage to the Queen song, “We Will Rock You.”

School Board candidate Monica Ratliff was spotted at the UTLA rally by KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.

Participants of the two rallies took barely any notice of each other.

Members of the SEIU local 99 celebrate after the vote

Classroom Breakfasts Approved Unanimously

As expected, the Board voted to keep the Breakfast in the Classroom program, which is set to expand over the next couple years.

There were two surprises, though: the vote was unanimous; even Maurgerite LaMotte and Bennett Kayser voted to keep the program.

“I understand the program has issues,” said Dr. Richard Vladovic. “We should add a half hour of instructional time… But in the meantime, our children cannot be pawns. They need to be fed.”

Board Member Steve Zimmer spoke passionately about the school district’s role in fighting hunger.

“We cannot pretend this is someone else’s problem,” he said. “This is not instead of education — this is education.”

And not a single public commenter argued for the program to be scrapped — including the UTLA’s Fletcher, who sat through most of the meeting in the audience.

Greuel speaking to reporters outside the meeting

Parent Revolution parents, before the vote

“In-District” Parent Trigger

The Board also voted 5-2 to approve a parent trigger petition signed by roughly 60% of parents at Weigand Elementary — but not before a tense debate.

Before the vote was taken, five different parents spoke out against the trigger, saying that parents and organizers had been lying to other parents in order to obtain signatures. Two others spoke in support.

LaMotte asks how to find bad schools? Happy to assist School Board Member: #LAUSD‘s own site to find failing schools. bit.ly/15Ln6js

 

Teachers protest outside the School Board meeting in March of 2012

Just as record-breaking temperatures in Los Angeles are expected to subside by tomorrow, many of the heated LAUSD issues on the docket for tomorrow’s Board meeting may cool off into mere formalities by the time they come up for a vote.

But a packed Board agenda and multiple union rallies could still make for a dramatic day at the district’s Beaudry Avenue headquarters.

Both UTLA and the SEIU Local 99 have planned demonstrations. The latest “parent trigger” petition is up for approval, and Board member proposals on such difficult topics as lengthening the school year and reforming school discipline are all on the agenda.

The teachers union is planning a big march in support of higher salaries and more jobs (or, as they put it, smaller class sizes). The rally starts at 4 PM, so that teachers can make it over after school.

UTLA President Warren Fletcher will address the School Board at some point during the meeting. Though there is no agenda item that directly addresses the demands laid out in UTLA’s “Initiative for Schools L.A. Students Deserve” which include smaller class sizes and higher salaries, you can expect Fletcher and others to address these issues.

The SEIU local 99 is also planning a march in support of Breakfast in the Classroom, a controversial program that Superintendent John Deasy has placed on the agenda and the Board is expected to approve by an overwhelming margin.

Deasy has placed a number of other budget items on the agenda, and they too are expected to be approved. While confusing and counterintuitive to some, Deasy’s move was designed to take some of the heat off of himself and perhaps to shift some of it onto the School Board and show UTLA and his other critics that there is a certain amount of political support for his policies.

The Board agenda includes a cornucopia of other intriguing items and cans of worms, including final approval of the parent trigger petition at Weigand Elementary, which was submitted to the district in early April and doesn’t call for the school to be reconstituted or taken over by a charter. Instead, the “transformation” model will call for replacing the principal with a candidate that the parents approve of.

A pro-parent trigger source told LA School Report that he expects UTLA to put up a fight over Weigand, even though the though the Weigand trigger appears to be less extreme than previous trigger petitions such as the 24th Street Elementary School trigger, which calls for part of the school to be handed over to a charter.

LA School Report asked UTLA about their positions on Weigand and other agenda items. We’re still waiting for a response.

There will be the usual number of postponed resolutions from Board Member Bennett Kayser resolitions and the usual number of charter approvals — although in a relatively unusual move Superintendent Deasy’s office has actually recommended that one of them, Gian Charter Academy, be rejected.

We reached out to the would-operators of Gian Charter, the Khalsa Care Foundation, and we’ve yet to hear back. But it will be interesting to see what kind of presence they’ll bring to the meeting, and they will have sway with the School Board, which has buckled to endangered charters in the past.

Last but not least, two agenda items by School Board President Monica Garcia could cause a stir. The first — a resolution on school discipline that would, among other things, ban suspensions for “willful defiance” — is expected to have broad support, despite some resistance from classroom teachers.

Garcia’s second resolution about lengthening the school year is brand new and therefore won’t be voted on until June. The proposal would in part direct “the Superintendent to examine the feasibility of increasing the academic calendar beyond 180 days, including but not limited to 1) extending the 2014-15 academic calendar by at least 5% and 2) the feasibility of a 200 day academic calendar year.”

Observers say this could put UTLA in a tight spot. Extending the school year may be good for student learning but it would presumably mean paying current teachers more money rather than re-hiring teachers laid off during recent rounds of budget cutting.

Previous posts: Parents Rally for Classroom Breakfast; Union Focusing on Jobs at Tuesday Board Meeting; Deasy Memo Foreshadows Dramatic Board Meeting; Deasy’s School Breakfast Gambit Confuses Supporters

Breakfast in class (via TakePart)

“Ending the breakfast program in Los Angeles could cause thousands of kids to start the school day hungry,” begins this recent TakePart story by Vanessa Romo.  “So why are teachers against it?”

The piece describes the classroom breakfast program that’s supposed to take the first 15 minutes of school, highlights the other districts around the country — Baltimore, Houston, Chicago, San Diego—that are doing the same thing, and the controversy that’s erupted among some teachers over the loss of instructional time and the mess the breakfasts have created by being offered in class instead of in the lunchroom. Improvements in nutritional quality and cleanliness are in the works, according to the story — including the elimination of Cereal Day.

Previous posts: Parents Rally for Classroom Breakfast; Union Focusing on Jobs at Tuesday Board Meeting

Image via United Way 

At an event promoted by United Way of Greater Los Angeles held in front of LAUSD headquarters, parents and educators called on UTLA and LAUSD to “put politics aside and continue the successful program, which provides a nutritious breakfast at nearly 300 schools.”  Earlier this week, Take Part explored the controversy surrounding the program.

Previous posts: Union Focusing on Jobs at Tuesday Board Meeting; UTLA Softens Criticism of Classroom Breakfast

United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) is planning a major show of force at the meeting and afterwards, calling for reductions in class size (and rehiring of laid-off teachers) .

According to the UTLA website, the School Board should rehire teachers due to the passage of Proposition 30 last year.

Meantime, there are other hot-button issues that may be discussed, including the Deasy budget items (including classroom breakfast), teacher dismissals, and the new teacher evaluation program.  The Board agenda for the May 14 meeting includes numerous decisions, approvals, and member resolutions. (See 05-14-13 Board Order Of Business).

Previous posts: UTLA Softens Criticism of Classroom Breakfast; Deasy Budget Memo; Deasy Memo Foreshadows Dramatic Board Meeting; Board Likely to Back Classroom Breakfast

Duncan Says It’s Still Possible for State to Get NCLB Waiver
California remains interested in receiving a waiver from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Wednesday it remains possible for the state to get one. EdSource

L.A. Mayor’s Race: Wendy Greuel Uses Web Chat to Target Women
The chat participants, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, L.A. Unified President Monica Garcia, longtime civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and operatives from the Feminist Majority and the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Project, urged Los Angeles viewers to join their canvassing efforts on Greuel’s behalf. LA Times

Poll: Should Breakfast Be Banned From the Classroom?
Should under-nourished students be allowed to eat in the classroom? The issue became a hot topic this week after Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy passed on making a decision, putting the future of a pilot breakfast program into the hands of the school board. KPCC
See also: LA School Report

California Teachers Sue Unions to Stop Dues
Ten California teachers — several of them from Orange County — are suing in federal court to stop mandatory union dues. The lawsuit seeks to expand last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision involving union activity in a California special election. KPCC
See also: HuffPo

Within Schools, Novice Teachers Paired With Struggling Students
More than a decade of research on teacher characteristics shows that, on almost every quality measure you can think of, schools with large populations of low-income, minority, and low-achieving students get shortchanged. They have fewer experienced teachers, fewer teachers teaching within their field, and teachers who show greater variations in effectiveness, including more of the worst performers. EdWeek

Duncan Admits Flaws in Current Standardized Testing
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledged serious flaws in the standardized tests that currently drive American schools, telling an audience of education researchers on Tuesday that the tests are an inadequate gauge of student and teacher performance. EdSource

StudentsFirst Under Scrutiny From the Left
Michelle Rhee frequently says her StudentsFirst lobbying group is a bipartisan organization that backs Democrats and Republicans who support her vision for education: charter schools, vouchers and performance pay for teachers. Sac Bee

Common Core Moves a Step Closer in CA, GOP Attacks Standards in Other States
Plans to commit California schools to a new student testing system aligned to the new common core curriculum standards by 2014-15 won passage Wednesday out of a key legislative committee. SI&A Cabinet Report

CA Bill Would Curtail Police Role on Public School Campuses
A bill to limit the role of campus police in disciplining students passed its first committee  hearing in Sacramento Wednesday. The bill’s L.A. sponsor aims to reduce the number of tickets that campus police issue to students. KPCC

Turning Teens Into Police Officers
Roberta Weintraub, a 77-year-old political activist and former president of the L.A. Unified School District Board of Education, has always had a soft spot for the men and women in blue. Jewish Journal LA

The union’s announcement followed a Monday night LA Times story that said a majority of School Board members planned to vote at the May Board meeting to continue funding the program next year, and preceded a Tuesday afternoon parent protest in support of the classroom breakfast program. (See: Parents Rally to Save Classroom Breakfasts.)

The “breakfast program is flawed — but fixable,” the union wrote in the press release, urging the district to work together with UTLA to resolve some of the issues it has with BIC. (See UTLA statement here.)

Only a few weeks ago, the union seemed to condemn the program when it announced that “Breakfast in the Classroom gets failing grade from teachers,” based on a survey of just 729 teachers, half of whom complained that BIC cut into their instructional time and left messes behind.

The UTLA press release arrived on the heels of a statement in support of Breakfast in the Classroom that LAUSD Board Member Bennett Kayser sent to the press Monday evening. (See release here.)

Kayser, who received significant UTLA funding during his 2011 campaign and often aligns himself with teachers union, may have startled some when he threw his lot behind BIC, writing, “Our Breakfast in the Classroom program not only furthers the President’s effort to feed hungry children but brings much needed revenue for the instructional program to the District as well.”

Then again, Kayser also seized the opportunity to criticize LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy for “inexplicably” pulling BIC from next year’s budget and leaving it up to the School Board to vote on whether or not to fund the breakfast program.

Both Kayser and UTLA emphasized that the breakfast program needs improvements, however. Their key concerns are how feed students breakfast without interrupting learning time in class, and how to resolve sanitation issues.

That the program needs work is something most stakeholders agree on — even Cortni Pugh, the head of the SEIU Local 99, which is a big supporter of BIC, told LA School Report last week that it is a new program and needs time to be fully implemented. Now that Deasy has forced a School Board vote, the teachers union seems more ready to negotiate the details of the program rather than failing it outright.

Previous posts: Deasy’s School Breakfast Gambit Confuses Supporters; Classroom Breakfast Expanding Despite Some Complaints

LAUSD Supt. John Deasy Faces Performance Evaluation by Teachers Union
Barely two weeks after delivering a stinging no-confidence vote on the leadership of Superintendent John Deasy, the teachers union announced it will do a first-ever “performance evaluation” of the Los Angeles Unified chief. Daily News
See also: LA School Report

Voters Can’t Let LAUSD Seat Be Bought: Elect Monica Ratliff
For a glimpse of what’s wrong with politics in Los Angeles, look no further than the campaign to fill an open seat in the LAUSD’s northeast San Fernando Valley district. LA Daily News Editorial

Lawsuit Targets Union Fees Collected from Nonmember Teachers
A conservative organization has joined with a group of California teachers in an effort to overturn laws that allow teacher unions to collect fees from those who don’t want to be members. Los Angeles Times
See also: Bloomberg, AP

StudentsFirst Rallies Troops for California Teacher Evaluation Bill
StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based education advocacy group headed by school reform crusader (and wife of Sacramento major Kevin Johnson) Michelle Rhee, has launched a major blitz in advance of a hearing today on Senate Bill 441, a union-opposed teacher evaluation bill that was granted reconsideration after registering a 4-4 committee vote last week, with Democrats and Republicans on both sides. The Tribune

Bill Would Overhaul Student Testing in California
A key hearing is set today for consideration of what may prove to be landmark legislation that would replace the state’s existing statewide student performance testing program with one that is designed to be taken online and is also aligned with the new common core curriculum standards. SI&A Cabinet Report

UCLA Preschool and the California Science Center Museum Help Turn Kids Into ‘Pre-Scientists’
University Village and the other two UCLA preschools are among a few in Southern California to offer science-based learning. The vocabulary and experimentation may give kids a head start in later grades. KPCC

L.A. Ninth-Grader Whips up Winning Breakfast Recipe
Her nephew likes fruit. Her brother likes eggs. And so Guadalupe Gonzales, a ninth-grader at Panorama High School in Los Angeles, put the two ingredients together in a dish that was named the top winner Tuesday in L.A. Unified’s first annual breakfast recipe contest. LA Times

Civil Rights Groups Oppose No Child Left Behind Waiver for LAUSD
A coalition of civil rights groups is opposing efforts by Los Angeles Unified and eight other school districts to get a waiver from a federal law requiring that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014. Daily News

L.A. County Rejects School Districts’ Bid to Avoid Voting Rights Suits
Los Angeles County officials rejected a bid Tuesday from several Santa Clarita Valley school districts and a water district hoping to consolidate elections and avoid the kind of voting rights lawsuits that other local governments have been hit with. LA Times

The teachers union has promised to hold a large rally demanding that LAUSD hire more teachers, nurses and librarians. The SEIU local 99, an equally powerful union (with a larger membership) that represents classified employees, will also make its presence felt in support of the controversial Breakfast in the Classroom program.

And — in response to demands from UTLA and the administrators union (called AALA) —  LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has put eight separate budget items up for Board members to vote up or down.

“The need is to make a decision between the demands from UTLA and competing issues inside the budget,” said Deasy, who will recommend to the Board that they vote to keep all the items. “I’m going to make recommendations, but I want them to understand… you can’t invest in everything.”

Some Board Members have been a bit unsettled by the Superintendent’s dramatic actions.

After a UTLA membership survey expressed the union’s disdain for Breakfast in the Classroom, Deasy announced that he would put the program before the School Board. According to the LA Times, the Board will vote overwhelmingly to keep the classroom breakfast program.

But a memo (which you can download here) sent by Deasy to Board Members and their staff last week outlines seven other budget items that the Superintendent is asking the Board to vote on.

It’s a strongly worded, at times even sarcastic piece of writing.

For example, when discussing the first item to be put before the Board, what he calls “hundreds of off norm positions,” he writes: “This will result in bumping of individuals or individuals that will not have positions particularly administrators. I am sure our unions will understand because they have been so vocal about restorations universally across the system.”

Other items up for Board approval include $1.4 million for KLCS, the TV station that broadcasts School Board meetings, funding for under-enrolled small schools, a number of school policemen, and of course, Breakfast in the Classroom, the only item that pays for itself — and more — since it qualifies the district for $6 million in federal grant money.

“We use that revenue to help defray the cost of physicians in the general fund, to keep cost of lunches down, and to support 900 employees who work in the cafeteria,” said Superintendent Deasy.

The SEIU local 99, which represents those 900 cafeteria employees, went ballistic at the news that Deasy had put the classroom breakfast program on the chopping block, and announced protests (one of which was held today at Hooper Elementary).

“We still wonder why it got put on the agenda,” said Sarah Bradshaw, Board Member Bennett Kayser’s top aide. “It’s beyond me. The result is we got a lot of scared lunch ladies and parents who are concerned, and it’s all for naught.”

Some Board members, including Monica Garcia (as we noted yesterday) and Bennett Kayser, are questioning Deasy’s high-stakes approach.

“We’ve got a $6 billion budget,” said Kayser’s aide Bradshaw. “We’ve got to look at the whole thing. To cleave eight items out and talk about them is no way to do a budget.”

Kayser will vote to keep Breakfast in the Classroom, but would like to see some changes made to it.  UTLA leadership would seem to agree, calling the program “flawed but fixable” in a recent statement that read, in part: “We call on the District to be part of the process, and not make this a political issue.”

It appears that ship has sailed.

Previous posts: Deasy’s School Breakfast Gambit Confuses Supporters; Classroom Breakfast Expanding Despite Some Complaints; Teachers Vote Against Deasy, For More Teachers

The Messy Complications of Breakfast in the Classroom
The Los Angeles Unified School District is in a period of tremendous upheaval that, it’s hoped, will result in better education for its students. With so much changing and so much at stake, of course there are more than a few daggers drawn. But when the teachers union and district administration can’t even get together over feeding hungry kids, something sick is going on. LA Times Opinion

Pre-K Funding is Delivered Another Blow
California state funding per child fell by more than than $400 compared with the previous year, and only 41% of 4-year-olds were served by public pre-K programs and Head Start in the 2011-12 school year, the institute reported. LAT

Washington and Sacramento Must End Cold War on Education
It is too late for California to get more than the sliver of Race to the Top funds it has already received. But the administration’s rejection of California’s NCLB waiver request is too important an issue to accept without further urgent efforts on both sides to reach a resolution. EdSource (opinion)

Walton Foundation Gives $8 Million to StudentsFirst
A foundation associated with the Wal-Mart family fortune has expanded its support for the education advocacy group run by former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. LA Times

Granada Hills Honored for Record Three-Peat As Academic Decathlon Champs
To raucous cheers and the skirl of the school’s bagpipers, the nine-member Academic Decathlon team from Granada Hills Charter High School was celebrated Monday for winning its third consecutive national championship – the first such achievement for a California campus. LA Daily News

New Science Standards Hard Sell at Cash-Strapped Sylmar High School
Ronald Hitchcock has been teaching science at Sylmar High School for more than a decade. He’s seen a lot of changes, but perhaps nothing has hit the school harder than the news last fall that it lost a $3.5 million QEIA grant.  “We’re pretty cash strapped right now,” he said. KPCC

Positive School Climate Boosts Test Scores, Study Says
It’s the million-dollar question or, given the size of the California education budget, the $50-billion-dollar question: What makes extraordinarily successful schools different from other schools? The answer: school climate, according to a new study from WestEd. EdSource

Attack on School Reformers Rings Hollow
This time, the powerful teachers’ unions went too far. At this month’s California Democratic Convention, a resolution attacking education reform movements was approved by delegates. It was sponsored by the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers and the California Faculty Association. O.C. Register Editorial

Bill Seeks to Limit School Police in Discipline Matters
As the national debate grows louder over deploying police in schools, the largest state in the union ­– California – is considering a bill that would require schools to set “clear guidelines” defining the role of school police and limit their involvement in disciplinary matters. CA Watch

School Discipline Survey Finds Challenges in Making Changes
Many school districts are changing their codes of conduct in a way that limits the use of out-of-school suspension and expulsion and defines the role of law enforcement in school. But the resources—human and financial—needed to make those changes don’t always match what districts can muster. EdWeek

New National Goals Set for Teaching Profession
A blueprint for improving the teaching profession nationally calls for more emphasis on quality preparation programs, higher standards for entry into the profession and better compensation for both classroom educators and school administrators. SI&A Cabinet Report

The possible elimination of a program Southern California Public Radio described as “a political hot potato” presumably pleased the teachers union, which has long called for its end.

But Deasy’s plan to remove the program from his budget and force Board members to vote to restore it confused and displeased some BIC supporters.

“It’s not my favorite strategy,” School Board President Monica Garcia told the LA Times. “But I understand choices have to be made.”.

“I get what he wants to do,” Courtni Pugh, head of the 45,000-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, told LA School Report. “He keeps saying he wants to save the program, so we have the same goal. But I would have gone about it differently.”

Word about the Deasy gambit started trickling out on Thursday, and then in an interview published Friday morning in the LA Times, Deasy said he wanted BIC reinstated, but only if the Board takes “maximum responsibility.”

“The program is going to have to be cut unless the Board votes to keep it,” Deasy told the paper. “UTLA made it very clear about how this program is a big problem.”

As LA School Report described last week, UTLA has offered a teacher survey as evidence to bolster its argument that serving low-income students breakfast in the classroom is a disruptive and messy process that teachers opposed.

However, the sample of teachers who responded to the UTLA was small — only 729 compared to 10,000 classrooms participating in the program — and of those teachers who responded only a little over 400 said they had complaints with the program.

Deasy’s maneuver took many education stakeholders off guard, as Deasy has championed the implementation of the program since it was first tried out two years ago.

“I don’t think that Superintendent Deasy wants to eliminate the program,” explained School Board president Monica Garcia in a LA Daily News story. “I think he’s asking the Board to affirm whether a program that has more kids eating breakfast and getting to school on time and putting more people to work – should we continue this.”

Others weren’t so circumspect about the decision or the process of unveiling it.

“We heard through a memo,” SEIU’s Pugh told LA School Report.

“We are disheartened that Superintendent John Deasy would consider ending a program that is successfully tackling the difficult issues of hunger and poverty in our schools,” said Pugh in a written statement. (Read it here.)  “In these difficult economic times, the program has already saved thousands of cafeteria jobs. And as the program continues to be implemented, more jobs will be saved.”

Pugh admitted that BIC is not perfect because it’s just started and is a large operation to implement. “But I wholeheartedly believe the pros outweigh the cons,” said Pugh. “You don’t throw away a program when 77 percent of the kids in LAUSD qualify for reduced price lunch, and 91 percent of kids of color do.”

Putting the decision in the hands of the School Board is an interesting political move on Deasy’s part. Board members, many of whom have received financial backing from SEIU, UTLA (or both) will likely feel pressure from each union as they weigh whether to ax a program that feeds hungry students breakfast.

When asked if she knows where Board members stand on BIC, Pugh wasn’t willing to talk about individuals, but she did say, “Not the entire School Board will be supporting BIC… But we’re in a situation that we’re in now, and we’re not going to back down from a fight.”

SEIU Local 99 plans to mobilize its members; it’s already scheduled an April 30 rally to support BIC. (See event details here.)

Board members will have to decide to reinstate the program or let it expire at the May 14 Board meeting.

In a press release sent out Friday afternoon, Deasy sounded assured that his plan will work out for the program, writing, “I’m confident that at its May 14 meeting, the Board of Education will enthusiastically and unanimously vote to continue funding Breakfast in the Classroom.”

UTLA Vice-President Juan Ramirez told the LA Times Friday that the union won’t support BIC unless some of its demands, including moving breakfast out of the classroom, are met.

Previous posts: Classroom Breakfast Expanding Despite Some Complaints; Teachers Vote Against Deasy, For More Teachers; April Vote Will Highlight Union Factions

L.A. Unified Fight Focuses on Breakfast Program
Los Angeles Unified will eliminate a classroom breakfast program serving nearly 200,000 children, reject more school police, cut administrators and scale back new construction projects unless the school board votes to approve them, according to Supt. John Deasy. LA Times
See also: LA School Report, Sac Bee, LA Daily News, KPCC

‘Super PACs’ Negate Spending Limits in L.A. Mayor’s Race
As groups raising funds for Greuel and Garcetti pour money into the race — a record $6.1 million so far — voter-approved contribution restrictions become meaningless. LA Times

Eric Garcetti for Mayor
Perhaps most important, Garcetti has demonstrated the capacity to grow, learn and improve his performance. He admits mistakes, such as his vote in favor of a settlement allowing, for a time, virtually unregulated digital billboards. LAT (editorial page)

L.A. Schools Finish One-Two in National Academic Decathlon
After months of preparation, Granada Hills Charter High wins the title for the third straight year. Finishing second was El Camino Real Charter High, a six-time national champion. LA Times
See also: Sac Bee

iPads in School: a Toy or a Tool?
Whether equipping all students with iPads is a gimmick or a great idea, one San Fernando Valley school that’s using them is sold. LA Times Column (Steve Lopez)

Gov. Brown As Robin Hood
His plan to shift money from suburban to urban districts might help disadvantaged students but it could hurt other kids. LA Times Opinion

Want to Build a Better Teacher Evaluation? Ask a Teacher
To generate more effective teaching through evaluations, teachers, principals, and school system leaders need to embrace a culture of ongoing two-way feedback and a commitment to continuous improvement. EdWeek Commentary

School Health Centers Are Not Just for Students
Lack of access to health care is a national problem, but it’s a particular problem in poor neighborhoods like South Los Angeles. California Report

California Legislature Ignoring Teacher Pension Gap
Those who occupy the Capitol have an infinite ability to evade reality, even something as seemingly stark as a huge deficit in the teacher pension system that’s growing, by its own numbers, by $17 million each day.  Sac Bee Opinion

Downey Teacher, Arrested for Allegedly Molesting 3 Girls, Out on Bail
A 55-year-old teacher at a charter school in unincorporated Willowbrook was out on bail Monday after his arrest for allegedly molesting three girls at the school between October 2012 and last March, authorities said. Daily Breeze

California Gets Mediocre Grade for Preschool Access and Quality
California got a mediocre grade in both access to preschool and the quality of the programs in a new study released today by the National Institute for Early Education Research. The state meets only four of the group’s ten benchmarks for quality preschool. KPCC

(Published in today’s Los Angeles Times)

Ousting Supt. John Deasy, as the union wants, would hurt students.

by Jamie Alter Lynton

The leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union recently conducted a survey among its members asking if they had confidence in Los Angeles Unified Supt. John Deasy. Although it was highly unusual for the union to mount this kind of frontal attack on the superintendent, the maneuver wouldn’t have raised eyebrows had it not been for the union’s full-court press to influence the vote. Not only did the union send out misleading information about Deasy’s record, it also posted unflattering, juvenile caricatures of him on its website.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when the vote went overwhelmingly against Deasy. But it almost certainly left a lot of people in Los Angeles wondering what the superintendent had done to raise the union’s wrath.

There’s no question that the forceful and popular superintendent is shaking things up: In two years, he has pushed the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the lowest-performing districts in the country, toward significant progress. He has promoted ideas that are good for students, such as expanding school choice through charters and other options. He has pushed to improve the quality of teaching and administration, in part through developing a fair measure of teacher performance and finding ways to keep good teachers, not just those with seniority. Some of these ideas are new to Los Angeles, but they are hardly radical and are all supported by the Obama administration and top educators across the country.

Since becoming superintendent in 2011, Deasy has conducted a massive overhaul of the district’s byzantine organizational structure, cutting more than 50% of the central office staff and restructuring regional offices to focus on one of his primary goals: training principals to be better leaders so they in turn can support good teachers.

And the results are starting to come in. The district is seeing more students graduating with fewer dropping out; an increase in the number of students taking Advance Placement exams; a 50% drop in suspensions; and students who lack English language proficiency are becoming English speakers, readers and writers at a much faster rate. Overall, student achievement (as measured by the state), though still too low, continues to rise steadily, even in the face of last year’s budget crisis.

Still, Deasy’s popularity and direct approach have been seen by United Teachers Los Angeles as immensely threatening. The union plays an outsized role in Los Angeles, in large part because we are one of the last large cities in which the superintendent reports to an elected school board, not the mayor. For years, the union has been able to influence board elections, which tend to have quite low turnout, and put its candidates on the board. But now, by targeting Deasy, it risks alienating even its handpicked candidates. Steve Zimmer, a school board member the union spent $920,000 defending just last month, publicly supports Deasy.

Meanwhile, the union is becoming ever more entrenched in its outdated positions, spurred on by pressure from a contingent of teachers who would like to see the union take an even harder line against change. Pressure from within the ranks has cast the union ever more in the role of obstacle. The union has opposed streamlining the dismissal process of teachers accused of sex crimes; the recent launch of “Breakfast in the Classroom,” which provides nutrition to children in need and is now bringing in $6 million in federal money to the district a year; and the “parent trigger” law, which allows parents to petition to transform a low-performing school.

Most spectacularly, union leadership stood in the way of submitting an application for a multimillion-dollar federal Race to the Top grant late last year because it couldn’t come to an agreement with the superintendent about teacher evaluations. When it finally did reach a quite modest agreement, union hard-liners thought that UTLA chief Warren Fletcher had caved.

As the intransigence and fervor of the union deepens, its stated core mission — to fight for teachers’ rights — puts it further and further from what we should all be talking about: How do we best serve the interest of students?

Imagine this in terms of a baseball team: What if, instead of managers setting lineups, the players union was allowed to mandate that the pitching rotation should be based solely on seniority? What if they decided that stats or behavior couldn’t be used to determine when to make a trade? Would we expect that team to win?

The analogy goes only so far, but it points to the deep conflict of interest created when a school board is put in place by the union it then must bargain with on teacher contracts. Can board members with strong ties to the union and its campaign dollars be expected to make an independent decision about the superintendent? It’s a question worth asking. The board already has a vocal contingent of members supported by the union, and it could add another in the May election.

Great teachers, something this district is blessed to have an abundance of, are key to any successful strategy for improving schools, and teachers unions have an important role to play too. But common sense dictates that the teachers union should not be calling the shots on whether the superintendent should be retained, or on a host of other policies.

In the end, what’s best for students should always come first.

Decrease in Pink Slips Thanks to Prop 30
The sharp decrease in the number of pink slips from 20,000 last year to 3,000 this March can be directly attributed to the historic passage of the CTA-supported Proposition 30 in November. CTA Blog

Senate Counters Governor’s Funding Plan for Disadvantaged Students
Brown wants to make sure disadvantaged students get more of the funding pie, but the Senate disagrees with the formula the governor wants to use. KPCC
See also: LA Times, EdSource, SI&A Cabinet Report

Endorsement: Monica Ratliff in L.A. Unified District 6
She would, she said, terminate Supt. John Deasy’s contract and initiate a new search for a superintendent, in which he would be invited to reapply. That would be a mistake. LA Times Editorial

LAUSD Reassigns Valley Superintendent, 3 Other Administrators
Four senior Los Angeles Unified officials, including the San Fernando Valley’s local superintendent, have been removed from their positions pending an internal investigation into “a confidential personnel matter,” a district spokesman said Thursday. LA Daily News
See also: LA Times, CBS LA

Giving Every Kid in L.A. a Computer Tablet? Pros and Cons
My wife and I have tried, with mixed results, to keep our daughter from becoming too obsessed with digital electronics. And yet her school district, L.A. Unified, has a plan to give every child in every school a digital tablet. LA Times Column (Steve Lopez)

A Dangerous Game for UTLA
Superintendent John Deasy’s popularity and direct approach have been seen by United Teachers Los Angeles as immensely threatening. The union plays an outsized role in Los Angeles, in large part because we are one of the last large cities in which the superintendent reports to an elected school board, not the mayor. LA Times Op-Ed (Jamie Alter Lynton)

Alice Waters, School Officials Talk Teaching With Food
Fast food begets a fast-food culture that has seeped into pretty much everything going on in the world today, the chef Alice Waters told a crowd gathered at UCLA for a presentation about edible education. LA Times

Democrats Are Inviting Trouble Over Education Reform
One of the nation’s biggest teachers’ groups has just attacked Democrats for Education Reform. Is the party itself pushing people who want to improve schools into the Republican camp? Crosscut Op-Ed

Private Groups Balk at Running LAUSD Science Center in San Pedro
It’s back to square one for Los Angeles school officials trying to keep San Pedro’s science center open beyond next year. Daily Breeze

Locke High School Joins List of South LA Schools With On-Campus Health Centers
The Watts Healthcare Corporation opened its second school-based clinic in three weeks on Thursday morning at Locke High School in South Los Angeles. KPCC

Sal Castro Recalled As Inspiring Teacher
More than 1,000 people attend the funeral for the activist, who urged a 1968 student walkout demanding better education for Latinos. LA Times

Teacher Dismissals: How Do We Protect Children and Safeguard Teachers’ Due Process?
Fire them. Dismiss them. Send them back. Let them languish in “teacher jails” while investigations drag on for months — or even years.  There’s got to be a better, quicker and fairer way to get rid of teachers who truly do not belong in the classroom and support those teachers who do. Huff Po Op-Ed by Tamar Galatzan

Deasy Should Be Thrilled With Union’s No Confidence Vote
It means he’s shaking up the moribund Los Angeles Unified School District and bucking the union that has battled every education reform proposed to protect the livelihood of its teachers – a livelihood that has put a stranglehold on education. LA Daily News Editorial

‘Willful Defiance’ in L.A. Schools
A proposal to prevent the suspending of students for a relatively minor infraction deserves the approval of the school board. LA Times Editorial

Sal Castro Dies at 79; L.A. Teacher Played Role in 1968 Protests
Sal Castro, a veteran Los Angeles Unified School District teacher who played a central role in the 1968 “blowouts,” when more than 1,000 students in predominantly Latino high schools walked out of their classrooms to protest inequalities in education, died in his sleep Monday after a long bout with cancer. LA Times
See also: KPCC

Teachers Dislike Breakfast in the Classroom Program, Survey Finds
An L.A. Unified program to serve breakfast in the classroom to make sure students don’t start school hungry has increased pests, created messes and cut down on instructional time, according to a teacher survey released Monday. LA Times

Teach for America: California Schools Need Their Talent
The English Learner Authorization embedded within the intern credential is a very hot issue for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing due to the concerns over incomplete education and preparation of intern teachers who serve students who are English Learners. Silicon Valley Mercury News Op-Ed

District’s Voting Rights Called Into Question
Latinos make up 42 percent of ABC Unified School District, located in Southeastern Los Angeles County. They are the largest ethnic demographic in the 30-school district, but the last time a Latino was elected to the seven member board was in 1997. EdWeek

Family Fee for Half-Day State Preschool Likely to Be Rescinded
A much-disputed daily fee for families with children in state-funded preschool programs will likely be removed from next year’s state budget. EdSource