Sen. Alex Padilla, sponsor of computer science bill

Few students would likely take advanced computer science just for fun, even though the course is considered an elective in nearly all California high schools.

But a new bill, SB 1200, from State Senator Alex Padilla of Pacoima, would change that, developing guidelines for the course to count toward graduation by fulfilling a math requirement. And the UC and CSU systems would set academic standards for the computer course to apply toward undergraduate admissions.

The bill passed the Senate Education committee yesterday and is now headed to the Appropriations Committee.

“More high school students will take advanced computer science courses if the classes qualify for undergraduate admissions as a core subject like math,” said Padilla.

Only one high school in California offers advanced computer science courses that have been approved by the UC and CSU, and “not surprisingly,” said Padilla, the school is in San Jose, where most computing-related jobs are located.

He added, “Most college-bound students do not have the time to take an advanced computer science course that is not required for college admission.”

Fourteen states have implemented policies allowing computer science to count as core requirements toward high school graduation.  Where this happens, enrollment in computer science classes is 50 percent higher.

Assembly member Joan Buchanan, left, and State Senator Alex Padilla, right

Governor Jerry Brown’s veto of AB 375, a bill that would have amended California’s teacher dismissal process, doesn’t mean the effort is dead.

“The governor still wants to do something,” LA Unified’s chief lobbyist, Edgar Zazueta, told LA School Report. “I do see there will be one, if not several, efforts to do this next year. Hopefully we’re able to find somewhere in the middle, where more stakeholders can embrace final product.”

Zazueta added that Brown “always wants to make sure that all the stakeholders are on board. With 375, it was unbalanced. None of the folks who do dismissals were part of process.”

Gloria Romero, who just left California Democrats for Education Reform to start her own organization, the Foundation for Parent Empowerment, also sees a pathway forward, even if it remains uncertain who’s leading the effort.

“The stars are aligned,” she said. “There will be a very bright public spotlight on this. The legislature will have to act. The question is, who carries it this time?”

Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, the East Bay Democrat who sponsored the measure, has not decided whether she will go forward with a reconfigured approach or defer to someone else on the issue. One possibility is State Senator Alex Padilla, who authored a bill, SB 10, that would have made it easier to fire teachers accused of harming a student.

That bill died in committee after an intense lobbying blitz from the California Teachers Association.

This year, Padilla declined to take the lead on the new version of the bill – perhaps because he’s running for California Secretary of State and doesn’t want to antagonize the teachers unions. Buchanan’s bill was supported by teacher unions but widely attacked reform groups and newspaper editorial boards statewide.

“I still strongly believe that the discipline appeal process is broken,” Buchanan said in an email. “It takes too long and costs too much money. However, I agree that the path forward is uncertain.”

The question then, is there a compromise to made?

Romero also said that if the legislature doesn’t act, there could be a move by outside groups to write a ballot initiative. “There’ve been discussions, believe me, about which way to go forward,” she said.

A ballot initiative could pressure the legislature into acting. But the real pressure might come from Vergara v. California, the lawsuit filed by Students Matter aimed at tearing up many of the laws that govern the teacher dismissal process. That trial is set to being on January 27 – and could have an enormous impact on how teachers in California are fired.

Students Matter spokesperson Danielle Kelton said that Brown’s veto “definitely highlights the failure of the legislature to address the problem.”

*This update includes a comment from Buchanan. An early version of the post mistakenly identified the Vergara plaintiffs as Students First.

Previous posts: John Deasy on AB 375 Veto: ‘Wise Decision’; BREAKING NEWS: Brown Vetoes Weak Teacher Dismissal Bill; Brown Facing Pressure to Veto ‘Flawed’ Teacher Dismissal Bill; Unions Ask Court to Dismiss ‘Bad Teacher’ Suit

One bill, SB 5, sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D, Pacoima), aims to create better teachers by allowing graduate students to spend an additional year in training before becoming a teacher. Until now, the state had limited graduate students to just one year of study.

Two other bills signed by Brown are intended to expedite the state’s transition to digital learning.

A measure, AB 133, from Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R, Chino Hills) requires a publisher or manufacture of printed educational material to also provide the content in a digital format. The bill, SB 185, from Sen. Mimi Walters (R, Irvine) gives school districts, county offices of education and charter schools the unrestricted ability to negotiate directly with publishers the price of their print and digital instructional material. Until now, negotiations were handled by the State Board of Education.

A fourth bill, from Sen. Marty Block (D, San Diego) amends the requirements of the governing board of California State University to open the two student positions on the board to sophomores. Before, the students had to be at least juniors. The bill also waives the tuition fee for the students on the board for his or her term of office.

Previous Posts: LA Unified Wins Big Under State Budget Compromise, Districts to Get First Payment Under Brown’s New Formula, Brown’s New Funding Formula Sets Student Limit for K-3 Classes

Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (D-San Ramon)

After nine months of hearings and amendments, legislation aimed to quicken and streamline teacher dismissal procedures failed to pass in the Senate Education Committee by one vote.

The Chair of the Senate Education Committee Carol Liu (D-Glendale) — the only LA-area lawmaker on the committee — decided not to vote for or against the bill because of district administrators and attorneys’ concerns. Many other lawmakers followed suit.

Liu did grant the bill reconsideration, however, but it now will not be reconsidered until at least January.

Unless the process is changed at the state-level, bill sponsor State Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (D-San Ramon) says LAUSD and other districts will continue to wade through onerous dismissal procedures that can last 18 months or longer.

However,  Edgar Zazueta, the director of government relations for LAUSD, said that while Buchanan’s bill would be a great improvement to the current law there are some serious flaws that could damage the district if the bill passed as is.

The Buchanan legislation has been supported by the teachers union, among others.

Assembly Bill 357 was expected to pass with strong support from teachers’ unions and student advocacy groups.  It would have made it easier for districts to suspend and fire teachers for serious offenses, an especially pertinent issue given the continuous slew of child molestation and teacher misconduct cases that continue to crop up throughout LA Unified.

First reported by EdSource Today, the failure of the Buchanan legislation was a repeat of the failure of similar legislation in 2012.

Last year, Buchanan voted against the legislation, SB 1530, which was championed by Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima).  This year, she developed her own legislation and was joined by Padilla, but was met with similar push back by the state Senate.

What is really holding the bill back, from perspective of LAUSD, is the proposed seven-month time frame for dismissing teachers accused of misdeeds in the classroom.

“This bill says that if the seven months pass without a resolution, a district gets another 30 days,” Zazueta explained. “But ultimately that time period may lapse, and the bill states that the district would have to refile the case. That’s a big concern for us.”

“It doesn’t make sense for us to have to start from scratch, put people back on the stand and do the whole thing over,” he added.

District lawyers warned that Office of Administrative Hearings, where the dismissal cases are heard, has a difficult time putting these on the calendar from the get go, according to Zazueta. To district administrators, a seven month dismissal resolution seems like a long shot.

“What our lawyers told us is that the Office of Administrative Hearings (where the dismissal cases are heard) has a difficult time putting these on the calendar from the get go,” said Zazueta. “Just because we say it will happen in seven months, will it actually happen?”

Buchanan disagrees with this assessment, saying that most dismissal hearings actually take days or a week once they are scheduled at the Office of Administrative Hearings because their deadlines are written into statues, and that forces the OAH to make sure cases are concluded.

“It works,” said Buchanan. “So to say you cannot get it done in seven months’ time, I don’t believe is correct, since these cases are not part of judicial branch.”

United Teachers of Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher said the union will continue to support the bill despite the recent setbacks. The administrators’ union also said they support the bill, though they also have concerns about the hard-set time deadline, among other details.

“Yes the process should be faster, but I think [the bill’s sponsors] tried to make it faster than would be possible,” said AALA President Judith Perez.

Perez said that she was concerned at the speed teachers could be dismissed if the bill passed and explained that putting such a specific length of time could backfire for school districts.

Buchanan acknowledges that’s what prevented the bill from passing.

“The bill stalling really hinged on one law firm who testified and said the process cannot be completed in seven months so cases will get dismissed and end up costing districts more money,” said Buchanan.

Depending on the severity of the charges in a teacher dismissal case, the process can drag on for a year or more, costing districts money they don’t have.

Buchanan says the biggest problem facing schools is actually not the sexual abuse and misconduct cases like Miramonte, but the dismissals for unprofessional conduct and unsatisfactory performance which are less cut-and-dry, harder to prove, “drag on for extended periods of time” and often costs districts hundreds of thousands of dollars.

On this issue, Buchanan and LAUSD agree.

“Sometimes cases last over a year,” said Zazueta. “Some cases have even dragged on for multiple years.”

These delayed dismissal cases can cost LAUSD anywhere from $150,000 – $300,000 for one case, he said. If the district loses a case once it finally gets to trial, Zazueta says the district has to pay the two panelists it finds to sit in for the hearing about $7,000-$9,500.

Under Supt. Deasy’s administration, Zazueta says the district has tried to “be more aggressive to see which employees should be in the classroom,” which can result in more teacher dismissal cases.

With months until the January consideration, Buchanan says she will do whatever it takes to get the bill ready to pass.

“I need to sit down individually with every member of the Senate Committee on Education to make sure they truly understand what the bill really does,” she said. “If we need to amend it we will.”

Previous posts: Mixed Reactions to New Teacher Dismissal Bill; Deasy Wants Stronger Teacher Dismissal Bill; State Teachers Union Rejects Criticism of Teacher Dismissal Bill; Deasy Requests Changes to Teacher Dismissal Bill

A diagram of the East Valley clan relationships that shape City Council and LAUSD politics

As you may have read in last week’s LA Weekly about School Board member Nury Martinez’s bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, there are surprisingly few women left on the Council thanks in large part to a rivalry between two male-dominated East San Fernando Valley political clans.

The rivalry between these two Latino clans doesn’t just affect the City Council, however.  It also greatly influenced Tuesday’s District 6 runoff between Antonio Sanchez and Monica Ratliff.

A look at the East Valley political factions may provide some insight about how we ended up with the Sanchez-Ratliff runoff rather than any of the other configurations that initially appeared likely — and why teachers union UTLA refrained from picking a single candidate to support in the District 6 race.  They simply didn’t want to get involved in a turf war between the Padillas and the Alarcons.

Of the candidates who initially declared their intention to run, the three heavyweights appeared to be Ernie Cardenas, Iris Zuniga and Antonio Sanchez.

But Cardenas dropped out; and then so did Zuniga, leaving Sanchez and Ratliff, a virtual unkown.

Why Cardenas and Zuniga dropped out has never been fully explained, at least not in a totally satisfying way.

Solid lines denote connections; broken lines denote former connections that have since been broken

The area, as any political consultant will tell you, is dominated by two clans, the Alarcons and the Padillas:

Alarcon Clan

The first is headed by outgoing City Councilman Richard Alarcon, and includes ex-Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (now a lobbyist and consultant for StudentsFirst), Antonio Sanchez, State Senator Kevin Deleon, community college trustees Steve Veres and Miguel Santiago, and Cindy Montanez, an ex-Assembly member who’s running against Nury Martinez for that city council seat.

(You might remember Cindy’s cousin, Annamarie, who was recruited by UTLA to run against Monica Garcia in District 2. Needless to say, LA politics is an incestuous world.)

The Padilla Clan

The other faction includes State Senator (and former LA City Council President) Alex Padilla — who championed a teacher dismissal bill in 2012 but then dropped the issue this year — incoming City Councilman Felipe Fuentes, U.S. Congressman Tony Cardenas (who recently vacated the City Council seat that Martinez and Montanez are running for), and State Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra.

It doesn’t stop there.  Nury Martinez’ husband Jerry Guzman runs the field campaign for many pols within the clan, and who currently works for Bocanegra.

Ernie Cardenas had a connection to this clique, through his brother Tony. Zuniga also had a connection, through Nury Martinez, who wanted Zuniga to succeed her.

Both Martinez and Bocanegra endorsed Zuniga, but Padilla, Cardenas and Fuentes never did (neither have they endorsed Antonio Sanchez).

Why did the power brokers turn a cold shoulder to the two political newcomers? That’s not entirely clear, but it may have something to do with the Mayor.

Sanchez is a former aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is nominally aligned with the Alarcon clan, which backs Cindy Montanez.

One explanation is that Villaraigosa simply leaned on Padilla and Fuentes to support his former aide.

But some speculate that a trade was made — Padilla and Fuentes would sit the School Board race out, and in exchange, the Mayor would endorse Nury Martinez for City Council (as he eventually did).

Another possibility is that Padilla and Fuentes simply didn’t think Zuniga or Cardenas were ready for primetime. Or, they didn’t feel up for a fight with the SEIU.

And then Monica Garcia — Villaraigosa’s most trusted School Board member — may have asked the Mayor to endorse Martinez.

Previous posts: Just How Connected Is Antonio Sanchez?; The Decline and Fall of Iris Zuniga; Sanchez Supports Classroom Breakfast & Teacher Dismissal Initiatives

Former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt (via SCPR)

California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel has issued a sharp response to criticism of the proposed teacher dismissal bill being championed by Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), focusing in particular on those of former state lawmaker Gloria Romero:

“Far from jumping late onto any dismissal bandwagon, CTA has led support of efforts to expedite the dismissal process, maintain existing safeguards that remove teachers from classrooms immediately when charged with serious offenses and toughen penalties for districts and school personnel who fail to follow mandated abuse-reporting procedures. These are the facts, despite any claims from paid spokespersons for organizations founded and funded in part by outspoken, school-privatization proponents and hedge-fund managers who see dollar signs in public-school funding… We applaud California lawmakers who are moving ahead with bills that keep children safe and streamline the process for removing people who don’t belong in our classrooms, while still maintaining safeguards against false allegations.”

Earlier this month, LA School Report interviewed education players in California about AB 375, sponsored by Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), which would streamline the dismissal process for teachers accused of sexual abuse and other forms of misconduct.proposal.

EdVoice, LAUSD, and others generally said they were happy something was being done to improve the current teacher dismissal process. But they also expressed concerns that the Buchanan bill didn’t have enough teeth to fix a system that has failed repeatedly to effectively dismiss teachers.

Since then, concerns have continued to surface — along with a handful of praise. Most recently, Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) has come out against the proposal. And written commentary from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in the works, according to his office.

On April 1, Gloria Romero, the head of California’s Democrats for Education Reform, wrote a harsh critique of the bill the O.C. Register, claiming it will make things worse by “severely limiting pretrial evidence discovery, creating an entirely new hearing process for suspended teachers and disallowing consideration by the panel of new information.”

On April 7, the LA Times published an editorial in support of the proposal, observing that it “makes more sense” than “several reform-oriented bills [that] went overboard.”

But an April 11 Daily News editorial (“Bill makes it (a tiny bit) easier to fire abusive teachers,”) described the Buchanan proposal as a “watered-down” version of the previous legislation that makes only “small changes around the edges, but is hardly revolutionary.”

Specifically, “the bill requires appeals be wrapped up in seven months, which hardly seems speedy. And it retains an appeals board rather than leaving it up to district officials,” according to the Daily News.

Despite all the shortcomings it finds with AB 375, the Daily News wrote, “this bill should pass because it would improve the system we’ve got now – a little. The original [Padilla] bill would have served the public better, but because of the inordinate power of one organization, it didn’t have a chance.”

Earlier this week, Chris Wheat, a spokesperson for Assemblymember Bloom, told LA School Report that Bloom would not vote for the bill in its current form.

Bloom won a November 2012 contest against incumbent Betsy Butler in which he highlighted Butler’s refusal to support a previous teacher dismissal bill that was championed by Senator Alex Padilla.

“If we get the bill as written on the floor, we would not be able to support it,” Bloom spokesperson Wheat said.

Bloom specifically criticizes how the bill includes two teachers on a three-person commission that has the final say in whether a teacher is dismissed or not.

The LA Times raised the same issue, noting that “Buchanan’s bill would have better balanced the makeup of the review panel, by placing an administrator on it, or a parent.”

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa plans to write a letter responding to AB 375, according to press secretary Vicki Curry, but she wasn’t able to disclose what kind of response it will be.

LA School Report has also reached out to lawyers representing victims affected by the Miramonte sexual abuse case to hear what they think about the bill. We’ll update you when we hear back.

On Tuesday, the LAUSD School Board voted to support the new teacher dismissal bill that’s making its way through the statehouse in Sacramento as well.

Previous posts: Mixed Reactions to New Teacher Dismissal Bill; Teacher Misconduct Proposal Wins Unexpected Support; More Failing Teachers Pushed Out Under Deasy

Assemblymember Joan Buchanan

AB 375, a new bill meant to streamline teacher dismissals, could be headed for quick passage after clearing the State Assembly’s Education Committee with a 7 – 0 vote Thursday.

The bill’s chance at passing is undoubtedly aided by the announcement last week that the state’s largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association, was joining forces with Assemblymember Joan Buchanan and Senator Alex Padilla to support AB 375.

But the alliance of Padilla and Buchanan and the quick pace of action in the statehouse have left some observers confused and concerned. Is AB 375 a watered-down teacher dismissal bill? Or have the unions, legislators, and education advocates finally come to a working compromise that will help streamline the teacher dismissal process?

Edgar Zazueta, the director of government relations for LAUSD, praised AB 375 as a “step in the right direction.”

But he also expressed reservations.

“I think we’d argue that there’s more consideration to be done here. We thank [Buchanan] for moving in the right direction, but we think we could push envelope a little further,” Zazueta said.

LAUSD, StudentsFirst, EdVoice, and Democrats for Education Reform have expressed a mix of praise and concern.

To be sure, the CTA, Padilla, and Buchanan are unlikely allies.

The union vehemently opposed both of Padilla’s teacher dismissal bills (SB 10 and last year’s SB 1530), and when SB 1530 was up for vote in the Assembly last year, Buchanan helped kill the bill when she voted against it. Yet Padilla has shelved SB 10 and teamed up with Buchanan to help pass AB 375.

According to CTA spokesperson Frank Wells, the union supports AB 375 because the bill “does the things we wanted.” He cited how Buchanan’s bill leaves the final dismissal decision in the hands of a Commission on Professional Competence made up of two fellow teachers and an administrative law judge.

In SB 10, Padilla planned to limit the commission to having only an advisory role, instead giving the local school board the final decision on whether to fire a teacher. Padilla also wanted to exclude the teachers from the commission, reducing it to a lone judge. It was this plan to limit the commission to an advisory role that “was a major sticking point” for the CTA with SB 10, Wells said.

Reform-minded Gloria Romero, head of Democrats for Education Reform in California, is skeptical the bill will accomplish much. (Read her critical review of the CTA’s involvement with AB 375 in an O.C. Register column here.)

EdVoice and StudentsFirst praised Buchanan for lifting the statute of limitations on evidence that can be used against a teacher during the dismissal process. (Current law prohibits the use of evidence from more than four years ago.)

However, both groups said they are still reviewing the bill and deciding just what they think.

In a letter sent to Buchanan, EdVoice expressed specific concerns that AB 375 won’t effectively improve the dismissal process for teachers who have sexually or physically abused their students.

EdVoice CEO Bill Lucia told LA School Report that he has several issues with the bill. “There’s no question whatsoever that SB 10 was more streamlined than AB 375 in terms of dealing with people who are child predators on the payroll at taxpayers’ expense,” Lucia said.

Lucia’s main concern clashes directly with the CTA’s praise for AB 375: The bill maintains the current law that gives the Commission on Professional Competence the final dismissal decision for teachers accused of “immoral conduct” such as sexual and physical abuse.

“To maintain the same process for someone who can’t teach and for someone who is a child molester is unacceptable,” Lucia said. “That kind of behavior is criminal, not a matter of professional competence.”

Lucia also takes issue with AB 375’s revised timelines, which have been extended longer in some cases than the timelines SB 10 proposed. While SB 10 would have required hearings to begin 60 days after a teacher asked for it, AB 375 allows the hearing to start within six months; and while SB 10 required that the Commission reviewing the case to choose its three members within seven days, AB 375 extended the time to 45 days.

The CTA’s Frank Wells defended the new timelines: “Padilla’s bill may have had a shorter timeline, but it was less fair. We want to streamline process, but we also want to give people adequate time to prepare their cases.”

Both EdVoice and StudentsFirst say they’re in the process of carefully inspecting AB 375 and meeting with stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and community members, to decide whether or not AB 375 has enough force to merit their support. They expect to decide by the end of the month.

To read the full text of AB 375, go here; for SB 10, go here.

Previous posts: Lawmaker Supports Former Opponent’s Teacher Dismissal Bill; Report: Teacher Dismissals Costly, Lengthy; Commentary: Implications of a Bloom Win

The Secret to Fixing School Discipline? Change the Behavior of Adults
A sea change is coursing slowly but resolutely through this nation’s K-12 education system. More than 23,000 schools out of 132,000 nationwide have or are discarding a highly punitive approach to school discipline in favor of supportive, compassionate, and solution-oriented methods. New American Media

Poll Finds the Less You Make, the More You Like Brown’s School Finance Reform
An even 50 percent of respondents told pollsters they favored – while 39 percent opposed – the idea of having “some money diverted from middle and upper class children to low income children and English language learners.” EdSource

Lockyer Widens Request for Legal Opinion on School Bond Campaigns
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer on Monday expanded his request for a legal opinion to determine if some local education officials and the financial underwriters they hire are violating state law by campaigning for school bond measures. LA Times

Long Beach Middle Schools to Start Day an Hour Later
The Long Beach school board voted Monday to push start times at the district’s five middle schools from 8 to 9 a.m. — a cost-cutting move officials believe will also boost student success. LA Times

Bill Clinton Endorses Wendy Greuel for Los Angeles Mayor
Former President Bill Clinton weighed in on the Los Angeles mayoral race Monday with an endorsement for City Controller Wendy Greuel. HuffPo

Orville Wright Middle School in Westchester Reinvents Itself in Bid to Improve Enrollment
Trying to reverse a plunge in enrollment and the effects of a high-profile principal kerfuffle, Orville Wright Middle School in Westchester – currently an aerospace magnet where students learn how to use flight simulators – is trying to recast itself as a magnet school with an expanded focus. Daily Breeze

St. Genevieve High’s ‘Cabaret’ Draws Ire of Conservative Catholics
St. Genevieve High in Panorama City, which won accolades as a National School of Character, now finds itself under fire, targeted by a cadre of conservative Catholics hoping to halt the production of its spring musical, “Cabaret.” LA Daily News

Partnership Blends Science and English Proficiency
Pupils at El Verano Elementary School are learning about science as they also improve their English-language skills. Their instruction is part of a federally funded collaborative project between the 4,600-student Sonoma district and the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco. EdWeek

Now, Padilla plans to join forces with Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), head of the Assembly’s Education Committee, who introduced her own alternative teacher dismissal bill this week.

Buchanan might seem like an unexpected ally for Padilla, given that Buchanan voted no (along with fellow Democrat Tom Ammiano) on the previous version of Padilla’s bill, SB 1530, which was endorsed by LAUSD and opposed by UTLA.

Buchanan and Padilla say they will work together to pass AB 375, which shares some of SB 10’s key provisions, such as permitting teacher dismissal during the summer and allowing the use of evidence that is older than four years.

In a statement released to LA School Report, Buchanan said she opposed SB 1530 last year because its focus on teachers who abuse students was too limited:

“The dismissal process takes too much time and is too costly for all types of dismissals.  We need a better process that works for everyone – one that is fair, ensures due process, and can be done in a timely and cost-effective manner.”

It remains unclear at this point whether the Buchanan legislation is as rigorous as the Padilla proposal. EdSource has a good analysis of the two bills; read the story here. Or, see the full text of SB 10 here and the draft text of AB 375 here. However, cooperation between Padilla and Buchanan could mean AB 375 has a better chance of passing.

Previous posts:  Richard Bloom Criticizes Betsy Butler For SB 1530 Vote; Where’s UTLA Stand on Teacher Removal?;

L.A.’s Mayoral Rivals Walk Fine Line in Dealing With Labor
Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel are Democrats with long histories of supporting organized labor. But the competition for labor support has upended conventional thinking about the candidates. LA Times

L.A. Unified Officials Let Abuse Allegations Slide, Lawyers Say
Two high-level district employees heard but failed to act on accusations of sexual misconduct by an elementary school teacher, according to attorneys representing alleged victims. LA Times
See also: KPCC, KTLA

LA Unified School Board Blocks Current President From Another Term
The term limit may be the first sign that fewer members on the board of education may support the reform agenda. KPCC

Gage Middle School Students Fight Back with Kale and Yoga
After an article posted by L.A. Weekly and headlined “Huntington Park Has the Fattest Kids in California; Manhattan Beach has the Skinniest,” many parents and students spoke out in the comments section. Gage Middle School has decided to try and cut the fat. LA Weekly

Teacher Pension Problems Catch Lawmakers’ Attention
For years, problems with California’s pension fund for teachers and school employees have been growing. Now a new report says the fund needs an additional $4.5 billion every year to stay above water. LA Times

Oakland to Close 3 Charter Schools
Three of the state’s highest-performing schools must shut down at the end of this school year after administrators failed to acknowledge and address illegal activity and serious lapses in financial and administrative oversight, the Oakland school board decided Wednesday night. SF Chronicle

Resident Enrollment to Carpenter Closes at Midnight Tonight
At midnight Friday night, it’s the deadline for families to apply to the charter-affiliated school that is reaching its capacity enrollment. Studio City Patch

Which Path for the Common Core?
As educators across the country implement the Common Core State Standards, we see two paths emerging … and diverging. EdWeek Commentary

“There is no reasonable explanation for why firing a teacher in California is such a time-consuming, tortuous and expensive procedure… Appeals often drag on for years — during which the school district must pay the teachers’ salaries and benefits — and almost invariably favor the teachers… The dysfunctional process benefits no one except bad teachers. The Legislature has been giving in to union resistance for far too long; it’s time to pass real yet reasonable reform.” — LA Times editorial

State Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima)

SB 10, a bill aimed at streamlining the dismissal process for teachers accused of sexual misconducted, was introduced earlier this week and is now out in a full-text version.

A carbon copy of SB 1530 (the previous bill seeking to address this issue) SB 10 is among a handful of proposals sure to garner attention even before the session begins for real in January. As with its predecessor, SB 10 was submitted by Senator Alex Padilla.

Earlier this year, the teachers union seemed initially to be unopposed to SB 1530, which passed easily in the Senate, but then dug in its heels in the Assembly and helped to kill it. This time, lawmakers may think twice about doing the bidding of the teacher lobby.  One legislator who helped defeat the bill, Betsy Butler, was portrayed in a CNN report as having protected pedophile teachers and lost her election in November by a close margin. (See bill here. See CNN report here).

Previous posts: Union Points Fingers on Sex Abuse, Betsy Butler: Teachers Union Help Not Enough?

Billboards Promote Law That Lets Students Leave Low Performing Schools
The Open Enrollment Act became California law two years ago with the goal to give kids a way out of the worst schools in the state.  KPCC

For Dropouts, a Way to Drop Back In
An increasing number of young people neither attend school nor work, a study finds. A new partnership between the city of Los Angeles and L.A. Unified aims to halt that ‘unacceptable’ trend. LA Times

Listen: LAUSD and UTLA Discuss Use of Test Scores for Teacher Evaluations
Should student test scores be used in teacher evaluations? The Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union have come to a tentative agreement to allow the use of student test scores in end-of-year evaluations. KPCC AirTalk

AFT Calls for Teacher ‘Bar Exam’; National Board to Oversee
The American Federation of Teachers has unveiled an ambitious new initiative to raise entry standards for teacher-preparation programs—and to create a “universal assessment,” analogous to the bar exam in law. Education Week

Student Achievement Part of the Payoff With Big Facilities Investment
An investment over the past decade of nearly $20 billion by Los Angeles Unified School District in new schools and facilities has had a direct result in higher student achievement – especially for those migrating to new elementary campuses, according to a new study. SI&A Cabinet Report

Study: More Churn at the Top in Large Districts
A study published in the December issue of the American Educational Research Journal finds 71 percent of superintendents left the largest 10 percent of districts, which include those of 29,000 or more students, within three years. Education Week

Iris Zuniga, Possible Board Candidate

Both UTLA and the education reform community are likely to pick candidates and dump money into independent expenditure campaigns supporting them. But who will they pick?

One possible candidate for ed reformers in District 6 is Iris Zuniga (pictured), the Chief Operating Officer of Youth Policy Institute, a large charter school operator. Its Executive Director, Dixon Slingerland, is very active in LAUSD politics, and YPI employees contribute a lot of money to local elections, according to the City Ethics Commission’s website.

Whoever runs will have to navigate the tricky terrain of Northeast Valley politics. covering the northeast San Fernando Valley, a region dominated by two political cliques.

The latest word from EdSource is that AB 5 is being revised slightly to try and mollify opponents and also to help make the state eligible for a No Child Left Behind waiver (see: Fuentes agrees to compromises on AB 5: Are they enough?). If approved, the amended bill could go back to the State Senate education committee early next week. But it’s not clear that’s going to happen without further changes. Romero, EdVoice and other education reformers are still strongly opposed to the law — as is LAUSD’s John Deasy.

What is AB 5? Why do ed reform groups, not to mention Deasy, hate it so much? And what is Fuentes offering to change?

The back story goes all the way back to the 1971 Stull Act, which mandates that teachers (and other accredited employees) in California be evaluated by objective criteria, including pupil progress. In almost every interpretation, that boils down to one thing: test scores.

Flash forward to 2011, when a group of anonymous parents and students teamed up with Ed Voice to sue LAUSD on the grounds that it was not enforcing the Stull Act, since it wasn’t using pupil progress to evaluate teachers or principals. The suit was called Doe v. Deasy, the irony being that the named defendant, Superintendent John Deasy, actually agreed with the plaintiffs. A judge recently ruled that the district was in fact not adhering to the Stull Act, and he ordered LAUSD and the unions to come up with a new evaluation system that would satisfy the law by December 4.

Which brings us to AB 5. Sponsored by Fuentes, the bill would essentially re-write the Stull Act. The “pupil progress” section would be obliterated, replaced with what the bill calls a “best practices teacher evaluation system.” The bill goes on to list the many attributes “best practices” would include, but the short of it is that teachers would be evaluated on what they do in the classrooms, as opposed to how their students perform.

“This is a bill that was ghostwritten by the CTA,” says Gloria Romero, former State Senate Majority Leader (and now head of California Democrats for Education Reform). “If enacted the way it is, it will set us back 40 years, in terms of teacher evaluations. It needs to be rewritten or abandoned.”

(CTA has not yet responded to my request for comment.)

On Wednesday, Ed Voice took out a full-page ad in the LA Times blasting Fuentes’ proposal: “AB 5 guts objective accountability of adult job performance in schools just as voters are being asked to invest more in education.” A number of other ed reform groups are lobbying against the bill, including Educators 4 Excellence, Students First and Alliance for a Better Community.

When I spoke with Superintendent Deasy last week, he said he found the timing of the Fuentes bill, coming so soon after the judge’s order in Doe v. Deasy, “unusual.” He also expressed dismay that the bill is funded by $89 million out of the Quality Education Investment Act, or QEIA, which provides money to low-income, low performing schools in order lower class size. That bill was the product of heavy lobbying from, yes, the CTA.

“CTA, which is like this very powerful organization, have spent every ounce of their capital making sure nothing happens to QEIA,” said Deasy. “This bill takes away QEIA funds – this is how AB 5 is being funded. I find that perplexing. I don’t understand it.”

“All sides of the issues agree that the QEIA funds are important and not something we should be cutting,” says Evan Stone, co-founder and co-CEO of Educators 4 Excellence.

According to a document sent to us by Ed Voice, the QEIA cuts would weigh heavily on LAUSD. District schools stand to lose a total of $30 million if AB 5 passes. Bell Senior High, for example, would lose $1.1 million, while John Adams Middle School would lose $300,00.

SI&A has helpful links to the Fuentes proposal and the recent changes he’s offered (see: Student scores at heart of new teacher ratings nationally).  The Senate has until August 31, the last day of the legislative session, to do something about AB 5.

“Everybody is on pins and needles,” says Romero. “This is the time of the year when, basically, the legislature is on call, so they can meet at any time.”  She’s not sure what’s gonna happen, but she knows one thing: “Sausage-making is taking place.”