The Highlander Road Elementary School campus in West Hills has been closed since 1982. Demolition is slated to start next month and at Oso Avenue next week.

*UPDATED

LA Unified will begin demolition Monday at the first of two schools to be razed in the West San Fernando Valley. But no new construction is planned, leaving empty lots in residential neighborhoods.

The Oso Avenue and Highlander Road elementary schools have sat mostly empty for more than 30 years, becoming eyesores and a source of conflict between their neighbors and the district.

The district is exploring the option of building new schools on the sites, but no solid plans are in place and the school board has yet to approve any new construction, said LA Unified Chief Facilities Executive Mark Hovatter. The current plan is to raze the schools but leave the concrete slab foundations which could be used as part of any new construction, he said.

“(Neighbors) have had to live with staring at old dilapidated buildings long enough,” Hovatter said. “I want to make it as amenable as possible to the local neighborhoods and I’m working with the local councils to make sure that what I’m doing is reflective of what they want us to do.”

Demolition at Oso is scheduled to begin Monday and at Highlander on Aug. 20, Hovatter said, at a total cost of $2,337,303.

The schools were closed in the early 1980s as West Valley enrollment declined. In total, 18 schools in the West Valley closed in the late 1970s and early ’80s and six schools have re-opened, according to LA Unified, and others are still in use for other purposes. One is in use as administrative buildings, one was swapped with nearby California State University, Northridge and other was sold. In total, five school buildings remain vacant. Highlander had been rented by a private school for several years in the 1990s and occasionally used for filming.

Hovatter said the district began informing neighbors around Oso about the demolition on Saturday by handing out flyers door to door but has not yet started outreach around Highlander.

Several neighbors of Highlander contacted by LA School Report were unaware the district had plans to tear down the school, which the board approved in May, and were not happy about it.

“This is the first I’ve heard of them tearing it down. I had no idea and I’ve lived across the street from it for 30 years,” said Bonnie Johnson. “It’s kind of hard to say if I like the idea of an empty lot. Right now it is really derelict. It is a fire hazard. It looks like homeless people sleep there. Every now and then someone vandalizes it. It has been a real eyesore. I don’t know how people will feel about an open vacant lot.”

Highlander neighbor Faye Berta, who also was unaware of the coming demolition, said the consensus in the neighborhood has been for tearing down the school only when there are immediate plans to build a new one.

“I am quite taken by surprise. I don’t know which is better, a big empty school surrounded by weeds or a big, empty, ugly lot. We have all kinds of problems with the school,” Berta said. “So they’re going to leave slabs so skateboards can go on it, that’s the plan? They are just really into destroying the neighborhood, aren’t they? I’m not happy either way. I’m not happy looking at it the way it is, and I’m not happy thinking there could be a skateboard park there. Just think of the nighttime thrill that all the drug dealers are going to have, which would then attract vagrants.”

Neighbor Mark Berens said he has been emailing and calling the district for some time to get information on its plans for the school but had never heard back.

“I am surprised, not necessarily that it is happening but that it is happening now. I have asked for a plan and for an outline, and I haven’t gotten a response yet,” he said. “It’s a little disappointing that we don’t have any current communication regarding the project.”

Hopes were raised for new schools on the sites in the last two years as nearby El Camino Real Charter High School, an independent charter school, came forward with a plan to develop the sites and a third closed campus, Platt Ranch, into middle schools and a science center associated with El Camino. Platt Ranch was to be a science center as part of the plan, but it was contingent upon approval of the other two sites. The district has not announced any plans for Platt Ranch, and El Camino’s director of marketing, Melanie Horton, has said they are retooling their plans for Platt Ranch and may come forward still with a new proposal.

The district had long said it had no money or need for new schools in the area, and El Camino officials since 2014 and until recently were working on plans for new schools and conducting community outreach after having been named the preferred developer of the sites by the LA Unified school board.

But the plans came to a sudden halt in late 2015 and early this year, when over a series of meetings the school board denied El Camino’s charter applications for the sites as the district announced previously unknown plans to develop the campuses into two traditional schools directly controlled by the district.

The sudden change angered many Highlander neighbors, who had thrown their support behind El Camino. A group of them confronted LA Unified Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian about the sudden change in March at a West Hills Neighborhood Council meeting.

One of their concerns for the site was the district’s plan for a high school associated with Hale Charter Academy, a nearby affiliated charter school. The school is located in a residential neighborhood and residents preferred an elementary school, as a high school would increase in traffic.

At the West Hills Neighborhood Council meeting, Ekchian made a promise to the neighbors that is was at least a priority for her to have the school torn down. The demolition is a significant budget commitment for the district because the money has to come out of general funds, not bond funds earmarked for construction, because in order to use bond funds the demolition must be part of a new construction project. This was one reason the district had not previously torn down the schools, but Ekchian, who moved to her role in 2015, said it was a priority for her.

“Many community members have contacted me and said this school has been sitting there, it has been an eyesore and a problem for the community for 30 years. And we have met over time with officials from the school district, and there has always been an attempt at demolition it but never has materialized,” Ekchian said this week. “It was important for as a local district to make a commitment by which we stand and to show them that we follow through on our commitments. That’s why this demolition is significant, because it has been over three decades of frustration that is being addressed by us.”

Hovatter said he was not yet sure if he will construct fences around the empty lots, but for the moment he does not want to.

“I believe that it’s been an eyesore long enough. If we go and put a chain-link fence around it, it’s still going to be an eyesore,” he said. “We have included within our budget money to install a fence, but initially I want to see if that is acceptable to the surrounding neighborhood. Ultimately I’m going to end up doing what the neighbors want us to do. But a fence doesn’t really stop anyone from entering the campus.”

*UPDATED to show that five schools remain closed, while others are open or being used for other purposes.

Mikelah Wynn at breakfast with Kevin Concannon.

Mikelah Wynn, 11, looked skeptically at the tall man in the suit who sat down with her and her friends as she opened up her breakfast Thursday morning. The man was Kevin Concannon, USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, who came from Washington, D.C., to her fifth-grade class in Winnetka to celebrate the 50th anniversary of School Breakfast Week and introduce a new program that is getting her free lunch at school.

“I’m interested in what you like and don’t like in your school breakfasts, how is it for you?” asked Concannon.

Holding up her apple, Mikelah declared, “I like the fruit. I like the milk too.”

Steve Zimmer asks students what they like in their school lunches.

Across the table, her friend Savanna Sadaba, 11, admitted after some prompting, “The breakfast burritos taste a little rubbery.”

Next to her, the school’s student council president, Cindy Estrada, said, “We all like the coffee cake, but it’s not as sweet as it used to be.”

For that she can thank Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian, who was standing behind them and said she helped the district tweak the recipes to comply more with the federal standards for whole grains and sugars. “We have to watch the levels of sugar and nutritional value, but they are still very good,” Ekchian said. “It is so important that every child has breakfast. And every child’s metabolism is different, and if you are hungry it affects your learning.”

Students take the breakfasts to class.

The national announcement of the federal school food program took place at Stanley Mosk Elementary School in the west San Fernando Valley, where more than 60 percent of students fall into a low-income bracket. Federal, state and local school officials kicked off the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows schools to identify students that could qualify for free meals by referencing other state and federal programs, including CalWORKS, CalFresh, Medicare and other social service programs that already earmark such populations. When more than 40 percent of a school’s population falls into that category, the entire school gets free lunches.

For LA Unified, that means 339 schools and 257,500 students — nearly half the district’s students — will get breakfast and lunch each day at no charge without their parents or guardians having to complete a separate application for free or reduced-price meals. The new program began this month and will continue through the 2018-19 school year. And it will save the school district more than $60 million over the next three years.

“We came here to announce this because LAUSD is the largest district with students affected by this, and they have been innovative and plan to identify more students in their school population with CEP,” Concannon said. “There is a heavy commitment in Congress on both sides to see how this works.”

LA Unified has more students identified than in New York or Chicago.

“This is also for charter, parochial and private schools, they are all eligible,” Concannon said.

Food Services manager Noemi Verduzco shows her kitchen to Concannon.

He and his U.S. Department of Agriculture entourage were also celebrating 50 years of serving breakfasts in the classroom. Today, nearly 100,000 schools and 15 million students nationwide participate in free breakfasts. Free breakfasts started in earnest at LA Unified in 2012 and are now served to all students. The meals are brought in to each classroom by appointed students pushing wheeled carts, and the leftovers are returned to the cafeteria.

“I have heard from teachers, school nurses and administrators that this has helped with complaints of headaches, stomach aches, restlessness, paying attention, and there’s good socialization and healthy eating,” Concannon said. “It even helps with school attendance.”

School attendance directly impacts the district’s budget, and LA Unified gets about 20 cents for every breakfast served. The free meal programs won’t disrupt the Title 1 status of any school, Concannon said.

“We are hoping that there will be less of a stigma for kids who may be conscious about how they are perceived by others, and whether they are in the free lunch program or not,” Concannon said. “This way, everyone is.”

Jesus Mendoza, USDA Western regional director, at Mosk Elementary.

The school’s food services manager, Noemi Verduzco, showed the Washington delegation how the students packed the gluten-free choices and milk and juices into their packs to wheel off to the classrooms. “We have made it so that there is a lot less waste and things thrown out than when we first started,” Verduzco said. “We are offering more choices and finding out what they like.”

But it’s still a challenge, according to USDA Western Regional Office administrator Jesus Mendoza, who represents Western states including Alaska.

“California, and LAUSD in particular, has taken the lead, but there is still some hesitancy,” Mendoza said. “Teachers are resistant because they think it will take time from their curriculum, and custodial staff is resistant because they think it will add to their clean-up work or bug and rodent problems. But when they hear how it’s working here, then they may be more open to it. Some teachers integrate class lessons into it, I’ve seen math and English teachers using the meals in their lessons.”

School board president Steve Zimmer said it was “a sad fact that LA Unified is sometimes every link in the food chain for our kids,” and that the only good food they get is at the schools. Students at Mosk are also provided suppers, which are served at a limited number of LA Unified schools.

During a news conference, Zimmer asked half a dozen kids what they liked best and got answers such as bean dip, tater tots, hamburgers, spaghetti and pupusas — a tortilla usually filled with meat or cheese.

“I think we all remember tater tots, but I never got spaghetti or pupusas when I went to school,” Zimmer quipped. “It looks like things have really improved!”

The Highlander Road Elementary School campus in West Hills has been closed since 1982 and fallen into disrepair.

LA Unified Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian faced an angry and skeptical group of West Hills residents Thursday evening as she presented the district’s plan to redevelop a long-shuttered and dilapidated elementary school into a high school serving 500 students.

The anger stemmed from the school board’s sudden cancellation last month of a plan that had been in development for more than a year by an independent charter school, El Camino Real High School, to rebuild Highlander into a K-8 campus.

Ekchian spoke before the West Hills Neighborhood Council and outlined the emerging plan to convert the closed Highlander Road Elementary School campus into the Hale Academy for Visual and Performing Arts. The new campus would serve as an extension to Hale Charter Academy, a nearby district middle school.

Several residents said they felt that El Camino had been open, responsive and transparent with them through the long process, while the district’s moves came without any community outreach efforts. Residents also said they are opposed to a high school being located at the campus due to the increased traffic and other problems high school students bring to a residential neighborhood.

“El Camino Real has been very straightforward with us. They have been having meetings, they have included us in their plans and this has been going on for about a year and a half,” Matthew Moon, who lives across the street from Highlander, said at the meeting. “And then out of the blue, it is scrapped and this new project is put in. We don’t know anything about it. All we have in conjecture. So if you are going to come to the homeowners and ask for their support, you better bring your A game, because El Camino had their A game.”

Ekchian told the council and audience that until the LA Unified school board approved the Hale plan at last month’s board meeting, she was not able to do any outreach. Several times she promised that her appearance was the beginning of an effort to engage the community.

“There is no way I would make a decision about a school in West Hills without communicating with all of you, who are on the neighborhood council,” she said. “But prior to the resolution going to the board, it would have been highly inappropriate to come to all of you and begin to distribute information that my board had not even seen or agreed to look into. So I apologize if some of you have been offended by thinking that this came to you as a surprise.”

At the meeting, held at de Toledo High School, a private Jewish high school in West Hills, Ekchian outlined her vision for the new school, which is to focus on the arts, and said that a main reason for the plan is to help the district increase enrollment. LA Unified has suffered a huge drop in enrollment over the last decade, in part due to students leaving in droves for charter schools, one of several factors contributing to the district facing giant budget deficits in the coming years.

The Highlander campus has been closed since 1982 and is among three other campuses in the west San Fernando Valley that have been vacant for decades after the area suffered a loss of enrollment in the early 1980s. With the exception of a private school renting the property for a few years in the 1990s, the Highlander campus has remained closed and fallen into disrepair.

The campus is located in a quiet residential neighborhood, and the homes surrounding it are primarily well-groomed, single-family, suburban residences. Two neighborhood residents, Faye Barta and Mark Berens, told LA School Report of the numerous problems the campus has caused, including junk and debris filling the property, graffiti, homeless people camping out there and teenagers frequently jumping the fences to skateboard on the property and the roof.

“It is a blight. It is an eyesore. It is a shuttered school, and it is one that reflects little to no maintenance and a fair amount of neglect. I use the term ‘dilapidated,’ which is probably a very good descriptor,” Berens said.

During a recent visit to the property, teenagers were skateboarding in the parking lot while another group of teenagers in two parked cars played music and smoked cigarettes. Piles of dry leaves and pine needles that appear to have built up over several years fill the parking lot and along the fence line, creating a potential fire hazard. Junk was strewn about, including a discarded couch.

After district officials said repeatedly over the last few years that LA Unified had no money to rebuild the schools nor any enrollment need in the area for them, the district put out a request for proposal for the four closed sites in 2014, and El Camino was later named the preferred developer of three of them: Highlander, Oso and Platt Ranch.

Since 2014, El Camino officials have held a series of outreach meetings and adjusted their site plans in response to community concerns, according to neighbors. Barta estimated that approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of neighborhood residents supported the El Camino plan.

In November during a vote to approve El Camino’s charter applications for Oso and Highlander, district officials announced a sudden reversal. Then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines announced a desire to build a magnet school at the Oso campus, and board member Scott Schmerelson announced that Ekchian was developing a plan for Highlander, although the details, including Hale’s involvement, were not released at the time.

Based on the new developments, the board rejected El Camino’s application for Oso at the November meeting and postponed the Highlander vote until more information on the plan could be presented. In February, the board officially rejected El Camino’s Highlander application and approved $500,000 for Ekchian and the district to develop the Hale plan. (Click here to learn more about the back story of El Camino’s attempt to redevelop the sites and the board’s sudden reversal.)

Previous to the West Hills meeting, Berens told LA School Report he found the district lacked transparency, and he repeated similar comments to Ekchian at the meeting.

“If I were to compare the El Camino process to the LAUSD process, then I’ve got a highly transparent, engaged and collaborative relationship with El Camino, and I don’t have any of those attributes with LAUSD,” Berens said. “I have concerns that the voice of the neighborhood will be lost in this process if the same lack of transparency that was applied to this decision that they made is applied to the exploratory process and then whatever comes of that.”

The LA Unified plan to develop Highlander by spending $50 million of bond money comes as the district is in need of up to $60 billion to fix and modernize its existing schools, while only $7.8 billion in bond funds is available. Other than the new plans at Highlander and Oso, the district has no current plans to build any new schools, and LA Unified Chief Facilities Executive Mark Hovatter told the board last month that in order to free up money for the new schools, other renovation projects would have to be cancelled.

Barta told LA School Report that she does not believe the district has the money to develop the sites, and she repeated those comments at the meeting.

“They don’t have the money to do it. So they are wasting the $500,000 and they are wasting everybody’s time and they are letting that school sit and rot,” she said.

During the West Hills meeting, the roughly 25 members of the council did not express much skepticism or ask hard questions of Ekchian. But several members of the audience, which also numbered about 25, did ask tough questions, and after Ekchian’s presentation, about a dozen local residents joined her in the hallway to ask more questions. Many of the residents were animated and angry.

Ekchian promised she would be responsive the community’s concerns and that the process would be transparent.

“I’m not going to do this without you, because it will be a failure upon arrival if we don’t have the community on board,” she said.

Some residents said they were skeptical of the timing, that just at the moment El Camino’s plan was set to be voted on by the board after a year and a half of planning, the district announced its own plan after 33 years of letting the property sit empty.

“Vivian, what the community is aware of is, if you have had this thought for nine months or six months or however long, why did you string along El Camino?” asked resident Bunny Field. “Why did you string along our community? Why did you put it on hold at the vote in November? Why weren’t you forthcoming with El Camino and all of their efforts and say, ‘You know what, it’s never going to happen, take your marbles and go home’? We feel that this is a fraud that has been perpetrated on all of us.”

Other residents then chimed in with questions, and Ekchian did not directly respond to Field’s question. But during the meeting she had said that despite all appearances it was essentially a coincidence that she came forward with her plan — which she said had been in the works for some time with the Hale staff — just as El Camino’s was set to be voted on.

“There is nothing that we have concocted. I could have brought to you 500 students and teachers and parents who would argue with you that it wasn’t concocted,” Ekchian said.

Barta asked why the district wasn’t interested in using the Platt Ranch site because it is closer to Hale than Highlander. El Camino’s plan for Platt was to develop it into a science center that would not house any full-time students.

“In response to Platt, it is also a part of El Camino’s application process. … I can’t negotiate who gets which school,” Ekchian said. But Highlander was also part of El Camino’s plan, and Ekchian did not address the discrepancy.

LA School Report asked about the $60 billion needed to fix the district’s current campuses. If the reason to expand Hale is to increase enrollment, doesn’t the district’s other neglected campuses, which include failing air conditioners and an array of other shortfalls, also turn off prospective parents and students?

“To me this is an investment. It is not a waste of money nor is it taking away from maintenance and operations, because I have a lot of other schools that require curbside appeal and maintenance. But one does not compete with the other,” she said, despite the fact that Hovatter told the board the new Valley schools would require the cancellation of renovation projects. “Who is to say we can’t find partners? I found with the Oso plans foundations that would invest in that, so if we think narrow and only think about this is what we have right here, we will never be globally competitive.”

Ekchian also told the residents that if the current plan for Highlander did not come to fruition she would advocate for the district to at least tear down the existing structures. But if the district were to only tear down the buildings and not build new ones, it would need to use general funds out of its operational budget and not bond funds. Ekchian told LA School Report she would still advocate to tear the buildings down even if it meant using general funds to do so.

School projects that had been moved to one of the schools’ temporary locations. Will they go back soon?

Two Porter Ranch schools that were relocated during the methane gas leak are being checked for contamination inside every classroom, and the schools could begin moving back as early as this month, LA Unified officials said Tuesday.

“Health inspectors are checking the inside of the schools before we move the children back,” Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian told LA School Report before a town hall meeting in Pacoima with Superintendent Michelle King.

Once the inspections show there is no contamination, LA Unified will assess the timing of moving students back, Ekchian said. “There are some families who have not moved back to the area yet, so we are waiting until everyone has moved back to their homes,” she added.

State officials announced last week that the Southern California Gas Co. leak had been permanently sealed, but some residents have refused to move back until the inside of their homes are checked by health inspectors. SoCalGas is appealing a judge’s order requiring it to continue paying for relocation for Porter Ranch residents until March 18.

About 1,850 students were displaced from Porter Ranch Community School and Castlebay Lane Charter School after students and teachers complained of headaches, nausea and other ailments due to the smell of the gas leak, which began Oct. 23. Over winter break, school desks and materials were relocated to two schools about eight miles away. Students are being bused to the new locations.

Originally, district officials said they would keep the schools in their temporary locations until the end of the school year because it was the least disruptive to the students’ education. But now that the leak has been plugged, some parents said they want to get back to normal and return to their schools.

School board member Monica Ratliff, also at the town hall meeting, said, “I wouldn’t want anyone to return until we are sure it is completely safe.”

The families at the schools remain as divided as they were when the district initially decided to move the schools, said Ekchian, who held many school meetings about the gas leak and how it is affecting students and teachers.

“About half of the families want to move back right now, and about half want to stay where they are,” Ekchian said. She said when health inspectors give an all-clear on the school sites and families are returning to their homes, the district will assess when to move the students back. It could be easiest to accomplish over the weeklong spring break, which begins March 21.

“Nothing is easy, but over spring break is when there will be no children around the school grounds,” Ekchian said.

Vivian Ekchian, Local District Northwest superintendent

In dual votes Tuesday about a long-vacant school in the west San Fernando Valley, the LA Unified school board halted a charter school that was previously proposed for the site and instead allowed a district school to pursue it.

The school board gave a unanimous thumbs-up for Hale Charter Academy to pursue a proposal to develop a performing arts school on the campus of Highlander Elementary School in West Hills. Hale Charter Academy, named after the astronomer George Ellery Hale, is now 6th through 8th grades in Woodland Hills. The expansion, which would be called Hale Charter Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, would go through high school graduation and continue into two college level grades (grade 14), allowing for an Associated Arts degree.

Then, in a cliff-hanger vote an hour later, the board voted 4-3 against allowing an El Camino Real Alliance charter school to be built at the site after the charter held some meetings with the Woodland Hills community over the past year to replace Highlander, which had been vacant for three decades.

It’s an area of the LAUSD district where students have few options to attend a public high school and many move to private schools or charter schools, according to district staff.

“I am puzzled with the misperceptions about this plan, but I’m thrilled that we will be able to expand the arts and other wonderful programs already going on at Hale,” said Vivian Ekchian, the local district northwest superintendent for LAUSD, after the first vote was taken authorizing an estimated $500,000 for Hale to pursue the expansion. She was instrumental in clearing up some of the issues to the school board about the district school’s expansion. She said that the plan for expanding into the space was discussed for nearly a decade.

The Highlander school site was a rundown encampment for homeless for decades, and El Camino Real Alliance offered to build a charter school there for 550 students in grades kindergarten through 8th. But that plan was delayed in October when school board member Scott Schmerelson pointed out that there were plans for the same site for a public school that would keep the students under the LAUSD funding umbrella.

It would also ensure that the teachers at the school would fall under the LA Unified union contract. In an unusual move, four labor leaders on Tuesday spoke in favor of the Hale Charter expansion during their own reports to the board.

“It is a well-rounded curriculum that serves the community needs, we urge you support it,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. After the vote, he said he was happy with the decision.

The president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, Juan Flecha, who represents principals and administrators, said he previously worked in the area and said, “This is a definite need, and it’s an innovative and exciting project forward.”

Jackie Keen, a community volunteer on the El Camino board and resident near the Highlander site, said, “You can approve the charter school and let’s work together.” She, and the representatives of El Camino, were voted down.

The vote wasn’t for a complete commitment to the charter school at the site, but when the board was asked to approve it, only Monica Garcia, Ref Rodriguez and Monica Ratliff voted for it. Ultimately, school board president Steve Zimmer, George McKenna, Richard Vladovic and Schmerelson voted against it.

“I’m concerned about the process,” Garcia said before the vote. “In October, the response around what to do with Highlander was mostly that we were told we do not have money to operate that site. What’s not here is how we’re going to pay for this.”

LAUSD facilities director Mark Hovatter said that no promises were made to the charter school applicant and made it clear that its proposal could be canceled at any time. He did also point out that if a school is planned for the site, its funding will have to come from some other projects that are already planned by the district.

Ratliff said, “I’m a fan of being as transparent and straightforward as possible,” but she said before the vote against the charter organization, “I would wonder why they would ever want to work with us again.”

Students, parents and teachers from Hale spoke about its successes, as did new principal Chris Perdigao, where there are 2,000 6th through 8th graders. He said the school has a 400-pupil waiting list for their performing arts program. Teachers talked about the school’s jazz band, mariachi band, cheerleaders and dance and acting performances and how they are sharing their work with the community.

Hale teacher Hank Amigo talked about writing plays for students and raising money from the community to help with programs. He recently had 563 students audition for 22 spots in a show. He now also teaches an early morning class where he said 150 students come to dance.

Rodriguez, who previously co-founded charter schools, said, “I’m impressed that the community is galvanized for the plan. I’m concerned where the money is going to come from.”

Zimmer added, “We need to grow enrollment in the district and this is a creative way, and it can permeate the entire district.”

The operators of Pinecrest Schools have notified parents that they intend to close the group’s last five campuses, a decision that creates a chance for LA Unified to add students from the Woodland Hills campus to some of its nearby public schools in the west valley.

Already, the district has distributed flyers to Pinecrest families, announcing that a “recruitment meeting” is scheduled for Monday evening at LA Unified’s Local District Northwest office in Lake Balboa to present parents with choices in LA Unified.

“We hope to have parents contact us,” said the local superindent for the area, Vivian Ekchian. “We want to tell them there is a zone of opportunity here for them.”

The Pinecrest school in Woodland Hills serves about 300 children in kindergarten through 8th grade. It is part of a family-owned chained that has been open for 65 years. President and CEO Jeri Dye Lynch told parents of of children at the remaining five schools that the company has “exhausted both our emotional and financial reserves trying to maintain our school business,” according to the LA Daily News.

The other campuses are beyond LA Unified’s reach, in Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Simi Valley and Santa Clarita.

Ekchian said the district would do whatever possible to move an entire grade together, if parents express a desire to keep the children together.She also said LA Unified has no interest in taking over the Woodland Hills Pinecrest campus, saying most private schools are not compliant with public school requirements.

“For us,” she said, “this is a beautiful opportunity to share our programs with parents,” she said. “We will make every effort to make a comfortable transition.”

It remained unclear whether any charter groups had contacted Pinecrest to express interest in the students or any of the buildings. Dye was unavailable, and a spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association said he did not know.

Another bargaining session came and went today and still no contract agreement between LA Unified and the teachers union, UTLA.

The district said in a press release, “union leaders weren’t ready to talk about raises at the table,”  leaving the sides to focus, instead, on issues with the student-tracking system known as MiSiS, for My Integrated Student Integrated System.

The union did not engage in salary talks, according to the district.

“Teachers certainly deserve a bigger paycheck,” Superintendent John Deasy said in a statement. “Finally, after years of severe budget cuts, we can afford to provide some relief that our teachers well deserve. We want to give raises.”

Chief Labor Negotiator Vivian Ekchian added, “While discussions around MiSiS implementation are very important, it shouldn’t preclude us from spending at least equal time on discussing salary increases.”

The union did not have an immediate response to the district’s characterization of the session.

The District has offered UTLA members an 8.64 percent salary increase over three years, which includes a one-time lump sum for 2013-14. It’s effectively the same deal the district has offered to all its other labor groups — the one-time payment and annual raises of 2 percent, 2 percent and 2.5 percent.

The union is seeking a 17.6 percent salary increase over two years, an amount the district said in the release it cannot afford “without a return to layoffs, dreaded unpaid furlough days, a shortened school year, reduced summer school and repeated deep cuts in staff and services needed to balance recent budgets.”

The next bargaining session is scheduled for Oct. 2

The district’s proposed spending budget for 2014-15, which must be approved by the school board and submitted to the state by July, includes a line item for teacher raises that remains to be negotiated with UTLA, as part of a new collective bargaining agreement.

However, Vivian Ekchian, the district’s chief labor negotiator told LA School Report, “While it is a goal, it could turn out that we do not meet that deadline.”

“We will do our best to meet it and work with our parters,” she continued, “but it may not happen.”

The absence of significant progress on a new contract comes in the shadow of developments in New York City, where 110,000 members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) last week agreed to an historic a nine-year contract, pending ratification, that includes raises of 1 to 3 percent over the next four years, two years of retroactive pay raises of 4 percent and a one-time bonus of $1,000.

The teachers there had been without a contract since 2009.

The UTLA bargaining committee met with district officials on April 22, but Ekchian reports nothing concrete was discussed.

“At this point we only know they want a 17.6 percent raise but we don’t know over how long. And other than that we don’t really know what else they want,” she said.

Unlike AALA, the administrators union, and the LA School Police Management Association (LASPMA), UTLA has not submitted an initial contract proposal. The next meeting between district and UTLA officials is expected in June.

Betty Forrester, a UTLA vice president who is the union’s chief labor negotiator, did not respond to an email message seeking comment. UTLA’s last contract with LA Unified expired in 2011, with the terms extending on a day-to-day basis.

Vivian Ekchian, LA Unifie’d chief labor negotiator

Within LA Unified’s proposed budget for 2014-2015, Superintendent John Deasy includes a line item for teacher raises.

However, in the absence of a contract for the last three years between the district and the teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, labor talks remain at a complete standstill, raising questions about just how much remains “TBD.”

“Neither UTLA nor the District has initiated negotiations for any re-opener or successor agreements at this time,” Vivian Ekchian, chief labor negotiator for LA Unified, told LA School Report.  

Teachers are working on a temporary contract. UTLA’s last agreement with the district ended in 2011, and Ekchian says their contract is extended on a day-to-day basis.

“It’s difficult to estimate a timeline with an ending date, but it certainly will be very sensitive to the needs of our employees,” Ekchian said.

UTLA is seeking a 17.6 percent salary increase over an unspecified amount of time, though the average contract lasts three years.

“It’s been more than a year since California voters approved Proposition 30, the tax increase that is bringing millions of new dollars into the District,” UTLA said in a statement shortly after voting for the salary boost.

The state’s new school Local Control Funding Formula is also generating hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue over the next seven years.

Union members last received a cost of living increase in 2007. They also agreed to 16 furlough days throughout the recession, with “each day equaling about half a percent of pay,” according to UTLA President Warren Fletcher.

Deasy, yesterday, thanked all district employees for their “sacrifices” during the budget crisis.

After walking the school board through his budget, he added, “Many employees have not had raises in six to seven years and it’s important to address that.”

Vivian Ekchian

The defense rested its case today in Vergara v. California after an examination of an LA Unified administrator that was designed to show that the state laws under challenge did not impede the district’s effort to get rid of ineffective teachers.

On Monday, court resumes with the plaintiffs’ opening a short rebuttal phase of the trial, leading to closing arguments next Thursday. Marcellus McRae, a plaintiffs lawyer, told the court that his side intends to call as many as four people to dispute “a number of witnesses” who testified for the defense.

Vivian Ekchian, who served as LA Unified’s chief human resources officer until a recent appointment to chief labor negotiator, was today’s only witness, the last of 28 for the defense. She was called as an adversary witness, in a sense, in an effort to show that the district was not overly burdened by state laws governing teacher dismissals.

The plaintiffs have argued that the dismissal laws lead to long and expensive ordeals for districts as they try to eliminate their worst teachers, thus discouraging them from more aggressive efforts to fire them. Those laws, along with statutes on tenure and seniority, are at the heart of the case, with plaintiffs saying the laws deny equal access to quality education.

The state, as the principle defendant and California’s two biggest teacher unions joining as intervenors, say the laws work well and do not interfere with properly-managed school districts.

The questioning of Ekchian devolved into a battle of numbers and lawyers’ spinning them the best way for presentation in the case.

Jonathan Weissglass, representing the unions, elicited responses that appeared to show LA Unified had only minimal difficulties weeding out ineffective teachers. For example, in response to one question, she said the district sent notices of unsatisfactory performance to only 85 teachers between Jan. 1, 2008 and Aug. 2, 2013, and that 64 of them left before the dismissal process began.

Under questioning by McRae, she said LA Unified had about 350 teachers who had received two “below-standard” evaluations in the 2012-2013 school year and the district would have sought to dismissal all of them “if the dismissal process were more streamlined.”

By the end, her testimony was just another piece of an enormously complex case that could reshape laws governing teachers in the state — or not, depending on how Judge Rolf Treu interprets evidence from 50 witnesses over 31 days of testimony.

“We’re very happy with the evidence that went in,” Jim Finberg, the lead lawyer for the unions, told LA School Report, reflecting on the defense case. “The evidence is quite compelling that the statutes serve very important interests for the benefit of students in California. To strike them down as unconstitutional would be a disservice to them.”

Previous Posts: Vergara witness says streets more than teachers shape academics; A witness in Vergara v California urges seniority over ‘effectiveness’; Teachers refute ‘ineffective’ charges by Vergara witnesses.

Ken Futernick

An expert on the the role that teachers play in academic performance today became the latest defense witness in Vergara v California to testify that students in high-poverty area schools face higher challenges to learning.

Ken Futernick, Director of the WestEd School Turnaround Center, a research organization, and a former professor of education at California State University, Sacramento, told the court that such factors as ill-prepared teachers, poor working conditions in the school and high turnover among teachers and administrators make it difficult to attract and retain effective teachers, thus adversely affecting academic achievement.

The testimony supports a major contention of the defendants, that it’s not exclusively the caliber of teachers that affects learning; it is also external conditions that bear on a student’s ability to learn.

Defendants in the case, the state and teacher unions, are trying to prove that these other factors make it difficult for the nine-student plaintiffs to show that state laws governing teacher dismissal, seniority and tenure should be struck down as impediments to a quality education.

Futernick provided several statistics to support his opinions. He testified that 22 percent of new teachers in California leave the profession after four years and that the percentage of teachers who transfer out of high-poverty schools is twice that from low-poverty schools, He said 20 percent of new principals in urban school districts leave after just two years and pointed to the Oakland Unified School District as an extreme: There, he said, 44 percent of new principals leave the field after just two-years.

The effects of this high turnaround, he said, impact both student learning and teacher development and damages a school’s ability to provide a stable learning environment.

Futernick further testified that high-poverty schools have a harder time filling vacant positions, leading to a greater number of teacher mis-assignments — a math teacher assigned to an English class, for example — and these mis-assignments, he told the court, have a negative impact on student learning.

The assistance Futernick provided the defense might have been undercut to a degree during cross examination by Kyle Withers, who solicited an acknowledgement from him that none of his research or opinions related directly to the statutes at issue in the case.

Earlier, the plaintiffs’ wrapped up their cross examination of Lynda Nichols, program consultant with the California Department of Education.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Marcellus McRae attempted to show that a teacher considered by the state as “highly qualified” for having a teaching credential does not always equate with being effective.

Judge Rolf Treu intervened and asked Nichols, “Are all teachers who are credentialed effective?”

“Unlikely,” she said.

Another witness today was James Webb, an English teacher from the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita and a consulting teacher for the district’s performance review program for first-year teachers.

He told the court he could decide within three months whether a new teacher would meet program standards — testimony the defense used in support of its claim there is sufficient time to make decision on tenure within the two-year statutory framework.

On cross examination, plaintiffs’ attorney Josh Lipshutz, tried to minimize Webb’s testimony by pointing out his experience is limited to one school district among hundreds in California.

The day ended with the start of testimony by Vivian Ekchian, who was recently named Chief Human Resources Officer for LA Unified.

While the district withdrew as a defendant in the case before the trial started, she was called by the defense in an effort to impeach the testimony of a plaintiffs’ witness, Nicholas Melvoin, a former LA Unified teacher at Markham Middle School in Watts, who had testified last month that teacher layoffs in 2009 resulted in effective teachers being dismissed and morale at the school eroded.

“It was a toxic environment,” he said.

During a rather contentious examination, defense lawyer Jonathan Weissglass tried to show that problems at Markham were created by ineffective school administrators, not the challenged statutes.

Ekchian is scheduled to return to the stand on Friday, so the defense’s final witness, Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor and expert on education policy, can start and complete her testimony tomorrow.

Previous Posts: Vergara witness says streets more than teachers shape academics; A witness in Vergara v California urges seniority over ‘effectiveness’; Ex-district chief tells Vergara court teacher laws don’t interfere.

Vivian Ekchian

The Los Angeles Unified Board voted 6-0 today to appoint Vivian Ekchian to the newly created position of chief labor negotiator. The district’s chief human resources officer since 2007, she will be responsible for negotiating agreements with all labor unions that hold contracts with the District.

She begins her new job immediately.

“I congratulate Vivian on her new position,” said Superintendent John Deasy. “Her vast, extensive knowledge of employment issues and excellent personal skills will be a tremendous asset in advocating on behalf of all our employees.”

Ekchian started working for the L.A. Unified as a teacher in 1985. During her nearly 30- year career with the district, she has also served as a principal, director of instruction, and administrator of secondary instruction.

“I’m grateful to the Board for the confidence and trust they have shown in me,” said Ekchian. “I’m eager to get started continuing the negotiating process with all our labor partners.”

Board Member Steve Zimmer

For the second year in a row, LA Unified is losing fewer teachers, and district projections indicate that the trend will continue through the current school year.

Vivian Ekchian, the district’s Chief Human Resources Officer, told a committee meeting yesterday that the trend is largely due to more diligent work at the front end of the hiring process. She said the district has revamped the interview system to include a lesson observation and an essay, and the district now requires that applicants have a degree in the subject matter they plan to teach.

Teachers leave their jobs for a variety of reasons, including retirement, dismissal and jobs in other districts.

Ekchian was one of several speakers at a meeting of the Committee of the Whole that was devoted to new strategies for training, hiring and retaining better teachers and including among new recruits teachers whose diversity more closely aligns with the diversity of district students.

The committee heard testimony that LA Unified loses 40 percent of new teachers after three years on the job, with those who leave reporting feeling unsupported in the classroom, undervalued, and under-prepared for the challenges of teaching in under performing schools.

This year the district hired 718 new teachers — mostly elementary and special education teachers — and has lost eight so far.

“We know we need to transform the concept of being a teacher, and that needs to start early in their training and in partnership with the district,” Steve Zimmer, chairman of the committee, said in an interview with LA School Report.

Zimmer said the issue is particularly urgent as baby-boomer teachers retire in greater numbers.

“And these are game changing numbers,” he said. “Three to five years from now we’ll have to replace 12 to 15 percent of the district’s teachers.”

The era of “horrific lay-offs” is over, he said, which is why “the district needs to start developing policies to recruit the next generation of teachers and ensure they stay in our classrooms.”

A spokeswoman for the teachers union, UTLA, declined to comment.

Ekchian told the committee that the district lost 2,641 teachers, about 7 percent of the workforce, through separation and retirement in the 2011-2012 school year and 1,896, (5 percent) last year. The projected loss for the current school year, she said, is 1,333. She did not provide a percentage.

Zimmer spoke passionately about the issues with an almost emotional welcoming statement, focusing on the importance of quality teachers. He admonished district officials who were absent, saying “I’m sad our Administration is not here to learn with us,” but he said nothing about the two board members who were also missing, Monica Garcia and Tamar Galatzan.

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