Monica Ratliff questioned how much MiSiS will cost.

Another $40.3 million was approved to repair and run the beleaguered MiSiS computer system for the next year, but the big question at Tuesday’s LA Unified School Board meeting was how much it will cost to maintain once all the repairs are done.

The answer came late into the nearly six-hour meeting when board member Monica Ratliff asked Diane Pappas, CEO of strategic planning and digital innovation, “So, how much will it cost to maintain MiSiS?”

Pappas said, “We are estimating this at $12 million, but that is just an estimate, it could be more. I don’t want to tell you 100 percent it’s that, but you should be budgeting a minimum of $12 million to maintain the system.”

Ratliff, while acknowledging Pappas for providing a complete report of the MiSiS progress, said she was still concerned. “I don’t know where we’re going to get that from, and I just want to put that out there that we need to find it.”

The repair funds come from bond money, but the $12 million to maintain the system every year will have to come out of the general fund.

“This is actually a big deal,” Ratliff said.

MiSiS, whose formal name is My Integrated Student Information System, was created to combine student data throughout the district. Its initial cost was $29.7 million. That has risen dramatically since the board approved it in 2013, as additional expenses were required for desktop computers and for repairing major glitches in the system. The system will now also include information from independent charter schools.

When the system launched in 2014 it was glitchy and malfunctioning, assigning students to courses they had already taken or to no classes at all during some periods, and required an influx of extra money to help stabilize it.

The MiSiS system at LAUSD headquarters.

Last spring officials said they needed $79.6 million more to fully repair the system by the end of this school year. That took the overall budget to $133.6 million. With the additional funding approved Tuesday, which is to carry through June 2017, the cost of the system will hit $173.9 million.

The new money requested will add high-priority enhancements and emergency fixes to the system. A user-friendly ad hoc reporting tool will cost $4.1 million, the integration of charter schools will cost $3.6 million, the pilot of the online grade book will cost $9.7 million and the parent access portal across the district will cost $1.1 million, according to some of the breakdowns.

Pappas noted that so far this year the system has run reliably and that officials continue to hold focus groups to give them feedback throughout the district. They have added 350 new enhancements and fixed 1,400 software bugs in the past year and trained more than 1,400 users on the system.

The system will validate graduation requirements, improve English Learner reclassifications, develop graduation eligibility status and provide an auto-save feature for teachers entering their grades.

The staff anticipates completing the tweaks to the system by June 2018. After 2018, the regular maintenance funding won’t come from the School Construction Bond Citizen’s Oversight Committee, which assigns bond money to school projects. It was determined in March by that committee that the money should be approved for MiSiS.

Ratliff still expressed concern about the continuing cost of maintenance for the system. “We need to find money and keep it in the budget forever,” she said.

School board president Steve Zimmer said, “We know this is serious and also acknowledge that work is being done, and this is going to work.”

Pappas warned, however, “We are not out of the woods, there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Diane Pappas, LA Unified’s CEO of strategic planning and digital innovation

The word “MiSiS” is not generally associated with happy endings at LA Unified, and neither is the district’s increasingly competitive relationship with its 221 independent charter schools, but that was the case earlier this month when the district and its charters announced they had reached an agreement on linking their student data systems to fulfill a court order.

“It just shows that you can make things happen. It just takes the willingness of everyone to work together,” Diane Pappas, CEO of LA Unified’s strategic planning and digital innovation, told LA School Report. “Everyone is happy we have a solution to what was a thorny issue and now we can move forward and get things done.”

But even though the deal has been struck, other issues remain, including that the district now has to develop interface software from scratch that will connect MiSiS, the district’s troubled computer system, and the charter schools’ systems. Another unresolved issue is the cost of the interface, which Pappas declined to estimate.

Cost and functionality are two important questions, considering MiSiS has a history of malfunctions and significant budget overruns. But Pappas said the district believes the cost of developing an interface will be cheaper than installing MiSiS inside each charter school.

“It really would have been a great burden to require that all charters get rid of their existing systems and in addition, it could have been a tremendous burden of money with taxpayer dollars that the MiSiS system be completely customized and reconfigured after we have already gone through such tough times with the system anyways and have to then spend all that additional money,” Pappas said.

The deal to develop interface software satisfied the independent monitor of the district’s special education programs, David Rostetter, and the plaintiffs of the Chanda Smith Modified Consent Decree, part of a class-action lawsuit over integrating disabled students into general education classes. This month’s deal was also characterized as “a huge win” for all parties by Gina Plate of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which negotiated on behalf of LA Unified’s charters.

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with the consent decree.

MiSiS was developed to satisfy part of the consent decree, which called for better tracking of special education student records. Because special education students at LA Unified’s independent charter schools are part of the same special education district, the decree required charters to also take on MiSiS.

But when the system launched in 2014 it was glitchy and malfunctioning. The influx of extra money has helped stabilize MiSiS, but charters were still reluctant to adopt the system, and the district ultimately came to agree with them after a year and a half of negotiations.

Papps said the development of the interface will likely take up to two years, but because 83 percent of charters use one of two systems, much of the work will be streamlined. She added that some of the cost of developing the interface will come out of the existing MiSiS budget, but the district will have to approach the Bond Oversight Committee and the school board for additional funds.

The deal that was struck and outlined in a March 10 letter to the LA Unified school board and Superintendent Michelle King from Pappas and Charter Schools Division Director José Cole-Gutiérrez calls on LA Unified to develop interface software that will allow MiSiS to communicate with charters’ data systems.

“One of the lessons the district has learned when it comes to MiSiS is what’s it going to look like in terms of on the ground, what’s practical?” said Cole-Gutiérrez. “To the team’s credit, they really looked at this from the vision to the practical aspects to say, ‘How do we best work together to make this happen?’ The result is what we have come to.”

LA Unified still has other areas of the consent decree to fulfill, and Rostetter and key officials have estimated that it will likely be several more years before the district will be relieved of court monitoring.

Components of the LA Unified MiSiS computer system.

LA Unified and its 221 independent charter schools have reached an agreement on the court-ordered requirement that charters sync their student data information systems with the district’s massive MiSiS system.

The agreement calls on the district to develop an interface solution that will allow data systems at charter schools to communicate with MiSiS but allow the schools to keep their own systems in place. The agreement also allows charters to adopt MiSiS if they wish to do so.

The agreement was reached on March 10 between LA Unified, its independent charters, the plaintiffs of a special education consent decree and the court-ordered independent monitor of the decree.

The agreement was characterized as “a huge win” for all parties by Gina Plate of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which negotiated on behalf of LA Unified’s charters.

“It could have gotten very hostile and ugly, like some of the other areas we have with charters and the district, but we were able to resolve this one in a way that makes everyone happy,” said Plate, who is a senior special education advisor for CCSA.

Plate said the district, the independent monitor and the plaintiffs reached an internal agreement in December to agree to the interface but did not share that with charter leaders until this month because they needed time to draft the letter and get all of the details organized.

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Chanda Smith Modified Consent Decree.

MiSiS, the district’s student data system, was created to fulfill part of the decree which called for better tracking of special education student records. And because special education students at LA Unified’s independent charter schools are part of the same special education district, the decree required charters to also take on MiSiS.

But when MiSiS was launched in the fall of 2014 it immediately began to cause substantial problems at schools due to system failures and glitches. Charter schools were hesitant to adopt the system themselves due to the problems, Plate said, and also because many of the older charters already have their own systems that they have dedicated time and money to developing.

“Because there was no system available for the last 20 years, charters have purchased their own systems. And not only have they purchased their own systems, they have customized those systems to reflect the needs of their student population,” Plate said.

MiSiS has been largely stabilized and is operating without any major problems being reported this school year. CCSA officials have had weekly meetings for the last year and a half to try and resolve the issue of how to get charters in line with the court requirements, Plate said.

The agreement was announced to LA Unified school board members and Superintendent Michelle King in a March 10 letter from LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez and CEO of Strategic Planning and Digital Innovation Diane Pappas.

“This approach will allow charter schools to retain their current student information systems, provided that they transmit certain key student data to the district in a technically compatible manner,” the letter said.

Plate said the interface will be developed by LA Unified along with experts from Microsoft, and the district will pay the bill. No timeframe has yet been set on when the interface will be ready.

The agreement between charters and the district on MiSiS does not complete the consent decree process for LA Unified. It still has to spend over $600 million to make all of its schools compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and it has one more of 18 performance-based outcomes that it needs to meet. The outcome requires disabled students to receive services as specified in their Individual Education Plans. In November, district officials and the independent monitor told LA School Report the district likely would be under the watch of the monitor for several more years.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines visits the MiSiS control center at the start of the school year.

As he reaches what may be his final weeks with the district, LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines sent a message Friday to all employees, congratulating the district personnel who have helped make improvements to MiSiS.

“I am extremely proud of everyone who has been involved in this important work during the past 12 months,” Cortines said, according to LAUSD Daily, a district communications website.

The message comes just a little over a year after Cortines took over the district for a third time and made fixing the troubled system a priority after it crashed computers and caused scheduling troubles, transcript backlogs and other problems.

One year later, the MiSiS system is performing well and no major issues have arisen in the new school year.

A big cornerstone of fixing MiSiS was asking the school board and Bond Oversight Committee for more money. The initial tab for MiSiS ballooned from $25 million to $133 million after Diane Pappas, who was appointed by Cortines last October to lead the MiSiS improvement effort, made a pitch to the Bond Oversight Committee in May asking for approval for more money.

Cortines praised Pappas in his message.

“Ms. Pappas worked with the team to identify and resolve major challenges with the system,” Cortines said. “She and I met daily to discuss urgent problems and engaged top experts in key areas to devise effective solutions. She kept the Bond Oversight Committee and the Board of Education fully informed so they could provide the support needed to keep moving forward.”

Pappas applauded the MiSiS team for its work.

“What this team has done for our schools and our students is nothing short of astonishing,” Pappas said in a statement. “They worked night and day and side-by-side with the top experts from around the District to identify every crucial challenge schools were facing and developed the best possible solutions.”

MiSiS remains short of fully functional to the level as was originally intended. The extra bond money approved in May was intended to help fixing the system by the end of next year, Pappas told the Bond Oversight Committee. For now, MiSiS leaders are saying the big problems appear to be behind them.

“Our focus has now turned to patching the leaks and making the finer adjustments needed to ensure that we stay on course and in alignment with educational policies,” said Jennifer Kessler, head of MiSiS training, customer support, and change management, in a statement. “Our next chapter will be a focus on making the system easier to navigate and provide a better quality experience for our users.”

A resolution approved by the LA Unified school board on Oct. 13 didn’t receive a lot of attention, but the vote to approve a pilot program with the online company Schoology has the potential to completely change how students, teachers, parents and administrators interact.

The resolution launches a two-year pilot program that will test an online grade book and learning management system (LMS), with the goal of going district wide should the program prove successful.

The grade book will create an online platform that lets teachers track student performance, enter assignments and assessments and view the “complete picture” of each student. The LMS allows teachers to assign homework digitally, communicate online with students and parents, archive past lessons and give students personalized lessons and homework. Both are to be linked with MiSiS, the district’s computer system.

Phase one of the pilot is set to launch at 10-20 schools in spring and expand to as many as 20 more schools next year, at a total cost of $598,240. To launch at every school after the pilot, LA Unified estimates the maximum cost to be $6,436,012, with an annual tab of $1.7 million after that to maintain the system. According to the resolution, funding for the pilot is already available within the current MiSiS budget.

The district’s last few attempts to launch a major digital technology initiative have not gone smoothly. There was the aborted $1.3 billion effort to give an iPad to every student and teacher in the district, a program that stumbled at nearly every step. The launch of MiSiS last year also caused serious problems as the cost of the system ballooned to $133 million from $25 million.

Jeremy Friedman, CEO of Schoology, said he believes the district has learned from the past technology troubles.

“I think they have learned a lot with some of the experiences they have had in the past, and this is something we do with most of the large districts. They do not go district-wide with a rollout in year one. So this is a phased approach,” Friedman said.

Schoology has plenty of experience developing online tools for school districts. Friedman said the company currently has contracts with over 1,000 districts, including the entire country of Uruguay, the state of Delaware and Jefferson County in Colorado.

The program does raise some equality issues. With more classroom content, homework and interaction moving online, a child without a computer at home or a smart phone may be at a disadvantage. But Friedman argues that moving to digital platforms will actually level the playing field, even with limited online access at home.

“Having this info online, despite the income disparities, and who has access to what device, there are places within the school that people should have access to devices, and there are places outside of school such as the library, where people should have access,” he said. “The goal isn’t to hinder people’s performance; the goal is to create a greater accessibility that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.”

LA Unified declined to comment on the Schoology contract.

Friedman said the goal isn’t to eliminate paper homework but for digital copies of the homework and lessons to be always available. For example, he said, a student who left homework at school could access it at a library or a friend’s house.

The program also allows parents to check out their child’s grades and to communicate with teachers. There will also be Spanish and other language versions of the platform for English learners.

Friedman said Schoology has increased completed homework and that shy students more easily engage their teachers.

“Students who often underperform in a classroom setting and rarely participate in classroom discussions, they rarely ask for help,” he said. “What we have seen with Schoology is their persona is different in a digital environment.”

Friedman also said the platform allows for teachers to personalize lessons and assignments for individual students. And because the homework can be assigned online, extra lessons for struggling students can be given in a way that students don’t feel “they are being singled out.”

According to the board resolution, the Schoology contract would be much cheaper than the district developing its own online program, at a cost of $10 million over two years.

LA Unified actually has developed an online grade book in-house and had 2,000 volunteer teachers test it before conducting focus groups in the spring. The results were not good. According to the district, the system was “severely deficient and would require millions of dollars in investment to bring the MiSiS grade book and teacher module up to the minimum requirements needed by teachers.”

The development of an online grade book, as well as MiSiS, grew out of a 1993 class action lawsuit against the district. A court ordered LA Unified to create a district-wide system to track student records. MiSiS and the online grade book eventually were developed as a result of earlier efforts to satisfy the court.

The MiSiS black box shown by Shahryar Khazei

Not many people know much about LA Unified’s $133 million MiSiS computer system that has held the center of attention for the past year—and will determine the success or failure of the school year now underway.

District officials this week gave LA School Report a behind-the-scenes look at the system to understand what it does and how it works.

The public can keep up with MiSiS and it’s progress (or not) through newsletters on the district website. But, here, courtesy of Shahryar Khazei, the district’s Chief Information Officer of the Information Technology Division, are a few things not widely-known about the system, with the formal name, My Integrated Student Information System

1. Everything is stored in a Hewlett-Packard black box, larger than a coffin, on the 9th floor of the district’s downtown Beaudry headquarters.

2. The  black box is a state-of-the-art memory system known as “DragonHawk,” and this latest version was installed in May.

3. The temperature of the room is set at very cool 69 degrees, but if temperatures rise to 85 or above, or if the power goes out, two back-up generators keep the system cool enough to prevent burnout.

4. At the moment there is no DR (Disaster Recovery) site if something were to happen to the black box. A separate site is being built in Van Nuys, but it will not be ready until next year.

5. The entire school system and its data goes through this 240-core-server and feeds to 23 web servers.

6. This is the largest system of its kind built for Windows 2012.

The red light warning system sits in the middle of the techs.

7. Last year’s black box failure was the largest system of its kind at the time (this one is bigger) to fail. The older version could not handle the code, and it was the inefficiency of that code that created last year’s problems.

8. The district will be getting rid of all the old servers this year.

9. A team of Microsoft employees from all over the country is rewriting the coding for MiSiS on the 10th floor, right above the black box.

10. The Microsoft employees sit around a red light that will go off like an alarm if the “build” of the MiSiS system fails.

11. It has been “a long time” (a few months) since that red light went off.

Diane Pappas, in charge of MiSiS

The first day of school went off yesterday without a hitch for LA Unified’s MiSiS system, a huge improvement over last year’s rocky start that caused so much disruption across the district.

The My Integrated Student Information System allowed 23,110 users to log into the system and handled the schedules of 439,756 students, according to Diane Pappas, Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Planning and Digital Innovation.

During a tour of the MiSiS Control Center on the 10th floor of district headquarters, Pappas said 16,767 teachers were able to register their attendance, a number expected to reach 22,000.

“We only had four schools with issues,” Pappas said. “We had to send support staff to some of the schools to help them register new students.”

But those issues were not MiSiS or computer related in any way, as Superintendent Ramon Cortines confirmed. The schools were overwhelmed with an unexpected surge of new students.

Audubon Middle School in Leimert Park, Narbonne High School in Harbor City and Cleveland Charter High School in Reseda all had some student enrollment issues that required help, and they were resolved by noon. Assistance also went out to Washington Preparatory High School in Westmont.

The $133 million computer system has an additional $80 million set aside for issues that may crop up this year as the system is fixed. None of the problems that occurred last year at Jordan High, Jefferson High, Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy or El Sereno Middle School occurred this time, but staff was waiting just in case.

Jennifer Kessler, Director of Organizational Change Management for the district’s information technology division said 182 calls came into the command center and were responded to within 50 seconds. Last year, the wait time alone was nearly an hour-and-a-half.

Pappas left a note of encouragement for staffers on a board the command center: “Everything you do helps students! Keep going! – Diane.”

“I have an amazing team with an extraordinary work ethic,” Pappas said. “There are some people on this team who have not taken vacation in a few years.”

To prepare for the first day of school, all principals were told that if they ever had more than 20 students sitting in an area waiting to be registered or without a schedule to call them. No principal called.

A few elementary schools had Internet trouble before school began on the first day: 28th Street, Ascott Avenue and Hooper Avenue had online issues that were taken care of immediately.

There are still 324 posted known issues on the website for MiSiS, but some of those are future fixes, and some are minor that won’t impact the overall system, Pappas explained.

By the end of the school day, Cortines offered a thank you and a pep talk for the MiSiS teams located in two different rooms on the 10th floor.

“This is not the end of all the issues, I know,” he said. “There will be bumps in the road.”

“We have made heroic, heroic progress with the MiSiS system,” said Diane H. Pappas, Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Planning and Digital Innovation. She took over the issues of the problem-plagued $133.6 million computer program that stands for My Integrated Student Information System.

In addition, a report generated by MiSiS on Thursday showed that 14,107 students still do not have schedules, with the first school bells of the year set to ring on Aug. 18.

Pappas said districts are still gathering enrollment information and master schedules from various sources — the main reason for the students lacking schedules, she said, not a computer glitch. Of course with nearly 700,000 students to deal with, that is only about 2 percent of the entire school population.

“The fact that we know there are that many students without schedules actually shows that MiSiS is working,” Pappas said. “That number is extremely fluid at this time, and it will be very different before school starts. Those numbers will jump all over.”

Superintendent Ray Cortines vowed at his annual address earlier this week to have the computer issues fixed before school begins to avoid the problems that plagued the start of school last year. At his address, he introduced the MiSiS team of workers, some who have come out of retirement and some who will be working long hours and over the weekend to make sure remaining issues are fixed.

“We will be dealing with about 100 of those issues just tonight,” Pappas said.

Until recently, the MiSiS updates were available for the general public to see, but Pappas said the district halted the release because the latest data dealt with students’ personal information.

Cortines was issuing updates himself during the summer, the last update dated June 19. The memos went to all the teachers and administrators in the school district.

Of the six newly-drawn Local Districts, the East district has the most students without schedules at the moment, with 3,523 students, followed by the West with 2,600. The South district recorded the fewest, with 1,553 students identified without schedules. There will not be 14,000 students without schedules on the first day of school, officials said.

“No, the superintendent would not have that,” Pappas assured.

“MiSiS is the heart of this district,” he said in a statement from the district. “After months of tireless repairs, our heart has some new stents, replaced valves, a pacemaker, and reduced cholesterol, and it is pumping much stronger.”

It was a mighty sick patient a year ago, with malfunctions causing computer breakdowns, scheduling nightmares and other distuptions. Jefferson High School was hit the hardest, with the MiSiS problems leading to a walkout after hundreds of students were left without proper class schedules.

MiSiS was given an original price tag of $29 million, but it has ballooned to $133 million. The additional investment of funds and personnel has paid off, Cortines said.

“Despite the challenges we’ve faced, I’ve never seen so much excitement and enthusiasm for the start of the school year,” he said. “Everyone has come together to help pick up the broken pieces of our schools and put them back together again. I’m very grateful that the LAUSD community was there to take action.”

The district said technical teams have spent the past year rebuilding MiSiS — My Integrated Student Information System — to ensure that class schedules and attendance programs will be operating properly when classes begin on Aug. 18. The district said its experts will be available to resolve any last-minute issues.

MiSiS wasn’t the only cloud hanging over LA Unified as last school year began. Former Superintendent John Deasy was under intense criticism for the rollout, functionality and bidding process of his ambitious iPads project. Deasy resigned in October, and the iPad program was cancelled by Cortines not long after he took over.

But the district now has over 230,000 tablets and laptops on hand that were purchased over the last two years. Principals who want to use the laptops must submit a plan for how they will be implemented, the release said.

The district pointed to other improvements over last year, including the reorganizing of LA Unified into smaller local districts, new investments in arts education, and the plan to provide all of the district’s students with lessons in computer science.

The district also began last year with 200 teacher vacancies but said every classroom this year will have a permanent educator, and all of the administrative positions will be filled before the opening bell.

“We overcame a lot of challenges over the last year and we will continue to overcome them, thanks to the inexhaustible determination of our entire LAUSD family,” Cortines said.

The request was approved unanimously by the Bond Oversight Committee yesterday. It will move to the school board for a vote next month.

If passed, it will bring the total MISIS tab to $133 million, a figure that includes the original $29 million budget the district once believed it would cost to build a perfectly functioning integrative software program. It also covers an extra $3 million to buy new computers for schools whose hardware was too outdated to run the new MISIS program.

Diane Pappas, who was appointed by Superintendent Ramon Cortines last October to lead the MiSiS improvement effort, made a pitch to the BOC, providing details of the yearlong plan to improve the system. Over the next year, she said, the team plans to correct problems with enrollment, scheduling, attendance and other areas critical to operate schools and educate students. The interface will be made more user friendly and additional updates would improve speed and reliability, she said.

The money to cover the costs will be drawn from the “unallocated funds” category in the School Upgrade Program.

The district has also restructured its contract with Microsoft Corp., according to Shannon Haber, a spokesperson for the district. The new deal delays full payment “until functions are working at schools.”

“As part of its assurance to the District, Microsoft has committed to keeping highly qualified personnel on the project, and will bring in additional resources from around the world as needed to foster continued improvement,” Haber wrote in a statement.

But this is not the end of MISIS spending. Documents submitted to the BOC explain, “As the MISIS system becomes operational, an additional allocation of ongoing general fund (money) will be needed starting in 2016-17 for staff to maintain and update MISIS to meet school needs.”

Just how much has yet to be determined.

LAUSD special ed students (Credit: Galatzan Gazette)

With more than two months remain before the end school year, LA Unified officials are making summer school plans for special education students and students who have failed at least one mandatory class for graduation.

It is the second straight year the district is offering struggling students the opportunity to catch-up on subjects after years of budgetary cuts that practically obliterated summer school.

The credit recovery program is open to all 9 through 12th grade students who have received a D or F grade in an A through G course. From June 15 through July 17 students can attend up to two 2 1/2-hour block classes to learn in five weeks what they should have grasped over a semester.

Special education students will have access to the Extended School Year courses from June 22 to July 17, five days fewer than the credit recovery program.

Teachers were required to submit the names of eligible summer school students through MISIS by March 27, and they’re supposed use the system to determine the courses students need based on the Ds and Fs. It is unclear if the deadline was met by all schools.

MISIS was first piloted by the district during last year’s summer school enrollment. It was then that the systems myriad database problems first came to light.

Unlike classes that are available throughout the regular school calendar, credit recovery courses have much stricter class size limitations: an academic class is capped at 25, and physical education is limited to 45.

Seventy-nine campuses will offer classes ranging in subjects from freshman English composition to world history to algebra.

The program is funded by a combination of Title I and Beyond the Bell Credit Recovery funds. Enrichment summer school courses will be added at a later date, paid for with Local Control Funding Formula dollars.

Although the budget for the program is unknown, last year the district spent $21.5 million to support 37,000 high school students who needed to recover credits to fulfill graduation requirements.

Why has it taken so long?

For one reason, says the district, parents of many gifted students proved they, too, are gifted — at cheating. For another, the new student tracking system known as MISIS showed yet again how it could bollix up a program to the detriment of students, teachers and schools.

By next month the GATE staff of 19 is expected to complete its review of 5,622 students who had been identified as possible candidates for the program in 2013-2014, in addition to any new referrals from the current school year. Overall, about 70,000 students are enrolled in the program.

“We’re almost all caught up,” said Megan Reilly, Chief Financial Officer, fully relieved now that Superintendent Ramon Cortines has allocated $35,000 for Saturday assessments to help alleviate the bottleneck.

The logjam began in the 2012-2013 school year after Wynne Wong-Cheng, a district GATE specialist, said her department noticed irregular patterns in the results of the district’s most widely-used and efficient test for gifted students called the “Raven’s Progressive Matrices,” which measures intelligence by assessing how a child learns.

She found that the district had many gifted students. Maybe too many.

“When you start seeing an entire classroom above the 99th percentile, or when you’re looking at statistics, and it’s not being aligned with what we’re supposed to be finding, then we have to look deeper,” she told LA School Report.

That deeper look was not good.

“The group assessment we were using over the past 14 years was being compromised,” she said, choosing her words carefully, before adding, “What we were finding was that a lot of the kids were pre-exposed to the assessments.”

Pre-exposed, as in searching for the test online, as in cheating.

“Not by the schools,” she was quick to clarify, but by internet-savvy parents, hoping their children tested well enough for their school’s more rigorous GATE instruction or viewing it as a ticket into some of the district’s most elite academic magnet schools.

“We’ve had a lot kids that would just admit that they were on the web taking the actual test the night before with their parents,” Wong-Cheng said.

Apparently, it doesn’t require much skill to find the Raven test online. “All you have to do is Google the name, and it comes up,” she said.

When the district became aware of the problem, the GATE department began reviewing earlier Raven testing records, sometimes reassessing an entire school, sometimes re-testing individual students. “That was one of the biggest reasons this problem started,” Wong-Cheng said.

GATE officials also decided to discontinue the Raven, phasing it out over the last three years, exacerbating the unprecedented setback. This is the first year the district did not use the old test at all, instead, piloting a new, unnamed, group assessment.

However, in the absence of the group test, the GATE staff was limited to screening students one-on-one, an extremely labor intensive process, according to Wong-Cheng. While the Raven takes 45 minutes to administer to 25 to 30 children at one time, individual assessments by a GATE psychologist can take up to two hours, and the district only employs eight full-time psychologists.

LA Unified officials also contacted Pearson Publishing, the maker of the test, to get the company to pursue legal action against online posters. But, it proved to be prohibitively expensive and ultimately, as anyone with an unflattering picture on the internet can attest, impossible to eradicate from the web.

The Raven test is considered by many field experts to be the gold-standard for IQ assessments and is still widely used by school districts throughout California, including San Diego Unified, the second largest district in the state. Developed in 1935 by John Raven, it is a non-verbal test designed to measure a student’s intelligence and cognitive processing rather than achievement levels, ability to memorize facts or the possession of a broad vocabulary.

Despite its widespread use, it is just one of a handful of assessments administered by LA Unified, which has seven categories of gifted and talented identification: Intellectual, tested with an IQ assessment administered by a psychologist, including the Raven; High Achievement, also IQ based; Specific Academic Ability, based on academic records including standardized test scores and class grades over two to three years; Leadership Ability, usually based on teacher referrals; Creative and Visual Arts, requiring a portfolio of work; and Performing Arts, which usually involves an audition.

Another factor contributing to the backlog was the introduction of MISIS. In recent years, the GATE office has generated lists of eligible gifted and talented candidates by data mining, using a computer program to cull through online grade records and standardized test scores. The system was set up as a result of an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights, which concluded that fewer Latino and African American students were recommended for screening than their white peers. The district automated the process to eliminate human bias.

But for most of the year teachers have been unable to use MISIS to record student grades. And it wasn’t until the beginning of this month that the automated program was fixed. A MISIS update dated March 4 announced, “GATE Identification has been corrected and is reflecting accurately.”

Erin Yoshida-Ehrmann, a GATE district specialist, said the grade vacuum coupled with the absence of standardized test scores as the state transitions to the Common Core, created an over-zealousness in teachers, who “upped student referrals” for the “Intellectual” and “High Achievement” categories, when they realized the automated system was down.

“Since the discontinuation of the [standardized tests] we came up with a contingency plan where our students would use their grades, in addition to their previous California State Test scores,” Yoshida-Ehrmann explained. “But with MISIS” and the uncertainty of no test scores, “I think a lot of the schools decided to up their referrals for the Intellectual because they were afraid that it was going to impact their identification percentage.”

Schools that under-identify eligible GATE candidates are monitored by the district.

“Teachers were afraid of having kids fall through the cracks,” she said.

Overall enrollment in the GATE program has grown steadily in recent years, even as district enrollment has experienced a sharp decline.

In his latest weekly update, Superintendent Ramon Cortines wrote, “The new website serves as a gateway for a variety of information needs, including general information about the project, updates on fixes and enhancements, training opportunities, and — perhaps most importantly — tools our employees can use to discuss MiSiS with their peers or to let us know how we’re doing.”

Although MISIS was down for 30 minutes Thursday, due to a technical issue with supporting equipment, the district is reporting some significant updates of multiple programs within the system, including:

• Roughly 75 percent of schools have negligible attendance backlog and are taking attendance correctly for every student in every class period. (Reclassifying students in grades 6 through 9 is still not possible using MISIS because the process is dependent, in part, on a reading assessment managed by a vendor.)
• Schools can now use MISIS to reclassify and print parent notification letters for English Learners in grades 2 through 5 and 10 through 12.
• All report cards — including comments — are now provided to parents in the correct home languages.

Principals and other school officials can begin entering student Master Schedules as early as tomorrow, pending the school board’s approval of the school year calendar. District officials are also asking the board to push back the start of school to a week later in August.

Flaws in the scheduling program at the beginning of the school year created chaos across school campuses. For weeks a series of glitches caused MISIS to delete student data, leading to scheduling errors that left thousands of students without class assignments and forced them to spend weeks in school auditoriums.

The district has spent more than $50 million to fix MISIS, and the tab is expected to double by the end of the year.

LA Unified, citing new money, ups its offer to teachers
Bolstered by a more robust state budget, LA Unified said it was doubling its offer to UTLA.

Survey: Teachers support changes in state job protection laws
The majority of public school teachers who participated in a new survey support changes in state teacher job protection laws that were the focus of last year’s landmark ruling in Vergara v. California.

Deasy to work for Broad Center as ‘superintendent-in-residence’
Former LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy will be working as a consultant for The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems as a “superintendent-in-residence.”

Feds find lack of leadership, vision, planning on iPads, MiSiS
A report from the U.S. Education Department on the district’s troubled $1.3 billion iPad program and gitchy MiSiS computer system had few positive things to say.

LAUSD middle school among California’s ‘Schools to Watch’
LA Unified’s Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park was honored as a model middle school by the state program, “Schools to Watch-Taking Center Stage.”

All you have to be is “a dynamic, results oriented technology leader with an exceptional background to lead our Information Technology Division.”

And all you have to do is straighten out the MiSiS mess, more or less.

According to a district press release this week, the ideal candidate will “be a forward-looking leader capable of influencing and galvanizing others in a shared view of the future.”  Applicants should have experience in large public, private, government, or non-profit organizations, while experience in public education is “a plus.”

What’s less clear is whether the new CIO will report to Chief Strategy Officer Matt Hill or vice versa. About a month ago, Hill was put in charge of overseeing the Information Technology Department under a wide spread restructuring of the district’s top level management by Superintendent Ramon Cortines.

The district didn’t return a message seeking clarification.

How much does the vacant post it pay? Well, it’s not chump change: It tops out at $223,186, which is about five times what a school board member makes.

Click here to apply and lotsa luck.

The report, which was requested by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, found that the iPad program suffered from a lack of a grand vision as to how the devices were to used, that it was deficient in providing enough field support, that it did not have any overall metrics to evaluate its success and that it was overly-dependent on the iPad while ignoring the possibilities of other devices.

“There is no district educational technology plan, goals, or metrics for success for how technology will support learning at the district level,” the report, which was first publicly released on the blog 4LAKids, stated.

The iPad program was conceived and touted by John Deasy, the district’s former superintendent who resigned in October under heavy criticism that included the iPad program.

The report is not the first to criticize the iPad program. An internal report by LA Unified board member Monica Ratliff found similar problems, and an independent report by the American Institute for Research found problems with the planning and execution of its pilot program.

Deasy halted the iPad program in August when emails were publicly released showing a high level of communication Deasy and a former deputy had with Apple and Pearson. Considering that a federal grand jury is now investigating the bidding process of the program, the report’s criticism of the district’s overemphasis on the iPad is sure to receive a lot of attention.

“The district is heavily dependent on a single commercial product for providing digital learning resources, which has plagued the project since the initial rollout,” the report stated.

The report also found a lack of district-wide instructional leadership and no way to measure the success or failure of the program. “It is difficult to show the impact of the investment or know which pilot practices should be scaled across the district more widely or shared as examples to the field at large. Conversely it is not clear which practices may be less effective and therefore should be improved upon,” the report stated.

Echoing an independent report that was made public in the fall, the federal report found a myriad of problems with the MiSiS computer system that has caused scheduling and transcript problems at district schools this year.

MiSiS was at least partly responsible for a scheduling nightmare at Jefferson High School, a superior court judge found, which led to the a state intervention at the school. It has also cost the district millions of dollars to fix, and it may not be fully functional until next school year, Cortines has said.

Among the problems cited by the federal report was no clear “owner” of the program, which led to a lack of accountability as to who was responsible for the it. It also found a lack of proper support and no established effectiveness metrics.

The report offers a number of possible solutions to the problems it citied, but the district has yet to publicly respond to the report so it is unknown to what level efforts will be made to address the issues.

MiSiS problems have been largely stable since the district started school again on Monday, the district announced in a press release yesterday, and Cortines halted the iPad program altogether after the grand jury investigation came to light in December.

As LA School Report prepares to shut down for the year — and gear up for a long holiday Tamale Fest and Eggnog-a-thon — we’d like to take a moment to look ahead at the big stories awaiting us in 2015.

So grab your snow globe, give it a good shake and look into the future with us. Here is a handful of headlines you can expect in the new year:

Teachers are growing (more) angry

The teachers union, UTLA, is approaching teach-or-cut-school time.

Despite months of fruitless negotiations, in which the district has held to a 2 percent salary raise offer while the union has bounced from seeking 17.6 percent over two years to 10 percent over one year to 9 percent over one year, the sides remain on AM and FM bandwidths.

All fingers are now pointing to Alex Caputo-Pearl, the hard-charging new union president who has been threatening a strike since long before he won office last summer. Is the time finally approaching? Will teachers walk out in 2015?

Caputo-Pearl has shown himself to be the George Washington/Fidel Castro (you decide) revolutionary of UTLA, providing cogent arguments for why it’s time teachers get a break — and a hefty raise. But does he have any Menachem Begin in him? In other words, can the revolutionary cut a deal?

Maybe the bigger question is: how will teachers react to whatever deal he can cut?

Possible shakeup on the school board

With four board seats up for grabs this spring, it’s conceivable that one or two board members will disappear from view, bringing in new faces and philosophies on education.

Most vulnerable may be full-time prosecutor, board member, school reformist and mom, Tamar Galatzan. She’s in the most crowded race, facing off against five hopefuls for the valley’s District 3 seat.

The list of candidates includes: Ankur Patel, a former candidate for LA City Controller, who has become a familiar face at school board meetings, often addressing the board during public speaking periods; Elizabeth Badger, owner of an auto repair company in Canoga Park; Social media consultant Filiberto Gonzalez; LAUSD school principal Scott Schmerelson; and Carl Petersen, who works for a Glendale manufacturing company.

The leading contender will be the challenger UTLA gets behind with money and ground support.

School board president and newly-goateed Richard Vladovic is running for a third term against two challengers in District 7: Euna Anderson and Lydia Gutierrez. But it’s Gutierrez, a Republican born and raised in San Pedro, who is likely to be Vladovic’s biggest competition. She ran for State Superintendent in 2014 and, nearly passed Marshall Tuck for second place. She got close to a million votes and according to one of her campaign managers, came within 1,000 District 7 votes of the total Vladovic received in 2011.

In District 5, one-term incumbent Bennett Kayser will fight to keep his seat against Ref Rodriguez, the co-founder of the PUC charter school group, and Andrew Thomas, a college professor who teaches statistics, research methods and educational policy. Kayser is the union’s surest vote on the board; it’s doubtful any successor would be so loyal.

With no official challengers on the ballot, it’s fairly certain recently elected George McKenna will be around for another term although it’s theoretically possible a write-in candidate could swoop in and pull the rug out from under him. Possible, but doubtful.

And we love the prospect of more McKenna-isms at future school board meetings. Gems like this: “It’s like an airplane with no wings, it’s not an airplane.” Not sure what he means? Allow him to expand: “It’s like a square circle. You can say it but it doesn’t exist.”

OMG, there are flaws in MISIS

Sometimes, when writing about the district’s student data management system, MISIS, it’s helpful to keep a thesaurus on hand.

After all, Cortines has taken great pains to stress that it’ll take another year (fingers-crossed) and approximately another $45 million to get the — please take a breath –botched/plagued/troubled/bungled/disastrous/straight-up messed-up software program to function properly.

Having said that, the superintendent is making sweeping changes to ensure MISIS personnel is “more accountable and responsive to all stakeholders.”

Earlier this week, he announced a new effort to recalibrate the district’s strategy and organization of the MISIS recovery effort.

In a letter to the board Monday, Cortines wrote, “MISIS personnel are now organized into five teams to concentrate on the issues that people from the field have currently identified as top priorities: grades, testing, enrollment, state reporting, and master scheduling.”

From now on, he says, each MISIS team will manage “every aspect” of its priority area.

That, of course, takes money. At its most recent board meeting, the seven members unanimously approved his request for $12.1 million in bond funds to carry the plagued MiSiS software through the end of January. He expects to come back in February, seeking more money. No word yet on March, April, May . . .

iPads/Chromebooks/Wireless devices and tablets

Oof. What more can we say?

The district is making another round of iPad and Chromebook buys for students to take the state mandated Smarter Balanced test this spring. Those should arrive in classrooms by February, giving students about two months of practice before the big test. But Cortines says that’s not enough time and has asked the state to ignore student test results as a measure of academic growth or improvement next year. The California Department of Education is thinking about it, and it’s up for discussion at its next meeting in January.

In the meantime, about 45,000 of the district’s 90,000 devices are locked up in a storage facility still waiting to be delivered. Bernadette Lucas, head of the Common Core Technology Project, told LA School Report the tablets will be delivered by the end of January. Lucas’s first ETA for delivery was November.

All of the controversy over the iPads has left the one-to-one computer crusade, which seemed so urgent under John Deasy, dead in the water for now. The district plans to restart the entire bidding process for new device and software makers who’d like to get a piece of the highly lucrative business “early next year.”

As for the past and how the district and Deasy handled the bidding process with Apple and Pearson, the Inspector General expects to release a final report at some point early in the new year.

And, oh yeah, a federal grand jury is looking into it, too.

Search for a new superintendent — or not

It’s looking less and less likely that school board will take up the search for a new leader anytime soon.

Cortines, a sprinter in his younger years, seems to have hit the ground running when he came back on the scene in October. And to hear some board members and even labor leaders tell it, after only two months on the job, it’s like Daddy’s finally home.

“I see a level of commitment, vigor, passion and expertise that I don’t think that we could find anywhere else in the nation,” board member Steve Zimmer told LA School Report, adding that Cortines “has more focus and energy than the last time we worked together.”

While Cortines has made it clear that he would stay through the school board elections, Zimmer says it would be disruptive to have him leave at the end of the school year.

“I certainly don’t see the need for us to start that process before July 1 of next year,” he said. Then, he says, it will take the board at least nine months to a year to find the right candidate to lead the nation’s second largest school district.

“We don’t want this to be a decision that is overly drawn out but we certainly don’t want to have a sense of immediacy around this. I think we want to have the healthiest timeline possible,” Zimmer said.

That would leave Cortines at the helm until the end of the 2015-16 school year, just before his 84th birthday.

* Removes reference to Valley Democratic party endorsement for Filiberto Gonzalez.

Here, in no particular order, are the top stories about LA Unified as reported this year by LA School Report.

Superintendent Deasy resigns

On Oct. 15, LA School Report broke the news that John Deasy was going to resign the next day as superintendent of LA Unified. Although his future with the district had been openly debated for weeks, the news still rocked the education world to the core and made headlines around the country. Despite his eagerness to help students with the greatest need, his departure was viewed as a victory by those who opposed his centralized style of management.

Key Deasy resignation stories: Breaking News: LAUSD makes it official, Deasy steps down; Ratliff: lone vote on school board against Deasy settlement; Caputo-Pearl insists Deasy’s resignation not a victory for UTLA; In resignation letter, Deasy ‘overwhelmed with pride’

School reform loss is union’s gain 

Deasy’s departure was a reflection of a general retrenchment of school reform advocacy in 2014. The teachers union showed a strong hand at local and state level in elections this year while reform advocates suffered not only the loss of Deasy but also reform candidate Marshall Tuck in his bid to unseat Tom Torlakson as state Superintendent of Public Instruction. The shift occurred at the local board level, too, with the election of George McKenna, who defeated a candidate, Alex Johnson, heavily supported by charter schools.

Key reform stories: In words of congratulations, Zimmer blasts ‘reform billionaires’; Tuck, in defeat: In California, ‘a growing call for change’; Reaction to Deasy resignation as polarizing as his tenure; McKenna victory gives appearance of a pro-teacher union board.

Cortines returns for a 3rd time

After Deasy’s resignation, the school board quickly turned to a familiar face to lead the district on an interim basis. Ramon Cortines came back for a third stint as LAUSD superintendent and quickly went about business. He made a number of sharp turns in district policy and made key personnel changes that signaled he did not intend to remain a passive caretaker while the district searched for a permanent superintendent.

Key Cortines stories: Cortines on returning the LAUSD a third time: ‘They called my bluff’;  Cortines lifts LAUSD ban on Parent Trigger enacted by Deasy; Cortines ends meetings that take staff out of classrooms; Despite board approval, Cortines opposes bond money for iPads; Cortines finalizes reshuffling of MiSiS leadership team; For Cortines and UTLA, class size reduction is LAUSD priority.

 

iPads, iPads, iPads – and the FBI

Deasy’s grand vision to get a computer tablet into the hands of every student and teacher in LA Unified rapidly and dramatically unraveled, in the process, making his continued stewardship of the district untenable. Significant problems with the rollout of the $1.3 billion program, as well as serious questions about the bidding process, led to Deasy’s canceling it in August. In early December, the FBI confiscated documents related to the bid as part of a grand jury investigation, leaving the ill-fated program likely to continue making headlines well into 2015.

Key iPad stories: Deasy cancels Apple contract, starts new bidding; LAUSD says concerns cited in iPad report were expected; JUST IN: FBI raids LA Unified offices, seizes iPad documents; Cortines halts iPad program in face of FBI investigation; Federal probe into LA Unified procurement a first, says lawyer.

 

The MiSiS Crisis

The districtwide implementation of the MiSiS computer system was an unmitigated disaster, more evidence that the district could not handle a technology project of such magnitude. Intended to streamline the process of scheduling and record keeping, the program exposed glitches that have cost the district millions, cost senior district employees their jobs and contributed to scheduling and transcript nightmares. And it won’t be fixed anytime soon despite all-out efforts to get the system running properly. Superintendent Cortines has now said it will not be entirely functional for another year.

Key MiSiS stories: LA Unified board considers more money for MiSiS, classrooms, cops; Feds joining LAUSD’s effort to help solve issues with MiSiS; LAUSD bond panel OKs another $25 million for MiSiS, devices; Long-awaited LAUSD report calls MiSiS ‘grossly inadequate’; Cortines tells LA Unified board MiSiS fix needs another year.

 

Vergara ruling

The state of California was rocked with the judge’s ruling in June. In a lawsuit brought by students, including some from LAUSD, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu struck down five state statutes governing teacher employment, ruling that they violate the California constitution by denying students access to a quality public education. In one highly-controversial 16-page decision, Judge Treu wrote a template for other states’ seeking changes and threw into doubt the future of teacher tenure, dismissal and layoffs across California.

Key Vergara stories: Vergara ruling stands, judge rules in final review; Vergara sisters recall the teachers who inspired them to sue; Vergara ruling gets mixed reaction from school board; Teachers’ unions vow to fight Vergara decision, others celebrate.

 

George McKenna wins

Another chapter was added to the George McKenna story on Aug. 12 when he won the special school board election, defeating Alex Johnson in a runoff with over 53 percent of the vote. McKenna was widely seen as a friendly voice for teachers, whose union provided the vast majority of his financial support. The special election for the District 1 seat was held as a result of the passing of late board member Marguerite LaMotte. In just a few months on the board, McKenna has seasoned his remarks in debate with lessons learned over decades as a school administrator.

Key McKenna stories: George McKenna; McKenna is the union candidate, but CTA gave to Johnson backers; McKenna victory gives appearance of a pro-teacher union board; The race is on for 4 LA Unified board seat elections in 2015.

 

Miramonte settlement 

One of the ugliest chapters in the history of LAUSD came to a close on Nov. 21 when the district settled with the remaining victims of former Miramonte Elementary teacher Mark Berndt, who was convicted in 2013 of 23 counts of lewd conduct on a child. The $139 million settlement was a record for the district and drew the ire of district critics who complained that the money would have been better spent for assets like teachers and other school personnel.

Key Miramonte stories: Miramonte settlement is largest ever involving LAUSD; Jury selection resumes in Miramonte case as settlement talks continue; LA Unified says it followed the law in handling abuse reports.

 

Caputo-Pearl wins UTLA presidency

On April 29, Alex Caputo-Pearl was elected president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the union that represents LAUSD educators. His landslide victory over incumbent Warren Fletcher signaled a major change in direction for UTLA toward more aggressive tactics and tone. Since taking office in July, Caputo-Pearl has pushed hard for getting more teachers involved in issues that affect them, drawn up a multi-faceted list of demands for a new labor contract with the district and started preparing teachers for the possibility of a strike if he fails in achieving the bargaining goals he has set out to win.

Key Caputo-Pearl stories: JUST IN: Caputo-Pearl wins decisively for UTLA president; Caputo-Pearl: The teachers’ view from the new union president; Strike talk emerges on Caputo-Pearl’s first day as union chief; In State of the Union, Caputo-Pearl hints at strike, targets Deasy; Caputo-Pearl asks energetic UTLA rally: ‘Are you ready for a fight?’

 

Fights over co-locations

The debate about the positive or negative impact charter schools operating on the same campus with district schools played out in a very literal way as difficulties among in several locations of co-habitation led to friction and even physical violence. The conflicts have drawn differences between charters and traditional schools into sharp focus, giving each side ammunition for the rightness of their cause.

Key co-location stories: 2 LAUSD schools work amiably in solving their co-location issues; Westside charter school finally finds a new home, or two; Zimmer: LAUSD ‘culture war’ over co-locations on the west side; Stoner parents win, LAUSD removes co-located charter; LAUSD reports increase in charter school co-location approvals.

 

Student achievement continues to rise

Amid all the negativity, there was positive news coming out of LAUSD this year. Graduation rates went up while dropout rates fell, leading to yet more controversy over who actually deserves credit — the board and administrative personnel who create new approaches to instruction or teachers charged with carrying out the every-day challenges of teaching.

Key student achievement stories: LAUSD sees big jump in graduation rates, early results show; LA Unified graduation rates are up, dropout rates are down; LA Unified reports LA Unified reports graduation rates up by double digits up by double digits.

The national television program PBS NewsHour dedicated a segment on Friday to LA Unified’s disastrous MiSiS computer system and the problems it has caused for the district’s students and administrators, as well as asking what lessons other districts in the country might learn from the crisis.

The segment features an interview with Los Angeles Times education reporter Howard Blume. Click on the above video to see the segment or click here to visit PBS NewsHour’s website.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

As if the recent efforts to fix MiSiS weren’t enough, LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines has called the feds.

In an email to school board members and their staffs on Friday, Cortines said U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, offered the district a lifeline.

“I spoke with Secretary Duncan today regarding various issues related to our District,” Cortines wrote. “The Secretary expressed his desire to provide support to our District, as needed, and agreed to send a team in December to work along with LAUSD staff to assess and advise on technology related issues.”

Matt Hill, who oversees the implementation and development of the plagued student data system, confirmed that Duncan’s team will be working on MiSiS. But it is unclear how many officials the feds are sending, how long the team will be here and what their specific tasks will be. 

Over the past two months, Cortines has pumped about $11 million into patching up software glitches, paying for thousands of hours in overtime and boosting staff to issue transcripts and report cards on time. Another $3.6 million has been allocated to buy new computers for schools whose hardware was too old to operate MiSiS.

Just last week, the Bond Oversight Committee also agreed to spend another $12.1 million in construction bonds to cover the cost of MiSiS improvements through February. The board will vote on the expenditure at the next school board meeting.

Microsoft is chipping in, too. The district developed the current MiSiS system using software and programs it licenses from the Seattle-based company. Earlier this month Microsoft deployed two executives and 16 employees “to augment the MISIS team (which already contained some Microsoft people), develop further clarity of the problem, set goals, and craft strategies to meet those goals.”

The district said that in addition to sending immediate help, the company is exploring a long-term relationship with LAUSD in which Microsoft would potentially lead the MISIS efforts.

Duncan is also keeping the door open for LA Unified. According to Cortines’s email, “The Secretary reiterated that if the District needs more staff assistance, more will come.”