Daniel Jocz doesn’t want to move the calendar start date.

The school board just made Daniel Jocz’s job a lot harder.

Jocz, who is a National Teacher of the Year finalist and the 2016 California State Teacher of the Year, already has to record lectures and give homework to cover five chapters of American history over the summer. He does that so his students can learn everything they need to by the time they take the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests in April and the Advanced Placement tests in May.

But as LA Unified moves its start date closer to Labor Day, it will ultimately cut into his teaching time before the tests.

“It is going to make my job substantially more difficult,” said the celebrated teacher who has worked at Downtown Magnets High School for 11 years. “We can’t do this as effectively with less instructional time.”

After surveying parents and teachers for months, discussing it for a year and getting input from labor representatives, the LA Unified School board on Tuesday decided to start school a week later, on Aug. 22, next year, and then another week later the following year, on Aug. 28, just before Labor Day.

• Read more: School will start later next year, and Thanksgiving and winter breaks will be shorter

“Late start calendar = LAUSD School Board just cut 3 weeks of instruction for my Advanced Placement students,” tweeted Jocz, who said Wednesday that his fellow teachers are not happy.

“A lot of us in the AP community are taking this very personally and we have our courses planned out,” Jocz said. “Had I known this was pending in this way I would have been more vocal.”

Jocz said the Los Angeles students are a diverse community filled with first-generation Americans and English learners who require more time to become college ready.

“You don’t want students taking tests that they are not ready for, especially if they are the tests that will be used to judge schools and teachers,” Jocz said. He suggested that the nation’s second-largest school district might have the clout to move the testing later in the school year, like to June.

School district officials confirmed that the California Department of Education sets the testing window for SBAC, and AP test dates are set by the College Board, which administers the AP program.

“Scores can go up and down for a variety of reasons and I understand why they want to move the calendar, but it was changed not too long ago and we all adjusted, and graduation and scores increased,” Jocz said, echoing an argument made Tuesday by school board member Monica Garcia.

Dennis Ashendorf, a high school math teacher in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, starts school after Labor Day, as do a handful of Southern California districts. Of 56 school districts surrounding LA Unified, 50 start school in August.

“The end of a semester is not the end of a course in general in public school,” Ashendorf said Wednesday. “For example, Geometry A is followed by Geometry B. Same stuff. An exam in January works well. There is no great reason not to start school after Labor Day if a little federal help was given.”

August learning isn’t all that fruitful, he said, and the argument that beginning school in the first week of August allows end-of-semester tests before winter break really only makes sense for college, not in K-12 where students usually continue the same English or math course over the whole year.

He added, “What a miserable situation. Sacramento can’t solve it. This is a national problem that only Congress can solve. The benefits are many to us.”

Charter schools, which can set their own calendars, often have earlier start dates. But, as charter school leader Caprice Young, CEO of Magnolia Public Schools, pointed out, “We have so many families who also have children in the LA district schools that we have to keep our schedules pretty much in sync with what they’re doing.”

LA Unified moved its start date to earlier in August four years ago after some elementary schools threatened to become charter schools so they could have more days of instruction, board member Garcia said at Tuesday’s meeting. The schools ended up becoming independent charters and affiliated charters anyway, and students started in early to mid-August.

Meanwhile, at least two labor unions told the board Tuesday that their members didn’t want to change the schedule, and the student school board member spoke out against it. Letetsia Fox of the California School Employees Association representing classified employees and Juan Flecha from the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles representing administrators and principals said their membership didn’t want to change the calendar. The principals had become used to the earlier start, and the classified employees were worried about fewer work hours.

Last year, student board member Leon Popa voiced his concern that a shorter summer makes it harder to land summer internships and that “people make plans and have commitments.” He voted to adopt the one-year plan with the schedule suggested by the superintendent’s staff and, in a recent interview on the district’s TV show “Inside LAUSD’s Student Voice,” he said he felt that School Board President Steve Zimmer followed his lead in voting and listened to his concerns.

A report by Budget Services estimated the cost of shifting the calendar at $134.3 million, but that was based on an estimation that school attendance for the first month would be poor as it is usually at the beginning of the school year. The use of school buildings in August cost an additional $1.4 million in air-conditioning repairs.

Meanwhile, Jocz is trying to figure out how he will teach everything he needs to in the time allotted.

“It’s already challenging the way it is, and moving it forward will present more challenges,” Jocz said. “But we’ll figure out how to face this challenge, as usual, and make it work out.”

Teacher Anthony Yom with student Cedrick Argueta at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

It was cause for celebration when 17-year-old Cedrick Argueta was one in 12 students in the entire world to ace one of the toughest college-level calculus tests.

But it wasn’t just one test. Cedrick also earned perfect scores on the English and math sections of the American College Testing entrance exam.

And it wasn’t just one student.

When the international spotlight shone on Cedrick, and his family, and his Lincoln Heights School in East Los Angeles, Cedrick kept pushing the credit back onto his teacher. “I could never have done it without him, he inspired us,” Cedrick said Tuesday when he addressed the LA Unified school board. “And, by the way, it was a team effort because the other students in my class did well too.”

In fact, for the past five years, everyone at the school who took the Advanced Placement Calculus AB exam passed it. And this past year, every student scored a 3 or higher. The scale is 1 to 5, with the highest score meaning “extremely well qualified” enough to do the work of a college level course.

So who is this teacher, Anthony Yom, and what are his secrets? Yom said he truly enjoys teaching. He doesn’t depend solely on the textbook, he doesn’t sit still in class, and he considers the students not only his colleagues, but his friends.

School board member Monica Garcia, Principal Jose Torres, Cedrick Argueta and his teacher Anthony Yom.

“I don’t really feel like I do anything different than many of the 30,000 other teachers who care about teaching in this school district,” Yom said in an interview with LA School Report. “I love spending time with the students, and I don’t consider what I do to be work. I also try to make it fun.”

Making calculus fun may seem like a tough task, but Yom said he doesn’t depend on dry lectures or boring textbooks. He seeks out additional teaching tools and examples on the Internet and develops worksheets from that. He tries to bring real-life applications to the math as much as possible. He also divides students up into groups so they can learn to help each other.

Although he’s 35 and more than double the age of his students, Yom looks a lot like one of them. Many of them, like Cedrick, are taller and their voices are deeper than the soft-spoken Korean-born teacher. Yom said he is shy and not a good public speaker. It was easy for students to bully their teacher. He said he had a bit of trouble when he first came to teach at Lincoln 11 years ago.

“There was a culture shock for sure,” Yom said about coming to the school of 1,300 where 80 percent are Latino, a majority of the students are low income and 20 percent are English-language learners. “It was a tough transition, but once they accepted me I built my reputation.”

Cedrick Argueta before speaking to the school board.

At first, the teacher was intimidated by the large number of unmotivated students coming to his class. Yom got to know some of the students, calling their homes and offering extra help as they needed it.

No, he doesn’t believe in too much homework, and he doesn’t believe in teaching to the test. Yom said he spends many hours after school and on weekends working with groups of students. He said he prepares students for every possible type of question on the tests, so they aren’t blindsided by something new.

“Another bit of advice I can give probably for teachers is that we should always think of the next level,” Yom said. “Where are they going in the next level, what are they learning in the next class? Then, you can do some backward planning, and that will help you do a good job at explaining things.”

The successes by Yom’s students helped motivate not only the school but the whole school district. School board president Steve Zimmer said, “We’re going to take this excitement and energy and it’s going to supercharge public education. We know that looking at you and telling us about your team that anything and everything is possible.”

Lincoln’s principal Jose Torres noted that Yom has set a high bar for teachers and said, “This is evidence of what can happen in every classroom if we believe every child can learn regardless of background or skill level. If you believe they can learn, they will.”

Teacher Anthony Yom and Cedrick Argueta at a press conference.

Yom credits his principal and fellow teachers with being part of the team’s success, and includes the parents who bring their children to extra lessons. He also said businesses and community leaders contributed by “letting us come in and turning on the air conditioners on scorching hot Sundays so we can study.”

Yom said, “It takes a village to raise a child. This is truly a community effort.”

Yom said he hoped Cedrick’s successful test scores also will inspire others, especially since most of his college-prep classes are dominated by Asian students. “It’s not as if the Asian students are any smarter than the Latino students,” Yom said. “They need to be encouraged to try.”

Cedrick’s parents, Lilian and Marcos, are not math whizzes like their son. She cleans houses and is from the Philippines; he is a factory worker from El Salvador. Cedrick speaks Spanish fluently.

“My parents didn’t realize how big a thing it was when we first heard about it,” said Cedrick, who now is called “the one-in-12 kid” at school because he was one of 12 in 302,532 students to get a perfect score on the Advanced Placement Calculus AB exam. Cedrick said his dream is to get a scholarship at Cal Tech and work for NASA.

Cedrick is aware of what his test scores mean. “I know that people think that Latino kids cannot do well in math and that’s not true,” he said. “Latino kids can do what other kids can do, all you have to do is support them and believe in them.”

Superintendent Michelle King said she was impressed with both the student and teacher when she visited Lincoln last week. So was President Obama, who sent a special Tweet saying, “Way to go on your perfect score” and invited Cedrick to the White House to attend the national science fair.

“I have to say he is such a humble, remarkable young man,” King said. She is amazed he is taking two more Advanced Placement classes this year, and four more next year including the next level calculus class. “And as far as the teacher, Mr. Yom has a personal connection of trust and belief of his students that allows them to succeed,” King said.

Board member George McKenna, who was a math teacher, said, “Math is the most difficult to teach, you have to wait for that ‘ah ha’ moment.” He told the teacher, “You will be inspirational and motivational for others, and I know how many interminable hours it takes to make mathematics live in the hearts and minds of students.”

Yom, overwhelmed by the attention, said for him, coming to school is like “coming to work with 150 friends.” He is amazed to see the shy freshman who came to his honors algebra class thriving in the public spotlight.

With his parents at his side, Cedrick told the school board, “I am part of LAUSD, I have been in it since pre-K and I’m just one small example of the great things you do.” He called his teacher not only a great influence on his life, “but a great friend too.”

And Yom added, “If you don’t think of this as work, you get better results. For me, it’s not work.”

PTA Endorses Munger, Not Brown: The California Parent Teacher Association has endorsed Proposition 38, Molly Munger’s ballot measure to raise taxes to pay for education, which it helped write. It has also decided to stay neutral on Governor Jerry Brown’s more moderate proposal, Prop 30. PTA

UTLA President Sets Record Straight: In response to an LA Times article suggesting that an agreement had been reached, Warren Fletcher reiterates that his union has not agreed to any evaluation system that includes use of students’ test scores.  UTLA

Former Columbia Ed School Dean Calls For Smarter Testing: An op-ed in the Times from Arthur Levine argues for the development of “smarter testing,” like GPS:  “Tests should gauge what students are learning in real time and continually recalculate the instruction each student needs to learn it.” LA Times