Zimmer asked for a breakdown of how many students are graduating with D grades and in what subjects.

“How many graduate with several D’s? How many of those D’s are in algebra?” asked Zimmer, who said he tries to remain data-driven in his decisions. “I see this and it causes me a lot of stress.”

He also wanted to know if the district is notifying local colleges and universities to let them know that the second-largest school district in the country is hiring academic counselors again.

“We know about the teacher shortage coming up, but I’m worried that we need to be working on hiring academic counselors,” Zimmer said. He pointed out that the district administrators should let the local colleges know of the district’s needs. “If they know we’re hiring, they will graduate them. This is a pretty market-driven system.”

Those academic counselors will also help students with their credit recovery program and push them toward graduation, he noted.

Although some of the academic scores came close to the district’s targeted goals, some were sorely lacking.

Cynthia Lim, the executive director of the Office of Data and Accountability.

For example, every high school student is supposed to have an Individualized Graduation Plan (IGP), but only 59 percent do, said Cynthia Lim, the executive director of the Office of Data and Accountability for LA Unified.

“We had a few glitches in the system,” Lim explained.

At one point Tuesday, Zimmer turned to the new student school board member, Karen Calderon, and asked if she had an Individualized Graduation Plan. No, she didn’t, but she said she has a good relationship with the counselors at her high school.

Also, about 38 percent of the district students taking the college-level Advanced Placement Exams received a 3 or higher, making them eligible to get college credit, Lim said. The target that the district is striving for next year is 40 percent.

“We have some improvement needed there too,” Lim reported.

The school district also wanted at least 48 percent of graduating seniors to pass the A-G class requirements with a C grade or better. They hit 42 percent.

“We have some work to do there,” Lim said. She also pointed out that the school board voted that students could get their high school diploma if they received a D-grade in the A-G classes, but “the goal is still to be college prepared and we want to cap it at a C. We are trying to improve that D to a C.”

Fellow board member Ref Rodriguez echoed some of Zimmer’s concerns and said, “We need to know how we got some of those scores up.” He added, “As far as the Individualized Graduation Plans, we need to do something about that.”

Zimmer pointed out that the district had laid off academic counselors in the past that were supposed to be helping students achieve success in graduating and steer them toward college. He said he fears that not enough academic counselors are graduating from local universities, and the district will suffer.

“We cut so much during the recession in non-roster classroom positions,” Zimmer said. “I know well that USC is only now restarting their counselor education program and we are two to three years out to getting those counselors.”

Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson said the district is working with Title 1 money to help schools that need extra resources. She said the district is also encouraging students to consider a counseling career.

In an interview, Gipson said, “What we’re doing puts a whole new perspective on what credit recovery is.”

She said the district is creating more pathways to accelerate student graduation and encouraging dual enrollment with community colleges. They are also working closely with USC, UCLA, Cal State and schools to share resources and produce the best graduates.

As far as the D grades, Gipson said, “a D-grade is not the goal. The goal is 100 percent graduation and high grades for all students. We will be increasing the rigor and calibrating the work we do in the system.”

Gipson said they want to encourage college-bound students from the early level of schooling. “You can imagine we’re pretty excited about what we’re doing and what can happen in every single grade level.”

She added, “The entire LAUSD family knows it starts in preschool. And we’re mapping those opportunities not just for the seniors who are getting ready to go to community college, but doing some design planning that takes them from preschool and graduation to high school and beyond.”

Principal Richard Ramos with Dominga Verduzco.

Haddon Elementary Avenue School is so in demand that families want to drive their children across the San Fernando Valley from Granada Hills to attend the Pacoima school.

Haddon is not a charter school, it’s not a new pilot program and it’s not a magnet school (yet). It’s a traditional Title 1 district school in a low-income Latino neighborhood that has been there since 1926.

But it wasn’t always growing. And in fact it had to fight district rules that prohibited families from moving to the school.

Five years ago, parents were so fed up with the school that they initiated a “parent trigger” to try to take over the school from the district. The trigger was never pulled, and a new principal came in who brought programs students wanted, like a Mariachi class, a robotics program and an award-winning speech and debate team.

“We are certainly an anomaly in the district, and I’m learning now that part of my job is to figure out how to be competitive and promote the school,” said Haddon Principal Richard S. Ramos, who has worked with the charter school group Partnerships to Uplift Communities and on dozens of successful electoral campaigns, most recently for Robert Gonzales to the San Fernando City Council in 2012. “We have to figure out better ways to get the word out about what we’re doing that’s good in our schools.”

Soon students were clamoring to transfer to the school — a welcome change especially as without the new enrollment, the school faced a loss of teachers.

Then came the curve ball. District administrators said “No!” to the families who wanted to transfer to Haddon.

The district wouldn’t allow students to transfer because it wasn’t a pilot or magnet or charter school. Families weren’t allowed to leave their home schools to attend Haddon. One family was pleading to get in because their daughter loved robotics, and the parents were willing to drive nearly an hour every day to bring her to the school.

“They have parents wanting to come in, and I don’t understand why it’s not allowed?” school board member Monica Ratliff said at a board meeting this spring after she heard about the issue.

District administrators listened to Ratliff. They worked it out so that applicants could say they wanted to transfer to the school because similar programs were not offered at their home schools. Parents’ requests needed to include a waiver form that explained the programs offered at Haddon were not offered elsewhere.

Removing that roadblock resulted in unprecedented growth for the school unlike any other school in the area. The principal noted that Haddon has had increased enrollment for the past two years. In fact, he said that 39 of the new students he has this year are transferring from charter schools.

“We are in a time now where the entire district is seeing declining enrollment,” Ramos said on the first day of the new school year on Tuesday. For the past decade, the school enrollment was on a steady decline. The school now has an enrollment of more than 900, with a capacity of 960.

Mariachis at Haddon. (Courtesy: Haddon)

Ratliff, who was at Haddon on Tuesday for the first day of school, said she was a bit irritated about the district’s initial response late in the school year.

“It should not be up to a board member to have to bring this up at a meeting to promote that a school is doing well,” Ratliff said. “Everyone on the administrative level should be helpful in a situation like this,” Ratliff added. “I’m glad the district was listening and no one stymied the efforts of this great principal.”

Ratliff pointed out that many principals at traditional district schools have great programs that no one hears about, and the district should be better at promoting those programs. She said charter schools do their own promotion and have learned to become competitive for students, so the district schools should too.

Monica Ratliff greets volunteers on the first day of school.

“Our principals haven’t had time to promote their programs,” Ratliff said.

One solution for Haddon is that the school will apply to become a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) Magnet Academy. That proposal will come before the school board in January. Ratliff said she would be stunned if it doesn’t get approved. When it becomes a magnet school, the school will have open enrollment and anyone can apply from within the district.

Superintendent Michelle King repeatedly brings up sharing best practices and touting and promoting district school successes. The LA Unified Communications Department launched LAUSD Daily last year and LAUSD Shines, which shares school successes. They place posters in schools and throughout the district to encourage principals, teachers, parents and students to share their stories.

“I am realizing I have to be competitive with our school,” Ramos said. “People don’t hear about our great programs unless they hear about it in the laundromat or at a soccer game.”

Before Ramos came to the school, parents at Haddon organized a parent union chapter to initiate a parent trigger and began gathering signatures in 2011, aided by Parent Revolution, which helps with parent trigger movements at failing schools.

But in January 2013, parents voted to put the process “on pause.” The following month, teachers at the school voted to institute a series of reforms by becoming a Local Initiative School, a reform model that allows some autonomy from district policies, such as in hiring.

“We were unhappy, and the district brought in a new principal and the parents are now happy,” said Dominga Verduzco, who was president of the parent chapter. “They implemented new programs and a curriculum and brought in a principal who puts kids first. We like what he is doing,” Verduzco said Tuesday as she helped give out school supplies donated by the nonprofit Rainbow Packs.

Haddon’s speech and debate team. (Courtesy: Haddon)

This is the last year at the school for Verduzco’s fifth-grader, and she is proud of the changes she helped create.

The teachers voted 29 to 2 in favor of the STEAM program to come to the school, and Ramos said they all stepped up to improve the school curriculum. Test scores are still not up to par, with the latest scores showing English and math at 18 and 11 percent meeting or exceeding standards, respectively, and 5 percent chronically absent. They expect to see improvements soon.

“Some of the special programs we have are electives that kids don’t see until middle school,” Ramos said.

Not only are the Mariachi classes a big draw, but the students can choose gardening, cooking, computers and photography thanks to the nonprofit Woodcraft Rangers, which offers after-school activities and clubs that align with Common Core standards. Do It Yourself Girls also comes to campus and helps introduce girls to professions such as engineering, construction and other traditionally male professions.

Another plan Ramos has for the school is to make it a dual language school.

“Although most of the students are bilingual, it is not a good Spanish, it is more colloquial and they could benefit from a dual language program,” Ramos said.

He wants to get the school’s test scores up, but the principal said he already notes some major changes. The attendance rate is increasing, chronic absences are down, and even teacher attendance increased from 69 percent to 79 percent.

This year, the school has a new director for the parent center, and the school was picked to be part of the Early Language Literacy Plan that works to make sure students read by third grade. The school is also starting a new Eureka math program — and explaining all the changes to parents along the way.

“People are wanting to come to school, and that’s a good thing,” Ramos said.

Meanwhile, Ratliff, who is running for Los Angeles City Council and will be leaving the school board, said she hopes the district will take note of the successes at Haddon.

“People do a lot of head nodding at the district level, but all administrators should be on the same page with helping schools like this succeed,” Ratliff said.

Michelle King announced a record 75 percent graduation rate at her first State of the District address as superintendent of LA Unified, “a district on the move,” she proclaimed Tuesday.

King noted that the 75 percent rate is based on “preliminary data” as she addressed 1,500 principals, assistant principals and district administrators at the annual kick-off to the school year, held at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

“We are a district on the move,” King said after her speech, when asked what she wants the general public to know about the second-largest school district in the country. “The movement and trajectory is from the earliest youth, pre-K and not just stopping at high school but through college. Right now our preliminary data shows that the class of 2016 is at 75 percent graduation. It Is supposed to be as high as we can get it. It is better than we’ve done in the past. Last year was 72 percent, and we’ve exceeded that.”

The graduation rate jumped nearly 3 percentage points over last year despite a new requirement that students pass a rigorous college-prep curriculum in order to earn a diploma. The slate of classes known as the “A-G curriculum” qualifies students to attend California’s public universities.

Michelle King at her first State of the District address.

She added, “This is exceeding expectations of those who said our students couldn’t do it. Today we say our students can and will thrive to meet the standards to be college-ready.”

The theme of King’s address was “A District on the Move,” and she introduced a promotional video of the same name showing the district’s successes. She also emphasized that “we’re in it together,” and she peppered her speech with more than a dozen names of principals and administrators in the audience that she congratulated for their successes.

Among those she called out included: California’s National Distinguished Principal Marcia S. Reed of 186th Street Elementary School in Gardena; teachers Anthony Yom and Sam Luu and Principal Jose Torres of Lincoln High School who helped every student pass the demanding Calculus Advanced Placement examinations; and Hesby Oaks Leadership Charter Principal Movses Tarakhchyan who required all of his staff to learn CPR and then saved a cafeteria worker when she collapsed this year.

“Together we are turning the tide in a district on the move,” King said. “We are at our best when we are unified and working together as a team.”

All of the school board members except Ref Rodriguez and Richard Vladovic attended the speech, held one week before the Aug. 16 start of school. School board President Steve Zimmer gave a rousing introduction, calling King “not only the best but most qualified leader in public education in the United States.”

Zimmer thanked his fellow board members, school police and principals for their response to the terrorist threat that closed down the schools on Dec. 15. “We hope that never happens again, but if it does, LA became the model on how we all come together and work together and be strong together in the face of danger.”

Marcia Reed, in white sweater, was one of the principals honored by Michelle King.

King noted safety as a top priority. “As I talk to parents, one topic that continuously emerges is school safety in this time when the headlines are dominated by tragedy and violence. Our students, families and employees want to feel safe, and I am committed to ensuring that they do.”

King also announced:

• Preliminary results of last year’s Smarter Balanced Assessments show that some math and English scores have improved by as much as 7 percent.

• Nearly 200 Title III coaches for English learners have been added.

• 1,000 classrooms in bungalows will be replaced this year with new, modern classrooms.

• Linked Learning will expand to 20,000 students.

• 16 new magnet schools will start this year, including firefighter academies at Wilson and Banning high schools and the very first robotics magnet at Mulholland Middle School.

• There have been 20,000 fewer days lost to suspensions over the last three years thanks to the district’s restorative justice program.

• Nearly 90 programs will offer Arabic, Armenian, Mandarin, Korean and French this year, and multilingualism will be required throughout LA Unified.

• The district is working on a plan to allow more students to earn community college credits while they are still in high school.

• A landmark academy for gifted students and gifted students with autism is coming to the district.

• The district has distributed more than 342,000 instructional technology devices and will expand online gradebook pilots to 54 schools this year, with full districtwide implementation planned for the 2017-2018 school year.

• Students will receive more support. A specialized counselor will be assigned this year to high-needs high schools, helping students stay on track to graduate, while college and career coaches support struggling middle schools. Additional resources will be dedicated to help English-language learners, who make up nearly one-third of LA Unified’s enrollment.

King’s speech brought the principals to their feet for a standing ovation at least three times. Many of the administrators arrived on buses provided by the district, and they divided up afterward into groups such as “new principals” and other groups for professional development training.

Some of the biggest applause and whoops from the crowd came when King discussed “decentralization” and allowing “greater decisions to be made by the school community.”

King touted her “listen and learn” tour, the successful relocation of two schools during the Porter Ranch gas leak and the “Promising Practices” forum with charter and traditional educators which she wants to make a biannual event.

She pointed out that the “district is facing a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars and we need to prioritize investments in what gives greater results,” and added, “We are spending more money than we are taking in.” She pointed out that the people in the audience could help by making school more attractive, because the district could save $42 million by raising the attendance rate by 1 percent. She pointed out that around Garfield High are banners on Atlantic Boulevard of successful high school graduates, and that keeps students wanting to come back.

She gave props to Kim Bruno, the teacher who created a play about the LA riots at the Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, Shelby Sims, who transformed Western Avenue Elementary School into a technology hub with an annual technology fair, and Garry Joseph at Millikan Middle School who won a Fulbright Award  to connect students with those in India to collaborate on a science fair.

She also honored longtime activist Scott Folsom who died last week, calling him “the conscience of the district” and saying he would be truly missed.

The Garfield High JROTC color guard and cadets brought out the flags at the opening of the ceremony, the Verdugo Hills High School choir sang, Danielle Rawles from Westchester Enriched Science Magnet High recited the Pledge of Allegiance and Eileen Garrido from Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts sang the National Anthem, receiving a standing ovation.

“It is critical that we continue the momentum of all these efforts through the year,” King said. “We have to keep it moving.

“All students can succeed.”

Derrick Chau said the Ethnic Studies Committee will start meeting again.

The Ethnic Studies Committee, which LA Unified unceremoniously disbanded last year, has been renewed by the district, and members agreed to meet for up to three more years with a goal toward incorporating ethnic studies as a graduation requirement, according to Derrick Chau, director of secondary instruction at LA Unified.

“We are moving ahead with districtwide ethnic studies, but there is not a clear timeline for when it would be a graduation requirement,” Chau said. “The committee is reconvening and we gave different options and they chose to meet for a period of three years.”

The committee was originally formed to look into creating a unified course curriculum that would make ethnic studies a graduation requirement. But last year, then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines voiced opposition to the idea and said it would be too costly, with estimates up to $72 million. Cortines scuttled the idea and the committee, even though the school board asked that the district make it a graduation requirement for the class of 2019.

“It’s a shame that this district was at the forefront of making ethnic studies a graduation requirement, and now has let it lag as if there is a lack of interest,” said Jose Lara of Ethnic Studies Now, who helped instigate the renewed committee meetings last week. Lara said that after LA Unified’s vote for the program in 2014, at least seven other districts in the state have made ethnic studies courses a requirement for graduation. He said that courses are already being taught in high schools throughout the district that could be the basis of a robust class.

For a year, the advisory panel tried to get the committee renewed while students protested and the school board even renewed their call to make it a required class.

Retired teacher Allan Kakassy, who was at the meeting where the committee was renewed, said it gave him hope that the district staff would finally be committed to the classes. Kakassy said he was disappointed though that only about half of the more than 50 former committee members attended the meeting.

“This is such an important class, especially in the political climate of the news of the day and the presidential election,” Kakassy said. “We should look at all sorts of classes like this, for example an Arab-American course.”

The district is encouraging individual high schools to come up with their own specific courses, such as ones involving Asian-American and Armenian-American studies, which some schools have expressed interest in developing.

Persistent protests have urged the district to revive the Ethnic Studies Committee.

Some high schools, in anticipation of this being a requirement, are already identifying teachers who may want to develop an ethnic studies class for their school, Chau said. He said the professional development training for the classes will be available over the summer online.

“In the fall it will be an option for some schools,” Chau said.

Meanwhile, the Ethnic Studies Committee, which was also called the Ethnic Studies Task Force, is opened to the public and will meet at least once a semester, with district staff in attendance, to discuss progress with the curriculum.

Chau said that the district is exploring ways to incorporate ethnic studies into other courses, such as English, arts, history and science. Meanwhile, they are continuing to move toward the class being a mandatory requirement, he added. However, they have dropped the idea of requiring it for the graduates of 2019.

LA Unified has so many different kinds of schools it’s hard to keep them all straight. With such varied terms as affiliated charter, independent charter, magnet school, pilot school, continuation school, option school and others, it can be a challenge to understand what they are, what they offer and how they differ.

This is the next part of an LA School Report series taking an in-depth look at the different categories of schools that exist within the massive LA Unified school district. 

Today we examine affiliated charter schools.

(Read more on affiliated charters: Does ‘charter’ make you look smarter? Principal of LAUSD’s newest affiliated charter says yes and The elementary school-turned-affiliated charter that became so popular parents fake their addresses)

(Read more about magnets and their expansion in our series, including profiles of Bravo and King/Drew medical magnets.)

One of the most successful school models in LA Unified is also one of the most under-used, and it’s becoming even more scarce. Only one school in the last two years has even applied to become one.

The unique “affiliated charter” schools — coined and developed locally at the nation’s second-largest school district — achieve higher test scores than either the district’s prized magnets or independent charter schools. They also have lower absentee rates than the district average.

But only 53, or 4 percent, of LA Unified’s 1,274 schools use the affiliated charter model. The schools are located in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods — nearly half of the student population is white in affiliates—and exist in communities where parent involvement has pushed the school administrators into more creative and innovative methods of teaching.

“Some may see it as the best of both worlds,” said Jose Cole-Gutierrez, the executive director of the district’s Charter Schools Division that oversees all charter schools connected to the district. “They are semi-autonomous schools of the district very much connected to the district’s collective bargaining, district staff and more, but each school also has its own governance council.”

Affiliated charters can choose their own curriculum, opt to reduce class sizes or adjust classroom scheduling, offer more professional development and exercise more control over budgeting, hiring and school site decisions. But they adhere to all district collective bargaining agreements. And the district receives most of the state money that goes to an affiliated charter and funnels it to pay for teacher and administrator salaries, although there’s some spending freedom with the rest of the money. A school, for example, must teach basic standards and can buy its own textbooks that are different from what the district uses, but must figure out how to pay for them.

In the past year, affiliated charters have ranked significantly higher in the English and math scores than either magnet or independent charter schools. And their California Office to Reform Education’s (CORE) scores from the past year have averaged 79.8 while the district average is 60.

Yet this successful school model is on the decline in LA Unified because fewer school principals are choosing the model.

“Like pilot schools, this is part of the diversity of options in our district,” Cole-Gutierrez said. “This model allows for innovation and still keeps the school in the family, so to speak.” He notes, “The number of schools applying for affiliated charter status has dropped significantly, and that could be for a variety of reasons.”

One reason is that a majority of the full-time teachers at a school must support the move, and the principal has to initiate the process. Also, the block grant funding that used to flow to affiliated charters was dropped two years ago after the state switched to the Local Control Funding Formula. Finally, the affiliated model depends on a highly committed teacher population as well as an active parent community because the school’s governance board must be made up of equal numbers of both.

The idea for affiliated charter schools caught on when it was first introduced in 1993, especially in smaller schools that couldn’t depend on big chunks of money coming to the school because of a larger population.

Schools that have become affiliated charters are almost all located in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside and in predominantly whiter and wealthier neighborhoods. That’s partly because those schools lost their Title 1 money when the district raised the percentage of low-income students needed to qualify.

This unique school configuration, which is not even outlined in the California Education Code, now seems to be on its way out. Statewide, 26 percent of schools use the affiliated model, according to the California Charter School Association. Most of the affiliated charters are concentrated in the Northeast and Central Valley region of the state (44 percent) with a small portion in Southern California (12 percent). CCSA considers affiliated charters as “charter schools in name only” compared to independent, autonomous charter schools.

AFFILIATED CHARTERS BY THE NUMBERS

Of the 53 affiliated charter schools in LA Unified there are three high schools, five middle schools and the rest are elementary schools.

Of the nearly 650,000 LA Unified students, 41,555, or about 6 percent, attend affiliated charters.

That’s compared to 107,000 enrolled at 221 independent charters, which are publicly funded and independently operated public schools.

Affiliated charter students are not included in the district totals as charter school students, even though the school may have “charter” in its name. They are included among the “regular school” totals because the funding still comes through the district.

A total average of 58 percent of LA Unified’s affiliated charter students met or exceeded the standards in the 2015 Smarter Balanced English Language Arts test, compared to 55 percent of the magnet students, 44 percent for the state, 39 percent for independent charters and 33 percent for the district.

In the math standards, 51 percent of the affiliated charter students met or exceeded standards compared to 44 percent of magnet students, 33 percent for the state, 28 percent for independent charters and 25 percent for the district.

Only 32 percent of the students at affiliated schools qualify for free or reduced-priced meals, compared with 83 percent at independent charters and 77 percent for the district overall. Some of the schools, like Canyon Charter in Santa Monica and Marquez Elementary Charter School in Pacific Palisades, have 3 and 6 percent socio-economically disadvantaged students, respectively.

The overall district’s demographics are 74 percent Latino, 8.4 percent African-American, 6 percent Asian and 9.8 percent white.

In the affiliated charter schools, 28 percent of students are Latino, 6.8 percent African-American, 9.5 percent Asian and 47.6 percent white. Statewide, as well as within the district, Asian and white students and those who are not from economically disadvantaged households scored significantly higher on the tests.

AFFILIATED CHARTERS BY LOCATION

Pick the wealthiest neighborhoods in the LA Unified borders, and you’ll likely find an affiliated charter school there. When broken up by neighborhoods, eight are in Woodland Hills, seven are in Northridge and five are in Sherman Oaks. A total of 43 are in the San Fernando Valley and nine are on the Westside, with one located near downtown.

That one affiliated charter school, in the Central district, is Dr. Theodore T. Alexander Science Center School, which ironically is named after the man credited with creating LA Unified’s magnet schools. Not a magnet, the Alexander Science Center does have the highest amount of socio-economically disadvantaged students of any affiliated charter (at 81 percent), and it has the lowest scores at 25 percent for English language arts and 13 percent for math. It has a CORE score of 45.

Most affiliated charter schools are in wealthier neighborhoods in part because the principals and teachers want to expand their curriculum to something more than what the district teaches, and their students are much different than those in the rest of the district.

“We don’t have as many English learners, and some of the district lessons don’t apply as much to our population,” said Joe Martinez, the principal of Carpenter Community Charter in Studio City, which has a 76 percent white population and 4 percent English language learners, with only 4 percent qualifying for free or reduced lunch. He has a school where people have faked their addresses so they can get in as a resident to the 92-year-old school that is surrounded by $1 million homes and within walking distance of the homes of George Clooney and Miley Cyrus. “We have found that being an affiliated charter has allowed us to try different and unique things, and it seems to be working.”

At more than 950 students, Carpenter is the largest affiliated charter elementary school and one of the oldest in the Valley. Parents and the principal applied for its charter in 2010. It was approved for renewal last year for another five years. The parents and teachers on their Governance Council explored other options before re-applying but chose to stick with the affiliated model.

“We have not found any drawbacks so far,” Martinez said. “When our five years ran out, we started looking at pilot and magnet school options, independent charter or even returning to the district. We looked at the next step for Carpenter and determined the affiliated model was the best one by far for us.”

Tamar Galatzan, the former school board member for District 3, helped Carpenter with its application at that time. She actively promoted the idea with dozens of other high-performing schools with Academic Performance Index scores exceeding the state’s target score of 800. (Carpenter had 943 at its peak; the tests were discontinued in 2013.) Most of the affiliated charters, 32 of them, are in District 3 and the next highest is 19 in Steve Zimmer’s District 4. Galatzan, who lost last year to Scott Schmerelson, encouraged small elementary schools to go the affiliated charter route and take advantage of block grant funding that was available at the time.

“A lot of these schools came together at the same time to apply and they had a strong record of performance and wanted to continue to be creative and continue to grow,” Cole-Gutierrez said. “The schools and their community wanted to continue to provide an innovative curriculum different from the rest of the district.”

WHY ISN’T EVERY SCHOOL AN AFFILIATED CHARTER?

Former LA Unified school board member David Tokofsky said he coined the phrase “affiliated” charter. Most other school districts call such a hybrid a “dependent” charter.

“No one wanted to be called a dependent school, so in some executive session at some point I suggested calling them ‘affiliated’ and it stuck,” Tokofsky recalled. Why wouldn’t every school want to become affiliated? Tokofsky said, “Not all schools are aggrieved. Not all schools need or want to change.”

Schools have to commit to the affiliated charter model, more than half of the teachers have to approve the idea, and the application process can take months if not years. Often, parents who are lawyers and grant writers volunteer their time to fill out the necessary paperwork to become an affiliated charter, which is another reason why fewer school communities in underprivileged neighborhoods with parents working multiple jobs seek to convert to the affiliated charter model.

Four years ago, the school board changed the Title 1 qualifications for schools to get extra funding for underprivileged children. It created a big dent in many school budgets, and schools in wealthier neighborhoods had to seek other ways to replace the steep loss of funding. Millikan Middle Affiliated Charter School in Sherman Oaks recorded a loss of $600,000 in one year.

Affiliated charter schools also received about $400 to $500 per student as a block grant when they were approved. But that state funding source changed and the block grants stopped two years ago. Many principals no longer saw the advantage of becoming an affiliated charter.

“When I submitted the application, the comments I would get from the district is ‘Why are you doing this, the funding is not there anymore?’ and I said we wanted to have more control over our curriculum,” said James Lee, the principal of Sylmar High School, which is the only school to apply to become an affiliated charter in the past two years. No other schools are even in the process of applying to become one. “We cared more about having the autonomy and didn’t do it just because of the money.”

Sylmar’s application was approved by the school board on May 10, and it will become an official affiliated charter school in July. Lee sees it making a big difference in the community’s perception of the school, especially in light of this month’s widely publicized schoolyard brawl.

“Just having the name ‘charter’ to the school will help us,” Lee said. “Even before the approval I’ve been getting estimates on changing the sign in the front of the school to add the word charter to it. I think it will bring a whole new attitude to the school to have that on the sign.”

Lee doesn’t understand why more principals don’t look at the affiliated charter model.

“I think the loss of the block grant funding has made it less palatable to become an affiliated charter,” Lee said. “But we have worked with what we have for a long time. Becoming an affiliated charter is a form of us branding ourselves in terms of being independent and able to design our educational curriculum and services to meet the needs of parents and our kids.”

For Sylmar, it has been a laborious four-year journey. It’s a far cry from when the principal came to the school in 2012 when it was considered an under-performing school. Already twice, the district had turned down the application for the school to restructure itself, and at one point before he came to the school, its affiliated charter request was denied.

“We had to be ready for the change, and this is the right time,” said Lee, who is following a Small Community Learning model that the teachers have adopted.

Affiliated charter schools must renew their application every five years, just like charter schools. Cole-Gutierrez cannot recall an affiliated charter ever failing to be renewed. The schools also have the option to convert back to a traditional school, but that only happened once. Only two schools, El Camino Real Charter High School and Pacific Palisades Charter High School, ever converted to an independent charter from affiliated.

When Sylmar High first discussed becoming an affiliated charter with the teachers, many were afraid it would affect their retirement or status with the district, but that’s not the case, as all UTLA agreements remain in place. At Sylmar, the initial vote was close, about 60 percent, but then the teachers did some investigating on their own.

“I gave them names of schools that were affiliated charters, like the other high schools, Chatsworth, Cleveland and Taft, and a couple them talked to teachers at the school and they didn’t even know they were affiliated charters,” Lee said. “Everything was essentially the same.”

In fact, the schools could use their discretionary money to pay the teachers more for extra work, some of the principals said.

But the common thought is that families also have to raise more money per student at affiliated charters to help the school, and that is another reason why they are in wealthier neighborhoods. At Carpenter, according to their Governance minutes, the school has raised $350,000 so far with an average gift of $948 per family. More than 20 families gave more than $3,000. A big fundraiser at the CBS Studios lot nearby every year, where they auction items from many of the celebrity families, and an annual golf tournament also raise money.

“I think there is more commitment to fundraising at an affiliated charter school, it comes with the territory,” Martinez said. “Of course, we never would or could require any family to contribute.”

Cole-Gutierrez said that all schools raise money to support their school programs, whether it’s for a full-time PE coach, more books for the library or supplemental art classes. “You cannot depend on family donations to be an affiliated charter, but the schools that are affiliated tend to have more engaged communities from the outset,” Cole-Gutierrez said.

Although it’s rarely chosen as a model, the schools that have gone affiliated don’t seem to want to change.

“When we first voted, 100 percent of the staff wanted to go affiliated charter,” said Martinez about his Carpenter teachers. In fact, two of them left to form their own independent charter schools after seeing the success. Now the faculty is learning to teach the students Singapore math and are trying innovative writing programs and even a daily relaxation exercise created by Goldie Hawn.

“I think the affiliate model has allowed to unify all the groups on campus and have greater transparency,” Martinez said. “It allows us to teach our children well.”

Coming next: profiles of Carpenter Community Charter School and the new Sylmar Charter High School.

Jesus Mendoza, regional administrator for the USDA, visits a San Fernando Valley school.

Students who depend on eating at school for their one — and sometimes only — meal of the day will be able to more easily find a location for free meals during the summer.

The expansion of the federal Summer Food Service Program will provide more meals to children and teens 18 years and younger during summer at school locations, Boys & Girls Clubs, community centers and social service agencies.

Students who typically get free and reduced lunches during the school year can now find other sites during the summer.

“We are reaching out more than ever before to places where we know we can reach these students and letting them know that some sites have breakfasts, lunch, snacks and dinners and they don’t have to apply or sign up, they just need to show up,” said Jesus Mendoza Jr., the USDA’s regional administrator for the Western Region of the United States. “Our summer meals program has really taken off, but we are concerned because many of the schools had to cut summer school programs and we want them to still have nutritious meals.”

• Read more: LAUSD is expanding summer school this year

Last summer, the federal program served 190 million students; this year they plan to reach 200 million nationwide. The federal government sponsors sites to run the program and get the word out to camps and faith-based and other nonprofit community organizations in low-income areas.

“Also during the summer months is a time when children gain weight if they are not physically active and are not eating nutritious meals,” Mendoza said. Some of the food programs are at libraries as well, where children spend the day and are involved with reading programs. Mendoza noted that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office announced a Get Summer initiative in April that the USDA is also working with to help keep students properly fed. The program gives youths ages 12-17 free access to all LA County YMCA’s in June and July.

For LA Unified students, that federal program means students can, for example, get breakfast and lunch at Granada Hills Charter in the San Fernando Valley from the day school ends until July 22, or if they live in San Pedro they can go to Bobbie Smith Elementary School in the Long Beach Unified School District for lunch between 10:45 and 11:45 a.m. The government aims to put the program in sties within 10 miles of any given address in the Los Angeles area.

LA Unified gets slightly less per meal for their summer food programs than they do during the school year, Mendoza said. The food program over the summer doesn’t contribute to the school’s budget debt, school officials said. The program also allows some of the district’s cafeteria workers to be employed throughout the year, Mendoza said.

Of the 750,000 meals dished up for breakfast, lunch and dinner to LA Unified students, more than 76,000 are served around dinnertime to about 140,000 students who stay after school, said Laura Benavidez, co-deputy director of Food Services.

“Sometimes, it will be the only meal the children will have until the next morning,” Benavidez said. “We want to make sure that students are properly nourished because it does help with their education.”

The meals, according to federal guidelines, consist of a protein, fruit, grain and dairy. Nationally, about 15.3 million children are living in households where they’re not sure where the next meal is coming from, and the USDA has served more than 1.2 billion summer meals since it started in 2009. About 22.1 million youth already receive free and reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch program, yet only about one in six of those (about 3.8 million) participate in the summer meals program.

More than 6,700 sponsors help dole out the summer meals — that’s 700 more than last year — and the number of sites increased by 20 percent to more than 66,000 locations.

The Summer Meals Site Finder (fns.usda.gov/summerfoodrocks) is a free, web-based application that features an easily searchable map to help locate sites serving summer meals. Last year, the site got about 5,000 visitors per day and as many as 69,000 page views per week.

Families can also identify nearby sites by calling 1-866-348-6479 (English) or 1-877-842-6273 (Spanish) or using a text service operated by a USDA partner by texting FOOD (English) or COMIDA (Spanish) to 877-877.

From LAUSD

Despite projected budget deficits reaching nearly half a billion dollars and steep enrollment declines, LA Unified’s certified administrative staff has increased 22 percent in the last five years, according to a superintendent’s report.

The number of teachers has dropped 9 percent in the same period. And teachers and certified staff are aging toward retirement, heading toward a possible teacher shortage.

The report was presented to the LA Unified school board Tuesday at a special budget meeting at USC to discuss ways of lowering a looming budget deficit.

The administrative staffing level increase surprised some of the board members.

“How is it possible that administrators went up so much when we have a decline in enrollment?” asked board member Ref Rodriguez, shaking his head.

From LAUSD

According to the report presented by Superintendent Michelle King and her staff, certified administrators increased from 2,146 in 2011-2012 to 2,628 positions in 2015-2016, a 22 percent increase.

Over the same period, K-12th grade teachers decreased from 27,208 to 24,863, a 9 percent drop.

Concerned that the chart could be “misconstrued,” King explained that many of the administrators are hired for programs located at individual school sites and involve staffing for restorative justice and foster programs that the school board chose to focus on in the past. Also, with the Local Control Funding Formula, schools asked for more local programs requiring administrators, not teachers. Of the administrators, 1,723 are school based while 905 are not.

“We invested in administered accounts, such as more restorative justice and foster programs where the ratios are one person to 100 foster youth,” King said. “You can see how that starts to expand when you’re talking about training for restorative justice coordinators and such. It is important to remember what we invested in and why this is the outcome to where we put our dollars.”

Meanwhile, King noted that in the feedback from a New Principals Survey she received, it showed principals expressing frustration with a lack of clerical staff, a lack of time to complete tasks and limited opportunities for instructional training. “Principals say there are not enough hours in the day to get everything they need done and improve teaching and learning due to a lack of sufficient personnel,” King said.

Some of the school board members emphasized that such statistics only add to the common thought that the district is top-heavy with administrative staff. “I know that’s not true because I know there are 2,000 people who are out of that building in Beaudry (the school headquarters),” said board member Monica Garcia. “We are still digging ourselves out of the days we gave 36,000 pink slips at one time.”

Board member Scott Schmerelson pointed out that he has heard complaints from principals with 900 children that they have no help in the front office.

Pedro Noguera facilitates the special board meeting.

“We need more administrators at schools sites, and I’ve been told all the reasons why we can’t do this and when I look at this I see the gain of all the administrators since I’ve been on the board and I’m really concerned about this,” said Monica Ratliff. “Maybe we need to move them to some of the school sites because that is where people are suffering.”

King said there’s a freeze on creating central office positions and on filling vacancies as well as a shift of resources to the schools. Central office budgets have also been reduced for next year.

King said the theme she sees running through a lot of the dialogue she hears is that there is a need for more training for the entire workforce. She said there is a lack of continuity and lower productivity for staff because they have to train new people coming in, and so retaining people would save resources.

King also pointed out that classified staff and teachers were aging closer to the 64-year-old average retirement age. Most of the classified staff (employees who are not teachers or administrators) are in the 45-to-54 age bracket. Most of the teachers are in the 41-to-45 age group.

“Everyone is marching toward that line, and that’s another piece we need to be attentive to,” King said. “There is a teacher shortage coming, and unfortunately, this is a perfect storm.”

A majority of the school’s budget, nearly 80 percent, goes to salaries and benefits, according to Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly. That aligns with the standards of a major corporation of a similar size, she said.

School board President Steve Zimmer said, “While these are high percentages we often hear that a majority of the money goes to adults not kids, and that’s not true. It takes people to operate, so that we survive, and that’s normal. It’s an important context that we are a service delivery organization and we are not out of line with other organizations our size.”

Reilly pointed out that since 2008, there has been a 19 percent decline in staffing levels for both classified and certified staff, from a high of 79,000 employees. She pointed out that at the same time the district built 131 new schools.

The average base teacher salary now stands at $75,434; it was $63,188 in 2007-2008. Pension costs that now take up 5 percent of the general fund will take up 9 percent in 2020-2021.

Zimmer pointed out that the district targeted early retirement for some employees, but it didn’t offset the projected $127 million loss of revenue expected in 2016-2017. Only $36 million has been saved through staff reductions so far.

Smaller schools also cost more to maintain because of supplemental staff, and King said, “We must make a decision if we should continue to operate small schools. We are paying the same costs to run a smaller school, is that where we want the investment?”

King said she followed the Independent Financial Review Panel’s report in reducing the teacher pool to 170 teachers. The report stated last November that the teacher pool was down to about 100 teachers, and it recommended that it be eliminated, saving the district $10 million a year.

The teacher pool is a group of teachers who are not assigned to a specific school or were displaced from their school and are still on full salary until they are added to a school.

King also said she is increasing employee attendance, though she didn’t cite numbers. The review panel said only 75 percent of LA Unified staff had “strong attendance,” a figure that should be at 96 percent, it said. Improving that would save $15 million in substitute staffing costs.

Pedro Noguera, a Distinguished Professor of Education in UCLA’s graduate school who has been advising the district and helped moderate Tuesday’s discussion, said the board should have a different way of thinking about how to approach the problems in the district.

“Don’t think ‘our job is to save the district,’ but ‘our job is to transform the district,’ because it is not possible to retain it as is,” Noguera said. He suggested the district look at several potential partners such as other universities and the city. “Think about what takes us out of the gloom. Not what to cut next, but how to recreate the system.”

He added that some districts are dismantling a deteriorating school system, but LA Unified still can be helped. “You are at a crossroads,” said Noguera, whose team is compiling notes and concerns brought up by the board during the full-day meeting. “You have to put it all together and take a comprehensive look and the make a salient plan moving forward.”

The next special board meeting is scheduled for May 31.

Megan Reilly, Michelle King and Monica Ratliff at Tuesday’s special board meeting.

*UPDATE

With LA Unified heading toward financial crisis within three years, Superintendent Michelle King on Tuesday kicked off a series of special board meetings to detail her plans for fiscal solvency. Topping that list is keeping kids in the district. Notably absent was cutting staff.

King’s initiatives would initially cost the district — roughly $20 million. But the programs, if successful, would bring in about $40 million, her staff estimated. The district’s deficit is expected to be about $100 million by the 2017-2018 school year and hit $450 million in three years.

“It sounds like a lot to spend, but if we get double our investment back, or we may even get higher than that, it sounds good,” board member Scott Schmerelson said.

Key to King’s plans is boosting enrollment, which has declined by 100,000 in just the last six years. Her suggestions include: increasing attendance by one percent; creating a unified enrollment process to make it easier for families to enroll in local district magnet schools; adding magnet, dual language and International Baccalaureate programs; making more use of marketing campaigns to highlight district successes; scheduling more professional development for teachers, and increasing parent involvement.

Some of those projects are already in the works, while others King presented to the board Tuesday and asked for their guidance — and eventually their vote to fund them when the budget is approved in June.

“We need to prioritize when we know our resources,” King said. “We can’t do 20, not even do 10, but we can determine six of these are good and let’s do two.”

King’s plans were drafted in response to a blue ribbon Independent Financial Review Panel, commissioned by former Superintendent Ramon Cortines to outline problems and possible solutions for the district, and the first part of Tuesday’s meeting was devoted to where the budget is headed and why revenue is expected to decline. The panel had recommended that staff be cut to adjust to declining enrollments, but King is rejecting that, opting instead to decrease staff through attrition, retirement and leaving vacancies open, as well as a concerted effort to renew grants that have run out.

“We have to align ourselves to what the student population is, and we’re able to shrink the overhead by right-sizing,” King said.

Besides, she noted, the panel’s recommended staff cuts would have saved the district only $36 million, while the revenue loss due to declining enrollment is projected at $127 million in 2016-2017.

However, according to the review panel’s report, a loss of 100,000 students means district staff would need to be reduced by about 10,000 people, for a savings of about $500 million per year. The report pointed out that the district has instead grown its staff — to 64,348 full-time equivalent positions — increasing its costs for both salary and benefits.

Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said that increasing student enrollment alone will not solve the deficit projections. Board president Steve Zimmer noted, “We have had these discussions for six or seven years now. Declining enrollment, well, we can’t do anything to affect that.”

Board member Monica Ratliff said, “I’m a little bit concerned that the outcome of this report is dark. If there’s a loss of 100,000 students, we lose 10,000 staff, administrators and teachers and more.”

Reilly noted that at its height, the second-largest school district in the nation had just under 1 million students, including in adult education, but since 2002 it has lost 200,000 students. About half of the loss is attributed to lower birth rates, the rest to the growth of charter schools. About 100,000 LA students are enrolled in 211 independent charter schools, the largest concentration of charters in the country. There were 204,124 births in Los Angeles in 1990, but by 2011 they had declined to 130,312, Reilly said.

“We don’t have much control of the local birth rates, but we do with attendance and keeping the students going to school,” Reilly said.

Keeping kids in school was a main focus of King’s report. The financial review panel had stated that attendance is “the single most important driver of district revenues; more than 90 percent of district revenues are based upon actual attendance of students.”

Since 2002, the average daily attendance rate has increased by 3 percent, and a 1 percent increase in attendance would gain $40 million a year in state funding, Reilly said. LA Unified lags about 1.2 percent behind the state average and aims to bring the attendance rate up to 72 percent of students not missing more than a week of school a year.

King also discussed implementing a unified enrollment process that will make it easier for families to choose charter, magnet and pilot schools by putting them all on the same schedule. “We know magnets are popular, there are long waiting lists,” King said. “We want to understand the enrollment declines and why one would want to leave the district, and how we can address those concerns.”

A survey of students who are transferring to non-district schools found that 36 percent said they were leaving to go to schools with dual language programs and 30 percent went to schools that have an International Baccalaureate program. So King suggested offering more of those kinds of options.

She also proposed more marketing of positive messages about district schools, such as current campaigns that include a mobile billboard in Ratliff’s district for Arleta High School and that encourage students to wear T-shirts in the community so the schools are more visible.

The district also has campaigns that address chronic absences of students who miss 15 or more days of school, promote dental and eye care in the schools, and promote Restorative Justice programs to prevent bullying and encourage safe environments.

Board member George McKenna talked about some of the ways he turned around Washington Preparatory High School by offering incentives for teachers and extra pay to make phone calls to students and to work with them on weekends or after school.

Student school board member Leon Popa pointed out how parental involvement is important in increasing attendance rates. He said, “Working on improving parent integration into the school community could build more of a connection to the school.”

Ratliff said the state should be more involved in deciding where to allow charter schools so they’re not concentrated in one area. “I have no problem with charter schools, but the saturation is something we could bring up,” she said, noting that she had spoken with some charter school operators. “They thought that competition is good and just makes you stronger if we’re right next door.”

Ratliff added, “We must embrace them as real partners and have a more open relationship. The charter schools don’t want to see the district die. I don’t think they want to see our employees devastated. They just want to run schools. How can we work with them and give more autonomy to our principals? We make it so difficult with paperwork and checked boxes, and we must take a look at that in the long run.”

Zimmer added, “We need to connect with kids and their families so that they believe LAUSD is the best choice for their public education dream.”

Tuesday’s meeting, the first of at least four special meetings, was held at the LA ’84 Olympic headquarters and library in the West Adams district. The superintendent and school board members were seated around a table in a casual setting. Representatives of the search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, including president Hank Gmitro, took notes on large sheets of paper for the board members to review. Gmitro told LA School Report that this was part of the final portion of their contract with the district when they led the search for the new superintendent.

Board member Richard Vladovic pointed out that having the special meetings off-sight will probably lower the amount of public comment that the board will get prior to the meetings, keeping them shorter.

“If we have it downtown, we will have longer meetings and we will regret it,” Vladovic said.

The next meeting involving the budget is planned for May 3 at 1 p.m., with the location yet to be announced. The board is scheduled to vote on the overall budget on June 21.

*The unified enrollment process will not include charter schools.

Principal Aresa Allen-Rochester, Superintendent Michelle King and George McKenna at a January visit to Windsor Hills Elementary Math/Science Aerospace Magnet.

George McKenna is going into his 55th year as an educator, and he has a lot to say about it.

In fact, he declares: “Give me a school that’s supposedly poor-performing for three years and I guarantee you no charter school would be able to snatch any kids from that school, and no kids will want to leave that school. Now, I’m not bragging, but I can do it.”

Of course, he adds, “I’d have to have the flexibility to be able to do what charter schools do and be able to get the right teachers in there, but it can be done.”

McKenna, who started teaching math at LA Unified in 1962 and now sits on the school board of the second-largest district in the country, said he has some common-sense ideas for making schools better. His style is peppered with homespun anecdotes and folksy humor, sometimes referred to as McKenna-isms, but they also offer solid solutions.

McKenna remains critical of some structures of the institution that he now is a leader of, and he is skeptical of Common Core and and various district policies. He has succeeded in implementing some solutions, and he has failed at others. But at 75, he is still trying.

“You have to figure out what will make the students interested in coming to school,” McKenna said in an interview with LA School Report. “Why did kids like to come to my trigonometry class? I had jokes, and I try to show them the practical side to what they’re learning. I would have them figure out the height of a fence that they would have to jump if a dog was chasing them over it, things like that. I keep them entertained.”

Not all of his ideas succeeded. He wrote a bill for the California legislature to consider that would permit parents to take time off from work to visit schools and sit in classrooms. The measure didn’t get out of committees, but he still thinks it’s an important idea.

George McKenna talks with a parent.

INVOLVING THE PARENTS

“Parental involvement is one of the most important elements to a successful school,” McKenna said. He disagrees with the use of automated robo-calls or sending home flyers because parents rarely respond to them. Teachers need to call the homes of their students if they’re not coming to school, and if necessary the principal needs to make those calls too. “Parent involvement is crucial, and I believe if you have somebody sitting in the back of every classroom, smiling, education would improve 500 percent. That’s why I asked the business community to release parents to their schools for two hours a month to do that.”

When he took over a failing high school and turned it into Washington Preparatory High School, he had parents sign contracts with students and teachers that outlined specific goals and expectations. He implemented a dress code, cleaned up the graffiti and gang tagging and created an air of respect for each other and among the staff. That’s the model that became the subject of a movie, “The George McKenna Story” in which he is played by Denzel Washington.

Mandating homework was a challenge for both the teachers and the students, but it helped them create a structure. McKenna said he wanted to nationalize homework throughout the U.S. “That way no parent would ever have to ask, ‘It’s Monday night, do you have any homework?’ because Monday will be national Math Homework Day and maybe the TV stations will have instructional shows that night.”

SHARING WITH CHARTERS

One of the things McKenna said needs changing in the system is to share practices that work and are replicable. He said that would solve a lot of the problems between charter and traditional schools.

“We have more charter schools in my little pocket of District 1 than any other in the whole state. There’s a big concentration. It does keep traditional schools under-enrolled, and I wished that weren’t the case.”

Great Public Schools Now, a plan partly funded by the Broad Foundation to increase the number of high-performing schools in the district including through charters, is not as threatening to him as it is to others in the district. McKenna’s district, just south of downtown Los Angeles, is predominantly lower-income and mostly black and Latino. McKenna said, “I’m not worried about charter schools, it depends on your lens, it’s an alternative. We are all public schools, but we should ask ourselves why children want to go to charter schools, what are they seeking? We should encourage all to do better.”

He added, “Some charter schools take advantage of exclusivity and they go look for better students and they fill up and say they don’t have any more room. Then they have better test scores. Sometimes it’s separatism and classism that works for them.

“The educational system must be education for all, not a few. Not for some in the Silicon Valley, but not for the ones in Napa Valley picking crops. That is ridiculous.”

TEACHING THE TEACHERS

Teachers sit together in the lunchroom, ride in carpools and have their own cliques, but McKenna pointed out, “They have never been in each other’s classrooms to watch how they teach. It doesn’t matter if it’s a different subject, but it helps to see how teachers handle classroom management and see how good practices work first-hand.”

Allan Kakassy with his McKenna archives.

At Washington High School, teacher Allan Kakassy was skeptical at first of McKenna’s plans for the teachers. Once the union representative among the teachers, Kakassy said he heard many complaints from teachers who were concerned about extra work that McKenna required of them, including calling parents at home for students who needed more help, working extra hours or weekends to help with tutoring and turning in lessons plans for the next week every Friday afternoon. Kakassy, who was depicted in the movie about McKenna, became one of McKenna’s leading supporters. Now retired and living in the San Fernando Valley, Kakassy keeps a few boxes full of newspaper clippings, photos, videos and other memorabilia of McKenna’s heyday of teaching, and he still serves on committees in an advisory capacity.

“There were some teachers who were resistant to what McKenna was doing, but others saw positive changes,” he said. Within five years, only 20 of the 140 teachers at the school when McKenna took over were still there. The rest had either transferred or resigned.

McKenna said that it’s important to change the mindset of teachers who may blame the students, or the neighborhoods where they live. “There’s nothing wrong with the kids, we should go with that premise,” McKenna said.

“First you have to identify the problems,” McKenna explained. “If you don’t mind that the carpet is red, then there’s no problem. So if you don’t think it’s a problem that a lot of your students are truant and not coming to school, then there’s nothing to be solved there. That’s a problem.”

He added, “There’s nothing wrong with the kids. There is something wrong with the people who work in the school.”

QUESTIONING COMMON CORE

“A lot of training for teachers now involves Common Core, and that’s a methodology and shouldn’t be handicapping teaching,” McKenna said. “The outcome should have more flexibility.”

One of the problems McKenna sees with Common Core Standards is that the process eliminates some rote memorization. As a former math teacher, he said it is important to memorize the multiplication tables, for example, and that’s what gets you to algebra. “It’s a mystery to me why that is no longer driven into kids and they don’t know their multiplication tables anymore,” McKenna said. “And there are ways to make math fun.”

He doesn’t believe in the district’s policy of moving students from one level to the next when they aren’t sufficient in basic reading or math levels. “Maybe he’s a slow learner, maybe we are not effective teachers, but we shouldn’t be passing them up the line without doing a better job. We shouldn’t have ninth-graders with the skill sets of third- or fourth-graders. Can’t we keep them another year?”

McKenna with Steve Zimmer and other board members in December when the district closed the schools due to threats.

TEACHING SOCIAL JUSTICE

Another important part of McKenna’s ideal school includes the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus. He started social justice programs at Washington and that led to a drop in absenteeism to less than 10 percent because students knew it had become safer to attend classes.

“Anything that leads to helplessness and hopelessness also leads to violent behavior,” McKenna said. “And we’re all in it together.”

He added, “Honor students have an obligation to help their friends, their home boys to do better in school. They think they’re supposed to break dance and spin on their heads, but that’s only because we don’t have anything else to offer them. They need to all get high school diplomas.”

McKenna disagrees with the principals who seem like tough guys and walk the school hallways with a bat. “I’m 145 pounds and will not kick anybody’s butt, I’m not a bully,” he said. “Why not give them confidence and embarrass them with recognition when they do something good and read off their names on the intercom when it’s their birthday?”

He also sees value in including police and probation officers on campus. He had a police officer teach a class and work as an assistant football coach at Washington.

“Encourage a positive police presence on campus, that stops negative thoughts about it,” McKenna said. “It shows they are real human beings who will come to their dances, teach in the classrooms and maybe play basketball on occasion.”

McKenna is sworn in by Congresswoman Karen Bass.

SUPPORTING TEACHERS

“You don’t need doctors till you’re sick, you don’t need lawyers until you are in trouble, but you need teachers all the time,” McKenna said. He is supportive of professional development training, but he adds, “I do not believe in staff development of rotten teachers, I have no use for that.”

McKenna created the Zero Drop-Out resolution last year to eliminate students leaving high school.

“There’s now a commitment to let no child escape,” McKenna said. “If we can get to the point where we get no drop-outs, then that’s a success, and that’s different than 100 percent graduation.”

He also said he wants students to have the idea of going to college instilled at an early age, from first grade. “It should not be if you go to college, but where you’re going to college,” McKenna said.

He doesn’t believe that teachers shouldn’t hug or give a child an encouraging pat when they’ve done something good or need a hug. “Sure, I understand that there are strange people, but we’ve developed a system where we can’t touch a child, even if they need a hug, and that’s wrong,” McKenna said.

A final word of advice to principals and teachers: “Never initiate anything you can’t monitor. You must be able to monitor everything you try to do.”

McKenna said there’s a long way to go. “Public schools are the most powerful institution in America, they’re more powerful than Wall Street, more powerful than banks, more powerful than politics. It’s because it is one institution that requires by law that our children participate in it for 12 years. Children can’t drive, can’t drink, can’t vote, can’t have sex, can’t be out too late on street at nights, but they have to go to school otherwise they break the law, and the parents break the law. Some still don’t attend, and that’s truancy, and we want to correct that.”

He added, “We should know why they’re not there — and figure out ways of making them want to come back.”

Principal Joe Martinez with Carpenter Community Charter fifth-graders at a Studio City Neighborhood Council meeting.

Neighborhood councils in Los Angeles have served as easy and reliable sources of funds for public schools. The councils have $37,000 a year to dole out to the community, and many have set aside a portion of their budgets specifically for schools.

But recently some of the councils have learned of a restriction that would tie their hands in giving to schools.

The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), which runs the 97 unpaid councils, told them through the city attorney’s office that a state conflict-of-interest law would prohibit their boards from giving money to a school if even one of the 15 board members has a child going to the school. That could affect many neighborhood council districts, especially those that have only one middle or high school within their boundaries.

“It seems problematic,” said LA Unified school board member Monica Ratliff, mentioning the situation at a committee meeting last week. “That will impact our budget and the budget of the schools.”

She pointed out that if a school, for example, wanted to start a mariachi program, it could come to the neighborhood council to pay for costumes. This new ruling could “prevent the neighborhood councils from reviewing a request if there’s a member that is a parent at that school.” She asked staff to review the issue for their next Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee meeting.

Fellow board member Richard Vladovic pointed out that many schools go to the neighborhood councils to get money for special events or special needs.

For example, when students were going to paint a mural at Taper Avenue Elementary School, the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council gave them $1,500 to kick off the project. When Walter Reed Middle School needed expensive timpani drums for their school orchestra, the Studio City Neighborhood Council stepped up with $5,000. And when the garden at Eagle Rock Elementary dried up because of a broken irrigation system, the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council granted them $750 to fix it.

“The schools come to the neighborhood councils when they have a need,” said Garry Fordyce, who has served on the North Hills West Neighborhood Council and has started one of the few education committees among the councils. “We are a bit groundbreaking because we are reaching out to the schools to see their needs and how the neighborhood council can help.”

But Fordyce said that restricting councils from giving money to schools if a member had a child going to the school would be harmful. “That is a stupid law, and it would have destroyed the neighborhood council system,” said Fordyce. “You want people to get involved, and I think the city attorney’s office overreacted at first when they told us this.”

DONE issued a statement last week that made the potential for conflict less daunting, according to Steven Box, DONE’s director of outreach and communication. “The concern would be if only one person’s child who is on the board would benefit from the grant to the school,” Box said.

In the clarification, DONE noted that the city attorney’s office “does not believe that the conflict of interest laws would preclude a [grant] being provided to a school for a general item that is available to all students, e.g., if the grant is for a playground, a board could award the [grant] even if the board member’s child will use the equipment.”

DONE recommends that the board member “disqualify himself or herself so as to avoid any issue under the common law bias doctrine and/or any appearance of a conflict. Disqualification means the board member may not nominate his/her child’s school to receive the grant, may not negotiate with fellow board members to nominate the schools of each other’s children” and more.

Fordyce and some other council members still find the wording restrictive and isolating, but they said they’re going to have to work with it.

Number of concussions at LAUSD schools for the past two years.

Rising concussion numbers have spurred LA Unified to examine how to better monitor head injuries and ensure the safety of student athletes.

“I love football,” said board member Richard Vladovic, who noted that this week the NFL for the first time recognized a link between football and brain disorders. “But I’m very concerned about long-term effects on our children. We need to look at this for our children and warn families of the risks.”

The Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee asked for a report on sports safety with the possibility of bringing additional safety recommendations to the full board. Their call comes in the wake of last year’s Will Smith biopic “Concussion” about the doctor who brought the issue to light.

The LA Unified statistics presented Tuesday to the committee show that 222 concussions or possible concussion injuries have occurred so far this year, compared to 199 for the entire 2014-2015 school year. But it doesn’t mean that more concussions have occurred, only that the district has better ways of identifying and reporting them.

LA Unified has 30,000 students involved in 14 sports from golf to water polo. Cheering will become an official sport districtwide in the 2017-2018 school year.

“We feel these are only a portion of actual concussions,” said the district’s director of student medical services, Dr. Kimberly Uyeda. “I think we are doing better in collecting the data.”

Trenton Cornelius and Dr. Kimberly Uyeda

Trenton Cornelius, the district’s Interscholastic Athletics Coordinator, noted that the statistics may be alarming and said more concussions occur in soccer than football. He said, “It appears like we are doing worse, but we are getting better with treatment and diagnosis about concussions. Our athletic personnel are trained, and it is due to the training that we see the concussion numbers have increased. I fully expect this trend will decline as more safety protocols are in place. We see an increase because now there is education and training to diagnose and report, so this is the only way that we have documentation to see that these kids are treated.

In the past, students who were hit on the field and knocked down but say they are OK would be put back into the game immediately, but that doesn’t happen anymore, insisted Earl Perkins, the assistant superintendent for school operations. He said that six high schools have medically trained personnel at games through a pilot program, and they hope to expand that in the future.

“You don’t have to be unconscious to have a concussion. There are subtle signs that people who are trained appropriately can pick up,” said Uyeda. She said that the district is guided by state laws, strict guidelines and forms required by the district. “The conventional wisdom you have to be knocked out is long gone. Our professional development and continual training are important.”

The new MiSiS computer system coordination is expected to help track students who have a history of head injuries as they go from sport to sport, but the record-keeping has only now begun, Cornelius said.

“In the last few years we have had the ability to track [students with multiple concussions], but that’s only as good as the reporting,” Uyeda said.

Coach Manuel Douglas of the championship Narbonne High School football team said he was not concerned about the school board looking into the sport’s safety. He and his staff have been regularly trained on medical signs, and their helmets and shoulder pads are inspected annually like at every LA Unified school.

“Football is a violent game,” Douglas said. “Knock on wood, we have not had many concussions. We train differently, so that it’s not as likely we’ll get as many head injuries. We’re not always a full-go contact during practices.”

Even volunteer coaches, such as Narbonne’s volunteer assistant coach Brandon Manumaleuna, must meet a full list of fingerprint and background checks and have training in CPR, concussions and other first-aid care on a regular basis.

“I don’t expect that they’ll take football out of the school district,” Douglas laughed.

In fact, school board member George McKenna pointed out, “When we have budget cuts and we talk about cutting athletics, the community rises up like nothing else. They’d rather not go to school five days a week than cut athletics.”

Every student participating in sports must have a medical clearance before they join a team. State laws have specific procedures that don’t allow students to return to play for at least seven days after a concussion, and only with outside medical approval.

“It makes it so that there are no mistakes and that a student is not allowed to play sooner than they should,” Uyeda said. “It is not determined by the school or a coach.”

Vladovic said he thinks there should be a warning to all parents. “I don’t want to take dreams away, but we also have legal obligations.”

The district has strict rules about playing and practicing in the heat and when games are delayed due to high or low temperatures. Also, because of concerns about child abuse such as in a case in Torrance Unified School District, Cornelius assured the committee that “there are no procedures where any athlete would be disrobed either fully or partially.”

The athletics staff was asked to come back to the committee in May to give details about the forms that families are asked to sign and the warnings parents are given about students playing sports. They also wanted to know details about how it is determined when a student can no longer play sports after suffering too many injuries.

Board member Monica Ratliff, who admitted she is not necessarily a football fan, added, “We want to make sure our students are safe while out there.”

A civic group protesting the military-style weapons once held by LA Unified police said they will continue to disrupt meetings and hold demonstrations until they get answers and action.

The group, Fight for the Soul of the Cities, took over a committee meeting at the LA Unified school board headquarters last month, and this week held a loud protest of about 50 students, parents and teachers outside Tuesday’s board meeting shouting chants and banging drums.

“We do not believe that the district has taken away all the weapons, and we are asking for more,” said the group’s director of organizing, Manuel Criollo. “We will not stop the protests and disruptions.”

The group is protesting the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which allowed surplus military equipment to be used by the schools. It was a solution for unused equipment by President Obama’s administration to help small police agencies.

“We do not believe that they sneaked the guns away in the middle of the night, we need proof of that,” said Criollo, who doesn’t believe the district’s answer that they are no longer involved with the program.

At one point, under Superintendent John Deasy, the school police force had a small tank (more accurately, a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle) and automatic weapons as well as three grenade launchers.

LA Unified Police Chief Steven Zipperman stated that on Feb. 5, “the last remaining ‘1033’ equipment items within the LASPD inventory (rifles) were returned to the inventory of the Defense Distribution Depot.”

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, P.J. Webb, president of the Los Angeles School Police Management Association, said, “Your police department is completely out of the Department of Justice’s 1033 program, the chief has returned the last of the equipment, and we are done with this.”

Webb said the rifles and other equipment were old and worn out and weren’t usable anyway, and they became a distraction for the board because of the protests. “It caused such a disruption for this board.” He noted the positive programs the police force has been involved in around restorative justice, a reduction in arrests and suspensions and confiscating hundreds of weapons on or near campus each year preventing possible tragedies.

“Let’s focus on providing quality education and put this to rest,” Webb said.

Alex Caputo-Pearl , president of the UTLA teachers’ union, asked the school board to take a national leadership role on the issue and said, “Positive work can be done with the students and community organizations.”

He wrote a letter in support to the school board and superintendent stating, “At a time when the national political debate is poisoned with explicit attacks on communities of color and tremendously dangerous racialized language and policy proposals, LAUSD could make a powerful statement that we need more support for our students and our communities, rather than investments in chilling programs like the 1033 program.”

Students and other activists protest the 1033 program.

Criollo said he asked the school board members to suspend their meeting at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday to come out to meet with the students and talk to them at a nearby grassy area. (The school board meeting lasted until after 8 p.m.)

“They are always telling young people to take responsibility for themselves, and the board is not taking their own responsibility by refusing to meet here with us,” said Criollo said, who pointed out that the students at the protest were from all across the district, from the west side to South Central. “We are not finished, we want a public apology.”

The group is also asking for the school police force to be reduced be half, reparations by cutting all school police weapons by 50 percent, and a response from President Obama that the 1033 program will be terminated.

Eric Mann, the executive director of the group, which is sponsored by the Labor/Community Strategy Center, led the disruption at the Committee of the Whole last month, challenging school board member George McKenna, who was advised of the planned protest.

“If they want to come to protest, that is their right, we will hear them,” McKenna told LA School Report before the meeting. But later he said, “They were rude and disruptive, so I suspended the meeting, and we went away until I let them have their say. I may agree with them on a lot of what they’re saying, but the way they went about it is all wrong.”

School board president Steve Zimmer praised McKenna’s handling of the situation, and school police watched the protest for more than half an hour in the board room.

At this point, the school district considers the matter settled, but Fight for the Soul of the Cities said it is not over for them.

Steve Zimmer at Mosk Elementary School.

LA Unified is making no bones about wanting to change the chicken industry, and federal officials visiting the district Thursday say they’re on their way to doing it.

LA Unified became the first large school district in the nation to contract for antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken and turkey in a vote Tuesday. On Thursday, visiting dignitaries from the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that such a bold move could have a direct effect on the way poultry is handled in the country.

“The district uses their leverage because of their great volume, and other districts take a look at what they’re doing, and that is how things get changed,” said Kevin Concannon, Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. “It takes leadership to make this happen.”

The leadership came from school board president Steve Zimmer, who is seeing the culmination of more than two years of work since getting the Good Food Procurement resolution passed that supports local farmers and local economies and seeks alternatives to foods that are genetically modified or hormone-filled.

“We are trying to change the industry,” Zimmer told LA School Report after a meeting at Stanley Mosk Elementary School with the undersecretary about expanding free lunches in the district. “We have the courage to make this investment, and then the rest of the nation will follow and eventually the industry-wide expectation is that it will be hormone free and antibiotic free.”

The cost will be higher, in fact about 67 percent higher, than the chicken the district has purchased in the past from Tyson Foods, said Laura Benavidez, interim Food Service Division deputy co-director. The new contract is with Gold Star Foods from Perdue Farms in Ontario, Calif.

“The cost will become less and less of an issue as more districts join us,” Zimmer said.

Tyson Foods spokesman Gary Mickelson said in a statement that the company was the first to qualify for the Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use certification from the USDA, and added, “In addition, we announced that we’re striving to eliminate the use of human antibiotics from our U.S. broiler chicken flocks by the end of September 2017, and we plan to annually report on our progress.”

LA Unified serves 700,000 meals a day, which include favorites like chicken teriyaki and chicken drumsticks. Over the past decade, the school board required more nutritious meals with less fat, salt and sugar, plus additional servings of fresh fruits, vegetables and more meat-free options, such as Meatless Mondays, which is part of the school menu. Chocolate and other flavored milks have been replaced by low-fat or nonfat milk, and sodas and junk food are no longer for sale at schools.

“The passing of the resolution shows the bold steps this school district is taking to ensure the health and wellness of students,” Benavidez said. “Providing the best possible, highest-quality food for students shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right.”

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, student board member Leon Popa said that he learned in school about Tyson products and was concerned about the antibiotics. “What I learned in school was really horrendous, and the problem continues to grow,” Popa said.

Zimmer noted that he has heard similar feedback from high school students who want to know where their food is coming from. “We have to be far, far, far more nutritiously aware at school, so when they go home they can say something if all they have is access to hormone- and antibiotic-pumped meats.”

Zimmer said, “Chicken is the first frontier, and we are looking to change this. We are looking to leverage our power as the largest public sector procurer to make sure that we’re changing not only the school food industry, but the poultry industry as a whole.”

What’s next? Zimmer said, “I worry about beef, but not nearly as much as poultry.”

And Zimmer said he is not concerned about putting some companies out of business. He said, “If Netflix didn’t knock down Blockbuster, there would be no ‘House of Cards.’”

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!”

To help a model charter school expand into high school, the LA Unified school board took unprecedented steps Tuesday night to cobble together a plan, concocting at least half a dozen proposals and amendments during a lengthy and at times contentious discussion. District staff had recommended that the board reject the school’s petition.

Ultimately, the charter school was approved for three years, against the recommendations of not only the district’s charter school review staff but also Superintendent Michelle King and school board president Steve Zimmer, in whose district the school is located.

Michelle King and Steve Zimmer were still discussing the charter vote long after Tuesday’s meeting ended.

This was the third time in two meetings that the board voted for charters against staff recommendations. The robust debate both this and last month indicates that the board, which has been recently criticized for voting against charters, is trying to help charters they find effective, even if they don’t meet all LA Unified qualifications.

About 80 students, teachers and parents from Westside Innovative School House Inc. (WISH) elementary and middle schools in Westchester cheered and applauded the decision after some of them had waited more than eight hours before the board took up the issue. The vote was four in favor of allowing the school to try a high school for three years, two against, with Zimmer abstaining.

The vote followed a frenzied debate where sidebar conversations were happening in different parts of the school board auditorium and ended as board member Monica Garcia was standing near a back door to leave early because she was the keynote speaker at a Linked Learning Showcase at a local high school. It was her plan for the WISH high school that eventually passed.

After the meeting, Zimmer and King remained in their seats for nearly half an hour talking about the evening’s drawn-out discussion.

“We deeply care about the kids, this was not a charter or anti-charter issue, it was very complicated,” Zimmer told LA School Report. WISH is in his district, and he supports what they have done, but he remains concerned that the school cannot handle the leap to starting a high school just yet. Zimmer offered a proposal that WISH students attend Venice High School beginning in the fall in a “full inclusion model that would be comparable to the WISH model.” His five-part proposal would also expedite money for disability access to the classrooms because WISH is noted for having a high percentage of students in wheelchairs.

Zimmer thought this was the best deal for the school and could solve the problem of not yet having classrooms for their new high school. But the board rejected it.

“Unfortunately, the board was very divisive and disrespectful in not giving any credence to the board member who knows their district the best,” Zimmer said. He added, “Not one of my colleagues has the enrollment pressures in high schools like I have on the Westside. They did not defer to my valid perspective.”

It was the latest chapter of battles over charters going on throughout the district. In the last week, 30 charter organizations signed a letter supporting WISH’s charter petition. The district is facing declining enrollment while dealing with well-funded proposals to increase charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated.

WISH families and teachers after the vote.

“Everyone is in such a bunkered battleground,” Zimmer said.

“I abundantly support the school, but this vote doesn’t mean their problems are solved,” he said. “When I abstained, I did not vote against the school, I just in good conscience could not vote for a plan that did not have a real strategy to succeed.”

But WISH’s executive director, Shawna Draxton, said she was thrilled by the board’s turnaround and accepted the three-year commitment for the high school, although she would have preferred five years, which is standard for such charter school proposals at the district.

“I am grateful for the vote, and we will continue to work with the district,” Draxton said. “At this point, we do not have a place for the high school students to go to this fall, but we will find a place.”

The two other WISH schools share spaces on traditional LA Unified campuses, and WISH did not apply for space under Prop. 39 in time for this fall for the new high school, which is supposed to start with 84 students and eventually serve up to 336 students in ninth through 12th grades.

Monica Garcia holding sidebar conversations during the meeting.

California Charter Schools Association‘s Sarah Angel said she was very encouraged by the school board’s discussion and decision. “The board was really compelled to make it work,” she said. “The success of this national model is that all students can learn together, and WISH can be replicated in schools everywhere.”

WISH allows the teachers to have modest autonomy and includes all students with moderate and severe disabilities mixed in with other students. It wouldn’t have worked at Venice High School, the WISH team explained. WISH so far has a high concentration of students with special needs and ethnic diversity and shows test scores higher than the district average.

But the district’s charter school review team was concerned about declining net assets and expenses exceeding income in three of the past four years. The staff report shows that the submitted budget for the new high school projects a net loss of more than $48,000 in the startup year.

José Cole-Gutiérrez, director of LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division, said his staff recommended rejecting the petition in part because of the financial situation of WISH, and also thought they did not have the commitment for enough students to start the high school. “Their record of projections are overly optimistic and have not materialized in fact,” Cole-Gutiérrez said. “Compounding that, in the report they have no facilities plan and, especially on the Westside, that is a challenge.”

Board member Scott Schmerelson apologized to Cole-Gutiérrez and his staff, saying he felt they were “treated as if you were fools and buffoons and did not know what you are talking about” by other board members. “I apologize for the way I saw you being treated,” he said.

Nearly every board member had a different plan for the school to get around rejection. Richard Vladovic suggested simply adding a ninth grade to their present charter plan and allowing them to come back next year to reapply for a full high school.

Monica Ratliff suggested the school consider becoming a pilot school, and Superintendent King suggested the school become an affiliated charter school. Both options would give LA Unified more control, such as with teacher salaries and hiring processes. WISH administrators turned down those offers in the past.

Being part of the district would not allow WISH to receive a state startup grant of $575,000, which the school was promised once the district approved their petition. WISH’s Draxton said the school will now get the money with the board’s three-year decision.

At one point during the discussion, board members seemed to lean toward giving the school only a one-year tryout.

Newly appointed King, who last week talked about a healing between charter and non-charter factions at a town hall meeting in the San Fernando Valley, proposed a solution of approving WISH for one year and discussing a possible affiliated charter status. “We could help them with staff and extra experts that they would have access to,” King suggested. “They can have their own program and still realize the benefits of being part of a larger school.”

Her plan was also rejected.

WISH families waiting in the audience.

Ref Rodriguez, who has created charter schools, said his staff analyzed WISH’s financial history and explained that most of the problems were with one 6th-grade program. But he said he was also concerned that the petition submitted by supporters of the school did not include their “intent to enroll, and I need to hear about that.”

George McKenna, who ultimately voted against the three-year plan, said he thought WISH should go to Venice and withdraw their petition. He was concerned that making an exception for WISH would be unfair to other charter applications past and future.

“There is a lot of passion and I am concerned about facts,” McKenna said. “I have feelings too. I am concerned that the process is fair to all charters. … I”m frustrated about the way we are doing this. Why do we have staff making reports? I also care about what the children say, and how great they think the school is, but that will not sway me.”

Nevertheless, a litany of children, including one who was unable to speak clearly, presented their case to the board and even addressed specific board members on video.

“WISH should have a high school because it’s a powerful community that pushes students to do their best,” said 8th grader Oliver Drexel.

Ivey Steinberg, mother of a 7th grader confined to a wheelchair, said her son Jack has a 4.0 grade-point average because he thrives in an inclusive environment. She said her neighborhood school wasn’t accessible and she had no other options.

Suzanne Goldstein, parent founder of WISH, said the school should have no problem getting its high school enrollment. “I appreciate this robust discussion and want to have inclusive schools everywhere. We have done our best to date.”

A WISH 5th-grade teacher, Pilar Chavez, said she found her calling at WISH and spoke to the board about a student who couldn’t read. “He wanted to be taught, and the WISH classmates all participated and within a year he was reading at a 3rd-grade level,” Chavez said. “You need to have every teacher involved in inclusive education, and it takes working countless hours to make it happen.”

The vote ultimately was for a three-year authorization with reviews every year, as suggested by Garcia. It was seconded by Vladovic. Ratliff and Rodriguez agreed; Schmerelson and McKenna voted against it, and Zimmer abstained. Student board member Leon Popa, whose vote is advisory, voted in favor.

The vote weighed heavy on Zimmer. “I absolutely and completely as a board member say this district supports the WISH model,” he said. “I have been personally moved by it, and it has helped me to change as an educator. … To say that WISH is valued, well respected, doesn’t even cover it.”

Zimmer said he preferred that WISH would have made some deal with the district before the messy public meeting.

“The board all wanted to put kids first, and we were all forced to think out of the box,” Zimmer said. “I hope and pray they figure this out.”

Demonstrators disrupt LAUSD committee.

LA Unified has returned the last of the military-style weapons it received under a controversial federal program.

The news was released in a letter Tuesday, which stated that as of Feb. 5 the last of the weapons, demilitarized rifles, were back in federal custody.

The letter from LA Unified Police Chief Steven Zipperman was addressed to Eric Mann, president of Fight for the Soul of the Cities. Mann and 10 other demonstrators from the group temporarily shut down an LA Unified committee meeting Tuesday afternoon demanding that the district account for any military-style weapons on school campuses.

When Committee of the Whole president George McKenna opened the meeting shortly after 2 p.m., Mann and the others, dressed in blue shirts, stood at the podium to address the school board members on the committee and Superintendent Michelle King, who was also at the meeting. McKenna asked everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and Mann tried to interrupt it.

Eric Mann leads protest.

There is a speaker card system at LA Unified meetings where anyone is allowed three minutes to discuss any topic or agenda item, but the group refused to follow the procedures.

McKenna asked the group to be seated and said he had met with them previously, but the protesters kept shouting and chanting. After three warnings, McKenna said he was suspending the meeting.

“I’m not sure what this was about or why this was done in this fashion,” McKenna said. “In some ways I’m very sympathetic to the cause, but I hope we can discuss this without disruptions and we can present the facts as opposed to the feelings.”

When the meeting was closed and the committee members walked out, the protesters stood at the front of the LAUSD board room and spoke about their demands to end the federal government’s 1033 Program, which assigned weapons to school districts.

“We want them to meet our demands and we want reparations and totally dismantle 1033,” shouted Barbara Lott-Holland, one of the protesters.

The other demands include a full history and accounting of the weapons that the police officers still have, what was returned and severing ties with the program. They want a pubic apology and reparations, including a 50 percent cut in the police force, and want President Obama to terminate the entire 1033 program.

“We got rid of the program,” McKenna said to the protesters as he was walking out. The LA school police — the largest school police force in the nation and fifth-largest police force in California — possessed three grenade launchers, a mine-resistant vehicle and dozens of M-16s. In response to criticism, LA Unified got rid of the grenade launchers and vehicle it had obtained through the program but kept the assault rifles. The federal government also severely restricted the program.

Zipperman’s letter on the 1033 program stated that LA Unified had ended its involvement in the federal program and last summer stopped procurement of weapons from the program. Zipperman stated that he could not put on display or destroy the weapons as they were now in federal custody.

During the demonstration in the board room, it was emptied out except for a handful of people as the demonstrators spoke. The live TV feed was cut off, and administrator Earl Perkins did a five-minute countdown to clear the room. Six LAUSD police officers lined the room and allowed the protesters to talk for about half an hour.

Eric Mann shouts to Earl Perkins as George McKenna walks out.

“This won’t be the last time we will have a demonstration like this,” Mann told LA School Report after they marched outside. “They can’t handle us so they walked away. They don’t know how to be equal.”

The group disrupted the full school board meeting for about 20 minutes in July, and afterward board members went to talk to the activists.

After holding the room and speaking, the protesters marched out and held demonstrations outside the headquarters at 333 S. Beaudry. They plan further demonstrations and an art exhibit after the meeting later in the afternoon.

“I want to thank the police department here and Earl Perkins for keeping the decorum of the room during whatever that was,” McKenna said when he returned and re-started the meeting.

Isabelle Medina told the school board, “Take care of my family as if they were your family.”

The second largest school district in the nation went on record last week saying it won’t allow law enforcement agents looking to deport those without documentation into any of its 1,274 schools without a review process.

The LA Unified School Board voted unanimously to make the district a “safe zone.” The district is not the first. Across the nation from San Francisco Unified to Montgomery County, Md., school districts have made the same declarations in recent weeks.

It’s significant here because about 74 percent of LAUSD students are Latino, and an estimated 10 percent of LA’s population is in the city illegally. “I appreciate when we try to take a leadership role in situations like this,” said board member Monica Ratliff. Fellow board member and teacher Monica Garcia was adamant about her response if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up asking for information about her students.

“When ICE comes to my school, I’ll say, ‘You sit right down and I’ll call somebody,’” Garcia said. “You don’t have access to my kids!”

The resolution that was passed:

• Forbids agents from coming on campus without review and not before a decision is made by the superintendent and the LAUSD lawyer’s office.
• Forbids school staff to ask about a student’s immigration status or that of family members.
• Provides teachers, administrators and other staff training on how to deal with immigration issues and how to notify families in multiple languages of issues.
• Asks all schools to treat students equitably, including those receiving free and reduced lunches, transportation and other services.
• Requires the superintendent to come up with a plan in 90 days to provide assistance, information and safety for students and families “if faced with fear and anxiety related to immigration enforcement efforts.”

The resolution was presented by school board president Steve Zimmer, who said he doesn’t usually bring up such proposals.

“I don’t do it lightly, the chairman doesn’t usually bring up resolutions like this,” Zimmer said. He felt that decisions pending with the Supreme Court about immigration laws and the fear-mongering banter at presidential debates have led to high anxiety at school campuses.

“I hear the vitriol and hate that is part of the political dialogue on TV and radio waves literally every morning, noon and night,” Zimmer said. “It is creating anxiety with students, parents, families and school communities. I ask that we stand with our families in this important moment. I want every child and every family to feel safe in our schools.”

Zimmer said another thing that prompted the resolution was a crackdown by ICE agents on undocumented immigrants in the past few months. Although ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said in a statement that they wouldn’t be going to schools, there is still mistrust among the families.

“They [ICE] change their policies, they change their practices,” said Maria Elena Durazo, the general vice president for immigration, civil rights and diversity of Unite Here International Union, which represents food service handlers and other workers at schools. “We can’t allow our immigrant families and youth to have their studies disrupted by unjust raids. People running for president are speaking this hate, calling us rapists and so many other names and calling for the registry of Muslims. It is outrageous.”

For Isabelle Medina, it means that she can attend adult school without being asked about her undocumented status, and if her children come home and find that their mom is gone, she feels relieved knowing that they can now go to the school for help.

“You need to make sure my family feels safe and can continue to go to school every morning,” said Medina, breaking into tears as she spoke to the school board. “What will happen if I get picked up? Take care of my family as if they were your family.”

Medina, who is a member of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said she taped a list of emergency numbers on her refrigerator door for her children in case she is detained. She said the “safe zone” declaration by LAUSD was more than just a symbolic gesture. She said the resolution now gives teeth to teachers and principals to help families.

“Teachers can only do so much when a child is having this trauma because his parent is deported,” Medina said.

For Pedro Trujillo, it means his friends at Bravo High School and other LA schools can continue to study without fear of being dragged out and sent across the border by ICE agents. Trujillo, a youth organizer for the California Dream Network, said the resolution is a big relief. He told the board, “You are reassuring families that you have an ally and working with them.”

(Photo: Immigration and Customs Enforcement website)

Although Zimmer said he drafted the resolution with input from school police and the school attorney’s office, he noted that some revisions were still being requested before it was passed. Chief LAUSD attorney David Holmquist was concerned that the investigative agencies had to bring proof that a crime was in progress when they came to a school, which was unlikely to happen. He advised taking the decisions out of the hands of the school principals and referring agents to his office and the superintendent before allowing access to any school.

“I’m concerned that principals in our schools will have to make judgment calls without input from our office, and that is not the best thing to do,” Holmquist said. “We want principals to comply with the law.”

The school board accepted the attorney’s changes and listened to other input from the community.

Juan Flecha, now president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles which represents principals at schools, told a story about being brought over from Tijuana at 2 weeks old and how his parents struggled to naturalize him.

“I am extremely passionate about this resolution,” Flecha said. “When I was 7 years old in Parmelee Avenue Elementary School we heard the media frenzy of ‘la migra’ taking kids and entire families away. The fear that youngsters experience really hit home with me.”

UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl said the teachers union is “proud to be part of the movement of pushing back at the inhumanity of ICE raids and the threat to separate families. Schools as safe zones is exactly in the community spirit that we support.”

Pedro Trujillo, a youth organizer with California Dream Network, praised the board for “reassuring families.”

Service Employees International Union Local 99 spokesman Lester Garcia pointed out that his service employees and school aides are among the first people that families meet when they come to school campuses. “People trust schools more than they do parks or hospitals or any public agency,” he said. “They are more likely to share their story than in any city or county building.”

Garcia said that the resolution means that he can post reliable information in parent centers at schools to keep unscrupulous “so-called lawyers” from preying on families and “drive them deeper into a hole.”

Garcia added, “This is more than sending a message, this is showing that the district is willing to equip them with tools they need to provide accurate information.”

Board member Richard Vladovic pointed out that families should also not fear sharing information about the federal free lunch program. “We want to make sure all children are being fed, we are not sharing that information with anybody,” he said.

Board member Ratliff was reminded of her mother coming from Mexico when they lived in Arizona and the fear she felt when once detained at the border after visiting Mexico.

“I know how afraid I was then, and we had all our documents,” Ratliff recalled. “I can only imagine the terror when they are afraid of deportation and afraid of immigration.”

Zimmer nodded after hearing the story and said, “Make our schools free of terror.”

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.”

According to internal district reports obtained by LA School Report, an estimated 54 percent of seniors are on track to meet their “A through G” requirements. The actual graduation rate could be even lower as there are several other requirements to graduate.

While the estimate is a stark drop from last year’s all-time high of 74 percent, it has been known for years that the district was facing a steep decline this year, when stricter graduation requirements went into effect.

But while the drop was anticipated, the recent internal reports showing a 27 percent plunge from last spring’s rate elicited an alert from the superintendent directing urgent new steps, including weekly updates from staff and letters sent monthly to parents, starting in February, informing them of the necessary courses that need to be completed.

The district would not disclose how many seniors had received “off track” letters this month. According to data available in October, the district had 33,420 seniors in the 2015-16 school year, meaning an estimated 15,373 would currently be off track for graduation.

The new estimate does not reflect progress by a $15-million credit recovery program begun last fall that puts students in specials classes after school and during breaks to help them pass classes they previously failed. District leaders in November had reported an extremely high participation rate in the program and predicted a high pass rate, which if proves true could land the 2016 graduation rate close to last year’s.

Still, despite the optimism over the ongoing credit recovery program, Superintendent Michelle King wrote in a January email to local district superintendents, “This is ‘all hands on deck.'” The email was sent a week after she was installed as superintendent, and King also created a timeline that calls for regular updates to her office as well as benchmarks for the district to meet between now and the end of the semester.

King inherited a number of major district problems, but perhaps none more urgent than the pending graduation crisis. In the memo, King said that “my top priority is ensuring that all students graduate and complete A-G requirements.”

She added, “This [54 percent estimate] will likely increase in the coming weeks as a result of the constant monitoring, additional resources to schools, and ongoing credit recovery efforts you have coordinated. Nonetheless, if even one student fails to graduate, that is one too many — we cannot rest until every student graduates college-prepared and career-ready.”

Another district report obtained by LA School Report includes a school-by-school breakdown of estimated graduation rates and shows that some schools are facing a daunting challenge. The Foshay Learning Center (91 percent) and Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet (81 percent) are well ahead of last year’s 74 percent graduation rate for the district, while others like Dorsey High (41 percent) and Verdugo Hills High (43 percent) are far behind.

The new A-G graduation standards were drawn up by the board in 2005. The standards, which require students to pass a series of classes making them eligible for admission into California’s public universities, go into effect for the first time this year. The 2005 board thought that 11 years was enough time for the district to improve its curriculum efforts to meet the raised bar, but it was not.

In the face of the pending graduation dropoff, the school board amended the requirements in June so that students only need to earn a “D” in the A-G classes and not the “C” that would be required for college eligibility starting in 2017. The move was a significant concession by the board, as the entire purpose of the A-G curriculum was to get more students into college. This year’s class was always to be allowed a “D” to meet A-G requirements.

The June resolution reaffirming the board’s commitment to A-G called on the superintendent’s office to develop a long-term plan set to begin in the 2016-2017 school year, leaving the class of 2016 caught somewhat in the middle and without much help but for the credit recovery program.

An A-G task force also produced a comprehensive report in the fall that calls on detailed and wide-ranging improvements the district needs to make to improve A-G completion, but much of it is also broader and long-term without much immediate help for the class of 2016.

The new 54 percent estimate — which includes all data from the fall semester — is a bump from the last available district estimate, which in October showed 49 percent of seniors were on track with A-G. But with only marginal improvement over the fall semester, it is clear that the credit recovery program is key to making any significant increase before the spring semester concludes.

Frances Gipson, the district’s chief academic officer, wrote in an email to LA School Report that the credit recovery program is going well.

“Superintendent King is monitoring our A-G progress with focused weekly meetings and updates,” said Gipson, who is in charge of the A-G implementation plan. “Students are currently enrolled in recovery options and are also successfully completing advanced courses. Our approach is about access, accomplishment and providing a personalized opportunity for our scholars.”

For credit recovery, each of the six local district superintendents was given the freedom to craft their own plan using a number of options, part of a decentralization effort that was put into place by former Superintendent Ramon Cortines. Each plan rolled out at a slightly different time throughout October and November, depending on the district.

Many of the credit recovery options are computer-based, like Edgenuity, which is being used on a wide scale. Students take the classes on Saturdays, during free periods or after school. The computer courses either have a teacher adding some instruction to go along with the computer program, known as blended learning, or it is or an all-online course, known as virtual learning.

In the fall, a high level of seniors missing A though G courses were signed up. For example, Gipson — who at the time was the Local District East superintendent before being promoted to her current role — reported that every senior short of an A-G course had been signed up for credit recovery in her district.

While Gipson reported that credit recovery is still going well in 2016, she did not offer any estimates as to what level it may impact the graduation rate.

“Our counselors and teachers are amazing. Local school leadership teams are rallying around our graduates, and our data points continue to increase,” Gipson said. “For example, over the winter break more than 800 student courses were recovered through our A-G localized plans.”

The credit recovery program, if it turns out to be as successful as has been predicted by district officials, is being achieved through the relatively modest cost of $15 million. When asked directly in the fall why the district hadn’t done anything like it before, Gipson said, “As we are coming out of one of the worst financial times in educational history, as a leader I’m happy it is happening now for kids and we can put the resources behind it to make sure it happens for kids.”