And, by next week five schools will receive iPads, laptops and Chromebooks. Another 30 schools are in line for their devices, 19,000 of them, said Sophia Mendoza, the interim director of the Instructional Technology Initiative at LAUSD.

This is all part of the steady progress that the district is making in expanding the use of technology in the classrooms in the aftermath of a botched $1.3 billion iPad program that effectively delayed the accelerated use of technology in classrooms by more than a year.

A report released yesterday by the American Institutes of Research revealed how a litany of problems with hardware, software, distribution, internet connectivity and training denied district students devices and the new approach to learning that district officials had promised. The effort was so plagued by challenges that one of the first things Ramon Cortines did when he replaced John Deasy as superintendent a year ago was rebrand the “Common Core Technology Project” to call it the “Instructional Technology Initiative.”

Change — and improvements – are coming. But slowly.

Cortines said in a statement that the 181-page report “points out areas of needed improvement that I have been aware of since my return to the district last October. Many of the recommendations in the report have already been addressed or are being addressed. We have improved the deployment at the school sites.”

For example, most of the 70,000 tech devices have been delivered to the “one-to-one” schools designated for a device for every student by the time school started in mid-August. By the middle of this month they should all be distributed. That’s quite a bit faster than the months-long process it took to hand out 47,000 devices in the entire 2014-2015 school year.

At a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon with new and longtime leaders in the the district’s technology departments, administrators described some of the progress, as well as the remaining issues facing the district in completing the project. So far, 101 schools are participating in the program to get an iPad, Chromebook or laptop to every student and teacher on campus, and allow them to take the devices home.

The students and teachers are going through a rigorous training (which was previously recommended by the report) to teach them to become responsible “digital citizens.”

“We are showing the students how to take pride and responsibility over the use of these devices, so no, they won’t be using them as Frisbees,” said Bill Wherritt, a Facilities Division official who is overseeing the device deployment to the schools.

Mendoza said that schools next month will have a Citizen Action Week which “is a big kickoff for students, teachers and staff to train them in the behaviors we want to continue to instill in our students, not just for one week, but for the entire year.”

Before a school can get these devices, they have to have a strategic plan showing how the computers will be used for instruction, how parents will be involved and have a person assigned to track the devices and oversee training.

Mendoza and Linda Del Cueto, chief of Professional Learning and Leadership Development, were among the tech executives who attended a principal’s meeting yesterday to explain some of the procedures. Principals were surprised that the process could be so quick.

“We are improving and expanding to not just a one-to-one device school but expanding technology district wide,” Del Cueto said. “We are very deliberately making connections with local district staffs, speaking at principal meetings and making everyone aware of what we are doing.”

In the two years since the tech program has begun, 150,000 devices have been bought by the district, and schools have purchased another 85,000 outside of the program through local fundraising, grants and donations.

“Technology is growing very, very quickly right now,” Wherritt said. “When we see teachers clamoring for technology in the classroom, and volunteering for training, we realize just how important this is. Our goal now is to build on our investment and do the best we can for our students.”

At the moment, they have to get WiFi for all the schools. Some Internet connections are spotty, if at all. The school board approved high-speed wireless networks for every school district wide, and the report showed challenges remain. As one example, the report found that 40 percent of the elementary schools did not meet the district’s bandwith specifications, and many schools had trouble getting online.

Wherritt said that only 19 schools still have internet issues, and “those remaining schools are scheduled to be finished between now and the first quarter of the next calendar year.”

Meanwhile, there’s no prediction about when and whether every child in LAUSD will have a device, as previously envisioned. That decision, and that plan, will come from the Instructional Technology Initiative Task Force formed in April. Their first meeting is scheduled for Sept. 10.

Cortines said, “As I have stated before, we remain committed to the use of classroom technology by our teachers and students.”

Matt Gonzales and Adrianna McMullen on panel

A group of LA Unified students joined local and national educators last week to describe academic challenges they face and to suggest ideas for what could help them.

The four-hour discussion last Thursday evening kicked off a weekend of activities sponsored by UTLA in conjunction with the “White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.”

David Johns, the executive director of the initiative, participated in the discussion with the students and in two other events, at Palisades Charter High School and the Grammy Museum, where the theme was social justice.

Also speaking Thursday was Congresswoman Judy Chu, a Democrat from Monterey Park and the first Chinese-American woman elected to Congress. She discussed her concerns that schools in predominantly poor and ethnic neighborhoods have less-experienced teachers than those in more affluent and predominantly-white schools in the same district.

“Kids are coming to our schools hungry, stressed and unprepared,” Chu said. “We need to strengthen teacher preparation and give the teachers resources.” Referring to the federal “No Child Left Behind” program now under review by Congress, she said, “We all know it’s a failure that needs to be fixed.”

“The bottom line,” she said, “is the voices of minority students need to be heard.”

Seven Latino, black and mixed-race students from charter and traditional schools were part of the Thursday discussion. Some said they experienced racism from other students, even from within their own culture, and from teachers and administrators. They also said they wanted their parents to be more involved in their academic pursuits.

“It’s as simple as my mom listening to what I did at school that day,” said Regina Black, who said that administrators could help by “supporting us when we want to start a club at school” and encourage after-school activities.

Judy Chu

Adriana McMullen broke into tears as she talked about transferring to a higher-achieving school in a mostly-white class neighborhood and being accused of a cheating by a teacher on her entry test. “I took it over and scored 100 percent. At my previous school we were like 46 to a class and sharing desks and books,” she said.

Matthew Gonzalez, who won a Fulbright Scholarship, said many of his friends have parents who have given up on them, and so they no longer try hard. “The parents just don’t participate in their education, and I know I have been lucky that way,” he said.

UTLA vice president Cecily Myart-Cruz said, “These conversations are so important to have to bring students, educators and community members together for this town hall.”

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl stressed that the union will be more involved in Black Lives Matters and talked about seeing white racism very up close when he lived in the east. “Then, when I began teaching in Compton, I was always doing some kind of organizing on the side,” he said.

Caputo-Pearl said, “Young people are experiencing things we find hard to believe. Our school environment has to be based on love and not on fear.”

The 7.5-acre campus will accommodate PUC Triumph Charter Academy for grades 6 through 8 and two high schools — PUC Triumph Charter High School and PUC Lakeview Charter High School. The campus also includes facilities that all three schools will share, including a state-of-the-art gym, a soccer field, regulation basketball courts, baseball/softball diamond, science labs, a theater and dance room.

The thee schools had been operating at different sites before now.

The $26 million campus is expected to reach the full capacity of 1,250 students by next school year. Currently, 250 students are on the waiting list to attend one of the three schools, which were financed through a bond and $600,000 from the Ahmanson and Weingart foundations.

PUC –Partnerships to Uplift Communities — operates 12 PUC public charter schools that provide college prep educational programs in densely-populated urban communities with low-achieving schools in northeast Los Angeles and the northeast San Fernando Valley. There group also runs one school in Rochester, NY.

United Teachers Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl says extensive input from teachers over the summer points to conditions in the classroom and the future of health benefits as among the issues most important to the union membership. He also said UTLA will strive to unionize more charter schools.

“Everyday teaching and learning conditions tend to be something that we hear a lot from our members,” Caputo-Pearl told the LA School Report. “They want to come into their classroom and do what they do and work with young people and not have to deal with ceiling tiles that are falling, or class sizes that are too big, or an administrator that refuses to follow basic contractual guidelines. Basic conditions are a concern.”

The other big concern voiced by teachers is the potential erosion of health benefits that have helped teachers to LA Unified. The benefits package LA Unified offers is among the most robust of any district in the state, including free lifetime benefits for retirees and their dependents.

“There is obviously a very well-funded national movement to attack public sector workers and health benefits that are associated with public sector workers,” Caputo-Pearl said. He talked about billionaire John D. Arnold who he said is “specifically intent to fund efforts to attack pensions, attack health benefits and retirement. It’s a very well-funded effort that our members are concerned about.”

Caputo-Pearl said teachers also expressed alarm over the proliferation of charter schools in LAUSD, which could result in a loss of revenue for schools. He said he is concerned about developments at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, which run 25 charter schools at LAUSD. In trying to unionize the Alliance teachers, Caputo-Pearl said the efforts have run into opposition from Eli Broad and others who “have built an aggressive anti-union campaign against educators there who just want a voice in their classrooms and their curriculum.”

He said a key element in his strategic plan for the next two years is the organizing of charter educators. “We are going to continue to do that wherever we can,” he said. “Some of the teachers at Alliance who are fighting to have their voice heard and to have a union are some of the most inspiring young teachers that I’ve met in a long time. So we’re going to continue to do that.”

Alliance and the union have had clashes in recent weeks, culminating in a Public Employees Relations Board hearing.

Caputo-Pearl said unionizing teachers at charter schools is not necessarily a way of boosting UTLA’s declining membership.

“We don’t think of it so much just as a narrow way to increase membership, but moreso as an opportunity to try to bring educators together across district schools, across charter schools to create a floor or what we hope is higher than a floor of what learning conditions should be in schools,” he said. “The way you get that is through collective action across both district and charter schools.”

LA Unified said today its inspector general is “looking into” the possibility that nearly 100 district employees used district email addresses to contact ashleymadison.com, a website that promotes extra-marital affairs, calling itself “the most famous name in infidelity and married dating.”

The district’s legal office has sent employees a memo yesterday, reminding them that the use of district email addresses for such purposes violates district policy.

“Failure to comply with the policy may result in disciplinary action being taken,” district lawyers told employees.

The actions came in response to a report yesterday by LA School Report that the hacked list of emails from the ashleymadison.com website produced about 100 email addresses that included lausd.net. Many of the addresses were letters and numbers, but it is not uncommon for district employees to use their initials and numbers for their email addresses.

In several instances, subscribers used full names.

The involvement of the district inspector general suggests that an effort would be made to identify people who used district-based email for their Ashley Madison accounts although it remains unclear what sanctions, if any, would be imposed.

The Associated Press has reported that the complete list of Ashley Madison email addresses included nearly 50 government e-mail addresses across California, some of which have announced the start of their own internal investigations.

Just yesterday, the former Alliance College Ready Middle School #9 was renamed for Kory Hunter, a tireless volunteer and fundraiser for educational programs who died of brain cancer in 2013.

For dozens of well-known people, there’s an LA Unified school named in their honor, even in one case, where the honoree has a controversial past, David Wark Griffith Middle School: There’s a movement to change the name because of the director’s insensitive film “Birth of a Nation,” which canonized the Ku Klux Klan.

So what’s in a (school) name? LA School Report decided to take a closer look at the district’s 1,274 schools.

There are plenty of schools named for what some might regard as politically incorrect or for undeserving reasons, such as schools named for religious leaders (Hillery T. Broadous), military leaders (Gaspar de Portolá i Rovira), gays (Walt Whitman), lesbians (Jane Addams), bisexuals (Frida Kahlo), Democrats (Pat Brown), Republicans (Henry Tifft Gage), even a Whig (Horace Mann).

But, most are pretty benign atttributions, with names of famous local and historic figures.

Here are some overall observations:

• About 58 percent of the schools are named after the streets they’re located on or the school’s neighborhood.
• About 5 percent of schools have numbers or street-named numbers in their title.
• 16 U.S. presidents have schools named after them, including the current occupant of the White House, Barack Obama.
• There’s a school name for every letter in the alphabet except for Z. (Yes, there’s Xinaxcalmecac Academia Semillas Del Pueblo.)
• Many schools are named after poets, civil rights leaders and inventors. Some are named after former school board members and local community activists.

A school generally gets a specific name after the community requests it and brings it to the school board member of that district. Then, it’s discussed and voted on by the full board.

For example, the school at 1963 E. 103rd St. existed a quarter of a century before Florence Griffith Joyner was born in 1959. After she became “the fastest woman in the world” and won Olympic medals she got a school named after her. Now, nitpickers could complain that her legacy has been tainted by allegations of drug use, but so far no one has asked that her name be removed from the school.

There are a number of husbands and wives who have schools named after them. Andres & Maria Cardenas Elementary in Van Nuys was named for a couple who raised 11 children in Pacoima — he was a laborer and then established his own successful business. Other couples have separate schools.

Twenty-six miles separate Michelle Obama Elementary School in Panorama City and Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy on 46th Street in Los Angeles. It’s only nine miles between Thomas Bradley Global Awareness Magnet, named for the former Los Angeles mayor, and the Ethel Bradley Early Education Center, a school named for his wife.

It’s only four miles between Diego Rivera Learning Complex Communication & Technology School and Frida Kahlo Continuation High, schools named for two of Mexico’s most renowned artists, who were married. Sal Castro was a pain for LA Unified, leading a mass walkout and protests against the board a few times in the 1960s, but he got Sal Castro Middle School named after him. His walkouts ultimately changed the district.

Presidents with schools named after them are: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, James Buchanan, James Garfield, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Obama.

Clinton’s vice president is honored with the Rachel Carson-Al Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences, but there was some controversy when it opened because of toxic soil where it was being built. Many pointed out the irony of naming it after two people famous for being environmental activists.

There’s a school named for lawyer Johnnie Cochran, who defended O.J. Simpson on murder charges and Michael Jackson on child molestation charges. (Simpson and Jackson have no schools named after them.) And, there’s the Sonia Sotomayor Learning Academy, named for the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and the Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School, which honors the late poet, who died last year.

Many schools are named for authors, raising serious questions: Are there wild things at Maurice Sendak school? Is there treasure at Robert Louis Stevenson school? Do they paint the fence white at Mark Twain? Are the students falling alseep at Washington Irving Middle School, which is named for the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Some schools are named for lesser-known people. Juanita Tate, for example, advocated for green space in south LA. Hubert Howe Bancroft was an abolitionist, whose family home was part of the Underground Railroad. Phillis Wheatley was the first black published poet. David Starr Jordan studied fish, William Antón became the district’s first Latino superintendent, and Jaime Escalante, had a movie, “Stand and Deliver,” made about his teaching style.

Other schools are named for union activists and union busters. Helen Bernstein was a teachers union president, and Bert Corona was a labor leader, but Andrew Carnegie was known for breaking labor strikes.

Aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who disappeared after her final flight, has a school named after her as well as airplane pioneer Orville Wright. And, there’s a school named for a lesser-known aviation pioneer, Glenn Hammond Curtiss, who was sued by the Wright Brothers for patent violation.

There are schools named for people who may be mistaken for their true accomplishments. Don’t let the middle schoolers say that George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, because he didn’t, and Thomas A. Edison did not invent the light bulb. Nor did Albert Einstein fail math, despite the legend. And, certainly the middle schoolers at Christopher Columbus can tell you that he did not, in fact, discover America.

It turns out that board member Monica Garcia is familiar with questions over the D.W. Griffith school — it’s in her district — and after some community discussion it may soon go to the full school board for a name change.

Anyone can find fault with some of the names of the schools at LAUSD, but the real question is: Do the 4th graders at South Park Elementary School really know how cool they are?

Got it?

That’s an excerpt from a new document that parents and students were given last week for any plan of going online or using computers at LAUSD schools. While the abbreviations are spelled out elsewhere in the message, it shows the complex use of LA Unified’s obsessive and sometimes confusing use of acronyms.

In this case, it was a memo from Shahryar Khazei, the Chief Information Officer Information Technology Division for the district, issued as a new Responsible Use Policy (RUP) that will replace the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that was required since 2002. The agreement confirms with a federal law affecting the educational use of digital media called the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).

Didn’t get the memo?

Basically, it explains that LAUSD uses technology to block or filter access to “visual and written depictions that are obscene, pornographic, or harmful to minors over the network.” The district also reserves the right to “monitor users’ online activities and access, review, copy, and store or delete any communications or files and share them with adults as necessary. Users should have no expectation of privacy regarding their use of District equipment, network, and/or Internet access or files, including email.”

Students and parents are asked to initial and sign two pages, checking off boxes that they agree to not share passwords, use appropriate language, avoid harassing and discriminatory communications, avoid vandalism, follow copyright laws and “practice positive digital citizenship,” among other things.

Teachers are asked to follow a more extensive contract that includes security issues and gives links to copyright guidelines.

According to the memo, “Site administrators must annually distribute, collect, and keep on file the completed attached forms prior to authorizing access to the Internet or the District’s network.”

LASR is HTH, ICYWW. SRLSY, JSYK.

Translation: LA School Report is here to help, in case you were wondering. Seriously, just so you know.

TTYL (Talk to you later).

LA Unified students were at 93 percent compliance, according to Ellen T. Morgan of the district communications office. That percentage “increases every day,” she said. There are about 36,000 7th graders at LA Unified.

Getting the word out to families early was key in educating the parents, although there were some glitches. Parents led a protest at the Thomas Starr King Middle School last week when their children were pulled out of class for not having their Tdap vaccine, which helps prevent whooping cough (also known as pertussis). Phone calls, letters and social media have been used to alert famlies during the summer in preparation for school.

Pertussis, a respiratory illness, is a contagious bacterial disease that can last for months but fade over time.

Starting next year, families will no longer get exemptions from immunizations due to personal beliefs, according to a bill signed by Governor Jerry Brown. Personal belief exemptions remain in effect until then.

Tomas O’Grady of Enrich LA at a school garden

LA Unified students are learning about water conservation methods needed locally because of the drought, and the effort got a big boost last week from a $50,000 federal grant.

An award from the Environmental Protection Agency is intended to support a pilot program to teach students how to conserve water. It’s part of the “One Water LA” Educational Initiative created in April 2014 through a resolution from school board president Steve Zimmer. It’s a collaborative effort that includes the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Metropolitan Water District and Los Angeles Sanitation department.

“Los Angeles is currently experiencing extreme drought conditions and it is the responsibility of educators to ensure the next generation is equipped with the necessary tools to develop solutions, not only for climate change but for other problems, or else the Earth as we know it today will cease to exist in the future,” Zimmer said.

Already, there are programs at many schools across the district. Vivian Ekchian, the area superintendent for the Northwest, said she is making it a priority to show how the school gardens can be grown in a drought-stricken climate. Students of Enadia Way Elementary School in West Hills, for example, are learning what flowers, vegetables and fruit trees they can grow in a 10,000-square-foot garden without using too much water.

Local businessman Tomas O’Grady has a nonprofit group called Enrich LA that has helped student gardens throughout LAUSD, including the transformation of a patch of unused mud in the center of Valley View Elementary School in Hollywood into a raised garden using a drip system. Teachers plant native flowers mentioned in poetry they are studying or draw from other Common Core teaching material.

Green Wish is another nonprofit that is providing (for free) Common Core curriculum exercises that involve the environment and school gardens for students K through 9th grades.

Actor and director Raphael Sbarge helped create Green Wish with environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. and created a half-hour documentary “A Concrete River: Reviving the Waters of Los Angeles,” which explains how the Los Angeles River is being revived and what part the river plays in water conservation. The movie is shown to students who visit the River Rover on school trips, part of the Friends of the Los Angeles River nonprofit.

“Scientific evidence demonstrates that the climate is changing at an increasingly rapid rate, with elevated temperatures, melting icebergs, extreme weather patterns, species extinction and other effects,” Zimmer said.

The sanitation agency, which is funding the “One Water LA” initiative, also will train students at its Environmental Learning Center. Other educational organizations involved in the effort, include EcoTelesis/ UCLA Engineering Extension, Climate Resolve and LA Waterkeeper. All of the programs will be aligned with content standards, including California Next Generation Science Standards, a common level of scientific knowledge that all students need to graduate high school.

“Educators need to create the next generation of Science Technology Engineering Math experts in the workforce and this curriculum will increase the STEM education pipeline from middle to high school,” Superintendent Ramon Cortines said about students studying STEM. “It is important to educate students to be college-prepared as STEM majors and career-ready for STEM jobs.

Eduardo Pacheco

For most kids, getting expelled in the seventh grade for bringing a weapon to school is the beginning of a sad story, the first step into the school-to-prison pipeline.

But for Eduardo Pacheco, a recent graduate of LA Unified’s Woodrow Wilson High School, it ended up being a low point from which he slowly rose to become an inspiring student leader and recent recipient of the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s 2015 Sargent Shriver Youth Warriors Against Poverty award.

The $5,000 scholarship award honors 12 high students around the country for their vision, passion and dedication to improving the lives of families in their communities. Pacheco was recognized for work he did volunteering with Inner City Struggle and Brothers, Sons, Selves.

“When I heard I had won the Shriver award, I was astonished by it,” said Pacheco, who is now a freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Pacheco said the money has gone toward rent and books.

Pacheco is the son of two Mexican immigrants, and his life growing up around east LA was often filled with economic struggles. In middle school he said he fell in with the wrong crowd, which is what led to his expulsion. But not long after, something happened that made him see his life and its potential in a different light: his older brother was accepted to UCLA.

“I knew I had to change my ways, it was a bad thing for me, and no good was going to be coming to my future,” he told LA School Report. ” But I saw my bother graduate and go to UCLA, one of the best schools in California and the country. I felt like he was unique because not everyone gets accepted there. It motivated me to thinking that I can maybe be unique too.”

During his sophomore year, Pacheco started attended after-school meetings of Inner City Struggle, a nonprofit that works to improve the Eastside of Los Angeles.

Pacheco soon became a leader within the group and helped lead a task force that explained LA Unified’s landmark Student Climate Bill of Rights to students and adults. The resolution, passed by the school board in 2013, sought to spur a significant reduction of suspensions and expulsions in the district.

“I think [the bill] is really great because it is giving every student a whole new different opportunity in school,” he said. “Because of the injustices they faced before, with the suspension rate because of willful defiance, it was outrageous. When I learned about it, I thought it was a great and that it would help a lot of other students, especially students in my shoes.”

Despite spending much of his spare time volunteering to help his community, Pacheco also tried to help his family. During lunch breaks, he  rummaged through trash bins looking for cans and plastic bottles to sell for extra money. He also joined the Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition, an organization that works to improve the lives of young men of color. Some of his work was in support of Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot initiative that reclassified some non-violent felonies and misdemeanors.

“Brothers, Sons Selves was a huge, different chapter. Not only was it a coalition that involved me organizing, but we had our own campaigns where we would go out with ideas to change,” Pacheco said.

Pacheco said his goal is to stay involved in community organizing. He is currently majoring in political science and said he hopes to earn a PhD.

The role of charters has been a long-running battle among board members, and now it’s sure to intensify with so many more in the planning stage. Issues involving charters, such as applications for new ones, renewals for existing ones and operational transparency, are part of almost every monthly board meeting, and even before the first meeting of the new year, opinions remain divided, based on interviews with LA School Report and other media outlets.

The foundations revealed their expansion plans several weeks ago but provided few details. One unnamed source told the LA Times that the goal was to enroll as many as half of LA Unified’s students in charter schools within eight years.

One of the two new members, Ref Rodriguez, a charter school founder, said, “I believe we need to offer every family a high quality option in public education, and that can be a LAUSD school or a charter school. I also believe that we need leaders in this district to advocate for transformation. I always welcome ideas around innovative and life changing approaches to creating quality and excellence in every single school across this district.”

Rodriguez added, “Is this plan a bold idea? Maybe. I don’t know the particulars.  But, I want to stay open to hearing about bold options and ideas to get to excellence in all of our schools. And, I want those bold ideas to come from the grassroots – communities, students, and parents.  I want to hear directly from our communities about what they need, what they want, and what they deserve.”

On the other hand, the other new board member, Scott Schmerelson, said, “I am opposed to any strategy that results in diluting and draining precious public school revenue or that does not fairly and equitably serve all students including English Learners, those with significant physical and mental health issues, homeless and foster youth, and those students and families for whom ‘choice’ is not an option.”

In that context, Schmerelson agreed with board president Steve Zimmer. In a recent interview with the Jewish Journal, Zimmer expressed his concern with the push by the big foundations.

“I believe in choice, but I am very, very wary. I am very cognizant of the damage that competition has done to our schools,” Zimmer told the Journal. “When a system becomes so obsessed with competition that they view children through their potential to score versus their overall humanity, the dehumanization of that public school system is not something that is attractive to parents, is not something that is warm and inviting. And our public schools, to my great regret, have become test score-obsessed. A lot of charter schools have, too.”

Zimmer added, “We have incredibly high levels of saturation. If choice is so important, the California Charter Schools Association agenda and the Walton Family Foundation and other foundations’ agendas to situate more and more charter schools within the LAUSD boundary is not about children. It’s not about choice. It’s not about innovation. It’s about a very different agenda of bringing down the school district, an agenda to dramatically change what is public education. It’s about altering the influence of public sector unions. I just happen to disagree with that agenda. But folks should be explicit about what their agenda is.”

Schmerelson added, “As a former teacher, counselor and principal, I believe that my most important responsibility as a newly elected school board member is to support all children by continuing to improve and strengthen our neighborhood schools. Our neighborhood public schools are mandated by law and tradition to maintaining the highest levels of professional staffing, transparent and inclusive decision-making, fiscal responsibility, and accountability to taxpayers.”

Mónica Ratliff, also a former teacher, has a large number of charters in her district. He expressed an open-mindedness about, so long as any expansion makes sense.

“When I first got into office, I did meet with some charter school operators to talk to them about this. And there were mixed feelings,” she said. “Some charter operators thought the more competition the better, and let it be free competition. Other charter school operators I think were sensitive to the fact that they have an established school now and to have other schools proliferate around them makes it more difficult for them as well. I think that this is something we should continue to dialogue about. It makes sense to have options for parents. But it also makes sense to make sure that schools are fiscally solvent as time goes on.”

Ratliff added, “I think that what we’re going to have to do as a district is figure out is how are we going to deal with the proliferation of charter schools because there’s no rhyme or reason in terms of locations … In the long run we should be working with our charter schools to try to figure out ways that would make sense for further development.”

Mónica García said she is open to any strategy that helps children graduate, and doesn’t see the proliferation of charter schools as the end of LAUSD.

“We know there is no one strategy for everybody,” she said. “Charters have been an important partner for LA Unified. I’m open to any strategy that helps children and families.”

“They’re part of the reason why there’s space,” she added. “They’re part of the reason why we have teacher-led academies. Our pilot schools and other district reform models took what we learned from charters and we brought it inside the district. I see a stronger district in the future that is about all of these strategies coming together. We have had to close some charter schools, and I’ve opposed the closing of some charter schools.”

Further, she said, “We are all still learners as a system and urban America has to learn from LA Unified. I would go to any philanthropic arm and say please invest in our kids. We have many. many good strategies that need support.”

Zimmer, in his interview with the Jewish Journal, acknowledged the difference of opinion on the board, but said, “Right now, we share an understanding that the cost of cutthroat competition in the public education system is greater than the real gains for some children.”

LA School Report was unable to include the views of the two other board members, Richard Vladovic and George McKenna. Vladovic did not respond to messages left, seeking comment, and McKenna’s office said he declines to be interviewed.

Cortines observes the MiSiS team

Now that the MiSiS crisis seems to be in the rear-view mirror, Superintendent Ramon Cortines is focusing on another difficult issue for LAUSD — class sizes.

“We are now beginning to make necessary adjustments to class size,” he said in a statement released today. “For instance, we can open a new class and assign an additional teacher if it is over-enrolled. We can also transfer students to a class that is under-enrolled. Our goal is to stabilize classes and schools as soon as possible – certainly within the next two weeks.”

When he took over the school district again last year, Cortines was appalled by some of the class sizes. At one point district records showed that there were 1,500 middle school classes and 1,200 high school classes with more than 45 students.

Since then, the district and UTLA, the teachers union, hammered out a new labor agreement that set the average class size for K-through-3rd grades at 24 students, while high school classes could have a maximum of 46 students, but a preferred average of 42.5.

Some of the records show that a class is over-enrolled, but may not be. “Some students may be registered, but have not shown up for class,” Cortines explained. “Other students may be enrolled at more than one school. Principals, counselors and other school-site staff are verifying records, and eliminating no-shows and duplicate students from MiSiS. At the same time, our human resources team has begun verifying that schools have the appropriate number of teachers.”

Overall, Cortines reiterated what he told LA School Report earlier this week, that he was happy with an “extraordinary first week of school.” He wanted to congratulate school-site heroes – both classified and certificated employees – for their hard work, as well as parents and guardians for their confidence in the schools.

“I am especially pleased with how well the My Integrated Student Information System program is working,” he said in the statement today. “Not only has MiSiS supported scheduling and attendance, it also has allowed us to quickly identify classes that are over- and under-enrolled. These imbalances are common during the opening days of school, but MiSiS has provided us with the information more rapidly than in past years.”

He added, “As we did during the weeks leading up to the start of school, we are working together to provide the best learning experience for our students.”

Cynthia Lim, executive director of the district’s Office of Data and Accountability, said she knows parents will make comparisons between the previous California Standards Tests and the new tests. That would be unfair, she said, describing it as worse than an apples-and-oranges comparison.

“Students are being measured in different ways than in the past tests, and there were five different performance bands; now there are four,” Lim told the LA School Report. The five “Far Below Basic,” “Below Basic,” “Basic,” “Proficient” and “Advanced” — are now “Has Not Met the Standard,” “Nearly Met the Standard,” “Met the Standard” and “Exceeded the Standard.”

Lim said she has seen preliminary scores for LAUSD — about 96 percent of the scores in grades 3 through 8 and 84 percent of the test scores in 11th grade — and they are not great. She declined to provide details but admitted that the scores would be “lower than what we’ve seen in the past in terms of what we would say is proficiency.”

The way the students are taking the tests could hurt the initial scores, too. All the tests are conducted on tablets, with no paper and pencil, no bubbles to fill in, no multiple guess. And, no student gets the same questions.

“In the past, every student had the same set of questions in a one-answer format,” Lim said. “So you got a question and possible range of answers and the student had to eliminate answers. On this new assessment, there are graphics, and the types of answers aren’t given to the students; they have to take it a step beyond, and show how they came up with the computation.”

The skills include writing on the tablet, typing in answers and sometimes listening on headphones before answering questions.

It’s also the first time the district tried a “computer adaptative” test. If the student gets questions correct, the questions get tougher. If they miss them, the questions get easier. “The questions are tailored to your ability, and we get more precise information about achievements and what the students need to work on,” Lim said.

The overall impact of the new metrics, Lim said, makes it less likely that instructors will teach-to-the-test — a common complaint of teachers — because of how the questions are asked, forcing students to concentrate on demonstrating a better understanding of what they are learning rather than rote recitation. That’s the essential change ushered in by the use of the Common Core State Standards as an instruction guideline.

The new tests not only help lower-performing students but help better identify highly-gifted students, as well. If more than two-thirds of the questions are answered correctly, the questions automatically go into a higher grade level. “That will give a better idea of the potential of the student, and the teacher can adjust accordingly,” Lim said.

Another reason the scores can’t be compared with the past regimen is because all students 2 through 11th grades were tested, while now only children in grades 3 through 8 and 11th graders are tested.

Schools went through a test-run two years ago and resolved problems with tablets not working properly. But all schools took the test in the last 12 weeks of this past school year, and those testing scores will now provide a baseline for the future.

The reports of the test scores sent to parents will have detailed explanations of where a child needs improvement, with more specifics than ever provided in the past. The inter-office memo showed examples, with a fictional student, Emily, as Below Standard for “Demonstrating ability to support mathematical conclusions” and At-or-Near Standard for “Demonstrating understanding of literary and non-fiction texts.”

“Teachers can use this information to adjust their teaching because the scores are broken into these sub-categories,” Lim said.

Teachers and principals can also ask students to take interim tests.

Meanwhile, the sample letters urge parents not to compare these test scores to past ones. An example reads: “These results are one measure of Emily’s academic performance and provide limited information. Like any important measure of your child’s performance, they should be viewed with other available information—such as classroom tests, assignments, and grades—and they may be used to help guide a conversation with Emily’s teacher.”

The MiSiS black box shown by Shahryar Khazei

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cynthia Lim, Executive Director of the Office of Data and Accountability, told the LA School Report today that parents should not worry when the see the results fro last year because the new tests are not comparable to previous statewide measures in how they are structured and how they are given — by computer.

Her explanation was part of a district strategy to ease anxieties among parents who may be fearful that the new tests leave the impression that their children are regressing in their academic pursuits. That is not the case, Lim said. It has always been clear to school administrators here and elsewhere that a new form of testing, based on the Common Core State Standards, would drive down test results in the early years.

“We are expecting that scores will be lower than what we’ve seen in the past in terms of what we would say is proficiency, because the tests are really different than what we’ve had for the last 10 years,” Lim said.

Not only are the new tests different in how they pose questions, the new scoring system is tougher, but Lim said the test material isn’t necessarily more difficult for students or any more advanced.

“It is a different way of teaching; the material is not harder, we are assessing deeper levels of thinking among students,” she explained. Rather than multiple choice questions or basic recall questions, the students are asked to explain how they got to an answer.

Lim sent a letter to the school board and Superintendent Ramon Cortines last week, warning against comparisons between the old test scores and the new ones. She noted: “The percentage of students who will have ‘met or exceeded standards’ on the new tests will be lower than the proficiency rates we have seen with the old California Standards Tests.”

Lim said, “There’s no way to compare the test scores. So even if you were advanced on (the California Standards Test) and this year you’re ‘Nearly Meeting Standards,’ it doesn’t mean that you’ve gotten dumber. We are assessing different skills. It’s new to teachers and new to students in terms of how we’re assessing. I think as people get more familiar, scores will most likely increase.”

The scores this year will not be used to determine if schools are “failing” nor will they be used for the evaluation of teachers, Lim said.

The district is not concerned with the lower scores for now. A decade ago when the tests were changed, they saw a similar drop in scores. This time, the tests are taken completely on computer tablets — some questions require listening, others include writing exercises. They are also subject to “computer adaptability,” which means an incorrect answer is followed by an easier question, a correct answer leads to a harder question.

District officials say they are especially concerned that parents may react negatively to a perception that their child is not scoring well on the new test. “We worked with our local district on our talking points because it does not mean our kids are getting dumber,” Lim said. “It means that we’re assessing them in a different way than we ever have before. It’s actually a more holistic view of students and how they learn.”

The actual scores by school, district, county and state will be released by the state and available to the public in mid-September. The state is a few weeks behind in releasing the scores, Lim said.

Steve Zimmer, center, at Vine Street Elementary School

LAUSD School Board president Steve Zimmer discussed the superintendent race on KNX News Radio this morning and mentioned Chief Deputy Superintendent Michelle King as a potential “top candidate” to replace Ramon Cortines.

While on his way to Vine Street Elementary School to kick-off the school year, Zimmer was was asked in the interview about potential contenders for the LAUSD Superintendent’s position. The interviewer mentioned no other candidates.

“We do not have a top list, but I have known and worked with Michelle King for six years,” Zimmer said, when asked if she would be a leading contender for the job.

“If she is interested, then she would be a top candidate,” Zimmer conceded. “I have not talked to her about that yet.” King would become the district’s first female superintendent.

Zimmer did say that the school board was well on its way to finding a new superintendent and that the members have sought proposals from search companies for candidates. Cortines has expressed a desire to step down by December. “We are fully engaged in the search,” he said.

He also said he was open to looking for candidates within and outside the district.

“It could be someone from out of state, it could be someone from other parts of the Los Angeles area,” Zimmer said. “I am looking for an equity champion.”

Steve Zimmer introduces new principal Kurt Lowry at Vine Street Elementary School

In the first effort of its kind, LA Unified staged a whirlwind of events for the first day of school today, with board members fanning out across the district, each visiting schools and other sites to welcome back staff, students and district employees.

At 9 o’clock this morning, board president Steve Zimmer greeted students at Vine Street Elementary School, not far from his house. But that was nearly four hours after his day began, meeting district employees at a bus yard and visiting the MiSiS computer center at district headquarters to make sure that everything was running smoothly.

At Vine Street, Zimmer introduced the new principal, Kurt Lowry, to a standing-room-only crowd of about 80 parents in the Parent Center complex, where there are about 580 students K-6th grade. Both Zimmer and Lowry spoke in English and Spanish (more in Spanish). One parent remarked how well Zimmer spoke in Spanish, while Lowry stopped occasionally and asked for grammar corrections from the mostly-Latino audience.

Zimmer said, “Your participation, your involvement, your communication with teachers and staff, that is what is going to make a difference. I have dreams today for the school that your children will have the same success as anywhere in the district.”

Lowry, most recently the principal at Crescent Heights Language Arts/Social Justice Magnet School, was also the principal of one of the first LA Promise schools, which was getting iPads into the hands of every student. He told the parents at Vine Street that his daughter is entering the fourth grade in the San Fernando Valley, where she lives with her mother, and that he lives nearby the school in Hollywood. He said his parents were both teachers, as well as his brother, and he welcomed parent involvement at the school.

“I will do what I can to help your child become whatever they want in life,” Lowry said. “You need to remain in your children’s life and education.”

Among the other events, school board member Mónica García was at El Sereno Middle School and Magnet Center; board member George McKenna helped with the first annual Backpack Giveaway at Manchester Elementary School and Local District South Superintendent Christopher Downing talked about transitional Kindergarten expansion at 186th Street Elementary School in Gardena.

School board member Ref Rodriguez planned to discuss garden and water conservation efforts at schools at the Sonia Sotomayor Learning Academy, and board member Scott Schmerelson planned to tour the Grover Cleveland Charter High School humanities program in Reseda.

Also, the district scheduled an afternoon MiSiS tour at the LAUSD Headquarters.

Some of the events began as early as 5:30 a.m. Donald Wilkes, the district’s Transportation Director, and Max Arias, Executive Director of Local 99, the school support staff union, joined Zimmer and transportation workers and bus drivers at the Gardena Bus Yard as Zimmer’s first stop of the day.

His last stop was scheduled for 4:30 at Mosk Elementary in Gardena, where he was scheduled to join the district’s Beyond the Bell Director Alvaro Cortés and Eric Gurna, President and CEO of LA’s Best, an after-school program.

Rafe Esquith, book cover of ‘There Are No Shortcuts’

LA School Report has confirmed that an LAPD sex crimes unit has an open investigation of celebrated teacher Rafe Esquith involving allegations of “inappropriate touching.” Meanwhile, Esquith’s attorneys are striking back with threats of additional lawsuits and a “declaration of war against LAUSD.”

One of Esquith’s attorneys, Ben Meisales, said, “This continued defamation by LAUSD knows no bounds. This is a slap at all hard-working teachers and it has created a declaration of war against LAUSD.”

Lead attorney Mark Geragos added, “People all across the country are watching these unscrupulous tactics. LAUSD is acting as a criminal cartel that needs to be put out of business, and we will put them out of business.”

Meanwhile, the Sexually Exploited Child Unit of the West Bureau Sex Crimes of the Los Angeles Police Department has a case that is opened against Esquith and being investigated by Detective Rachel Saavedra. The attorneys for Esquith said they were unaware of the investigation, which is being conducted by police at the Olympic Division of the LAPD in the district of the Hobart Boulevard Elementary School where Esquith taught fifth grade until he was unceremoniously taken out of the classroom last April and confined during the day hours to the “teachers jail” in a downtown LA building.

On Thursday, Geragos filed a class action lawsuit against LA Unified not only claiming age discrimination and unfair business practices, but defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Hours after receiving the lawsuit, LAUSD issued a letter for the first time dealing with alleged serious allegations against Esquith, including “highly inappropriate conduct involving touching of minors” during his time as a district teacher as well as “inappropriate photographs and videos of a sexual nature” on his school computer. The letter also mentions allegations of “threats to a parent and two students” and “possible ethical” violations of district policy regarding Esquith’s nonprofit after-school program, the Hobart Shakespeareans. 

Through attorneys, Esquith denies all the allegations. Esquith is the author of some popular books about teaching, won the National Medal of Arts from President Obama and was named one of the best teachers in the country by The Washington Post.

School officials are required by law to report all sexual allegations involving children to the proper authorities, and because of the “inappropriate touching” allegations, LA School Report asked LAUSD if police officials were notified.

Shannon Haber, the district’s director of Communications & Media Relations, issued a statement reading, “Yes, as mandated reporters, we always report allegations of suspected child abuse to the appropriate agency.”

LAPD officials had no further details about the ongoing investigation.

Meanwhile, Geragos said he plans to ask for a criminal investigation against the school district by going to the Department of Justice, and they also plan to file a lawsuit against Toni Tosello, the liabilities claims coordinator who wrote the Aug. 13 letter from LAUSD’s Risk Finance and Insurance Services department. The letter said that while investigating the original allegations (of a reading from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), they discovered “additional serious allegations of misconduct” by the 61-year-old teacher.

Meanwhile, Esquith’s attorneys claim the noted teacher is a victim of a “witch hunt” and that after one day, their class action has gone from about 200 hundred teachers to more than 1,000 who have contacted the office with similar complaints.

“The only child who was been hurt by all this is one of Rafe Esquith’s students who when LAUSD started this witch hunt attempted to commit suicide when [Esquith] was taken from the classroom,” Meiselas said.

Meanwhile, in a letter dated Thursday from Student Safety Investigation Team director Jose Cantu, the district asked for an interview with Esquith for the “investigation of alleged misconduct” according to the letter. They planned the interview on Aug. 18 with investigator Ray Johnson. That interview won’t happen, Esquith’s representatives said.

“The only discussion now about this will be in court,” Meiselas said.

Monica Garcia talks to students at a board meeting.

As the school year begins next week, Mónica Garcia is celebrating her 10th year on the LA Unified School Board and her 15th year working in District 2, where she served as an academic advisor.

A lifelong East L.A. resident, her parents met at Stevenson Middle School in the 1950s and they remember more of an ethnic mix in the area at that time.

Garcia sat down with LA School Report at her LA Unified office to discuss the issues and anticipation of the new school year ahead.

LA School Report: As LA Unified’s longest-serving board president, six terms, what do you see as the most pressing challenges facing the district over the coming year?

Garcia: This year, even as leadership transition occurs, we want to make sure that our families feel connected and supported. I think that achievement, safety and communication are always at the top of any school. We’re going to see more technology.

We will allocate money from Measure Q [a bond for construction] which will be good for kids and good for jobs and good for our existing campuses. Roosevelt High School in my district will get support in the neighborhood of $100 million dollars. It doesn’t happen but once in a long time. We really have to be purposeful around how to support schools so it continues to grow. We will be talking about roofs and pipes and fields, but we have to really be strategic on the investment.

LASR: Do you think there’s been an erosion of trust with the parents and how do you improve that?

Garcia: We always need to improve whatever we do. When we say LA Unified is 70 percent graduation that means we’re getting it right with 70 percent of the families and missing it with 30 percent. I think we have to continually have to introduce ourselves as a service provider.

Every year there are changes at school sites there are changes with the district and we have to constantly be in communication with families about that.

We’re always inviting people to join with us. So whether that’s our athletic teams, or our wellness teams, health teams, people constantly come to this district wanting to partner to reach our kids.

LASR: You have said you’re not as concerned about the groups trying to get more charter schools into LAUSD as perhaps some of your colleagues are.

Garcia: We have to get 600,000 students to graduation and that is our job. I am open to all paths that lead to graduation. We’ve moved on dropouts—that has dropped significantly. If our academic progress continues, we’re going to need a strategy of how to not repeat what we did 40 years ago.

I’m open to any strategy that helps children and families. We know there is no one strategy for everybody. Charters have been an important partner for LA Unified.

LASR: Doesn’t that mean the end of LAUSD as we know it?

Garcia: A successful LA Unified cannot be over. We only get stronger. We are part of the educational justice movement that seeks to have quality schools everywhere, seeks to have parent engagement and communities and seeks to get to 100 percent graduation and we’re not there yet. I am hopeful we can continue to go as quickly as possible to meeting the needs of kids.

LASR: Do you have criteria for a kind of superintendent you want to see as Ramon Cortines’s successor?

Garcia: Absolutely, I want the best superintendent in the country. I want someone who embraces our belief system of serving all kids. We need someone who knows they’re a leader in LA at the state level and at the national level.

LASR: Does it matter if someone from outside or inside the area or the system?

Garcia: I would love someone who could make a five to seven year commitment to us. I am interested in someone who can inspire adults and children to be their best selves.

We interrupt poverty when we get it right. We impact the country when we get it right.

And we need to have someone who can earn the trust of the great Los Angeles politics and the media. Our superintendent doesn’t just work for the seven of us, and that’s really important.

LASR: As the new year begins next week, what are the major concerns you’re hearing from teachers?

Garcia: Teachers are always concerned about their working environment. I hear repeatedly they want to be treated with respect, they don’t want to be handed out mandates. This is why the pilot schools are so important in Los Angeles. It is the teacher-led strategy of making decisions closest to the kids that are allowing for a lot of flexibility.

This is why when people say it was better then, I want to ask, ‘What are you really saying? What was destroyed that was serving kids better?’ I don’t know.

I think losing $2.7 billion dollars [from state funding] was extremely painful and we had to stop doing a lot of things that were not necessarily helping us get to goal. I think teachers want to understand the rules, and they want to make sense of it  for the students and families that they serve. Where we have included them as partners, we have seen improvements.

Isn’t that wild, we lost $2.7 billion and 10,000 people and graduation went up? Why? Because we had to collapse some of the rules and people really came together. I don’t want to lose another $2.7 billion dollars, but I do want to continue to see people on the ground, thinking and reaching and growing as professionals and as partners in transforming a system that needs to be changed.

LASR: You have been one of the longest-serving School Board presidents. Do you have any advice for Steve Zimmer, who just got elected to the board?

Garcia: That’s a tough job. It is important to be available to our community and our constituents. Sometimes our organization needs a champion that reminds people to follow through, or just connect people.

Often I would say my job was to repeat what other people are working on. So aligning efforts and mostly just representing young people. Every day the board president of this organization represents young people and has to be available for people who want to help.

And I’ve said that to Mr. Zimmer.

Rafe Esquith

Lawyers for LA Unified today told the attorney representing acclaimed teacher, Rafe Esquith, that the investigation into his background has found evidence of “highly inappropriate conduct involving touching of minors” during his time as a district teacher as well as “inappropriate photographs and videos of a sexual nature” on his school computer.

The letter to Esquith’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, also claims that investigators found allegations of “threats to a parent and two students” and “possible ethical” violations of district policy regarding Esquith’s after-school program, the Hobart Shakespeareans.

The original complaint against Esquith focused on his reading of a passage from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to his class, financial issues regarding the Shakespeareans and a report from decades ago that he abused a student.

Esquith has been relieved of his teaching responsibilities while the investigation continues. The district said it “has a duty to thoroughly investigate these allegations before making any decisions to return Mr. Esquith to his classroom, and it takes this duty very seriously.”

The district’s letter to Geragos was sent within hours of Geragos’ announcing that he filed a class action lawsuit against the district —  a lawsuit that claims to represent several hundred district teachers — over the nature of the so-called teacher jail system. The lawsuit claims such a policy represents an unfair business practices and retaliation.

Teachers like Esquith facing allegations by students or other teachers are taken out of their classrooms and housed during their work day in a downtown location, sometimes for months, while an investigation is underway.

In particular, the class action cites “intentional infliction of emotional distress” against Esquith, who was hospitalized with “stress-induced thrombosis.”

The letter to Geragos came in response to letters from Esquith’s lawyers, accusing the district of engaging in a witch hunt against their client and threatening to file the class action lawsuit. Esquith claimed that the district actions against him violated Federal and state due process laws.

The district lawyers said they were rejecting those accusations “because while it was investigating the original allegations made against him, additional serious allegations of misconduct by Mr. Esquith came to light.”

The class action lawsuit also said that LAUSD officials confiscated more than $100,000 worth of music instruments and books from Esquith’s classroom at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School as well as a Medal of Arts presented to him by President Obama.

“Why would they come to raid his classroom?” said Ben Meiselas one of Esquith’s lawyers. “Why would they take his Medal of Arts? That is theft.”

A district spokeswoman, Monica Carazo, said, “Yes, items were removed from the classroom because the Office of Environmental Health and Safety issued a corrective action notice to the school in order to be in compliance with our health and safety rules/guidelines and the school took those necessary actions.  As for his National Medal of Arts, I am not aware of its removal.”

Meiselas said the law firm is also planning to file a federal class action lawsuit against LA Unified and a defamation lawsuit against the Sedgwick law firm, which is representing LAUSD in the case. Meiselas said several hundred teachers have contacted him about similar treatment that Esquith faced.

“This is a systematic violation of due process that we have heard over and over from teachers,” Meiselas said. “When you hear the same crazy story 12 times a day from teachers, then that is a problem. It is shocking what is going on at LAUSD.”