Free Republic

Ten months after installing a new computerized payroll process that has been roiled by glitches, Los Angeles Unified officials now say costs for fixing the system and completing its rollout could top $210 million. The system, with an original price tag of $95 million, has underpaid or overpaid thousands of employees, and last week district officials said hiring consultants to fix it has already ballooned the cost to $132.5 million. And some officials are questioning the district's transparency on all the costs associated with the system, noting that at least $6 million will be forfeited by allowing some overpaid teachers...

It is this reporter's opinion that it is time to take a look at the plight of a battle-scarred substitute teacher in the Los Angeles barrios. ... a substitute teacher who graduated from UCLA with high honors, is fluent in Spanish, and is a professional screenwriter. To make ends meet, she began as a substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). After several harrowing experiences, she now says there is no teaching going on at LAUSD, only confinement – the kind one might find in a penal colony, complete with wardens and bullhorns. And she says she’s...

...after 30 years of the institutionalized intellectual vandalism of our city’s most precious and needy children, when will we call it DELIBERATE regularity? If LAUSD was a private company, it would have collapsed a generation ago like the stinking necrotic tumor it is. LAUSD is a criminal enterprise – a $30 billion dollar (allegedly $11B operations, $21B construction) protection racket that extorts tax dollars under the pretext of improvement and higher scores. It makes schools I’ve seen in Calcutta, Rio, and Nairobi look like Cal Tech and MIT. ....LAUSD makes us lament the good old days before Brown v. Board...

Acrimony with racial overtones has plagued the advisory council. The key issue: whether meetings in Spanish should be allowed.For months, parents on a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council have disagreed over whether their meetings should be conducted in Spanish or English. Such arguments became so abusive that district officials canceled meetings for two months and brought in dispute-resolution specialists and mental-health counselors. But Friday morning's gathering of the District Advisory Council proved dysfunctional in any language. By one vote, parents censured their own chairman for alleged bad behavior, leading to a walkout of most Spanish-speakers. The rebuked chairman,...

Perhaps I'm just not that good at it. It's only my fourth year. They say it takes practice.I am standing at the door of my classroom. It is 7:24am in Los Angeles, and my homeroom students are trickling in listlessly. "Good morning. Please get your book out." I say to each group as they wander in. "Good morning, please get your book out. Good morning, please get your book out."I say it about 10 times. It is school policy to use the 20 minutes of homeroom for silent reading, to set the right tone for a day of schoolwork, and...

Four hours after arriving at her Los Angeles hotel from the Philippines, a jet-lagged Lolita Magno was thrown into a nonstop schedule of orientations, training sessions, paperwork and getting documents both for her new life in America and her new job teaching science at a Los Angeles Unified school. Despite pangs of homesickness and the uncertainties of a foreign environment, Magno knows she's begun a three-year journey that will offer her invaluable experience and knowledge she'll take back to her students in the Philippines. She thought it an ideal match: She'd bring her degree in science where it's needed and...

California education officials put forth artificially positive results on the number of students who passed the state's controversial high school exit exam last year, according to a recent UCLA study. The analysis also concluded that about 50,000 fewer students statewide earned diplomas last year compared to previous years, raising the prospect that the exit exam requirement is pressuring students to drop out. The decline in graduation rates was most pronounced in poor, heavily minority areas, the study found. "We've constructed a system that sets in place incentives for disinformation," said John Rogers, the study's author and co-director of UCLA's Institute...

Officials from a Los Angeles charter school are suing KABC-AM (790) and "McIntyre in the Morning" host Doug McIntyre for slander, alleging the school was the target of an on-air, racist campaign that led to a bomb scare. Academia Semillas Del Pueblo and its principal director of operations, Marcos Aguilar, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. They are seeking unspecified general, compensatory and punitive damages. "McIntyre implemented a premeditated scheme to bring down the school at all costs because the school educated predominately ... Latino-indigenous children in a non-Western European format," according to the lawsuit. According to...

Celebrating diversity has become one of the main goals of American schools. Students are being taught to think of themselves primarily as members of different ethnic groups, while being discouraged from developing an American identity. Consider the case of Mount Diablo High School in Concord, California. Mount Diablo's website states that students will "celebrate diversity by being respectful to all walks of life." In keeping with that ethos, last month the school divided students by ethnicity for separate assemblies. School officials explained that the purpose of segregating the students was to talk about test scores, recognize achievements and celebrate different...

Already lagging behind their statewide counterparts, Los Angeles Unified high school students took a precipitous plunge on newly released Academic Performance Index scores, dropping 20 points from the previous year. The LAUSD's elementary and middle school students made steady progress on tests that measure math and English-language skills, but still were well below the statewide averages, according to a California Department of Education report released Tuesday. In a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he is lobbying for more federal money for education, Superintendent David Brewer III said the high-school score reflects the stubborn achievement gap between white and minority...

LOS ANGELES - A judge on Thursday struck down a law granting Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa partial control of the nation's second-largest school district. The law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, violated the state constitution by interfering with the governing authority of the Los Angeles Unified School District board, Superior Court Judge Dzintra I. Janavs ruled. "The statute makes drastic changes in the local governance of the LAUSD giving the mayor a role that is unprecedented in California," she wrote. A coalition of parents, students and administrators sued in October, contending the law takes too much power away from the...

Nachum Shifren is an ordained rabbi in Los Angeles who spent 18 years of his life as a secondary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was also known as the "Surfing Rabbi" because of his abilities as a former professional surfer. He is quite familiar with youth culture and can be a pretty hip fellow -- despite his long beard, yarmulke and phylacteries that hang from his waistband. His level of coolness, however, never prepared him for a public school system where he received a death threat in class by a student and, on another day,...

Los Angeles Unified's massive school-construction project faces an estimated $2 billion shortfall fueled by soaring building costs, Superintendent Roy Romer warned Wednesday. Despite four bond measures and state support totaling nearly $19.2 billion over the past decade, Romer told the bond oversight committee that more steps need to be taken to shore up the program and fill the looming gap. While Romer said he didn't believe another bond would be needed, committee chairwoman Connie Rice said that if costs continue to escalate at this pace all options will be on the table - including a possible fifth bond measure. Romer,...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's fast-tracked legislation to gain control of Los Angeles area public schools faces a key Senate vote today, just days before the legislative session runs out. But even as lawmakers race against the clock, nearly all observers say approval has been virtually assured by an intensive lobbying campaign and the nearly unprecedented support of a powerhouse coalition of political leaders. While few in the Capitol halls say they are publicly willing to discuss - or even acknowledge knowing about - any specific political favors being traded to keep the mayor's legislation moving, most agree the wrangling has been...

Should American taxpayers be forced to pay for a self-segregating school that teaches children to hate the United States? That is apparently what is happening in Los Angeles. Academia Semillos del Pueblo (ASDP), a charter school partially funded by the Los Angeles Unified School District, claims it only wants to help disadvantaged Latinos to earn a quality education. The school's true agenda, however, is far more radical and far more dangerous. Judicial Watch recently launched an investigation of the ASDP by filing a California Public Records Act request. Here is a small sampling of what we've uncovered so far: The...

Hoping to appeal to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's immigrant roots, educators and legislators Thursday called on the Austrian-born leader to support the use of special textbooks geared toward students born outside the United States. "You're also an immigrant. You still know exactly what I'm talking about, governor," Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Whittier, said during a news conference promoting her bill aimed at bridging the gap between native and non-native students. Senate Bill 1769 would require the state Board of Education to develop an approach to teaching reading and writing that incorporates English instruction for non-native speakers. Advocates envision textbooks and teaching materials...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had raised nearly $1.1 million by the end of June to fund his campaign to wrest control of the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to finance reports filed Friday. The largest contribution by far came from A. Jerrold Perenchio, chairman of Los Angeles-based Univision Communications, who gave $500,000. Altogether, Villaraigosa's campaign to promote restructuring of the nation's second-largest school district received $1,075,000 from 10 donors by the end of last month. Three donors gave $100,000 apiece: shopping center operator Westfield Group; Chicago-based AP Properties Ltd.; and David I. Fisher, chief investment officer of Capital Group Investment...

LOS ANGELES In his bid for more power over public schools, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is set to appoint a veteran educator to a post designed to ease tensions between City Hall and public school officials opposed to the plan, the Los Angeles Times reported. Ramon C. Cortines, who served six months as interim superintendent of the L.A. Unified school district in 2000, is scheduled to be named deputy mayor for education, youth and families Tuesday. Cortines did not say whether he supports state legislation that would grant Villaraigosa say in district management a proposal that has drawn fire from the...

Guys this is a propaganda piece from the California Charter Schools Association in support of Marcus Aguilar and his school. It was released on June 7, 2006 and it flew under the radar. Since I like taking news that have been thrown in the garbage, I thought I would share it with you. What is interesting is the press release are filled with lies and it tries to promote Mr. Aguilar and the make up of the school itself. This "press release also tries to blame us(even though it does not name us) for the dissiminating bad information and inflammantory...

As the controversy surrounding LAUSD's Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School continues, many people still support this La Raza-funded Aztlan madrassa. In our LAUSD Parent Group, Annie explained the attack on Academia Semillas was "rooted in racism tied to the immigration debate." (Sigh) If you spend time in the Middle East, you'll learn that every bad thing on the planet is tied to Israel and Jews. From stubbed toes and drought to broken light bulbs and cancer, Jews are the epithet that explains...