WestchesterParents

While I try to stay as neutral as possible on WestchesterParents there are times when I have to call people out when they offer policy proposals that fly in the face in reality.  Particularly in the case of education which I often write about and especially when it comes from a candidate for governor who is proposing what they will do to education over the next four years. This is one of those times. 

California Gov Candidate Brown Education today came out with a campaign press release aimed at education that is frankly dishonest and his proposals are written as if he were closeted away in a monastery for the last twenty years. You can find his plan here:

www.jerrybrown.org/sites/default/files/Education%20Plan.pdf

In his plan he makes a number of claims that I’ll list below. Each one of them I follow up with data that disproves the claim.

Claim 1 – “Despite the fact that many students (at Oakland Military, a school Jerry Brown claims to have started in Oakland as Mayor) come from low income families (80% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches), this year 25% of our graduates were accepted to the University of California system. In prior years, graduates have been admitted to such prestigious schools as West Point and Yale.”

It wasn’t until the 2004/05 that year the Oakland Military Charter began reporting enrollment data to the California Department of Education (CDE) and only two full years of enrollment data is available to report.

Despite Browns claim that 25% of grads were accepted into the UC system, the raw numbers paint an entirely different picture that is easily hidden behind ‘percentages.’

The first full graduating class that matriculated through grades 9-12 at Oakland Military was the class of 2008 just two years ago. This class reported to the CDE a 43.68 percent drop in enrollment from 87 freshman that began 2004 to 49 seniors that reported back in 2007.

The class of 2009 saw a larger drop with 81 freshman enrolled in 2005 and saw only 42 students report in their senior year witch represented a 48.15% loss of enrollment.

While data from two graduating classes alone are hardly enough to hang your accolades on, a 48% drop in enrollment of which 25% (10 students) went on to a UC or UCS school is terrible.

Claim 2 – “I also started the Oakland School for the Arts, which is devoted to intensive pre-professional training in the arts within a college-preparatory curriculum. The school, going into its 9th year, is audition based and also serves 600 students from 6th through 12th grade.”

Oakland Arts began reporting enrollment to the CDE back in 2002 and its first class to matriculate from 9th to 12th was the class of 2006. This class began with 102 freshman and ended up with only 61 seniors, a 40 percent loss. The most recent class of 2009 began with 88 freshman students and saw only 45 students reporting for the senior year for a 49 percent loss. Just as disconcerting is the drop in freshman students reporting in 2006, 2007 and 2008 where the number of incoming students fell to 58, 26 and 77 students.

Claim 3 – “Both schools charge no tuition and are among the top-performing schools in Oakland.”

Charters by state law cannot charge tuition. They are public schools. As for top-performing, see claims 1 & 2 and judge for yourself how well they perform.

Claim 4 – “From my experience in starting and running these schools, I have gained first-hand experience in how difficult it is to enable all students to be ready for college and careers. Student outcomes are a complex interaction of student characteristics, teacher competence, instructional materials, and parental support. Any reforms and state educational policies must take into account this complexity and refrain from oversimplifying the problems and solutions.”

Brown has neither first hand experience nor any solution to enable “all students to be ready for college and careers” and his managing the schools above aptly point that out.

After making these claims Jerry Brown then goes on to state what he will do but his proposals are nothing new. His proposals follow the same path that has followed since the 1990′s and will simply make things worse.

Brown begins by saying he will “Establish(ed) Minimum Requirements for High School Graduates.” However the State of California already has minimum requirements in place. In fact in 1999 California had raised the bar and instituted a more rigorous college preparation curriculum “for all students.” This however has had the unintended consequence of exponentially raising the drop out rate and placed diplomas well out of reach for many students throughout the state.

Brown goes on to say that he will “Significantly increased investment in K-12 and Higher Education” but education today has already consumed 40 percent of the California budget.

Brown also proposes to raise the graduation requirement even further than it is today. Considering that it is the math portion of the state curriculum and CAHSE that has proven to be so difficult to pass, his proposal to and another year of math will most assuredly raise the dropout rate to well over 40 percent.

Most of Browns other proposals are related to funding as if to explain that California’s problems with its education system have to do with under funding. Funding is not the problem, the problem is making education relevant to California’s students.

Note to our readers: To date I have not yet seen candidate Meg Whitman’s education plan if she has submitted one. When she does submit one I’ll comment on it as well.

Posted on July 28th, 2010 by David Coffin
Tags: GENERAL, LOCAL, OUR SCHOOLS, POLITICS, QUALITY OF LIFE, RAISING CHILDREN, STATE
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A spirited defense of Assemblyman Steve Bradford’s (D) Limousine Legislation by Jenny M. appeared in our comments section in Part 1 but it was her initial comment on the state of education (the main point of the article) that was worth a column in itself. Part 2….

(Jenny M.) Unfortunately you cannot legislate students to stay in school. If there was a viable piece of legislation that would make all students graduate high school there is a good chance that would have flown through the legislature by now.

Jenny M is wrong on both counts. It was the legislature and the state board of education that forced students out of school by changing the curriculum. California students once had multiple paths towards a diploma but in 1997-98 that was eliminated reducing it to one single path. The argument then was that elementary and secondary schools should be preparing all students for college and so the curriculum was changed. Vocational paths to a diploma were eliminated and replaced it with two years of college preparatory math. In essence, they legislated a quarter of a million students out of a diploma.

From the California Dropout Research Project:

… students need a wide variety of skills to be successful in college and in the workplace. These skills include both traditional academic skills, but also applied, vocational skills, as well as so-called “soft skills,” such as punctuality, perseverance, and the social skills needed to work in groups. In fact, one recent study found that improvements in a range of non-academic skills were more valuable than improvements in math achievement for increasing chances for enrolling in and completing postsecondary programs, and for increasing earnings eight years after high school.

If California wants to truly prepare its students for life beyond high school, it should examine a full range of academic and non-academic skills and incorporate them in the state’s high school graduation requirements and accountability system so that schools and students are encouraged and recognized for acquiring them.

Finally, the state should consider more options for students to meet the graduation requirements. An increasing number of states have pursued the idea of multiple pathways for students to meet high school graduation requirements, such as through career and technical education (CTE) courses.

There could be a viable piece of legislation that would dramatically turn the dropout rate around and that would be a bill to eliminate the college preparatory math requirement (Algebra 1) and again offer vocational paths to a diploma. Students planning to go on to state universities would still need college preparatory math but those who choose a vocational career or a longer path to a college degree could still earn a diploma.

With multiple paths in front of them more students would be finishing high school, more students would be passing CAHSE and more high school grads would be going on to postsecondary programs such community colleges and state universities. More students would be applying for jobs with a diploma in hand. With multiple paths we could reduce spending on expensive intervention programs that are clearly failing and redirect that money to more meaningful academic offerings.

Today’s legislators are lock-step into group think and Bradford has so far fits neatly into that box. They are unable to seek solutions that put the California’s student’s interests first. Education unfortunately has steered perpendicularly to its stated purpose and goals and instead it has become a jobs program for state employees.

By the end of Steve Bradford’s first year in office, another 80,000 students in California will have dropped out. Students pushed out because the only other path available to them was dropping out.

Posted on July 22nd, 2010 by David Coffin
Tags: LOCAL, OUR SCHOOLS, POLITICS, QUALITY OF LIFE, RAISING CHILDREN, STATE
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30  to 60 percent of the high school students in Bradford’s assembly district are dropping out and one of his first pieces of legislation is AB 2572 to regulate limousines going in and out of the airport????  Where are his priorities?

Your vote has value. What do you value most?

Posted on July 21st, 2010 by westchester dad
Tags: LAX - AIRPORT, LOCAL, OUR SCHOOLS, POLITICS, QUALITY OF LIFE, STATE, WESTCHESTER HS
1 Comment »

On Tuesday April 6th, LAUSD school board members Steve Zimmer and Tamar Galatzan will be proposing a compromise resolution to the school board to allow students already permiting out into neighboring school districts to remain there until they graduate.  The meeting will be held at 1PM at 333 S. Beaudry Ave., Board Rm on 1st Floor, Los Angeles 90017

I hope that you can all be there to express to the school board that education opportunities for students must trump the districts desire to handcuff them into seats of poorly performing schools in an effort to grab for more school dollars.   

Regardless of how the school board vote goes however, there are going to be a huge number of families that will have the door to a quality education shut closed on them unless the board amends the resolution to allow all students intra-districts permits to any districts that have room for them. Short of that, we need to look ahead and start lobbying state representatives to promote legislation that promises real choice in schools and even file law suits if they fail to.

So far state and federal “school choice” legislation has been very limited in scope and have provided very little real opportunity for us.

For instance, Senate bill SBX5_4 which we all hear about is limited to 1000 lowest performing schools and no district may have more than 10% of its schools on the list.  In a district with 587 schools, only 59 of LAUSD’s can be on the list and those will be spread out over elementaries, middle and high schools. 56 of LAUSD’s high schools alone are PI schools. Clearly SBX5_4 like other legislation before it falls far short of choice.

If there has been one benefit handed to us since Cortines ill-advised policy announcement, it has made us realize just how precarious our rights to school choice and quality education really is and in turn has provided us an opportunity to rally thousands of parents and students together at Stop LAUSD From Denying Permits For Inter-District Student Transfers!!  It took just one guy (Cortines) and a memo to the school board to take away our opportunities to quality education. It will take a thousand angry mom’s, dad’s and students to get it back.

We must take advantage of this opportunity and demand that our legislators write meaningful school choice legislation for all.

Posted on March 31st, 2010 by westchester dad
Tags: OUR SCHOOLS
15 Comments »

LAUSD TO DENY QUALITY EDUCATION TO STUDENTS.

In a press release announced today, [Daily Breeze story] LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines pulled the trigger on intra-district transfers for families seeking quality schools.  No new out of district permits and students on existing permits will have them denied next year. [See Cortines new transfer policy]

Make no mistake about it, this is all about money. Your child’s education takes a back seat to LAUSD’s money woes.

“Just about every school district in the Los Angeles area is experiencing massive budget deficits but ours is the largest at $640 million,” said Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines.

Clearly Ramon Cortines best days are behind him. In his first tenure as LAUSD superintendent he bucked heads with the establishment setting up mini-districts in an effort to decentralize the top heavy districts and bring more autonomy to local schools.  For many of us at that time he was a hero. But we were soon disappointed when he walked away from this interim job before he finished the job of reforming the district.  

An education reformer? Not anymore. Upon his return, Cortines has not only inherited the problems left by his predecessors Roy Romer and David Brewer, Cortines has become an integral part of the problem. Under Cortines supervision, the school district has amassed a $640 million debt,  seen its dropout rates climb hover around 50% and graduation rates fall below 40%. Now he’s ready to throw a tiny segment of the districts student population representing just over 1%, under the bus by forcing them to leave schools that are better managed and offer far more opportunities than their home district. Force them to enroll in schools that have been targeted by the state as having persistently failed to meet state standards.

“It is time to bring our students home to LAUSD where we still have plenty of excellent schools for them to attend and we have great teachers to instruct them.” – Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines

Still have plenty of excellent schools? 

This is Ramon Cortines world view of excellent schools:

• 359 of the districts k-12 schools have persistently failed to meet the states academic targets for multiple years. Up from 292 schools in 2008.  These Title I schools are designated as “PI” schools and are on the states watch list.
• 56 of his 71 high schools (78%) are “PI” schools and are on the states watch list.
• Another 11 schools (14%) have persistently failed to meet AYP but are not targeted (yet) because they are not Title I schools.
• Only 8 of Cortines 76 high schools are in the upper 50th percentile and 6 of those are in the San Fernando Valley.  Only four have earned a state ranking of 7 and above.
• The entire school district is in year 3 as a “PI” district having failed to repeatedly meet state targets. It enters the “corrective action” phase where the California Department of Education must take more aggressive action to turn the district around including abolishing or restructuring the district.
• An average district dropout rate of  49.75%
• 422,654 students in the district are enrolled in “PI” schools and are eligible to transfer to non-PI schools. Up from 364,027 in 2007/08.
• The total number of “PI” schools in the district has increased from 313 to 359 between 2008 and 2009.

Ramon Cortines school district is financially broke.  $640 million broke, so he’s looking under the sofa for loose dimes and quarters.  It’s highly doubtful he will find enough coins to benefit a district that is in a downward spiral and losing enrollment to charter schools. What he will do is turn kids and their families lives upside down. 

Because there are so few schools above the 50th percentile, students that find themselves having school choice taken away from them will soon find letters like this in their mail boxes after they enroll in their “new and improved” school advising them that it has not met the states AYP and they have the option to be bused to a non-PI school, if they can find space for them. 

If they do find a seat at a non-PI school it will likely be a long bus ride paid for by the district to a  distant community served by the LAUSD, to a school that will be only half as good as the school in the district that once welcomed them.

Simply stated, Cortines does not have enough seats in quality high schools available to him. And what few seats that are available should be going to the students already trapped in his under performing schools.

Posted on March 17th, 2010 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS
9 Comments »

Well the rubber has finally hit road.

Despite all their posturing, Money does matter more than your child’s educational opportunities in the Los Angeles Unified School District and there is no more stunning example of that than the school board vote last month that quietly authorized the policy change behind our backs.  They want their $9,500 back even when it means your child will be forced to enroll in one of the districts substandard schools.

Because the district is facing a $640 million shortfall, the LAUSD is gearing up to deny up to 80% of the transfer permits it currently extends to thousands of Los Angeles students who have sought better academic opportunities outside of the district.

Parents don’t make these herculean efforts to obtain transfer permits out of the LAUSD without a good reason. In Westchester/Playa del Rey for example the local high school here has failed meet the states AYP (Average yearly progress) for 10 years running.

In 1999 the school was already well below the 50th percentile earning a dismal “4″ in the states ranking system where 10 is best. Since then, Westchester High Schools ranking has dropped to a “1″ where it rests at the bottom 10% of the states schools.

For many parents, the districts announcement will likely result in their children being pulled from excellent public schools ranked in the top 30% in the state and dragged into schools ranked in the lower 40%.

While this may monetarily benefit the district it could have serious consequences for other districts and the state.  Students enrolled in smaller surrounding districts cost the state roughly $8000 per student per year. If these students are denied permits by the LAUSD and forced to enroll in LAUSD schools, the cost to the state will go up by fifteen hundred dollars per student to $9500.

The boards vote also flies in the face of the goals set by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was enacted by congress to offer parents public school choice when their neighborhood school fails to meet academic expectations and annual yearly progress.

NCLB provides that if a school fails to meet academic milestones (AYP) the district must offer students another choice of school within the district. However, what happens if well over 50% of the districts high schools are on the states watch list because they are failing to meet AYP?  And worse, what happens if the district itself is on the watch list as is the LAUSD? (Sounds like an opportunity for a NCLB federal lawsuit to me.)

NCLB also states that when a school does not meet academic milestones and is designated a “PI” or Program Improvement school, the district cannot offer students another PI school as an alternative. With over 50% of LAUSD of its high schools falling into the “Program Improvement” category, there are few if any LAUSD schools where students could go. Consequently parents seek out inter-district transfers.  Suitably close hight schools near Westchester for example (Venice, Hamilton, University, Gardena) are all on the PI watch list.

The district believes that by denying families permits, it can steer $51 million that now goes to other local districts back to the LAUSD budget assuming all these students end up in LAUSD schools and not private schools or charters.  However the State of California would stand to lose even more education dollars when these students are moved from less costly and more more academically proficient school districts that receive about $8000 into a very expensive low performing LAUSD school district that receives $9,500 per student. 

Families wishing to enroll their children in other districts should continue to file for inter-district permits with the district. If they later receive a letter denying the permit they can file this appeal [form] to the Los Angeles County Department of Education.

I would also suggest that you call, write or fax your LAUSD board member and let them know how you feel about this policy. The board contact list can be found at http://laschoolboard.org/. Steve Zimmer is the school board member for most of the west side.

Posted on March 14th, 2010 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, ORVILLE WRIGHT MS, OUR SCHOOLS, POLITICS, RAISING CHILDREN, WESTCHESTER HS
11 Comments »

The LAUSD and Alternative Public School Opportunities

Summer is nearly over. Some schools have already begun classes.
Last year I wrote this article and thought it would be a good idea to republish it again because one of the more fascinating realizations that I came upon was how insular the teachers and admnistrators at WHS were. Later I find that this a district wide problem. For the most part, they have no idea how schools outside of the LAUSD operate. Or what best practices are. The good news is that change is afoot.  

Be careful. I can’t be held responsible if you find yourself feeling a little despondent and maybe angry after having looked at the course offerings at Westchester High School (WHS) and comparing them to offerings at other nearby school districts such as Torrance, Santa Monica and Mira Costa.

Take a look at the following high school course catalogs and you’ll understand. The presentations alone are enough to give you a sense that maybe WHS administrators and district officials aren’t too passionate about their product or are interested in providing students and their families with real choices.

First let’s take a look at some other nearby South Bay schools. Clicking on the covers will download the entire catalog. (Adobe pdf files)

Let’s compare them to Westchester High Schools planner (2006-2007) which also substitutes as their course catalog:

Two pages. That’s it? When I saw that my heart felt like it dropped as low as my ankles. It was really disappointing. With only two pages, the Westchester class planner is merely a form with a list of available classes name.Many courses exhibit ambiguous names such as Discrete Math, ROP or AVID, but there are no descriptions following the names of the classes in the planner, it doesn’t say which, if any courses fullfill UC or UCS requirements or how many credits they are worth.Santa Monica’s course catalog is 41 pages long, Torrance’s catalog is 40 pages long and Mira Costa’s catalog is 65 pages and each of them describe in detail all of their class offerings.In the County of Orange I also looked at Mission Viejo High School and this school offers classes in Engineering and Architecture. Visit their web site at http://www.svusd.k12.ca.us/schools/mvhs/.Westchester’s class offerings are bare bones and offers few opportunities to students looking for elective courses that might steer their interests into one or more academic or career paths.

The schools Math/Science Aerospace Magnet offers nothing that other LAUSD schools offer in the Math/Science Aerospace fields. [editors note: The Daily Breeze reported that the aerospace curriculum was dropped even though they continued to keep the name]

The math classes at WHS are no different than math classes at other LAUSD high schools and how the magnet school relates to aerospace I don’t understand even though I’ve been in the aerospace field for forty years.

They don’t offer any elective or A-G courses that are specific to the aerospace or engineering fields. No engineering courses such as 3D modeling, CAD, CAM, Robotics, Fluid dynamics, electronics, ADA, C, JAVA or other computer related study. Wood shop doesn’t count as career opportunity today and auto shop? Please, that’s a hobby, not a career elective.

One has to wonder how many students from Westchester went on to Cal Tech, MIT, or other engineering/science schools. I know how many didn’t. Read.. Academic Excellance Through Attrition.

Beyond the engineering and sciences, it interesting to note that other schools offer various combinations of Latin, Japanese, Korean, Jazz, Music Theory, Video Production, Band, String Orchestra, Wind Ensembal, Earth sciences, Anatomy, Marine Science, Computer Science (AP), Economics.

One interesting byproduct of my search for course catalogs was that I could find more information of LAUSD professional development than I could student course catalogs. As important as it is, I had to wonder if school employment, i.e, professional development, i.e, saving jobs was more important than describing the courses that students take? Just a thought.

Is it any wonder why dropping out is so easy to do?

Footnote – A teacher wrote me:
The following is a quote I received today from a fraternity brother of mine who’s a professor in Howard University’s (an historically African-American University in Washington D.C., my father’s alma mater), college of Engineering, that is a sad symptom of the abysmal education system we have here in LA:

“The Howard University registrar did a search yielding the following:

Howard University Architecture, Computer Science, Computer, Civil, Chemical, Electrical,and Mechanical Engineering have ZERO STUDENTS from Crenshaw, Washington Prep, Westchester, Locke, Dorsey, View Park, Inglewood high schools. That is 0 as in ZERO.”

Does anybody want to guess the drop-out rate at those schools (except maybe View Park)?

Posted on August 29th, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: OUR SCHOOLS, WESTCHESTER HS
3 Comments »

(Originally published in 2007)

Los Angeles Unified School District loses almost half (49%) of their high school students before the end of their senior year.

In the spring of 2005 a Harvard University report of the Civil Rights Project came out detailing the “graduation” crisis in California. The Harvard study acknowledged what I’ve seen in snapshots of enrollments figures over the years of various Los Angeles Unified School District high schools and being drawn to the numbers that showed huge differences between the freshman and senior enrollment.

Year-to-year enrollment snapshots that parents might visit to evaluate a school such as LAUSD’s Accountability Report Card (SARC) tell the reader very little about what is going on.

For example, In 2004 at Westchester High School the 9th grade enrollment was 1143, 10th grade enrollment was 620 students, 11th grade with 546 students and the 12th grade with 331. What does that tell you? Not a lot except that the 9th grade class is significantly larger than the senior class. It could be something simple like the districts moving kids from one over crowded school to Westchester or the freshman numbers could be a reflection of students being held back.

To obtain a better picture of the enrollment dynamics it made better sense to look at the data over a period of years from a “class perspective”, how we typically see a students progress and then sort the data by graduating class. In the study, I tracked 309 graduating classes from 31 schools from 8 LAUSD districts over 9 years.

Once I began connecting the dots it became clear that neither shifting seats nor grade retention was the case. What I found was disturbing and it appears to support in part, the Harvard Study.

While looking at enrollments sorted by graduating class, I found that graduation rates were the least of LAUSD’s problems because huge numbers of students are not even getting into their Sophomore or Junior years much less as Seniors. Also, not all seniors graduate or even pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSE).

Some examples of the data the include:

• Venice High School where the average loss of enrollment from 1997 through 2006 is running at 51% or 460 students PER GRADUATING CLASS!

• Van Nuys High School is losing 46% or 289 students for each of graduating class.

• San Fernando High School has lost 63% or 389 students for each of graduating class.

• South Gate High School loses an average of 743 students per graduating class.

The worst rate of attrition of the 29 schools I studied had a loss of 69% or 1219 students for each graduating class. Only one school in my study of 29 high schools had a loss of students below 20% (most were well over 30%) and that was Marshall High School though it still lost over 300 students per class.

No schools seem to be immune to this disturbing phenomena. Even award winning schools like El Camino Real noted for its achievements with the Academic Decathlon teams and Granada Hills Charter with its Science Bowl achievements lose on an average 338 students and 343 students per graduating class respectively. Roughly 33% of the students at these schools did not return by their senior year. Most recently, El Camino’s graduating Class of 2006 lost 427 students. Almost 40%.

District wide, all the LAUSD graduating classes combined between 1997 and 2006 (not just those in the study) had an average loss of 49.2% or 28,123 students each year. Over a quarter of a million students that began their high school experience in LAUSD schools as freshman did not return by their senior year.

Since 2003, enrollment losses at all LAUSD high schools increased from 53.6% to 56.2% so it is difficult to attribute any particular schools drop in enrollment to the ongoing building program and transfer of students therein. It is doubtful that these students could be moving over to private schools since there are only 25,334 private school seats in use (roughly 6300 seats per grades 9 through 12) within the LAUSD boundaries and most of those students are committed (K-12) private schoolers.

LAUSD is not merely a district with problems, it is a broken district. The charts showing the high school enrollments of 300 graduating classes from 30 high schools over 9 years visually reinforce the real story of an enrollment freefall of a district bleeding with students of unfulfilled potential. Charts of the schools are available at Where Have All the Seniors Gone?

Last year the entire Class of 2006 for the LAUSD lost almost 39,000 students over their four year stay in high school. If these young people are not your son’s and daughter’s then it is their peers who will find themselves working low paying service jobs or on public assistance. While we cannot attribute all of these students to dropping out (some may have moved out of the city, or sought out-of-district schools or private schools), certainly a sizeable number of them had in all likelihood, given up and cut short their educations.

The data came from the State of California Department of education web site at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ which collects the information from school districts throughout the state.

Posted on August 1st, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS
No Comments »

Now that Westchester High School has again taken the state Division I basketball championship I’ll take this opportunity to reprint an article I posted a year ago that pointed out that we cannot have reform at WHS until the school focuses its attention and resources (including it varsity sports programs) at local students instead of the regions elite.

Westchester High School may have won its 5th State Division I title, but the basketball program continues to be nothing more than a private club team headed by Ed Azzam. A club that has no place for W/PdR students.

Azzam even acknowledges himself that academics at WHS takes a back seat to sports in this recent  L.A.Times blog as saying “That’s kind of when it kind of dawned on me, the difference between CAMS (the charter school Azzam’s son goes to) and a lot of other schools. My kids would never consider missing a game — and it wouldn’t even enter my mind — and that’s the difference. The academics here (at CAMS) come first in all that they do.”

Since I published the article a year ago there have been some encouraging changes including the hiring of a new principal. Dr. Bruce Mims was recently hired by a select group of parents, teachers and community members as part of the iDesign reforms at the high school.

However, Mims will have a tough time attracting our local students including local student athletes as long as Westchester’s sports programs are designed to attract or recruit athletes from throughout the country with the specific goal of winning Division I championships.

Westchester out of the Playoffs – so should be the coaches

Former principal Dana Perryman – “We would like the Westchester community to continue to believe that this is their school… There are a lot of families with young children in the area and we want them to send their children here.”

When Perryman uttered those words six years ago hoping that our communities children would return to the school, few Westchester families took up her offer. Many of those third graders whose families she was speaking to will be attending other high schools this coming September.

That is because the school continuously failed to offer the families a wide array of academic courses, electives and it set its bar so high in its sports programs by offering places on its junior varsity and varsity teams only to the regions most elite players. I pointed out not to long ago on these pages (quickly picked up by one local newspaper) that the high school no longer even has an aerospace magnet even though the magnet had “Aerospace” in the name.

All of this could change if reforms can take place now that the school elected to distance itself from the perpetually broken system of local districts and a micromanaging downtown board of education. In December, teachers and parents voted to join the LMU/Westchester Family of schools. Its still part of the LAUSD but it is being granted some forms of autonomy.

Steps for reform
One recent step in the right direction was the announcement that our high school will be getting its school band and music director back. That’s just one of a series of steps that will be necessary if the LMU/Westchester family of schools is serious about renewing community interest in the high school.

Another important step would be a demonstration to the community that the athletic needs of our sons are just as important as the performing arts needs of all of our children.

That step would necessitate a new direction in the schools varsity and junior varsity athletic programs and finding new people to manage and coach it.

Now that the basketball program at Westchester High School has come to a quick end, it would be a good time to thank athletic director Brian Henderson and basketball coach Ed Azzam for their services and look for a new director and coach whose interests are in providing the local student athlete with opportunities.

Henderson and Azzam’s only interests has been to win CIF State Division I championships year after year. Together they have been quite effective. However, to meet that lofty goal the Comets have been caught violating CIF rules time after time, year after year.

Few if any at all of Azzam’s varsity players over the years have come through Westchester’s feeder schools that would also include our local private schools. Henderson and Azzam’s program have routinely recruited outside of the schools enrollment area, often raiding other schools to recruit some of the best players in the country to insure a place in the CIF state finals.

Some examples include:

• The Comets were slapped with a year’s probation when Hassan Adams played for the team in a 2000 summer tournament before his transfer to the school was official.
• The same year Ashton Thomas was declared ineligible for varsity competition one season because of an improper transfer from Leuzinger.
• In 2003 Amir Johnson was recruited out of Verbum Dei (an academically superior school btw) to play basketball for WHS. Westchester was Johnsons third school in as many years having originally enrolled at Narbonne. Westchester was banned from post season play in the CIF State finals after the recruiting violations were discovered. According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson was punished for falsifying grades and an assistant coach was banned from coaching for one year.
• Hassan Adams of Inglewood had attended two other high schools before landing at Westchester.
• The LA Times also noted that starting point guard Ashanti Cook, sixth man Brandon Heath and reserve Bobby Brown each came from Inglewood and others came from Santa Monica, Hawthorne, Torrance, Lawndale, Carson, Hancock Park and the Crenshaw district.
• Auri Allen played at two different high schools in four years before winding up at Westchester in his senior year.
• The LA Times wrote: “Three times in the last two years (2002-2003) Westchester has been formally accused of breaking City Section rules, and twice it has been penalized.
• In 2005 Eric Sonderheim of the Times wrote: “The stink of corruption keeps getting stronger even though the City Section (referring to particularly to Westchester) and The Southern Section have new transfer restrictions requiring athletes to change residences if they want to gain immediate eligibility.”

Cheating the community

Westchester high school recruiting practices have come at a price to the community. Our son’s, many who could easily find themselves a slot on a team in another school if they had lived elsewhere, are left out of program in our own community.

Because of Westchester’s recruiting practices, it’s been years since this community has been able to rally around one of it’s children at our high school and its been years since one of our kids found their name in a local paper such as the Argonaut with a story of their contribution to a successful win over another school. What this ultimately boils down to is another opportunity that the school failed to provide our children and one of many reasons why it will be difficult to encourage community enrollment.

In 2002, Reseda Coach Mike Wagner was quoted as saying: “No kid in his right mind is not going to want to go to Westchester, where they get their shoes and sweats and bags.”

It goes even further than that, The LA Times write “While most high school teams do car washes and bake sales to raise funds for equipment, uniforms and travel, Westchester, a public school, attracts all-star-caliber athletes from across the South Bay and parts of Los Angeles. The players admit they have been at least partially enticed by thousands of dollars in free apparel and paid trips to national tournaments that are attended by hundreds of college scouts.”

In the same article the Times wrote ”Jonathan Smith, a top player at Lawndale Leuzinger High, transferred to Westchester before this season only to become an end- of-the-bench reserve. But he doesn’t regret his choice.

“There’s a lot of exposure,” he said. “At Leuzinger, we only traveled to tournaments in the South Bay. At Westchester, we travel everywhere. The shoes, they’re nice too.”

Westchester high schools activities have hurt not only our community but other high schools as well since they lure students away from their programs as had happened with Amir Johnson who attended Narbonne and Mater Dei before settling in on Westchester HS.

On a well known basketball forum a parent wrote, “If you want your son to be part of a program that cheats and constantly is looking for players to replace your son and your son will have teammates transferring in and out faster than the planes that land at LAX, then Westchester might be one of the places for him.

If you want your kid to be part of a program that the Coaches genuinely care about the well being of the kid (not just the basketball skills) and will work their butts off to build a team around your son and help him both on the basketball court and in the classroom, I can suggest the following schools…”

Clearly at many high schools, recruiting top talent has reached obsessive levels and the cycle continues year after year. It doesn’t have to continue at Westchester High School any longer.

If the LMU/Westchester Family of Schools is true to it’s commitment of bringing the community back into its schools, it will have the authority bring back athletic opportunities to kids living in the Westchester high school enrollment area.

Posted on March 22nd, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, WESTCHESTER HS
10 Comments »

Despite the fact that nearly 700 community members turned out to vote on how Westchester High School should be governed, this vote was designed to fail at the start.

It didn’t matter if 30,000 community people voted and Proposal 3 got 100% of their vote. It didn’t matter if only 2 teachers showed up as long as at least one of them voted for Proposal 2.

The governance vote used a bizarrely weighted voting scheme that locked in the vote so that the community could only get as high as 19% of the vote if they all voted for Proposal 3. The vote it turns out was completely up to the teachers as to whether they wanted Proposal 1, Proposal 2 or Proposal 3.  It only took 52 teachers to set back reform by voting against Proposal 3.

At best Westchester/Playa del Rey could only have hoped for a tie and that could only happen if both SCHOOL PARENT and COMMUNITY voted unanimously for Proposal 3.

I am frankly stunned that LMU/iDesign officials didn’t recognize this beforehand and step in to correct the problem before the vote. Neither they nor the transition team made any effort to advise the community on how the vote would be counted.

The transition team who’s representation was already leaning heavily towards in-trenched interests such as the UTLA, the district and permit availability appeared to have been reaching over backwards to protect them from being overrun by a community turning out en masse and intent on reforming the school. Can’t let that happen or the school lest the school become a California Distinguished School. 

The one and only positive note that came out at the end of last weeks vote was that 683 community members were compelled enough for change that came out to vote and they overwhelmingly supported Proposal 3 with 93% support. Yes they demonstrated, we do want reform at our high school.

Teachers on the other hand flatly rejected the community with 60% of them voting for Proposal 2. This proposal reserves only 2 seats for the community on a board of 17. (Students also get 2 voting seats so you can see just how much importance they place on the community.)

Proposal 3 would have set up a governing council with representation equally split between 5 teachers, 5 parents, and 5 community members along with the principal and a classified employee but the weighting scheme decided by the transition team essentially eliminated our community’s role to fairly represent our stake in our public high school.

If it were not for the community efforts over the last 2 years, WHS would still be part of Local District 3. The school would not have replaced the last principal and allowed a local transition team to interview and hire a new principal instead of acquiescing to the normal district practice of having principals assigned to the school. The school would not likely have had its band back.

All of this was driven by a community longing for change but last week the teachers threw it out the window because they valued their own interests over the communities or their students and they failed to acknowledge the communities progress towards reform in the last two years.

At this weeks NCWP education community meeting, Westchester parent David Voss stood up and said that “with this vote, the teachers have rejected the community.”

He summed it up exactly. 

Change is not coming soon if it ever comes at all.  Shame on this schools teachers.

Posted on February 1st, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, POLITICS, WESTCHESTER HS
4 Comments »