WestchesterParents

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 »

This week YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Whether your a parent, grandparent, maybe not a parent now but expecting to be one someday or you just care about improving our local high school and you want more representation in the operations of the school by our community.

There is a vote on our high schools governance coming up that hopes to achieve more accountability to you and our community’s future.

Vote for Proposal 3!
VIEW THE FLYER

If you fall into any of the above descriptions then you must come out to vote for Proposal 3, the community representation proposal at Westchester High School. There has been no more important vote on our local schools in the last thirty years and you can make a difference.

For too long, the Westchester/Playa del Rey community has had little say or representation in the operations at Westchester High School. Taxpayer dollars are spent and policies are established without significant input from the people who live in the surrounding community. But that is changing.

The community, parents and teachers have already decided overwhelmingly to join the iDivision and the LMU Family of Schools, gaining new autonomy from LAUSD. Now, on January 22-24, 2009, community members will be asked to vote on the new governance plan at Westchester High School to determine who will make the decisions that impact students every day. Three options will be presented, but Proposal 3 was drafted by the local community and is the only plan that provides true, equal community representation.

For three days beginning on Thursday, January 22 between 1 and 8 PM there will be a governance vote at Westchester High School. Voting will continue on Friday, January 23rd (same hours) and Saturday between 9 AM and 1 PM.

Vote for Proposal 3!
5 teachers • 5 Parents • 5 Community

Proposal 3 offers equal representation for our community on its 15 member board.

5 teachers, 5 parents and 5 community members.

Only Proposal 3 offers equal representation. The two other proposals skew heavily towards UTLA and school staff representation which is no different than what we’ve had in the last 28 years.

ONLY PROPOSAL 3 IS ENDORSED BY:

• Westchester/Playa Neighborhood Council
• LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce

CREATE EQUAL PARTNERS AMONG ALL STAKEHOLDERS AT W.H.S.

• Teachers know curriculum and pedagogy, and parents know their children. But local stakeholders can bring W.H.S. invaluable experience and knowledge of downtown and local politics, civic and non-profit networks, enterprise finance, technology and electronic communications and more
• Token representation by any group never achieves results

PROPOSAL 3 IS BASED ON THE PACIFIC PALISADES HIGH SCHOOL MODEL

• Since Palisades Charter High School adopted a governing model with equal participation by teachers, parents and the community local students have returned in record numbers, test scores have risen and academic honors have poured in

PROPOSAL 3 IS OUR BEST CHANCE TO IMPROVE W.H.S

• Proposal 1 has already been tried and failed
• Proposal 2 would include only one business representative and one resident on a Governing Board of 17
• Proposal 3 was researched and adopted by the Neighborhood Council of Westchester Playa to bring local students and increased resources to Westchester High School

Every Westchester, Playa Vista, Playa del Rey and Windsor Hills Resident and Employee Can Vote!

• Thursday, January 22, 2009 between 1 – 8 p.m.
• Friday, January 23, 2009 between 1 – 8 p.m.
• Saturday, January 24, 2009 between 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.

In the Westchester High School’s Auditorium (front of the school)
7400 W. Manchester Avenue (at Hastings)
Westchester, CA 90045

Posted on January 19th, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, WESTCHESTER HS
3 Comments »

Before you vote, consider using the education litmus test on the candidates

I don’t think there is a single person in California today that thinks that our public schools or our States curriculum are better today than it was thirty years ago.

So before you vote Tuesday, maybe you should consider using education as a litmus test on who you should vote for among the California’s Assembly and Senate candidates. Poorly educated students have profoundly effected California’s competitiveness in business, manufacturing, education and have been a huge burden on social services such as health care and unemployment.

History is turning out to be an excellent gauge in telling us who is most responsible for the horrible slide in academic performance in California’s public school system over the last 30 years. A task made much simpler by looking at the California’s legislative majority leadership and Superintendent of Schools.

The California Assembly
The California’s Speaker of the Assembly is most always choosen by the majority party. Since 1971 California’s Speakers were Bob Moretti, Leo T. McCarthy, Willie Brown, ** Cruz M. Bustamante, Antonio Villaraigosa, Robert M. Hertzberg, Herb J. Wesson, Jr., Fabian Núñez, and today Karen Bass.

The California Senate
Like the Assembly, The Senate President pro tempore is choosen by the Senate majority. Since 1971 this position has was held by James Mills, David Roberti, Bill Lockyer, John Burton, Don Perata, and now Darrell Steinberg.

The California Superindendent of Schools
The Supertendent of Schools is choosen by California’s voters. Since 1971, our Superintendent of Schools were Wilson Riles, Bill Honig, Delaine Eastin and today Jack O’Connell.

So who has been in charge?
By and large when you’ve looked at each of these leaders platforms, the most common theme has been “improving our schools.”  Most of these leaders saw that much of their campaign contributions came from the California Teachers Association (CTA) or the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) so you could rightfully assume that they were the education party. After-all public schools are bad, they are going to fix them. 

History has demonstrated to us that the collective efforts (or non-efforts) of these elected officials has had an opposite effect. A failure of seismic proportions that have rocked the foundations of our public school system.

What’s startling about this Who’s Who of California’s political leadership is that you can’t really spread the blame around much because all of these people are Democrats or are members of the party as in the case of the Superintendent of Schools. Collectively as leaders in the majority they have owned the Assembly, they’ve owned the Senate and owned the Department of Education.

Elected Democrats over the last 30 years have driven California’s curriculum, controlled the money, changed how schools are budgeted, campaigned for school bonds, staffed the education departments from the State superintendent of schools all the way down to local school boards and accepted millions in campaign donations from teacher unions.

Legislative control by this party has led to a crippled education system failing millions of students. Democrats and Republicans alike.

Why do we keep believing that they will improve our schools when it’s been absolutely clear that since 1971 they have been responsible for running it into the ground where it is today?

However you vote, consider applying the education litmus test to all of the candidates whether they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or Green.

Simply believing the ads and voting by party line is a surefire guarantee that another million students will fail to graduate from high school over the next ten years.

QUESTION AUTHORITY as we once encouraged to do. Before you vote,  ask them “what are they going to do to improve education that is a break from the last 30 years?” 

VOTE SMART or DON’T VOTE. You might be responsible for yet another dropout.

**For a very brief period of about 18 months were Republicans were in the majority in the Assembly.

Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS
3 Comments »

A hiring committee of 11 members consisting of teachers, parents, community members and staff announced today the selection of a new permanent Principal for Westchester High School.

WESTCHESTER HIGH SCHOOL
SELECTS DR. BRUCE MIMS AS PRINCIPAL

WESTCHESTER – The Westchester High School hiring panel, comprised of parents, teachers, students, classified staff, community members and the Director of Learning and Leadership, selected Dr. Bruce Mims as principal of Westchester High School.

Dr. Bruce Mims comes to Westchester with a wealth of knowledge and experience. He has been at assistant principal at high schools in Hacienda-La Puente School District, Rialto School District, and most recently, Long Beach Unified School District. Dr. Mims was also a teacher for nine years in the Juvenile Court and Community Schools program in San Diego Unified School District. He is currently an adjunct professor for Argossy University, and worked for several years as an adjunct professor at National University.

He received his doctoral degree from University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, holds a masters degree from University of San Diego, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science from University of California-Berkeley.

Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: WESTCHESTER HS
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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, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: OUR SCHOOLS, WESTCHESTER HS
3 Comments »

Great news has come out of Westchester High School. Principal Anita Barner has left the school and there will be an interim principal assigned to the school in the meantime. This will allow a new transition team under the new LMU/iDivision to develop a new job description and search for a new principal.

Since 1999, Westchester High Schools Academic Performance Index (API ) statewide ranking fell from a below average 4 to a 1 making it one of the worst in the state. Under the API system, schools can score as high as a 10 or as low as a 1. Other South Bay high schools perform significantly better such as El Segundo High School with a statewide ranking of 9 and Manhattan Beach’s Mira Costa High School with a 10.

I received news that our former principal Anita Barner is headed for Van Nuys Middle School. Stakeholders at Van Nuys have asked about her performance at the school. If any teachers and parents at WHS have any experiances that you would like to share on Barner’s tenure at WHS, feel free to comment.

Westchester’s fall from grace began under previous administrations. When principal Dana Perryman left in 2004, the schools state ranking fell to a 3. Under Barner’s administration the state ranking dropped all the way to 1, the bottom 10% of the states public high schools.

Boys at Westchester High School have been dropping out in increasingly greater numbers under both administrations.

During Perryman’s tenure, the male dropout rate rose from 40% to 55% and hovered there through 2003. In Perryman’s final year, the figure then jumped to 66.9% for the Class of 2004. Vice principal Anita Barner was named Perryman’s successor and under Barner’s administration, the male dropout rate remained 68% through 2006.

Two other vice-principals left earlier in the year.

Posted on August 23rd, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: OUR SCHOOLS, WESTCHESTER HS
6 Comments »

On July 9th a decision was made by the California Board of Education to begin Algebra testing on all 8th grade students. One of its proponents, Russlynn Ali of the Education Trust-West implored the State Board of Education to follow the Governor’s recommendation, and enter into a compliance agreement that does away with General Mathematics as a grade level assessment in favor of Algebra Readiness and ensure Algebra I for all over time.

“California has a rich history of trend-setting. Today we continue to lead the nation as an example of what it means to set the bar high and truly push for rigor and educational excellence.

Russlynn Ali – edtrustwest.org

Sadly, the trend is following an all too familiar path for Californian’s. Our state is well on its way towards replicating former education Superintendent Bill Honig’s disastrous policies on a new generation of California students.

The following chart paints a bleak picture where since 1997, over a quarter million LAUSD students had never made it to their Senior year, largely due in recent years to the states “one size must fit all”  requirement for a diploma. I can only imagine what the numbers are throughout the state.

TREND SETTING

Maybe after the testing begins, the Board of Education, the Governor and the Superintendent of Schools and the state legislature will get the picture that there should be several paths to a diploma. Not all students have the inclination or even the aptitude to become proficient in Algebra.  The states insistence on the algebra requirement and now pressing even younger kids to learn it will create even greater dropout rates in high school than we are seeing today.

This stubbornness on the part of the state legislature and the California Department of Education reminds me of the Whole Language boondoggle during Honig’s tenure that led to a decades worth of illiteracy in California. A problem that cost billions of dollars and millions of hours to try to correct.

Today, we are in a similar situation having to spend an inordinate amount of time, money, and resources to teach and mostly intervene on one particular subset of math and then denying students a diploma it they don’t get it. 

In the late 80’s and 90’s we denied students literacy and a diploma because of an ill-advised reading curriculum, now we are denying students a diploma because of an ill-advised math achievement threshold.

One writer commented on westchesterparents.org:

“I was educated in a high school environment in which students were assigned into one of three tracks. Inclusion was assigned based on elementary school achievements, a pre high school test and parent/school involvement. For example:

• TRACK 1 – College Bound
  • 4 years of Latin
  • 3-4 years of Math including Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus
• TRACK 2 – College Bound
  • 4 years of Spanish or French
  • 2 years of Math, including Algebra and Geometry
• TRACK 3 – Business
  • 1 year of Language Skills
  • 1 year of General Math

General classes, such as History, mixed students from the 3 tracks together. While I am not suggesting that every college bound student be given 4 years of Latin, I do suggest that students be given classes in which they can hope to succeed.”

“Students being given classes in which they can hope to succeed…”

I couldn’t have articulated it better myself. How many of today’s students do succeed in general math and could otherwise earn a diploma if California’s vanity didn’t stand in the way?  The Education Trust-West news release typifies this misplaced sense of vanity that places trend-setting over success.

Posted on July 14th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS
No Comments »

Tuesday night the education committee of the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa is submitting a motion to the board that would ask the LMU/Westchester Family of Schools to adopt the successful Palisades Charter High School model of governance.

The Palisades model provides that an equal number of seats are allocated to teachers, parents and community members consisting of individuals who live or work within the geographic boundaries of the school.

Update – The motion was approved last night (7-1-2008) at the Neighborhood Council meeting.

Posted on June 30th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: OUR SCHOOLS
No Comments »

Dear Mr. Rochelle,
You’ve been a part of this process almost from the beginning so you must be acutely aware of the fact that when this process began a year ago one of the very first goals we sought was to design a family of schools where the community would take an active part in the leadership and operations of the what was know then as the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools or WPFS. In fact, early on we had a document that was floated to various community leaders around May 2007 asking them for changes, amendments and adding new elements. In the last version of the document that I have the Mission statement said:

“All students who attend the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools (WPFS) will receive a well-rounded education based on California state standards and taught by highly qualified teachers. The local community will govern the schools through an elected board of directors, composed of community members, faculty, school administrator, and parents, and will have autonomy in the areas of staffing, budget, facilities, curriculum, assessment, calendar and governance.”

The Vision statement went on to say that:

“The community will lead in the creation and operation of an independent District known as the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools District (WPFS).
WPFS will be an autonomous family of schools within the Westchester/Playa del Rey/Playa Vista/Windsor Hills area operated independently and outside the normal governance of the LAUSD. ” and that “WPFS will be a District that is a partnership of the community, parents, teachers and school administrators, LAUSD and Loyola Marymount University…”

Note the references to the community in both statements.

Shortly after we began putting together this document, the LMU/iDivision came in and assumed responsibility to set up meetings to discuss reform and the document was quickly abandoned or discarded. No problem with that.

However, a rather large shift took place right away when an exploratory committee was formed by the LMU/iDivision consisting of 16 people. 14 of them were affiliated with the LAUSD and only 2 were from the community.

After bringing up the point that the community was under-represented, we were told not to worry, it’s just a group of people to collect data, best practices and so forth.” But looking back, this was the point where the iDivision was beginning to distance itself from the community.

The exploratory committee was tasked to research and present a number of different school alternatives. They were to consider iDivision, independent charter, affiliated charters, and anything else that might come to mind. When the time came to reviewing what the participants had researched… both charter alternatives got their three minutes and then the entire focus was quickly pinned on the iDivision structure and what services it would provide.

Even after the momentum shifted to iDivision, there was no effort to put together a governing board of directors, never mind a community based governing board of directors to oversee the communities vision of a Westchester Family of Schools. Over the next year there would be many other examples of decisions being made without any representation by the community. The important decisions were being decided pretty much within the close confines of the LMU/iDivision/LAUSD/UTLA administrators.

iDivision elections are another example. The elections were completely centered on enrolled families and teachers with the community having no access to voting. The voting disenfranchised families with preschool kids, families of kids who would soon matriculate into middle school or high school, it disenfranchised members of the community who have no children but would like a say in their schools on such subjects such as curriculum, temporary bungalows or enrollment criteria for students permitting in.

After the elections and still without any oversight of a Westchester Family of Schools governing board, a new committee of volunteers called the Autonomy Exploratory Committee [really groups of people representing WHS, Orville, Westport and Kentwood] began visiting schools [Oakland, San Diego, Inglewood, Los Angeles] in various parts of the state to observe, document and compile a report of their operations and submit to the LMU/iDivision hierarchy. This report was released in May 2008.

More recently the LMU/iDivision hierarchy again made a decision to create a new LMU/iDivision position without a community based governing board. That position was the newly announced Director for Learning and Leadership. The position was filled again without any community participation.

Also, we have now been advised -after the fact- that Kathi Littman, the iDivision Director has been replaced by Garfield High School principal Omar del Cuedo, husband of local district 8 Superintendent Linda del Cuedo.

An administrator from Garfield doesn’t seem to bring the best practices into the iDivision given the schools 870+ dropouts per year at the school and its state ranking of a 1. [Perhaps Mayor Villaraigosa had a disproportionate amount of influence of this decision???  Welcome to politics!] We might as well have elevated WHS principal Anita Barner to the post.

Finally, to cap off my examples of community disenfranchisement, you said unwittingly or not said that the “design” of the schools will be “for the students in the seats today, not for the students that aren’t coming.” I can only assume that designing schools for the students in the seats today are an effort to mitigate the districts failure to bring students up to today’s standards and try to raise the API.

By commiting your “design” to this standard means that the LMU/iDivision heirarchy [of which you are now a part of] intends continue that effort and you are not looking forward to instituting a curriculum that families within the Westchester high school enrollment area find attractive enough for them and their children. Families that you deemed aren’t coming anyway. Designing schools specifically to provide intervention and improve a bottomed out state ranking is not a good idea. It will only perpetuate the low scores and make it impossible to achieve Superintendent Brewer’s expectations that iDivision schools deliver on their perceived promises. Promises saddled by LAUSD rules. The faster road to success would be to provide a curriculum that competes with schools ranking in the top 20% of the state, not the bottom 30%.

Posted on June 29th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS, WESTCHESTER HS
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