Westchester/Playa del Rey Little League Starts
Yesterday was opening day for W/PdR Little League base ball. Batter up..
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No Airbus A-380 Cargo Planes on Order
The mammoth Airbus A-380 has had huge implications on the design and renovation of the worlds major airports and those implications have reared themselves in our commuity with LAWA proposals to separate the two runways on the north airfield anywhere from 100 to 300 feet. (Recent community objections to those plans forced planners to come up with another proposal that did not include any further separation but added some additional length and a high speed taxiway to the end of the outboard runway)
If you haven’t been keeping up with the news on Airbus recently there has been some very serious design problems that have likely taken all of the profit out of the A-380 program.
The problems in a nutshell began years ago when the German partners of the program were told they would use Catia 4 while the French used the latest Catia 5. Catia is the software used to design products that produces the models, electrical and mechanical drawings, bill of goods, etc. The decision was based on saving money (they didn’t want to spend the money on purchasing new licenses and training the German design teams.)
Because Catia 4 and 5 are not compatible, wiring harnesses designed in Germany did not fit the planes being designed in France. The results were catastrophic particularly to the freighter program. Because of delays in delivery, last fall FedEx canceled its $2.8 billion A-380 order of 10 aircraft and this week UPS similarly announced that it will be cancelling its order of 10 aircraft leaving Airbus with no A-380 freighters in its order file. My guess is that UPS was quietly urged to cancel by Airbus itself because it could not profitably build and deliver only 10 cargo versions of the aircraft.
It’s hard to say how this will impact LAWA airports and especially LAX. Probably not much because I believe that LAWA planners still want to move the north runways and create more separation between the two in order to live up to an unannounced agreement with El Segundo to “balance the load” of heavy aircraft between the south airfiels complex and the north airfield complex. While the number of flights between both sides of the airport are about even, the south runways handle 70% of the super heavies like the 747′s.
The Charter School Road
The Tuesday night meeting hosted by the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa del Rey’s education committee had a presentation on how to create a charter school. Terry Marcellus chaired a great meeting and the representative from the California Charter Schools Association laid out the options that our community had before it. The two main options were what are called a ‘starter’ charter school and a ‘conversion’ charter school.
The ‘starter’ in my opinion is a non-starter. It means going it alone, buying your own property, or trying to appropriate some of Westchester High Schools 42 acres (or Orville) and putting a high school their (WHS) property. That’s the Prop 39 option but few charter schools are able to obtain it. I doubt that anyone wants ‘two’ high schools on the same property. That doesn’t address community concerns.
The ‘Conversion Charter’ is the best option in my opinion. Essentially, a conversion charter is a high school that is converted into a charter. The charter operator (the community or community assigned management team) assumes complete control over the school site and all of it assets. In essence, we become partners with the teachers and we are given the keys to the school. We assume all of the management of the school. We can also adjust the capacity of the school so that it serves pretty much only the traditional district boundaries which is what we have wanted all along Thos boundaries include Playa del Rey, Westchester, Playa Vista and Winsor Hills. If our enrollment drops below our new capacity then we could allow enrollment from outside the district. If our enrollment goes up then we only except kids in our boundaries and the others have to be put on a waiting list.
There are a number of steps that need to be completed to become a charter but the two main things are that 50% +1 of the tenured teachers at WHS want to convert AND that we have “a lot of support from the community”. Teachers can still remain with the UTLA as their bargaining group AND they bargaining independently from the regular district.
There are already a number of charter high schools already two of them are Pacific Palisades and Marshall.
Some benefits of an independent conversion charter include, we can align the enrollment to our boundaries, we get funded directly from the LACOE (http://www.lacoe.edu/), we can hire our own administrative team, parents have public high school alternatives for their kids. Right now the only alternatives we have are moving to another district, or hoping another district has seats for our kids, or private schools which in this area means a long drive because there are no private schools nearby. Most families I know of go to St. Monica’s, Loyola, Marymount, Pacifica Christian, Bishop Montgomery, El Segundo, Mira Costa, etc..Hope this helps and we hope you will come to the next meeting and become a supporter.
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