Author: Howard Blume

The Super Quiz portion of the local Academic Decathlon competition resulted in a three-way tie for first place. Sharing top honors were Granada Hills High in the San Fernando Valley, Marshall High in Los Feliz and Garfield High east of downtown.

The Super Quiz is only part of the competition, but it takes place in public with the excitement of a game show. All three schools scored 59 out of a possible 60 points.

Sixty-four teams from the Los Angeles Unified School District competed in the event at the Roybal Learning Center, west of downtown. Schools from other Los Angeles County districts compete in a separate event.

This year’s topic was the French Revolution. Other parts of the competition include questions about art, economics, language and literature, math, music, science and social science. Total results will be announced Thursday. The top teams travel to Sacramento for the state competition in March.

Garfield’s success is a particular point of pride for the school, which was defined last fall as among the worst in the district and therefore eligible to be taken over by outside operators. A final decision on future reforms at that school is scheduled for this month.

Marshall has twice won the national Academic Decathlon. Its team was especially hardworking this year, even meeting 60 hours a week over the winter vacation, including on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

— Howard Blume

Ballot counting began Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles for an election over school-reform plans; results will be available by Monday but might not be released until Friday, officials said.  A delay in releasing the results is likely to create yet another controversy over this school-reform strategy.

The purpose of the unprecedented election was to give parents, students, school employees and others — each voting group tallied separately — the chance to express a preference regarding who should run 12 long-struggling schools and 18 new ones. The process is part of a groundbreaking school-control plan approved in August by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education. The plan will affect nearly 40,000 students.

The main competitors are groups of teachers — often with the backing of union officials and district administrators — and private charter operators. Charter schools are independently managed and not bound by some rules that govern traditional schools, including union contracts. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also is trying to claim more schools for his nonprofit education organization.

The first round of polling occurred Tuesday, and voting concluded Saturday. The results are not binding, either for Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who will make his own recommendations, or for the school board, which will make selections later this month.

Cortines on Saturday countermanded plans to post results as they became available. He preferred not to have partial — and possibly inaccurate — tallies made public, said his special assistant Ana Fernandez.

Results might be withheld until the end of the week, at the district’s request, said officials with the League of Women Voters, which conducted the election.

From the start, Friday has been the deadline for certified results, but unofficial counts are typically made public in an election as soon as they are ready, said Raquel Beltran, the league’s executive director. She said unofficial tallies would probably be ready Monday.

Friday also is the scheduled day for the release of professional evaluations of each reform plan.  So if they are released Friday, the election results will have to share the spotlight with related news.

The notion of a mandated delay bothered some who were observing the counting at the Chamber of Commerce building west of downtown.

“The district should have nothing to hide,” said Joel Jordan, director of special projects for United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union.  "The public has a right to know the results as soon as possible.”

From the start, the school-control process has been both celebrated and maligned. The elections prompted additional complaints over electioneering, alleged voter intimidation and voting rules that left critics questioning the validity of the results.

— Howard Blume

Parents and other community members are weighing the educational fate of nearly 40,000 students within the nation’s second-largest school system through a special school-level election. 

Voters are choosing a favored reform plan for each school from among groups inside and outside of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Competing bidders are vying for control of 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses.

The ballot takes place Tuesday and Saturday. The school board will make the final decision on who runs the schools.

One of the most complex ballots is the one for the soon-to-open Esteban Torres High School complex, where five small schools will operate. There are 10 bids for the site — five from groups of teachers and five from charter schools.

Charters are independently run, free from some restrictions that govern traditional schools, including union contracts. The charters are touting their successful schools elsewhere in the school system. The teacher groups are highlighting knowledge of the community and new management freedoms — similar to charter schools — which they would employ under their plans.

The election for the Torres school is taking place at Belvedere Middle School, east of downtown, where a steady stream of voters filed in Tuesday morning.

Representatives from United Teachers Los Angeles, the L.A. teachers union, as well as charter-school organizers handed out fliers and tried to speak to voters on their way to the polling place, the school’s library.

The voters in this election include high school students at the affected schools, as well as parents, school employees and community members — whose ballots are all counted in separate tallies.

The results are not binding on school district officials. A final recommendation will come from L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, and the final decision on who will run schools will be made later this month by the school board.

Maritona Quinones, 29, voted for the teacher-led proposals for the Torres school. Quinones’ son attends fourth grade at a nearby school.

“The district has its ups and downs, but I’m happy with the education my son is getting,” she said.

Members of the nonprofit InnerCity Struggle bused in parents and community members to vote, also in support of the teacher-led proposals.

“It supports our vision of smaller schools,” said Joanna Salinas, a parent organizer who spent the morning ferrying voters to the school in a gray Chevy van. “But they’re able to vote however they want.”

Charter-school advocates have asserted that they are at a disadvantage when competing with the school district and teachers for district schools. The charters lack access to parent phone numbers and addresses, for example.

They also complained Tuesday morning of irregularities, such as the alleged presence of teacher-union members in polling places, who, they said, were advising some parents how to mark ballots.

“It was very unfortunate and very questionable,” said Yolanda Sanchez, communications and compliance manager with Camino Nuevo Charter Academy.

Other complaints came from Parent Revolution, an organizing group closely affiliated with a charter-school operator, Green Dot Public Schools. It alleged that middle school students were being allowed to vote and also instructed to vote for the district plan in balloting at Foshay Learning Center, south of downtown. The group also complained there was insufficient assistance for Spanish-speaking parents.

There was no immediate response from L.A. Unified or the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, which is conducting the election.

— Howard Blume and Jason Song

Photo: Parents and community members line-up to take part in casting ballots at Belvedere Middle School. Groups inside and outside the LAUSD system are competing to run 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses. Credit: Irfan  Khan / Los Angeles Times

Voters Tuesday will choose reform plans for 30 Los Angeles-area schools in an election like no other.

For one thing, the voting age could dip to 14. Undocumented residents are welcome. Some people will get multiple votes. Ballot stuffing is expected.

And did we mention that each contestant will actually be competing in seven simultaneous elections? And that the results could be meaningless?

Whoever said democracy is messy could have been thinking of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The subject of the election is singular: Groups inside and outside the school system are competing to run 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses. The purpose of the balloting is for different voting blocs to select their favored bidder. Each bloc will be tallied separately, including parents, high school students and school employees.

Despite all the hoopla — and the complaints from all sides about the
process and the actions of rivals — the election results could prove
meaningless. It will be up to L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to
make recommendations for each school, and the school board will make
the final choice late this month.

Voters will include the parents of students in the schools that feed into a campus that is up for grabs. For example, elementary and middle school parents will get to vote on reform plans for Jefferson High if those students might ultimately attend Jefferson High. The parents of eighth-graders — those nearest to attending Jefferson — will be tallied separately from other feeder-school parents. And the parents of current Jefferson students will also be counted separately.

The same logic applies for Carver Middle School. Parents from feeder elementary schools will get a vote, with the parents of fifth-graders — those closest to middle school — tallied separately.

Parents get one vote per student. School employees who also are parents can vote as employees too.

In the end, in fact, anyone can vote. There are two kitchen-sink categories: “unverified parents” and “community.” Anyone can vote in these two categories in any of the 30 individual school elections.

The unverified parents and community categories are “not valid,” said Ruth Logan, co-chairwoman of election committee for the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles. “I would not pay attention to them personally.”

The league is running the complex election for a fee of $50,000.

The L.A. teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has urged members to vote under “community" in as many elections as possible.

The union is acting out of concern about ballot stuffing by other entities, such as charter school supporters. Charter organizations are competing with groups of teachers for control of many schools. Charters are independently managed and exempt from some rules governing traditional schools, including union contracts.

The school district’s website has detailed information on election times and polling places for each school. Voters can cast ballots Saturday as well. An election hotline will operate through the end of the election, with information in English and Spanish, at (213) 368-1616.

— Howard Blume

Los Angeles school officials unveiled a more user-friendly school “report card” today that is more focused on information than public relations. The new product updates an effort that began last year, when L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines sought to make school performance more transparent, even when the data revealed disappointing results.

Last year’s report cards, however, were difficult to read and had not yet incorporated features such as an annual survey of parents, students and school staff. Officials acknowledged the ongoing need to improve response rates on these surveys at many schools.

The data for a high school include the percentage of 9th graders who move to the 10th grade — a key indicator of whether a school is reaching troubled students. That information could be more reliable, in fact, than dropout rates, which remain subject to manipulation. The revised report also includes student proficiency rates for special programs at a school, like a magnet program. But still missing are proficiency rates for a school once students from higher-scoring special programs are removed from the calculation.

The report cards are going out to the families with students enrolled in nearly all schools managed by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Not included until next year are primary centers, special education centers (for disabled students) and continuation schools.

Some L.A. charter schools, although not managed by L.A. Unified, also are participating. Cortines said he would like all charter schools within school district boundaries to take part. But they have to be part of the district data system, and many have invested in different software.

The district fashioned the latest version of the report card after feedback from focus groups and with the support of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the California Community Foundation.

Report cards for individual schools can be found at reportcard.lausd.net or www.lausd.net/ReportCard.

— Howard Blume

Pasadena residents will vote on a parcel tax for schools in May. The Pasadena school board unanimously voted to put the tax on the ballot at Tuesday night’s school board meeting. 

The levy would be $120 per residential and commercial parcel each year for five years, with exemptions for low-income seniors, officials said. It would raise an estimated $7.1 million annually beginning next fall.  

Like other California school districts, Pasadena Unified has suffered funding reductions because of the state’s ongoing budget crisis.

“When Sacramento fails to fund our schools by more than $20 million, we must take steps to ensure that every student continues to have access to a great education,” Pasadena school board President Tom Selinske said in a statement. He added that the money would be used to “attract and retain qualified teachers, protect college preparatory programs, keep libraries open and continue offering arts and music.”

Polling for the tax revealed potentially strong support for the measure, but also suggested the effort could be a close call. Parcel taxes require a two-thirds plurality. The Pasadena district includes the communities of Altadena and Sierra Madre.

Voters in the nearby and prosperous cities of La Cañada Flintridge, San Marino and South Pasadena recently approved parcel taxes, but the taxes have not fared so well in cities with a greater proportion of lower-income residents.

The action by Pasadena’s school board means that L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who lives in Pasadena, will be able to vote for a parcel tax, but it won’t benefit his own cash-strapped school system, the nation’s second largest. Cortines supports a try at a parcel tax for Los Angeles schools; the matter would have to come before the Los Angeles Board of Education in short order to reduce the effect of massive budget cuts planned for next year.

— Howard Blume