"DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME" starts tonight- set CLOCKS AHEAD 1 HOUR TONIGHT.
-------------------------- there was no posting for Friday, as everyone just is pretty busy with thinking of the weekend and needs a break from reading somebody else's opinions, including that somebody. I still collected a little more work to present, and here's part of much more about the LAUSD's activity that will cover a few more days of postings. Just a break from the City politics for a brief moment- not that they have improved one bit, either, but LAUSD needs some attention here, too. ----------------
NEW HIGH SCHOOL ("H.S. #9") FOR DOWNTOWN AREA:
The LAUSD is posting invitations for "School Tours for parents and their children to see the new LAUSD high school number 9 (built on the old LAUSD HQ site at Grand and Sunset/now Cesar Chavez) that is all done with construction. This update on the school situation is one that I accidentally discovered in checking a notice I saw posted at local LA Public Library branch this week. Now they need students for September 2009 to start it off. There were no other copies to take with me, so this is based on what I remember- I'll go back later anyway and check it again. The notice added that there would be NO senior class for the entering students in September 2009.
The announcement did not entirely clear up whether they decided that it was for a split of enrollment for local students and city-wide art-oriented students. Still lots of questions on the operations, but parent tours with their children is the purpose of the announcement. It sounds like this was going to be for city-wide enrollment.
CURRENT STATUS:
The focus will be the "arts"- meaning drama, art and music and maybe a few other things I can't think of now. About 1200 enrollment is the number set per the flyer; the dilemma before this time was whether a state-of-the-art school would be for the "local" population, like a generic school would be, or if all the specialty facilities would be used for an "art-music" school, open to students citywide like the County's Arts school does in County territory.
Apparently that's solved by "district-wide enrollment," and logically so, a very rare outcome for LAUSD Board. They must have hired an outside consultant.
If it's used for "general" education- which isn't even offered in LAUSD anymore under that label, replaced by the "A through G" college track for all, then that would be some primitive thinking showing up again in LAUSD, like having a Ferrari for daily driving in city traffic.
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A REVEALING LOOK AT THIS PROJECT BY THE L.A. WEEKLY
Going to the L.A. WEEKLY for an examination of the LAUSD's second most costly school construction (over $230 million, on a basic design school price of $30 million) and delayed readiness of 2 years (first September 2007, then 2009), they did a very thorough job here,
"Art School or LAUSD Folly?
A gorgeous downtown high school has no plan, no curriculum — but sure looks fab," By Erica Zora Wrightson
Published on September 03, 2008 at 4:55pm
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-04/news/art-school-or-lausd-folly/
L.A. Weekly has become the leading source of uncovering a lot of what's going on in L.A. The L.A. Times sometimes finds and sometimes just finds and ignores, with the same now for the other paper, the L.A. Daily News, that used to be more reliable for covering city issues.
The article is so revealing of all kinds of examples of mismanagement, arrogance in operations, and outright waste of time and money in the educational system and you can see that maybe the LAUSD still doesn't have a clue on how to improve student performance, trying out expensive experiments. It's hard to have faith in an institution that spent.
For all the value that "arts" in education have in society, was this the best choice for a struggling school district to plow funds into? Doesn't it sound more like a specialty school that vastly overshoots the aim to produce educated students, competent to fend for themselves in society and even ready to pursue higher education without most of them needing semesters of remedial classes to account for inadequacies of the system like it is now?
What WAS the priority? Was it a specialty school to fulfill the wishes of big shots in society, or was it to create a basic complete high school facility to start producing better-educated students than we produce now?
LAUSD could have had a functional and new school two years ago for lots less, with enough change leftover for another half-dozen or so schools. The school would already be in use NOW, working at it's purpose already a couple of years to give our students that better education that the newly constructed schools were supposed to provide. But LAUSD did not go that way, did it?
(still more to come on this topic)
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