More on "Public School Choice" -voting tomorrow; Study finds racial imbalance in some Charter Schools

Here's a bit more about the reason for the voting that's happening at Lincoln and other LAUSD schools that will end tomorrow. (See the LHS official home page for copies of proposals by the groups seeking approval.) There's more detail on what the election process is about than what I was able to find the other day in the Lincoln web site material.

In the L.A. Times, "Voters advise L.A. Unified on preferred campus takeovers - Parents, teachers, students and community members weigh in -- sometimes more than once -- on their preferred plans for 12 underperforming schools and 18 new ones in the advisory election." By Howard Blume, February 3, 2010.

Another bidder is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who seeks to expand
the number of schools managed by his nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles
Schools. (I would not recommend anything that carries the name of the mayor with it.-r.g.)

The bidding process also drew furious participation by groups of teachers from the very schools that were deemed the district's worst. (I think you see that there is some irony to this is being pointed out for you. -r.g.)

The district paid the League of Women Voters $50,000 to run the
elections. Seven different ballot pools will be tallied separately. (And you can see that nothing the LAUSD pays for comes cheaply, even it its a civic group charging. -r.g.)

"Who Will Run Your Schools? It's Up to You," Written by Anjuli Kronheim, North Valley Reporter, Wednesday, 03 February 2010, http://ourla.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1430&Itemid=3236 that appears in the blog: OurLA.org , a blog about activism in the area of city operations and the ongoing (mis)management you find at City Hall.

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There's a story in the L.A. Times today about a pattern in charter schools- that the ethnic makeup is not diverse in some of the schools, a racial imbalance, if you will. There's a comment reflecting on the integration goal achieved by bussing practiced a few decades ago, that says that schools should not be going backwards. Some of the reason is that establishing schools in some neighborhoods will reflect the makup of the neighborhood and there is where you have a lot of the main ethnic/racial group, be it Afican-American or Latino, or other identifiable grou that forms the makeup of the neighborhood as often exists weighted in much of the city. See the story, "Charter schools' growth promoting segregation, studies say - A UCLA study is one of two finding that the increasingly popular campuses skew toward racially separate student bodies. Charter advocates criticize the reports." By Howard Blume, February 5, 2010 L.A. TIMES http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charters5-2010feb05,0,3300930.story