Alumni Meeting Saturday, location change

It's time again for another Alumni Association meeting, and there's a location change that was noted in the email from Mike Ibarra.

It will be at the regular time, 9:30 a.m. but across the streed at the Cafe in the Heights, 3510 North Broadway. Recall that LHS is at 3501 N. Broadway- "Downtown" as many of my teacher trainee colleagues from across the city's expanses called it- but not to us. It's still the Eastside- but not it's not quite "East L.A." as many others like to pigeonhole the school and it's issues.

I don't know why there's a meeting change since school's back in session- add that to the list of things going on with the school and the alumni association that I don't know about. I can only report what people share with me or what I observe first-hand, and this isn't part of that at this time.

There are s few events coming up and I know little about them- especially the poker tournament. My knowledge about poker calls up some freshman memories of college when all-night card games were the cause of some of the more financially well-off students being relieved of some sizeable amounts of cash. That disinterest in poker holds to this day for me.

That tournament is happening on the 28th of August and you can see the sidebar link for the LHS link and see under the Alumni tab for more.

Fall Semester Starts Today for Lincoln High. What Else Is In Store for Students?

A "Welcome Back" goes out to the LHS students, faculty, administration and other staff on this sunny and warm August day.

There are only a handful of LAUSD schools, other the shrinking list of year-round schools, that start a new semester today. The rest come back in the traditional month for back-to-school, September. The short summer has a good aspect to it. The whole semester is done by the time the Christmas season rolls in.

There's a new change in the way the school operates after the decisions on the Parent Choice selections were decided by the Board. The program control resulting from that Board action remains within, as I understand it, the plans of two approved plans, one teacher lead and the other, principal led.

I just checked the LHS official web site and here's something new about "Advisory":

What is an Advisory?
The goal of Advisory is to ensure that each student is known well by at least one adult staff member. These connections promote both student satisfaction with school and academic success.

When do they take place?
Every day for 30 minutes. Each student will have their advisory period during the 1st or 2nd lunch period.

What will be learning in advisories?
The advisories will be divided into different subjects each day. SLCs with decide the sequencing; however, all Mondays are for Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). Below are the topics of focus for advisories.

Aside from some proofreading oversights here, there seems to be a return of sorts to the homeroom type of consistency of contact, but with a bit of curriculum attached to the period.

That conclusion comes from the sentence, "The goal of Advisory is to ensure that each student is known well by at least one adult staff member." But I hope they really mean, "teacher, including interns, or other certificated employees," since we have "staff" that help the school plant run, from plant manager and that staff to the cafeteria and maintenance persons.

Yet more importantly than the choice of wording here is the real effectiveness of the concept. I really have very low expectations from most things that come from LAUSD Board choices, given the history of major blunders in the past relating to poor fiscal management, poor personnel management and just foolish conceptual choices that do nothing for the student that is in school at the moment and that will probably be gone, either by graduation or dropping out, by the time LAUSD action arrives at a completed project.

Am I just a pessimist here? Maybe so, but as for LAUSD I would say it's more of a "realist's" view that's come about from seeing history unfold with LAUSD since back when I was a student here:

1. Belmont construction fiasco with years of delays and cost overruns as Vicky Castro was the Board President to begin that; building over an oil field was a poor choice and the earthquake fault seems to be everywhere; long gone from the picture are the street level "mixed-use" retail establishment's whose rental income payments were envisioned in the initial plans.

2. The payroll software disaster; putting a "beta" level software system into full operation was destined for major problems:

LAUSD (Los Angeles) payroll system price tag balloons - $ 210 Million!!
Los Angeles Daily News 12/15/2007 Nash Boghossian Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 6:28:10 PM by Loud Mime.
Ten months after installing a new computerized payroll process that has been roiled by glitches, Los Angeles Unified officials now say costs for fixing the system and completing its rollout could top $210 million.

The system, with an original price tag of $95 million, has underpaid or overpaid thousands of employees, and last week district officials said hiring consultants to fix it has already ballooned the cost to $132.5 million.

And some officials are questioning the district's transparency on all the costs associated with the system, noting that at least $6 million will be forfeited by allowing some overpaid teachers to keep the money.

Full article here: http://www.utla.net/node/965

3. The RFK- Ambassador Hotel school site history and final cost-the District got into early and costly litigation on the purchase of the site with Donald Trump and I would say he was not the loser:

Shocking choices: LAUSD's most expensive school raises questions about priorities
Posted: 07/15/2010 01:00:00 AM PDT
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_15516956

"The sensible answers are pretty obvious, right? Not to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which chose to spend $572 million to build elaborate - no, lavish - schools out of the former Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. Artificial turf soccer fields, historic replica spaces and public art sculptures helped push the per-student cost of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools to $135,000, nearly 40 percent higher than the average school built in the central Los Angeles area over the past two years.

"When the completed campus opens this fall, students will be met by a shocking incongruity. They'll enter the most expensive school ever built by the LAUSD and find fewer teachers, older textbooks, larger classes and a shorter school year."

4. The aggressive school construction program that puts up school, evicts some of the persons it might have served and all in the face of a continuing history declining enrollment.

"Art School or LAUSD Folly? - A gorgeous downtown high school has no plan, no curriculum — but sure looks fab"
Comments (9) By Erica Zora Wrightson Thursday, Sep 4 2008
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-04/news/art-school-or-lausd-folly/

This was the second most expensive high school in the country, at about $242 million, behind Belmont aka Roybal Learning Center. But the RFK site sounds like it will be the most expensive after all is done.

This is why you cannot depend on letting choices be made without some accountability involved.

What COULD have been done with all of the money spent if it was spent WISELY? But you know what? They don't care. NO ONE takes the blame, no one gets fired, and if there were millions involved, who would be sued anyway with any money on hand to pay for their share of wrongdoing?

And do you know what the school district wants? More money from taxpayers. I think that's not happening, not quite in this lifetime anyway. At some point this wasteful spending binge ends. We cannot help the District's spending jones here. Sorry, everybody is broke or did they miss that over at the Beaudry offices? Being an "enabler" is what we'd be doing. As a matter of fact, that goes for all the politicians. Some "tough love" is about all they can expect now.

Oh, I forgot to say that this is considering that there's always some behind-the-scenes choices going on with contracts to direct the money to make some groups or people happy. Notice how building trades unions happen to be the first level to benefit from building programs money that the LAUSD spends. Union pressure on moving toward development is a regular item in all politics. Just check the LA. City Council and its choices in building and spending to see theory in actual operation.

Well, I am going beyond what is really the point here, and that's Lincoln's participation in yet another experiment with an early start that seems simple enough to understand. You have a district desperate to see improvements in test scores and measurable academic achievement.

But for all the money poured into these plans, I think they'd benefit from more outside participation for arriving at better, or at least comparably hopeful and practical ideas.

They plan and then they don't do a sort of "walk-through" of what they have created to see if it works or if it's practical. If they put themselves into the shoes of the students for a lot of things that happen, they might see why a lot of results that are produced happen to turn out like they do.

Ah, but they are bureaucrats, and the ritual more than the functionality matters more to them- "form over substance."

Wander off the path of the traditional or mandated choices and you become an outlaw in the eyes of the bureaucracy, even if what you, as a teacher, think is an absolutely valid basis and is a vehicle that will produce something of value- like educated students. What a novel concept.

So we will have to see what happens. Too bad that the lives and education of young people have to be what is at stake here, for better or worse, as the adults sort out the plans at snail's pace and still come up short.

Oh, and I would like to have seen some presentation of the program at Lincoln to clear up questions on how improvement will be achieved, item by item. Of course, the parents, I guess, have already been given that demonstration by now.

Maybe that is so, but the community members, including the business community might benefit from a presentation that could attempt building a renewal of faith in the schools. We already see that the LAUSD has done a very good job in tearing that faith down and causing so many families to head to private schools, that is, if they even choose to move into LAUSD school areas to begin with.

(And, City Council, this is another factor in NOT being attractive to new business development - the children of the prospective employees might have to go to an LAUSD school which right now is a big negative for any considerations of attracting businesses to locate in L.A. In reality, they'd just have to see if they could pay for a private school on top of what they have to already have to pay in taxes for the public schools anyway. Not a good deal for them.)

See "Advisory" at http://lincolnadvisories.wikispaces.com/

Early End to Summer Vacation- Classes begin Monday at LHS

Yes, this was not only a very cool weather summer but a very short one to for LHS students. The school schedule for the Fall Semester begins on Monday for them and a few other LAUSD schools, while the rest of the district begins in September as we remember as the "back-to-school" month.

I don't have the exact basis for the selection of the schools for the early start but it's got something to do with a desire on the district's part to have more of an advantage in recall and learning for testing that will include an entire semester done by the end of the year.

When I was taking our teacher training, we discussed the effect of breaks on the students. You usually found that there was a lot of re-learning that had to be done for the students to be back where thet were in June. And the district is really hurting for showing some improvement, too. The other factor that must be a consideration is the change that happened to Lincoln with the new programs that I understand left some teachers out in the cold without certain classes due to the new parent choice outcomes and changes to the SLCs.

Whatever the reason, let's hope something in the way of performance improves at the alma mater, and if coming back early helps, then so be it. More of an effort to get parents on board with all the programs would do wonders, too, for the results to be expected.