LA school officials say they're in the dark over computer inventories
Maya Sugarman/KPCC
Los Angeles Unified School District officials said they don't have a complete accounting of computers at schools because they stopped counting during budget cuts - and a new survey meant to get an accurate accounting is incomplete, according to records, statements at public meetings and interviews.
With new computerized state standardized tests two months away, Superintendent John Deasy wants to rush order as many as 67,500 iPads to allow students to take the tests. The district released a new survey to KPCC on Monday showing only 38 percent of schools have necessary computers. But the survey only asked how many wired computers schools had - leaving out tens of thousands of laptops and tablets - and about a quarter of the district's schools failed to respond to the survey.
For instance, according to the district's new survey, the Diego Rivera Learning Complex in South Los Angeles has thousands of students but no wired computers. What the survey leaves out is that every student at the school received a wireless iPad earlier this year.
District administration put together the survey after school board members
5 things you need to know about California civil rights leader Fred Korematsu
David McNew/Getty Images
Old twisted barded wire and other artifacts are still scattered around the Manzanar War Relocation Center south of Independence, CA, June 25, 2000 where 10,000 Japanese-American citizens and Japanese aliens were interned during World War II
By state law Thursday is Fred Korematsu Day, approved by policymakers for people to take a moment and remember the struggles of a California Civil Rights leader.
The Korematsu Institute lists some of the in-state and nationwide events commemorating Korematsu’s civil rights struggle, including a screening in Rosemead, CA of a documentary about his life.
Here are five things you should know about him:
- Fred Korematsu was a U.S. citizen, born in Oakland, California in 1919 to Japanese immigrant parents.
- He was 23 years old in 1942 when he refused to obey the presidential order imprisoning people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
- Korematsu went about his life in San Leandro, California; had minor plastic surgery to look less Japanese.
- He was convicted of defying the presidential order - and that decision was upheld on a 6-3 vote by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944.
- Five decades later, in 1998, Korematsu was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Supreme Court decision affirming his and other Japanese American imprisonment wasn’t unanimous; one of the justices wrote in a dissenting opinion that Japanese American internment “falls into the ugly abyss of racism.”
Decades after he left internment and resumed his life, Korematsu's conviction was overturned in San Francisco federal court after he and lawyer Peter Irons discovered documents that showed the U.S. knew that Japanese Americans didn't present a wartime threat.
The U.S. Supreme Court has not overturned its Korematsu ruling despite wide view that it is one of the high court’s most shameful decisions.
California’s Department of Education recommends, but doesn’t require, schools to teach about California’s civil rights hero. The suggestion is that schools teach kids about preserving civil liberties in times of real or perceived crisis.
The Korematsu Korematsu Institute in San Francisco offers lesson plans for teachers.
Korematsu died in 2005.