Newly established Vacaville committee is welcome move - The Reporter

Newly established Vacaville committee is welcome move - The Reporter:

"Facing a prospect of having to carve another $8 million out of its budget in the coming school year, the Vacaville Unified School District Governing Board recently took a first step in the right direction, agreeing to establish a broad-based committee to look at which schools should be closed and in what order, if the need arises.

The committee will include seven to 10 parents, one member of the district's English Learners Advisory Committee, up to four classified and five certificated employees, one member of the district's Citizens Oversight Committee, a representative from the business community and potentially one City Council member.

The decision to form the committee came Dec. 10, the same night that parents and teachers showed up at the board meeting to vent about widespread speculation that Sierra Vista and Hemlock elementary schools are on the list to be shuttered next year."

Security measures keep S. Phila. High calm | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/19/2009

Security measures keep S. Phila. High calm | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/19/2009:

"Stepped-up security may have thwarted another attack on Asian students at South Philadelphia High School yesterday.

According to one teacher, several Asian students were warned that they would be jumped after school.

'They were told to watch out, that there's a threat against you after school,' said the teacher, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal.

School administrators and police officers heard the rumors, too, and monitored the situation carefully, they said.

The rumors did not appear to be related to problems in Center City, where youths from several high schools roamed the streets, perhaps in retaliation for earlier fights at the Gallery."

Education | Group offers after-school Bible clubs in two Seattle elementary schools | Seattle Times Newspaper

Education | Group offers after-school Bible clubs in two Seattle elementary schools | Seattle Times Newspaper:

"An evangelical organization again is offering after-school Bible clubs in two Seattle elementary schools this year, part of its statewide push to convert young children to Christianity.

The clubs at Loyal Heights and Whittier elementary schools are the first Good News Clubs in the Seattle School District, but they likely won't be the last. The Child Evangelism Fellowship, the clubs' sponsor, plans to focus on King County as it works to double the number of children it reaches each year — from 5 percent of Washington residents ages 5-12 now to 10 percent."

SaveCordovaLane.com

SaveCordovaLane.com 

Welcome to the SAVE CORDOVA LANE website!

Our Story

On November 19, 2009, the FCUSD board of trustees voted to close Cordova Lane and Riverview Elementary schools in Rancho Cordova, CA, due to budgetary issues. Our schools will close in May of 2009 :-( Closing these two schools will save the district $600,000.

Just ONE month earlier, we were notified our school was considerd for closure. On October 16, 2009, the Save Our Schools (SOS) committee was formed and we began efforts to save our school.

Cordova Lane has provided decades of high quality education! It is the HEART of our community and located on one of the busiest streets in the city of Rancho Cordova. For hundreds of cars to drive by our school each day and to see it abandoned, would be heartbreaking.

Cordova Lane is not only known for its exceptional reputation in our school district, but also for it's dedicated, passionate and involved parents. We have 461 students. We are at 84% capacity enrollment. Several CHOICE students attend Cordova Lane. This means they choose to attend our school over their home school. Cordova Lane has high Academic Performance Index (API) scores. We offer an award winning Drama Program, the FLES program where our students learn Spanish as a second language, and other unique programs.

Cordova Lane students have access to the STARS program on site and the Cordova Community Preschool and Safe Harbor programs off site for before and after school care. Many parents depend on these programs to safely walk their students to and from school. Both programs also work closely with Cordova Lane in terms of preparation for entering Kindergarten and meeting the needs of students outside of the classroom. If we do not save our school, these vital programs may no longer exist and parents will be forced to revisit their transportation and daycare plans.

Closed schools are NEVER good for a city. Property values may decrease, blight may come to our neighborhood and families may leave. This will affect our neighbors and businesses and most of all, our children!

As an alternative to closing our school, our parents asked if we could raise $300,000 to save our school.

The board agreed to give us until March 1, 2010 to raise these funds. This is a crazy, extreme undertaking and amount to raise. However, we cannot put a price on a GREAT education. We need to keep this EXCEPTIONAL and long standing school OPEN. Should we not reach our goal (we plan to!) we will designate a beneficiary of these funds within our school district.

WE NEED YOUR HELP! We have 90 days to raise these funds. We need the help of our residents, businesses and families from other schools to PLEASE help! We are appreciative of any donation and all donations will be tax deductible.

We are reaching out to our community members and those of surrounding communities.

The Cordova Community Council is our fiscal sponsor and is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your contribution to SAVE CORDOVA LANE is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. No goods or services will be provided in exchange for your generous financial donation.

Donations can be made payable to:

SAVE CORDOVA LANE and mailed to

SAVE CORDOVA LANE

C/O Cordova Community Council

2729 Prospect Park Drive, Suite #117

Rancho Cordova, CA 95670

or Donate using Paypal

 

BE A PART OF SOMETHING GREAT- WE’RE ON OUR WAY, TO SAVE CORDOVA LANE!

We will mail a tax receipt letter within 2 weeks of receiving your donation.

COUGARS ROAR!!!

Thank you for your time and interest,

Kathryn and Kristy

SOS Committee leaders for Cordova Lane

on behalf of our students, their families and our teachers

Help Save our School - Buy a button to support our effort.. Just send us an email and we will follow-up with you...

Click here savecordovalane@yahoo.com

We hope to see you again! Check back later for new updates to our website. There's much more to come! 

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.

What you gain at one end you lose at the other.

It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.

 It won't fatten the dog. ~Mark Twain 

Cordova Lane Parents Launch Effort to Keep School Open — The Rancho Cordova Post

Cordova Lane Parents Launch Effort to Keep School Open — The Rancho Cordova Post:

"The Folsom Cordova Unified Schoold District has given concerned parents the opportunity to keep one of the schools open that is slated to close at the end of the school year.

Save Cordova Lane, an organization of Cordova Lane Elementary parents, has launched an effort to raise $300,000 by March 1 to keep their school operating for the 2010-2011 school year. The school, which currently houses the Rancho Cordova Little League, was targeted for closure at the Nov. 19 meeting of the FCUSD Board, and Riverview Elementary was also approved for closure. The school closures would save the district $600,000 in their effort to close a $20 million budget gap.

“We are hearing that this has never been done before,” Kristy Elder, the co-founder of Save Cordova Lane, said. ”We may very well be the first school in the state of California and possibly the nation to raise this amount of money if we are successful.”"

Julia Steiny: Suspending students only makes a bad situation worse | Julia Steiny | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Julia Steiny: Suspending students only makes a bad situation worse | Julia Steiny | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Schools banish kids often and self-righteously. Generally, educators and the public believe that suspensions and even expulsions are sound, necessary practices. If kids don’t behave according to the rules, out they go, onto the streets where apparently they will learn how to control their impulses, anger or poor choices. Feral behavior is sent back into the wild.

Hasta la vista, baby.

I bring this up at holiday time, when people of all ages hope to belong somewhere. As mammals, we dearly want to connect with creatures who connect back to us. So banishment feels horrible. It mainly teaches us to resent or even hate the banishers. It’s barbaric.

Even so, in school year 2006-07 (the latest available national data), America’s schools meted out 3.2 million suspensions. That year Rhode Island’s public schools kicked kids out of school for well over 60,000 days — or 167 years of class time spread among fewer than 18,000 kids. For some reason the data lumps together all 18,000 kick-outs, no matter what kind of suspension they got — out-of-school, in-school, or “alternative program.” They’re a subset of “bad kids” among the 152,000 students attending our public schools that year.

It gets worse. The 167 years are only for out-of-school suspensions. If you also add the days spent in in-school suspension and “alternative programing,” it comes to a total of just under 85,000 days (232 years) of learning interrupted, if not completely halted.

Furthermore, over 5,000 incidents of suspension were for skipping detention. It’d be funny, if it weren’t so awful.

Suspension is a holdover from seemingly-efficient factory-model schools. Defective products are rejected from the assembly line and considered “acceptable casualties” until the number of “casualties” exceeds acceptable and forces the assembly line to stop and solve the problem.

Schools set no such limits. Lots of misbehavior leads to lots of acceptable casualties. And zero-tolerance policies have driven these casualties through the roof in many schools.

Nationally about a third of the kids drop out before graduating from high school each year. Guess what? Most drop-outs have been suspended, many repeatedly.

Midyear layoffs, funding cuts hit metro schools | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Midyear layoffs, funding cuts hit metro schools | freep.com | Detroit Free Press:

"Dearborn Public Schools axed nearly 200 employees last week, and about 100 more layoffs are to come."

Utica Community Schools laid off 40 last week and is asking employees to take three-day furloughs.

Employees in Walled Lake Consolidated Schools are forgoing pay raises for the first half of 2010, part of a union initiative to save jobs.

It was a tough week across the board in metro Detroit school districts, as the ramifications of the middle-of-the-school-year state funding cuts began to become clearer. The midyear cuts mean some students may lose their favorite teachers, staff won't be able to travel to hear the latest education methods and parents may find themselves doing more to keep extracurricular activities afloat.

In October, the state cut school funding by $165 per student, and soon after, 39 school districts -- including 26 in metro Detroit -- had additional funding cut.

Presumably good news came two weeks ago when Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced that yet another cut in funding -- of $127 per student -- would not happen in December. But

City Schools’ New Criteria for Diversity Raise Fears - NYTimes.com

City Schools’ New Criteria for Diversity Raise Fears - NYTimes.com:

"The Chicago public schools’ response to a recent court desegregation ruling — a plan to use students’ social and economic profiles instead of race to achieve classroom diversity — is raising fears that it will undermine the district’s slow and incremental progress on racial diversity."


Chicago schools, like the city itself, are hardly a model of racial integration. But a Chicago News Cooperative analysis of school data shows the district has made modest gains in the magnet, gifted, classical and selective-enrollment schools, where, for nearly 30 years, race has been used as an admission criterion. Those advances may be imperiled in the wake of court rulings that have prompted Chicago Public Schools to look for factors other than race when assigning students to such schools.

Nationwide, court rulings have prompted school districts to seek creative ways to diversify classrooms without using a student’s race as a factor. In Chicago, school officials last week moved ahead with their own experiment.

Instead of race as an admissions factor, they now will use socioeconomic data from the student’s neighborhood — income, education levels, single-parent households, owner-occupied homes and the use of language other than English as the primary tongue — in placing children in selective-enrollment schools

Bar set low for lifetime job in L.A. schools -- latimes.com

Bar set low for lifetime job in L.A. schools -- latimes.com

Altair Maine said he was so little supervised in his first few years of teaching at North Hollywood High School that he could "easily have shown a movie in class every day and earned tenure nonetheless."

Before second-grade teacher Kimberly Patterson received tenure and the ironclad job protections it provides, she said, "my principal never set foot in my classroom while I was teaching."

And when Virgil Middle School teacher Roberto Gonzalez came up for tenure, he discovered there was no evaluation for him on file. When he inquired about it, his school hastily faxed one to district headquarters.

"I'm pretty sure it was just made up on the spot," Gonzalez said.

There is nothing to suggest these teachers didn't deserve tenure, but the district did little to ensure they were worthy.

A Times investigation found that the Los Angeles Unified School District routinely grants tenure to new teachers after 

Arizona teacher on leave after taking choral students to Hooters - USATODAY.com

Arizona teacher on leave after taking choral students to Hooters - USATODAY.com:

"A music teacher whose students performed at one of President Obama's inauguration events has been put on administrative leave after taking 40 students to eat at a Hooters in downtown Phoenix.

Mary Segall, a choir director at Paradise Valley High School in northeast Phoenix, accompanied choral students at a performance at Arizona Center last week. While there, the students ate lunch at the Hooters restaurant, said Judi Willis, spokeswoman for the district.

Segall told her principal that the restaurant, known for its busty waitresses in tight shirts and orange shorts, was the only place that could accommodate a group of that size. She could not be reached for comment.

'We believe that there are many venues for lunch for a large group of people in the downtown Phoenix"

NYC Educator: Vice President Klein Closes New Jersey

NYC Educator: Vice President Klein Closes New Jersey

This morning, there was yet another toxic waste cloud emanating from Linden, New Jersey. Vice President Joel Klein declared that he’d had enough and announced plans to phase out the entire state. Jersey residents pointed to many areas that were improving, but the Vice President called Jersey an eyesore and an abomination, declaring that it needed to be closed once and for all. Bruce Springsteen wrote a protest song, but President Michael Bloomberg once again pointed out Springsteen was a parent and therefore ineligible to have any inputwhatsoever in matters of state.

Naturally the measure will have to clear Congress. However, since President Bloomberg reorganized Congress during his third term, it has never voted against any of his proposals. Vice President Klein’s new streamlined 8-page Constitution specifically allows the President to select a two-thirds majority of representatives, and to fire any appointed member of Congress who votes against any of his proposals, even before the vote takes place. New York Senator Patrick J. Sullivan spoke up against the measure, giving reasoned arguments that were roundly ignored by all.

“If Sullivan had a clear vision for the future of our country,” mused President Bloomberg, “why would he need 

Editorial: Michigan Legislature endangers state's chances for Race to Top funding | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Editorial: Michigan Legislature endangers state's chances for Race to Top funding | detnews.com | The Detroit News:

"The dysfunction of Michigan's political structure is on full display this week. State lawmakers have bickered and gone down to the wire on working out comprehensive education reforms that would position Michigan to compete for $400 million to $500 million in federal grants.

Senate Republican negotiators have been wrangling with their Democratic House colleagues, who have balked at allowing the opening of more charter schools in the state.

The federal Race to the Top program, which will distribute the money Michigan wants, demands that states allow for the easier establishment of charter schools, particularly in districts where the traditional public schools are failing students."

Attacking immigrant students not new, say those involved | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/18/2009

Attacking immigrant students not new, say those involved | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/18/2009:

"Soon after Superintendent Arlene Ackerman arrived in Philadelphia in 2008, officials set up what was to be a friendly meeting with parents and representatives from immigrant groups.

The meeting lasted two hours and focused on one issue, according to people present: Immigrants were being beaten and harassed in city classrooms. What would the district do?

Then, in October last year, five Asian students from South Philadelphia High School were attacked near the subway station outside the school.

Leaders of the Asian community quietly met with district officials, who promised better security. A Chinese student group formed"

The Chalkboard: The Perpetual Question - What To Do With New Covenant Charter School?

The Chalkboard: The Perpetual Question - What To Do With New Covenant Charter School?

New Covenant Charter School in Albany is on the grill -- again.

Now in its eleventh year, the charter school is up for renewal since its one-year extension from the SUNY Board, granted last year, expires in June.

It's not looking good for New Covenant Charter School.

To be clear, I have not seen the preliminary renewal findings from SUNY's Charter Schools Institute (CSI) containing its recommendation for renewal (or non-renewal). The SUNY Board will have to make a final determination at its meeting in January. The New York Charter Schools Association has taken no position on the school's renewal question.

What I have read is the not-so-subtle statement from the SUNY Charter Institutes's Director, Jonas Chartock, quoted in today's Albany Times Union: "While the school has made some progress, it has not met the goals of its accountability plan or the academic conditions of its renewal." He went on to say: "Specific areas of concern include student performance in math, English and science. In addition, the school's financial condition continues to deteriorate."

Like I said, it doesn't look good for New Covenant.

The Brooklyn Paper: Big money could ‘PAVE’ the way for new Red Hook school

The Brooklyn Paper: Big money could ‘PAVE’ the way for new Red Hook school:

"A controversial charter school sought to diffuse mounting tensions inside the Red Hook building it shares with a public school by dropping the bombshell news that has almost all the money it needs to build its own permanent facility.

The news from the PAVE Academy came in a call to The Brooklyn Paper on Thursday — one day after PS 15 parents held an emergency meeting to plot their next move against a charter school that the parents feel was plotting to push out the long-standing public school from the Wolcott Street building.

That fear reached a fever pitch last week when the Department of Education released an “educational impact statement” that declared the school building capabl"

Florida Union Opposes State RTTT Plan - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Florida Union Opposes State RTTT Plan - Teacher Beat - Education Week:

It looks like the question I asked the other day—whether unions will agree to sign off on state Race to the Top plans—is a resounding "no," at least for the Sunshine State, says this Associated Press story.

The AP story talks a lot about the performance-pay elements of Florida's plan, and certainly the state has had its fair share of problems with performance pay. But let's not forget that this isn't just about performance pay. Student achievement must be factored into teacher evaluations as well. The union also seems to have problems with the school-turnaround language.

Having the union backing isn't an absolute requirement for the state to receive Race to the Top funding, but it will be weighed as part of the application. The state's aggressive MOU agreement also says that districts and unions that don't bargain the relevant sections of the state plan will forfeit

Race to the Top Hopefuls: Clear the Week of March 15 - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Race to the Top Hopefuls: Clear the Week of March 15 - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

If you're a finalist for a Race to the Top grant in Round 1 of the competition, then the week of March 15 is when your state team will have to come to Washington, D.C. and make your in-person pitch to the peer reviewers.

This nugget of information, plus more on the Race to the Top timeline, is contained in a new FAQs document released by the U.S. Department of Education today.

Those who are finalists will be notified around March 1, which leaves about two weeks for states to prepare their Olympic-sized sales pitches. It's unclear if those who do not make it to the interview round of this education reform pageant will be informed then as well.

Round 1 winners are expected to be announced in early April. (And losers will have until June 1 to get their Round 2 applications in.)

Some notes on the PEP in the Bronx � JD2718

Some notes on the PEP in the Bronx � JD2718:

"Went to the Panel for Educational Policy meeting in the Bronx last night. Noticed a few things:

1. “Mismanagement” may be a good description of how the DoE operates, but it makes a lousy chant.


I think mismanagement is far too weak to describe much of what they do… but listening to the smaller stuff at the PEP, mismanagement seems present in all the little stuff. School closings? Intentionally destructive policy, meant to harm kids, hurt teachers, disrupt neighborhoods. They are not closing schools out of mismanagement, but mismanagement pervades the entire process all the same."

I bet some linguist or speech person could explain how the stress pattern (short-long-short-short) makes a lousy chant. Bad rhythm. Hard to understand. Just not punchy.

2. Closing schools is on the agenda. Even if the PEP pretends it is not.

The audience was loaded with kids, faculty, parents from closing schools. Columbus had the most. But Monroe Academy of Business and Law was there. SCRL. New Day. A bunch of kids and a few faculty from Global Enterprise. FDA. And school closings were a major part of public comments. They seeped in during the middle of the meeting. And they were all that came up at the end. School after school, student, teacher, parent, principal got up to challenge the DoE. A few challenged “school closing as policy” – most made the case for keeping their own school open.

Two UFT VPs spoke,

Dyslexia defined: ‘Uncoupling’ between IQ and reading (re-issue)

Dyslexia defined: ‘Uncoupling’ between IQ and reading (re-issue):

"Washington, Dec 20 (ANI): A new study has provided a validated definition of dyslexia by showing how otherwise bright and intelligent people struggle to read.

Contrary to popular belief, some very smart, accomplished people cannot read well. This unexpected difficulty in reading in relation to intelligence, education and professional status is called dyslexia.

And now researchers at Yale School of Medicine and University of California Davis have presented new data to explain this learning disorder.

“For the first time, we’ve found empirical evidence that shows the relationship between IQ and reading over time differs for typical compared to dyslexic readers,” said Sally E. Shaywitz from Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Paediatrics, and co-director of the newly formed Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity."

University World News - US: Universities should prepare for postdoc unions

University World News - US: Universities should prepare for postdoc unions:

"Research universities should prepare for the possibility that postdoctoral researchers will work to form unions by developing consistent policies on how postdocs are treated and establishing student support groups as alternatives to unions, a panel of deans said on Thursday at the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools, writes Josh Keller for The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog.

Postdocs have only recently started to organise into unions at American public universities, starting in Connecticut, California and New Jersey. The push for postdoctoral unions may extend elsewhere, forcing universities to deal with a variety of academic and workplace issues at the bargaining table, the panelists said."