Nailing Your First Parent-Teacher Conference

Nailing Your First Parent-Teacher Conference:

Nailing Your First Parent-Teacher Conference

Photo by Danny Peck

Effective parent-teacher conferences are critical to your students’ success and planning for them can be a challenge. Fortunately, NEA and its members are here to help. Watch “Before, During and After: Tips for a Successful First Parent-Teacher Conference,” a prerecorded webinar from three master educators sharing their best advice and tips on how to prepare, conduct, and follow-up after your meeting with parents.

Hosted by NEA’s Center for Organizing, the webinar features these master educators:

• Anna Larsen, Utah second-grade teacher
• Bob Erlandsen, Massachusetts middle-school science teacher
• Rowena Shurn, consulting teacher in Maryland

Access the webinar (Flash player required) to learn more now.

Check out more teacher-tested tips on working with parents and guardians.

 Nailing Your First Parent-Teacher Conference:

When California schools call cops for small infractions it disproportionately hurts minority students, civil rights study finds - LA Times

When California schools call cops for small infractions it disproportionately hurts minority students, civil rights study finds - LA Times:

When California schools call cops for small infractions it disproportionately hurts minority students, civil rights study finds

Many California school districts offer their staff little or no guidance on when police should be called to control student behavior, according to a new study that comes as districts face increased pressure to redefine law enforcement’s role in public schools.

The report, released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, analyzed law enforcement policies of 119 California school districts, including 50 of its most populous. It found that more than half of the districts — large and small — gave their staff broad discretion to summon police officers for small infractions, bullying and disrupting lessons.

After the police are called in (most districts don’t permanently station officers in their schools), many districts do little to shield their students from potential consequences, the study found. Of those analyzed, about 98% don’t require parental notification before a student is interviewed by police and about 99% don’t mandate that officers advise students who haven’t yet been arrested of their constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent.

The result, according to the study’s authors, is that school administrators often outsource what used to be routine, in-school discipline to police officers. And when they do, the effects are disproportionately harsh for poor, minority and disabled students, who are more likely to be arrested than their peers.

Too often, school staff call the police to have them handle a situation that makes a student end up having to go to court or get a fine.— Victor Leung, ACLU staff attorney

During the 2013-14 school year, 9,540 school-related arrests were made in California, according to the study. Black students were three times as likely as white students to be charged with an offense.

“Too often, school staff call the police to have them handle a situation that makes a student end up having to go to court or get a fine,” said ACLU staff attorney Victor Leung. “Really, they should have no discretion — the rule should be that they handle this minor rule-breaking with their own staff.”

In California, 19 school districts have their own police forces, ranging in size from four officers in Apple Valley Unified to 410 sworn officers and 101 school safety officers in Los Angeles. Most districts have memorandums of understanding with local law enforcement, but many of these documents contain “deficient, vague, or even non-existent policies,” according to the report.

The worst offenders, Leung said, are the 33% of school districts that require staff to report low-level offenses such as vandalism or graffiti to the police. Although these may sound When California schools call cops for small infractions it disproportionately hurts minority students, civil rights study finds - LA Times:

When the "extra" is actually essential and life-changing - Lily's Blackboard

When the "extra" is actually essential and life-changing - Lily's Blackboard:

When the “extra” is actually essential and life-changing

We typically think of band, the chess club, drama club, debate team, dance, cheerleading, garden club, “It’s Academic” and similar programs as “extras,” like the colorful sprinkles on top of a sundae. But that doesn’t do justice to the role they play in the overall education and development of our students. Actually, they are essential­curriculars.

And speaking of essential: so are the many teachers, guidance counselors, coaches, school social workers, education support professionals and paraprofessionals who do double-duty, even giving up precious time on the weekends, to ensure these activities are available.

The emphasis on testing during the years of No Child Left Behind took away time and energy from a host of subjects and activities. It robbed too many students of the opportunity to “just be content with enjoying school.”

Photo by Sewell Johnson

In the test-crazed environment NCLB sparked, extracurriculars took a back seat. Some even thought of them mostly as résumé-builders for an impressive college application. But with the Every Student Succeeds Act, we have the chance to reclaim their place in education. As the author Robert Putnam said in an interview with NEA Today, they have an important place in students’ overall development. Without them, a pathway to growth and discovery is lost.

“We know from the evidence that extracurricular activities foster what are often called ‘soft skills,’ things like teamwork, grit, communication and so on. These are skills that are hugely important for success in life,” Putnam, author of books including Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, said. “That’s causation—if you participate in, for example, sports, and you learn those skills, you will in fact be more attractive to employers. … And of course when you take way these opportunities, students become disengaged from school and drop out.”

Sports programs are in a different league; they usually get lots of support. A host of professional athletes and Olympians got their start in PE and on school teams. But there’s more to activities than athletics.

Future Farmers of America, Mathletes, Model U.N, the aeronautics, robotics, graphic design, photography, manga and Harry Potter clubs, student government associations and others can help students figure out what they enjoy.

Moreover, they can give students information about what they are good at and point the way to educational choices and future careers.

That’s what happened to Kent Boyd, a runner-up in the seventh season of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” competition, who started out in high school musical productions back home in Botkins, Ohio. He’s continued his acting and dancing career and even started a clothing line, Sugar and Bruno.

Participating in the debate club can channel a student’s more challenging attributes (such as a propensity to argue a point ad nauseam) and help her discover the advocate within. Being in the baking club can provide the foundation When the "extra" is actually essential and life-changing - Lily's Blackboard:

FBI’s Online Anti-Extremism Effort Meets Resistance - WSJ

FBI’s Online Anti-Extremism Effort Meets Resistance - WSJ:
FBI’s Online Anti-Extremism Effort Meets Resistance
Teachers raise doubts over website that seeks to educate teenagers on how to avoid the pull of violent extremism

When it was introduced last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Don’t Be a Puppet” campaign was billed as a novel way to help educate teenagers about avoiding the pull of violent extremism.

The website, which teaches users how to pinpoint when young people are drifting toward radical ideology, is part of a broader initiative launched by the federal government to counter homegrown extremism. The site’s development comes as the Islamic State terror group seeks to ramp up its recruitment of young people in the West.

But as high-school students around the nation continue to settle into a new school year, the American Federation of Teachers union and other groups have come out against the campaign.

In August, the groups, which include the American Association of School Administrators and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, wrote a letter to FBI director James Comey saying they were “deeply troubled” by the Don’t Be A Puppet campaign and claimed it would increase distrust of Muslim and Middle Eastern students. Critics of the website fear that the recent bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey, and stabbings at a Minnesota mall, will be used to further justify its use with young people.

The website—which walks users through various topics related to extremism and allows them to “free the puppet’ after each section—references religious and environmental extremism, white supremacy, and anarchists. It offers short explanations of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

Specifically, the advocacy groups have raised concerns that the computer program can too easily be interpreted as singling out Muslims. Critics have taken issue with several of the potential signs of extremist behavior that the website warns users to report—such as “talking about traveling to places that sound suspicious” and “using code words or unusual language.”

They have also objected to a video of an Arab-American woman on the site who said she FBI’s Online Anti-Extremism Effort Meets Resistance - WSJ:

L.A. Unified decides fate of six charter schools; El Camino leader resigns - LA Times

L.A. Unified decides fate of six charter schools; El Camino leader resigns - LA Times:

L.A. Unified decides fate of six charter schools; El Camino leader resigns

The ongoing tug of war between pro-charter school and anti-charter forces was focused Tuesday on the Los Angeles Board of Education, which faced controversial decisions on the future of six campuses.

By the end of a sometimes contentious meeting, the school board allowed one high-profile charter to survive in exchange for the departure of its leader. The board also voted to reject petitions for five schools run by two other organizations.

The outcome was bittersweet for many at El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills.

The district agreed to stay a revocation process that would have returned El Camino to the control of the L.A. Unified School District. But founding executive director, David Fehte, consented to leave within the next week. Several governing board members also are expected to depart over the next several months. 

The L.A. school board’s vote was 6 to 0 against a five-year renewal for three schools operated by locally based Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation. Board member George McKenna abstained.

Magnolia came under widespread scrutiny after the Turkish government accused it and other U.S.-based charters with Turkish governing boards of helping foment a failed July coup in Turkey. The schools’ leaders denied any involvement.

A more direct concern for L.A. Unified was Magnolia’s importing of Turkish nationals and their families for teaching and other staff positions. That past practice is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the district’s inspector general. 

Magnolia operates 10 campuses, including eight in L.A. Unified; the ones up for renewal were Magnolia Science Academy 1 in Reseda, Magnolia Science Academy 2 in Van Nuys and Magnolia Science Academy 3 in Carson. 

The school board denied the other two charter renewals, for Celerity Dyad in South Los Angeles and Celerity Troika in Eagle Rock, in a 6-0 vote. Ref Rodriguez, who represents the area where the schools are located, abstained.    

The actions on these schools directly affected more than 13,000 students but also took on greater significance as the L.A. Unified School District struggles both to oversee and compete with charters.

L.A. Unified has more of these independently operated schools than any other district, and, as they compete for students, charter growth is one major factor affecting the district’s financial stability.

Charter advocates on Tuesday asserted that L.A. Unified is growing increasingly hostile to new and existing charters, and that district evaluators are seeking to close charters over relatively minor matters that have no bearing on academic performance. 

They insisted that L.A. Unified is acting unfairly and possibly in violation of state regulations.  An attorney for Magnolia went further, calling the focus on the Turkish workers, “discrimination based on nationality and religious beliefs.”

“These people have never done anything but provide a world-class education to inner-city kids in Los Angeles,” attorney Jerry Simmons said.

District officials maintained that all six of the schools had problems that justified taking action despite their academic performance, which ranged from acceptable to much better. 

The approval process for charters has taken on a ritual-like quality in the nation’s second-L.A. Unified decides fate of six charter schools; El Camino leader resigns - LA Times:

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Court Decides in Favor of Privacy

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Court Decides in Favor of Privacy:

PA: Court Decides in Favor of Privacy



 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week issued a long-overdue ruling with far-reaching consequences for school privacy issues.


The case dates back to 2009, when some folks asserted that Right-To-Know laws meant they could demand home addresses and phone numbers for teachers. The state teachers union fought the issue, but the lower court ruled that teachers should have the right to argue why specific their own personal info should be denied. But that was it, and it wasn't much. PSEA appealed.

Now in a unanimous ruling, the state supremes have ruled that a school district is not a directory service. And they've said in language that has some other clear implications. Here's how Emily Leader described the ruling in an e-mail to Pennsylvania School Board Association members:

The Court held individuals have a constitutional right to privacy in their home addresses under Article 1, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.  In general, individuals have a right to “informational privacy” which may not be violated unless this right is outweighed by a public interest favoring disclosure.”   The Court found that in this case there is no public interest in disclosing the school employees’ home addresses in response to this request which outweighs their interest in privacy in their home addresses.  It noted, “To the contrary, nothing in the RTKL suggests that it was ever intended to be used as a tool to procure personal information about private citizens or, in the worst sense, to be a generator of mailing lists. Public agencies are not clearinghouses of “bulk” personal information otherwise protected by constitutional privacy rights.

Does that seem a little broader than just employee's home addresses? It looks that way to PSBA, too. Here's their advice for how school districts should deal with the ruling:CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Court Decides in Favor of Privacy:

How Joy Became the New Grit – EduShyster

How Joy Became the New Grit – EduShyster:

How Joy Became the New Grit

Schools are increasingly manipulating students’ emotions in the name of achievement—and that’s wrong says University of Pennsylvania education professor Joan Goodman…

By Joan Goodman
*No excuses* charter schools face a teaching predicament. Their long school day/year with few diverting extra-curricular activities and heavily rule-governed pedagogy is tough on students. Inevitably, strict behavior restrictions, aimed not just at controlling common misbehaviors but also behaviors that might lead to misbehavior, result in a gulf between student desires and teacher demands. To close the gulf and avoid constantly admonishing students, charter management organizations have layered onto their culture an expectation that learning is to be approached joyously. Indeed, joy has been elevated to a central value at many CMOs.

The j-factor
Uncommon Schools promotes *joy* as one of its five values; Democracy Prep advertises a *joyous culture* with enthusiasm as one of its DREAM values; Mastery lists *joy and humor* among its nine core values; and Achievement First includes the child’s joy in its assessments of  student progress. Success Academy says that, along with rigor, its schools stress *humor (joy)…making achieving exhilarating and fun!* Meanwhile, KIPP includes joy’s close cousin, *zest,* as one of the seven character strengths on its Character Growth Card. Chicago’s Noble Network has likewise embraced *zest.* According to Doug Lemov, a major source of CMO pedagogy, the Joy Factor, one of his 49 essential techniques, is *a key driver not just of a happy How Joy Became the New Grit – EduShyster:

Where Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton Stand On 10 Policy Issues : NPR

Where Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton Stand On 10 Policy Issues : NPR:

From The Economy To Race, See Where The Candidates Stand On The Big Issues

This election has been particularly noisy.

But when all the Twitter storms and heated exchanges (maybe) fade away after Nov. 8, the issues that affect real voters will remain.

With that in mind, we set out to create a cheat sheet on where each candidate stands on the issues voters care about most. The issues we chose to highlight come from the top 10 issues voters said were "very important" to their vote, according to a 2016 pollfrom the Pew Research Center.

Those issues are, in order: The economy, terrorism, foreign policy, health care, gun policy, immigration, social security, education, Supreme Court appointments and the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities.

We've tracked where the major candidates — Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein — fall on each issue. We chose these four candidates because they are on the ballot in most states.

We've categorized each candidate's stance in various subcateories with a yes or a no, if it truly was that simple. Some were given an "it's complicated" rating, meaning that the candidate hasn't put forth a plan, commented publicly or has changed positions.

We will continue to update their stances as they evolve. Is there a subcategory you'd like to see but don't? E-mail us at nprpolitics@npr.org.

Economy / Terrorism / Foreign Policy / Health / Gun Policy / Immigration / Social Security / Education / Supreme Court Appointments / The Treatment of Racial and Ethnic Minorities

---

The Economy

Though the country as a whole has recovered in the eight years since the 2008 recession, many parts of the country are still struggling. Partly for that reason, economic policy continues to be a major theme on the campaign trail. Candidates have sparred over the role that the tax code should play in economic growth, how to solve the social security problem and more.

Where Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton Stand On 10 Policy Issues : NPR:

Russ on Reading: Teachers as Writers: You Can’t Teach Swimming from the Side of the Pool

Russ on Reading: Teachers as Writers: You Can’t Teach Swimming from the Side of the Pool:

Teachers as Writers: You Can’t Teach Swimming from the Side of the Pool

Today I am pleased to offer a guest post from Cynthia Mershon on the importance of writing teachers being writers themselves. Cynthia is a former long-time literacy specialist and writing teacher and is currently a workshop presenter for Teachers College, Columbia University.

by Cynthia Mershon

During high school and college, I worked as a life guard and a swimming instructor.  Most of the children I met in swimming lessons were between the ages of five and ten – some had never had a swimming lesson, but some knew a little about swimming.  As a swimmer myself,  I appreciated the importance of being in the pool with them, standing beside them and talking with them as they clung to the wall or bobbed up and down in the shallow end of the pool.  

When it came time to demonstrate a particular swimming skill - how to use arms to stroke through the water, or feet to kick, or how to turn the head to breathe - it was easy to gather them around me so they could watch as I moved my arms, or held onto the wall and kicked, or put my face in the water and turned my head to the side and took a breath.  Most of the time, they were close enough for me to touch them and I often did, supporting their bodies while they tried each skill so they could feel what it felt like to be a swimmer, offering them the chance to know what it would feel like to glide through the water when they could put all of their learning together.

Now, many years later, I work with upper elementary teachers, supporting them as they develop their reading and writing workshops.  As a part of our work together, I recommend that teachers write their own pieces when teaching students a particular genre of writing.  I encourage them to share this writing with their students as mentor texts, as examples of the kind of writing they want students to do in the units being taught.  Reading John Hattie’s 2008 analysis of what factors maximize student achievement (Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement,  Routledge), we learn students need crystal clear examples of what we are asking them to do if they are to be successful at specific tasks.  Deliberately producing a piece of writing for them that illustrates the skills and strategies we are teaching so they can use our writing as a model to examine makes perfect sense.   

Another reason to think about writing teacher-generated mentor texts is because Russ on Reading: Teachers as Writers: You Can’t Teach Swimming from the Side of the Pool:

Why Is Schooling, After Adopting Computers, Yet To Be Transformed? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Is Schooling, After Adopting Computers, Yet To Be Transformed? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Why Is Schooling, After Adopting Computers, Yet To Be Transformed?

Today, robots build autos, assemble electronic devices, put together appliances, and make machinery. Automation has eliminated most bank tellers, white collar clerks and secretaries, salespersons, and dozens of other occupations. U.S. Agriculture has become industrialized and family farms have largely disappeared in the last two generations. Whole industries have been transformed by the advent of the computer. Moreover, from drafting plans for buildings to doing legal research to managing insurance claims, computers and software algorithms have either replaced people or reduced numbers of employees. Business leaders of large and mid-size companies seek increased productivity and lower costs in producing products and services. None of this is new. Greater efficiency, higher productivity and increased profit margins. But not in schools.

Surely, since the early 1980s when desktop computers appeared in public schools, administrators have applied business software to personnel, purchasing, transportation, food services, and assembling big data sets for managers to use in making decisions. And, yes, cuts in school employees have occurred. But these efficiencies have yet to transform classrooms.

If the inner workplace of schooling, the classroom, came late to the surge of automation, robots, and personal computers, then that helps to explain, in part, why so many teachers and principals in the past have perceived these powerful devices as an add-on to their work, something else that policymakers, parents, and administrators expected teachers to do in classrooms. The advent of higher curriculum standards, high-stakes testing, and coercive accountability since the mid-1980s pressured teachers to concentrate on content and skill standards that were tested. I said, “in part,” because this perception of an additional task (OK, burden) differs greatly from private sector employers who eagerly automated occupational tasks and transformed professional work (e.g., engineers, architects, financial analysts, online marketers).

Beyond the perception of a burden foisted onto teachers as a partial explanation, surely, minimal student access to computers in the 1980s and much of the 1990s also accounts for the snail’s pace of adoption and use. Yet many teachers and principals were early adopters and enthusiasts for applying new technologies to classroom tasks. Much evidence from teacher surveys, direct observation of lessons, bloggers, and researcher accounts clearly establishes that, as hardware Why Is Schooling, After Adopting Computers, Yet To Be Transformed? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teachers For Social Justice: The Challenge of Teaching in a Racially and Politically Polarized Time

Teachers For Social Justice: The Challenge of Teaching in a Racially and Politically Polarized Time:

The Challenge of Teaching in a Racially and Politically Polarized Time

Our panelists will address the complex issues faced by K-12 teachers struggling to help students make sense of the current tumultuous environment: the heated rhetoric around race, immigration and xenophobia in the 2016 election, the debates around race and policing here in Chicago and throughout the country and other  controversial issues.  What are the challenges of these developments for teachers and what are the different ways that educators meet these challenges?  The panelists will address how to engage students in meaningful discussion, how to create safe classroom spaces and how to develop a mind-set of civic responsibility.

Dr. Horace Hall, Associate Professor, DePaul College of Education will present introductory remarks and moderate the panel.

Panelists include:

Liz Robbins, Social Science teacher, Lindbloom High School; Civic Instructional Specialist for Chicago Public Schools

Mario Perez, Coordinator and Social Science teacher, the Newcomer Center, Township High School District 214, Arlington Heights

Johnae Strong, Elementary school teacher and restorative justice coordinator, Chicago Public SchoolsTeachers For Social Justice: The Challenge of Teaching in a Racially and Politically Polarized Time:

Private Donations to Public Schools: The Latest Way to Undermine Funding Equity | Alternet

Private Donations to Public Schools: The Latest Way to Undermine Funding Equity | Alternet:

Private Donations to Public Schools: The Latest Way to Undermine Funding Equity

School foundations are helping the "haves" get even more.

 At 24, as a brand-new teacher looking for my first job, I went through the rigmarole of applications, interviews, and job fairs. My first offer came from Lake Oswego, a city I knew only by its reputation for affluence and racial homogeneity (whiteness). I had never visited, even though it was a mere 20-minute drive from Portland, Oregon, where I had lived most of my life. I took the job, a one-year, temporary position. I would be a “foundation teacher”: My salary was paid not out of the regular budget, but by the Lake Oswego Schools Foundation, a separate, private fundraising apparatus.

I would like to say that I was always enlightened enough to understand the implications of school foundations, but the truth is, at the time, I was just happy to have a job and didn’t pay much mind to where my paycheck was coming from.

Sixteen years later, I am still at Lake Oswego, no longer a foundation teacher, and now painfully aware of the insidious role school foundations play in perpetuating inequality in public education funding.

Anyone in education or interested in education policy has heard the claim “You can’t fix what’s wrong in education by throwing money at the problem.” Indeed, claims like this are made every legislative cycle as lawmakers wrangle over how much to budget for K–12 education and again during campaign season, when too many candidates jump on some version of the tax-cutting bandwagon.

But if more money is not a critical requirement for improving education, why have school foundations become so ubiquitous? According to Ashlyn Aiko Nelson and Beth Gazley, who published an investigation of these school funding nonprofits, school foundations have proliferated in the last decades, increasing threefold since the mid-1990s. So has the amount of money they are raising: School foundations and comparable organizations raised about $197 million in 1995; in 2010, the number had more than quadrupled to $880 million.

The Lake Oswego Schools Foundation raised roughly $1.5 million for the 2014–Private Donations to Public Schools: The Latest Way to Undermine Funding Equity | Alternet:

BRIDGEGATE TRIAL–Defendant Baroni’s version shredded on cross-examination |

BRIDGEGATE TRIAL–Defendant Baroni’s version shredded on cross-examination |:

BRIDGEGATE TRIAL–Defendant Baroni’s version shredded on cross-examination

 Bridgegate trial defendant Bill Baroni’s efforts to portray himself as an honest, compassionate and politically independent–if, at times, conflicted– public servant vanished in a mist of embarrassment Tuesday as a federal prosecutor shredded Baroni’s self-serving version of the decision to create massive traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge  in September, 2013. And gone, too, is any doubt over whether Gov. Chris Christie was involved in whatever his lemmings were doing at the bistate agency.

In controlled but sharply-aimed cross examination, Assistant US Attorney Lee Cortes depicted Baroni as an “attack dog” who delivered Christie’s angry and often profane threats to potential adversaries–especially during the governor’s re-election campaign.

“This was a political time and a political campaign,” Baroni said in discussing how Christie’s Port Authority’s appointees were expected to act toward those from whom the governor expected support and endorsements, including Jersey City Steven Fulop and Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich.

Baroni, Christie and Wildstein on 9/11/13–what were they laughing about?

“The governor was very, very involved personally.”

The federal prosecutors, however, have never been eager to delve into Christie’s role in what has become known as Bridgegate. US Attorney Paul Fishman was satisfied with indicting only Baroni, then a PA deputy executive director, and Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff. David Wildstein a boyhood pal of Christie, already has pleaded guilty for his role in what looks more and more like a silly but potentially dangerous high school prank than political intrigue. Wildstein, who got to the prosecutors first, has testified against Baroni and Kelly.

Wildstein’s version is this: He came up with the idea of jamming up traffic at the GWB to punish Sokolich for refusing to endorse Christie’s re-election bid. Kelly authorized it with her infamous email–“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”–and Wildstein and Baroni executed it under the cover of a non-existent traffic study. Christie knew about it while it was going on and approved. Patrick Foye, the PA’s BRIDGEGATE TRIAL–Defendant Baroni’s version shredded on cross-examination |:

LA Unified rarely rejects renewal requests from charter schools. Last night, they did five times. | 89.3 KPCC

LA Unified rarely rejects renewal requests from charter schools. Last night, they did five times. | 89.3 KPCC:

LA Unified rarely rejects renewal requests from charter schools. Last night, they did five times.

Every few years, any charter school has to ask the school district overseeing it to renew its operating authority — like a renter asking to renew his lease on an apartment or a car.

The Los Angeles Unified School Board has routinely approved these charter approvals. They’ve also regularly green-lighted “material revisions” to charters, allowing schools to add grade levels, alter enrollment targets or change their operational structures. Out of 202 such requests to L.A. Unified since 2011, the board has rejected only five.

Tuesday night was different.

L.A. Unified board members voted down renewal petitions for five charters in one evening — three schools operated by Magnolia Public Schools and two othersoperated by the Celerity Educational Group — during a meeting that was as fraught, divided and emotionally-charged as the district’s broader relationship with the charter schools it oversees.

With both Celerity and Magnolia, L.A. Unified officials raised questions about the governance and oversight — but not their academic performance, which prompted charges from charter school supporters that the district was not judging the requests impartially.

“Up until this board report, I had confidence that LAUSD was treating charter schools fairly,” said Magnolia CEO Caprice Young. “They are specifically targeting some of the highest-performing charter schools … and I believe it’s just because they don’t want charter schools to continue to exist.” (Young made those comments in an interview on Monday, and renewed those objections after Tuesday night’s meeting.)

District officials said their questions about management practices at both Celerity and Magnolia are substantial. At Celerity, they question whether the schools are able to operate independently of Celerity Global Development, an umbrella non-profit that provides services to the school but that has not fulfilled the district’s requests for documents or information.

At Magnolia, they said school officials have not responded to reasonable inquiries from the district’s Office of the Inspector General or from the state’s Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team. (Young disputes this, saying she’s produced thousands of pages-worth of documents for district officials.)

L.A. Unified’s Charter Schools Division, the office charged with overseeing all of the charter schools the district authorizes, has been increasingly skeptical of petitions to open new charter schools, a KPCC analysis has shown.

But board members haven’t always followed staff recommendations. Data from the California Charter Schools Association also showed that, before Tuesday, L.A. Unified’s board had approved 155 out of 159 renewal petitions and 42 out of 43 material revision requests since 2011.

Still, Tuesday night’s events eschewed easy analysis. L.A. Unified’s board also approved — against the recommendation of district staff — a material revision for Citizens of the World, allowing the charter school operator to add seventh and eighth grade classes to its Mar Vista campus.

Additionally, L.A. Unified’s board held off on revoking the charter of the embattled El Camino Real High School after leaders of the Woodland Hills school agreed to part ways with their principal and several members of their governing board.

Further complicating the evening’s events: neither Mónica García nor Ref Rodriguez — the two L.A. Unified board members often identified as the biggest allies of the charter school sector — supported Celerity or Magnolia’s renewal petitions. 

Rodriguez, who abstained from the Magnolia vote, expressed frustration with both the petitioners and district staff making the recommendations.

“I want to tell our charter partners out there that you’ve got to be good partners,” said Rodriguez, who himself is a co-founder of a charter network. “You’ve got to look in the mirror and say, ‘Are we being good?’”

"But I also want the [L.A. Unified’s] Charter Schools Division to ask themselves that LA Unified rarely rejects renewal requests from charter schools. Last night, they did five times. | 89.3 KPCC: