Bidders can vie for eight schools, including L.A. High; charter schools file lawsuit

Eight low-performing Los Angeles-area schools and nine new campuses will be open to bids from groups inside and outside the school system, officials announced Monday. The winning bidders would take over management of these schools in the fall of 2011.

The two high schools on the list are Huntington Park High and Los Angeles High in Mid-Wilshire. Most are middle schools: Audubon in Leimert Park, Clay in unincorporated West Athens, Harte in Vermont Vista, Mann in unincorporated Westmont and Muir in Vermont-Slauson. Woodcrest, also in Westmont, is the sole elementary school.

Except for the high schools, all the low-performing campuses are, broadly speaking, in low-income minority neighborhoods north and west of the intersection of the 110 and 105 freeways.

This is round two of bidding under a school-control process that the Los Angeles Board of Education approved last year. A first round concluded in February for 12 struggling schools and 18 new campuses. Teacher-led groups claimed most of the campuses, with a handful going to charter schools and the education nonprofit controlled by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Independently operated charter schools were unhappy at being shut out from most of the new campuses in the L. A. Unified School District. Their discontent has continued into the spring over disagreements with the school system over the distribution of classrooms districtwide. Under state law, charters are entitled to "reasonably equivalent" facilities.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, charters complained that they typically receive only leftover classroom space, if that, often in unworkable configurations.

District officials insisted that charter schools are being treated equitably, given competing demands on space and resources.

To become eligible for outside control, a school had to fall short of federal improvement targets for at least the last five years and score less than 600 on the state’s Academic Performance Index, which is based almost entirely on test scores. These schools also have improved less than 100 points on the state index over the last five years. In addition, less than 20% of students are proficient in English or math. And the high schools have a dropout rate greater than 10%.

As with the first group of schools, the bidding process will include public information sessions, non-binding school-level votes by parents and staff, and then a recommendation by L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. The school board will make the final selections.

These “focus schools” can escape this bidding process if this spring's test scores show marked improvement when they are released in the fall.

Fifteen other schools also met the criteria based on data, but they already are engaged in substantial reform efforts, officials said.

-- Howard Blume

Comments

[dhwj]

Again and again, poor parents are forced to send their children to underperforming schools. Isn't it time we give all parents vouchers and let the parents decide which school is best for their children???

It may not be teacher union friendly but it sure would be family and children friendly.

[dco]

Ah yes, ignore state law and bow to the unions.

[jennydonut]

Careful what you wish for. Education run on a for profit model? I don't have to spell out who wins in that kind of situation, it won't be our children.

[ARD]

So the inappropriately-named “parental choice” public school giveaway train rumbles on in LAUSD with the dreaded and scrooge-like Ramone Cortines at the helm with a backseat full of grinning thieves such as Ben Austin, Gloria Romero, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Arne Duncan, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and Yolie Flores. This rogues gallery of political climbers, capitalist thieves, misled sycophants, and political dimwits are the braintrust behind the largest public school giveaway/moneygrab in the history our country. Last time I checked, our elected school boards and elected officials are given our trust and treasure in order to design, create, nourish, and protect our public schools in Los Angeles, and to do so with a common goal of creating a platform of educational equity for the masses – a public platform critical to the growth and vigor of our healthy and sustainable American democracy – and not in the business of giving away our communities’ precious resources to dear political cronies with deep pockets and strange, self-driven agendas. Each of these schemers, when you scratch the surface, have little in the way of a professional understanding of education, and most are using the “parental choice” train as highly-charged, visible, and lucrative political vehicle to carry them past public education issues – which they claim they care so much about – into greener, more powerful, more lucrative, and more visible political situations. To cut through the sound-bite clutter filling our airwaves regarding this LAUSD-driven taxpayer-owned school giveaway policy and see it for the moneygrab/powergrab that it really is, one needs only to witness how the “parents” acted last school year when they were actually asked to choose schools (I know, there was that little nuisance of having to ask the “parents” about their school “choice”). When put to a vote, the parents in communities in which their neighborhood schools were being given away overwhelming shunned the LAUSD-backed charter schools that were jockeying to close them down, and chose instead their traditional LAUSD public schools with their traditional staffs. Ouch. “Darn those pesky parents, teachers, students, and community members that foiled our evil plan,” the rogues’ gallery would mumble to themselves in the dimly-lit backrooms of the Beaudry building in the early spring of 2010. Today’s newspaper headline in the late spring of 2010, however, is a chilling reminder that these grim reapers still lurk. In those same shadows they now chuckle. “We’re baaack.”

[Kenneth Smith]

I have to disagree. Audubon Middle School is located near the Leimert Park and Baldwin Hills area. I don't think that is considered low-income when the average priced home is 400k+. Also, when I attended Audubon in the late 70's it was one of the best Junior High Schools at that time. What has happened in the last 30 years with LAUSD?

[Lawrence W]

"Education run on a for profit model? I don't have to spell out who wins in that kind of situation, it won't be our children."

"Non-profit" Education has been highly profitable for the Teachers Union. The children sure aren't winning under the current model.

[CUSD Parent]

When people complain about "for profit" public schools they seem to forget that there are a number of private, for profit schools at all levels that do a very good job of educating, e.g. Catholic & Lutheran elementary and high schools (Loyola, Mater Dei, Bishop Amant), and USC, Pepperdine and Pomona College, among many, at the college level.