Debbie Johnson, principal at Lennox Middle School, by many accounts was one of a handful of people who was strongly disliked by Jose A. Fernandez, superintendent of the Centinela Valley Unified High School District.
With Dr. Cheryl White in charge of the district, there were many key positions at the district level left unfilled. The district did not have an assistant superintendent of human resources or an assistant superintendent of educational services. A micromanager, White also had holes at the directors of facilities, fiscal services and food services positions.
Johnson, according to several accounts, kept the educational services department running as director of curriculum and instruction under White. She continued to play an important role after Fernandez was named interim superintendent in 2008.
“She had put in place a lot of programs, and she had put in place a lot of talented people to make these programs work,” a former assistant superintendent said.
In the summer of 2009, Johnson asked Fernandez to make her the principal of Leuzinger High School.
“Leuzinger High School got to a point where they were in crisis,” Johnson said. “I told him I would pull them out of crisis and give them the leadership they need. He refused, even though two of his assistant superintendents told him that was the best idea. He refused.”
By many accounts, the programs that had been started by former Leuzinger principal Sonia Miller were beginning to crumble because a lack of support. Former interim Leuzinger principal Jim Jobes, who had a “closed-door policy" to faculty, according to many sources, left Leuzinger with a lack of direction.
His successor would be Raul Carranza, who would later resign six months after he was hired.
Fernandez denied Johnson’s request. After 26 years of work in the district, a strong history and relationship with teachers assisting in the educational services department, Fernandez had other plans for Johnson. He would make her a physical education teacher the following fall.
Johnson had little to comment on her time at CVUHSD. Fernandez refused to talk to Spot.Us.
Several of the programs she helped build were reportedly deconstructed by Fernandez. The instructional coaches program she had implemented was dismantled. A reading intervention program at the district level she had painstakingly overseen crumbled because of neglect and inattention after she left.
Johnson left the district in the summer of 2009.
A year later, she said she is happy in her current position at Lennox Middle School, the largest school in Lennox School District. It's a place on the rise, she said.
“I think in three or four years from now, they are on their road to success here,” Johnson said. “We’re in the mindset we can do it. That is the mindset the leader of the school needs to build first. If they don’t have that passion, if the leaders of the school district don’t have that passion, you’ll never get to where you want to go.”
In a black picture frame hoisted in the Lennox Middle School administrative office, there is small abstract picture of a small town on a hill. The words say, ‘Unity in our community.’
Even in achievement, Margaret Fagano is not happy.
The principal at Prairie Vista Middle School let loose a joy-filled, exasperated sigh from her chair, looking at a rolling cork board covered with charts in the faculty room.
“Look at that number!” she said.
The charts on the wall send a dual message to Prairie Vista faculty members: it showcases achievement to the faculty, but the colorful charts also keep the faculty focused on the need to continue improving.
Academic Performance Index, or API, at Prairie Vista has increased 72 points over the last three years.
Despite improved performance from its feeder schools -- the districts that send their elementary and middle-school students to a high school district -- Centinela Valley in 2008-09 had an API 111 points lower than the lowest achieving feeder school district. Lennox School District had a respectable API of 737 in 2008-2009. Centinela Valley had an API of 626.
There are four school districts that feed into CVUHSD: Wiseburn School District; Lennox School District; Lawndale School District; and Hawthorne High School District, which includes Prairie Vista.
A constant shuffle of personnel for counterproductive purposes has blunted progress at Centinela Valley. Constant intervention by district personnel and a superintendent who has put his focus on the budget over education has left the school district in educational chaos, critics said.
Fagano said Prairie Vista’s achievement has come about by pulling students from the bottom as much as improving students who are already academically strong. There’s a focus on improving reading because good reading skills carry over to all subjects. Every student has two periods of math. Those students who need it also receive an extra period of language arts. Such steps are common practice at many urban high schools.
Educators know that students who struggle academically, while difficult, can rise quickly, resulting in a prompt rise in API.
“It’s criminal that our kids have to scatter,” Wiseburn Superintendent Tom Johnstone said. “The reason why they have to scatter is because they do not have a good high school solution.”
Johnstone is looking to take part in a movement that has been in operation for the last decade: the energetic and passionate superintendent wants to secede from Centinela. There are already five charter high schools in the area, which pull one-fourth of the students who would otherwise be attending Centinela Valley.
“The elementary school districts have done a much better job of dealing with (socio-economically disadvantage students),” Johnstone said of the less-affluent area that feeds into CVUHSD. “They are not using this as an excuse.”
He said he believes that Centinela could do better.
“Absolutely, they are underachieving,” Johnstone said.
Johnstone does not withhold criticism. He said from afar, he sees Centinela Valley Superintendent Jose A. Fernandez putting his focus on school construction and the budget.
“That has not translated into an improved instructional program and, ultimately, that is how you are going to be judged as a school district,” Johnstone said. “You won’t be judged by facilities or a budget that passes muster.”
Leslie Montes hoped to convey some advice — some parting words before departing for Harvard in the fall — to the Centinela Valley Union High School District board in her final months before leaving Leuzinger High School in Lawndale.
Montes, who graduated with a 4.2 grade-point average, hoped to tell the board it wasn’t right to entice students to attend school with giveaways. Perfect attendance during a specified period of time? Students could win movie tickets to an iPod in a raffle.
Montes won a camera.
“It’s the right intention, but it’s going about it the wrong way,” Montes said in a phone interview, the week she was about to depart for Harvard. She had hoped to read a letter she prepared at a board meeting near the end of the school year until she learned it had been canceled.
Getting students to engage in school is tough when there is a lack of continuity in school leadership and the absence of a strong teacher-administrator-superintendent relationship. Leuzinger High School has been ranked in the bottom 10 percent of high schools in California for over a decade. Since Superintendent Jose A. Fernandez took over the district in 2008, critics say that he has not put the school in a position to succeed.
A lack of focus on education from the district, a recent round of arbitrary personnel transfers, a series of condescending e-mails from the district, unexplained demotions, high turnover at the high school administrative level, the threat of a state takeover because of a lack of academic success, and what teachers describe as “teacher bullying” from the district and administrative level have lowered staff morale to an all-time low, some said.
“In the last few weeks of school, I was either crying or I had another teacher in my room crying,” said a Leuzinger faculty member who asked to speak anonymously. “Because the bigger picture looks so bleak, and so scary sometimes, for your own survival you need to put your head down. You put your focus on that one success, that one student. You have to tell your friends in the same teaching circle to do the same sometimes.”
At Leuzinger last year, one student found himself in the role of teacher. Pablo Plata, who will be attending California State University, Long Beach, this month, said he had six substitute teachers in his choir class, five in those first two months. By November, he was seeing the same teacher every day, but Plata said the substitute teacher did not know anything about music.
So Plata, the choir president, took charge along with the choir vice president and another member of the class.
Five days a week, starting in November, he and his peers would teach his third-period choir class – 40 students. This continued until the final two months of school.
“It was hard for us to take control of the class,” Plata said. “There was no authority.”
If there had been more stable leadership, Plata might have been able to sing instead of lead the class. Instead, the high turnover of administrators has set up a position where serious issues go unaddressed.
Since former principal Sonia Miller left in the summer of 2008, a steady stream of administrators has walked through the Leuzinger doors. When administrative staff – some of them commended by their peers—are demoted or transferred, it does not receive an explanation from the district, many faculty said.
Leuzinger has had five principals -- two named on an interim basis -- and nine associate principals since 2008. This fall, Leuzinger will have three new associate principals to bring that total to 12.
“We were upset,” said Plata, about the principal turnover. “There was no real principal. Who was in control of everything? Nobody. All of us were asking questions. We were confused.”
Longtime faculty members describe the current feeling at Leuzinger as the worst it has ever been. While some have spoken approvingly on the emphasis of discipline among the faculty ranks, even these faculty members say this philosophy is being taken to extreme ends.
The top-down decisions from the district level and what many teachers describe as a lack of respect from the high school and district leadership levels have also have contributed to the bleak outlook.
Sandra Goins, the executive director of the South Bay Union of Teachers, said she has heard numerous complaints from teachers.
“It’s a general climate of, 'If you ask questions, or if you veer from what I tell you to do – or if I think you do' —… if faculty go against it, (district personnel) will go out to publicly humiliate you,” Goins said. “They will try to get you in as much trouble as they can.”
Faculty members also have raised questions about how the personnel transfers from June will affect academic progress. Conversations with those teachers who have been involuntarily transferred raise questions about the effect of these moves. Some have said they will “teach to their contract” because of how the transfers were handled while others have left the district or are seeking employment elsewhere.
With new teachers coming on this fall, new faculty members will need to be familiarized with a new teaching environment. Department duties will have to be reassigned. Those changes, combined with low morale, can make for a difficult situation when educating urban students, which requires an enormous amount of energy, focus and personal investment.
The picture at Leuzinger was radically different two years ago.
People look back on the days when Miller was principal with mixed emotions, some glowing and others who said she was “too nice.” Some students also expressed concern about discipline problems. Faculty members talk about Miller as someone with a tremendous work ethic. Rae Jeane William, a faculty member involved with the teacher education program at UCLA Center X, said she and Miller worked together on a program that would get students reading and writing on a college level.
Faculty members and members of Miller’s administrative team describe long hours being put forward to come up with a formula that could work for Leuzinger High School students back in 2006-2007. Improvements in state standardized test scores followed. Even though a significant percentage of students were still testing poorly, there was a positive trend, especially in math.
There was hope.
“Leuzinger was making growth,” said a former CVUHSD assistant superintendent. “There was really progress being made.”
At the core were two faculty instructional coaches – a model recommended by the state to help underperforming schools – who would oversee classes at Leuzinger. The responsibility of Frank Divinagracia and Leona Matthews, now both faculty members at DaVinci Charter Schools and national board-certified teachers, was to watch what was happening in the classroom, suggest methods for improvement to faculty, and relay faculty concern and input to the high school-level administration.
Matthews had been a Leuzinger employee since 2001. Divinagracia, a former Leuzinger student who was first employed at the school at age 22, started as a math teacher and was later nationally board certified as the math department chair. Divinagracia had been a faculty member for 13 years prior.
Given their extensive experience teaching at Leuzinger, both were able to provide a level of faculty support to facilitate the teaching experience.
“They would also sit in on the administration meetings and share what works,” said Oscar Cisneros, a former associate principal at Leuzinger under Miller. He now works as principal at Arroyo High School in El Monte. “They would not evaluate, but observe, and offer feedback to the teachers. “
The instructional coaching program was put to an end by the district in the fall of 2009. The Peer College Counseling program – designed for upper level students to promote college among their peers— that Montes wrote about in her essay to get into Harvard was also cut last year.
Faculty question whether the cuts had anything to do with the budget.
Employees at Leuzinger also express frustration over a lack of district help from the educational services department. A program administered by the district level called Studio to help students improve their reading received no support this previous school year, even though the school could soon be taken over by the state.
"Teachers who were teaching a class that was supposed to work on improving struggling readers, many of them teaching that challenging class for the first time, were given no support through professional development or coaching during the school year," a former Leuzinger faculty member said. “Zip. Zero. Zilch.”
Faculty members have also expressed frustration because Fernandez had never made a point to learn what successful programs Leuzinger had in place when he came onboard.
Fernandez declined to speak with Spot.us.
At her new job as principal at Gompers Middle School in Los Angeles, word got back to Miller about how a lack of leadership at Leuzinger was causing two years of hard work to disappear.
“People e-mailed me and told me (progress) was getting fainter and fainter,” Miller said. She declined to comment on why she left the district.
”I don’t think anybody runs my destiny,” Miller said. “I do think that was my exit point. Just like I respect my teachers, I like to be respected. It’s also important to me to work with people express similar values: The core belief that all children can learn and all children have the right to an excellent education.”
That’s what Montes said she hopes will evolve at her alma mater.
"I haven't seen a lot of positive changes,” Montes said. "I hope (her friends who are returning students) tell me something gets better, but I don't expect it.”
Adrian Castro, a recent Lawndale High School graduate, was in the lead on June 16 walking hundreds of Lawndale students across the Lawndale High track to protest a recent round of teacher transfers. The student protest march was civil and orderly.
“This is the one thing for sure: teachers were not a part of this,” said Castro, the former Lawndale ASB president. “This was impromptu. It was a spur-of-the-minute decision. Teachers tried to stop us."
But they couldn't stop the students, who were determined to support their teachers just as their teachers have supported them.
The transfers struck especially hard for Castro, who was a part of the Lawndale Marine Science Academy (MSA). The three leaders of the program – Julie Ichiroku, Tali Sherman, and Kimberly Merritt—were all transferred in June. And for students like Castro -- who will attend Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., on a full Gates Millennium scholarship, it is like losing part of the fabric of their lives.
“They became our family,” said Hazel Claros, a sophomore at UC San Diego who credited Ichiroku with helping her to prepare for college. “They cared.”
But come September, the MSA program will be shadow of its former self at Lawndale, which has the district's highest graduation rate and received the district's first California Distinguished School Award in 2009.
“This program has succeeded in empowering young adults to reach for higher education, proving statistics about our district wrong,” wrote Melissa Bejarano, an MSA graduate and a sophomore at Amherst University, by e-mail. “I can honestly say I saw the growth in my classmates and in myself change drastically as we drew a close to our four years.”
Without these three teachers, those associated with the program speak in bleak terms about the future of the program. Merritt, co-coordinator of the program, said 90 percent of the students are accepted into four-year universities.
On June 16, the MSA program built over six years was inexplicably taken away from Merritt, Sherman, and Ichiroku – who began participating in the program several years later— by a district that has allowed personal retribution against employees to take precedence over the goal of educating students. All three MSA leaders have stated that they were targeted for transfer by the CVUHSD in a retaliatory manner.
An academy that has produced two Gates Millennium Scholars this year was suddenly pulled away from the teachers and students who have invested themselves heavily into the academy. The academy has succeeded in sending students to some of the top East Coast colleges.
“I knew some of these kids three years ago,” Sherman said. “We did not think they would get into college. Now they will go to college. They know after two years of community college they will transfer. It is ingrained in them. They don’t have a choice. Three years ago they did not think like that.”
“I am sad to see the MSA program crumble as a result of district politics,” Ichiroku wrote in an e-mail. “In the end, it's the students who suffer the most. It takes many years for any program to be successful, and I feel MSA had finally gotten to the point where we were taken seriously and respected as an important institution at Lawndale.”
The success of the Marine Science Academy is an example of how teacher buy-in and support can transform the lives of students in urban neighborhood.
Sherman, Ichiroku, Merritt and others associated the program have reservations about what the program will look like in the fall. While the program will exist in name, those closest to the program say it will be a shadow of what it once was. They attribute the academic success of the program to the painstaking attention and tremendous effort put forward by a small group of teachers.
“We couldn’t fathom with all the success we had in the program – and the success we had for the school as a whole – we would be targeted if someone didn’t like us,” said Sherman, a co-coordinator of the MSA program
With the transfers, a tremendous amount of irreplaceable knowledge was lost.
Sherman would check the grades of 125 students once every other week, coordinate the MSA mentor meeting program, and planned 20 field trips over the course of the year as part of the curriculum. Each grade level, from the freshman class to the senior class, would go on four field trips and one overnight trip. Students had to maintain their GPA and participate in the MSA program to go on these trips. The trips also acted as a bonding experience and expanded the imagination of the students, Sherman said.
In their junior year, the MSA students went on an overnight coast trip during spring break to visit colleges from UC Santa Barbara to UC Santa Cruz to expose them to the college world.
For the past six years, Sherman said she has also taken willing students on a one-day field trip of her alma mater, UC Berkeley. A former tour guide at Berkeley back when she was an undergraduate student, the trip was not a part of the MSA calendar; it was a way for Sherman to give back to her alma mater and to inspire her students to excel.
“It was kids who had never been on an airplane,” Sherman said. “It was kids who had never been outside of LA… Some of the kids (would) then look at the college requirements and say, ‘That’s it.’”
It was just a case of teachers going beyond their duties.
Ichiroku walked students through the college application process and scholarship search. Students would turn in a portfolio with copies of their applications, letters of recommendations, scholarships, financial aid information, and college essays. Merritt was in charge of overseeing the web team, promotional events, committees, and recruiting students into the MSA program through fairs and work with local middle schools. She also went out of her way to learn what fields in oceanography were in demand.
In the previous school year, Merritt dedicated 150 unpaid hours toward writing a grant, which was a district order, for the MSA program. At the time of publication, the district has not paid her for this work. District officials have told her it would net $25,000 for MSA. For her time and effort invested last year, that money will now go to a different coordinator.
"It's a double slap to Merritt’s face because she wrote the grant and now she’s not even the director,” Sherman said.
Next year, the district decided arbitrarily that there will be only be one coordinator at MSA, an enormous task teachers said.
In June 2009, Merritt, Sherman and Lawndale associate principal Jennifer Garcia decided to phase the MSA program out – stop recruitment of the freshman class beginning in the fall of 2009 — after a year of seeing components of the program arbitrarily stripped away by district personnel who said the curriculum needed to remove classes in marine biology, oceanography and a marine chemistry class.
After hearing MSA parent loudly complain when Merritt and Sherman published the information in the MSA parent newsletter, Fernandez said he would throw his full support behind the program. Merritt and Sherman backed off their decision to do away with the MSA program. The district offered financial support and laptop computers. At the time, the two coordinators thought their academy was safe from district interference.
The honeymoon was short lived.
Hassles from the district persisted and increased when Merritt and Sherman began to question the district’s decisions to implement more academies across the district.
“There was no organization, no plan – it was like, ‘We are going to have academies.’ It’s not that easy… They had no plan. It just looked like the nightmare we have seen it become,” Merritt said.
The number of academies at the district has gone from three to 10 in two years.
For the rest of the school year, Sherman and Merritt consistently found themselves butting heads with district personnel on a broad range of issues that had never previously been an issue the past five years.
“It was fighting over every little thing,” Sherman said.
Then on June 16 Merritt, Sherman and Ichiroku were transferred to different schools
Neither Sherman, Ichiroku, nor Merritt will be teaching or heading an academy next year. Sherman and Merritt were the only two faculty members to apply to run the MSA academy last year, but both were turned down. They were given interviews for a position at an academy, but neither received a position despite past success.
For the MSA program, the district brought on a faculty member that never applied for the position, Sherman said.
It's the students who will be left to suffer, the coordinators said.
“One of my kids, so cute, said, ‘They can’t take away MSA, Mrs. Sherman, it’s in our heart,’” Sherman said. “I was like, ‘Yeah kid, it’s in our heart. In a way, they can’t take away six years of impact. Unfortunately, there won’t be six more.”
This is Part I of a multi-part series that will be running this week on the Centinela Valley School District.
Graduation was only eight days away for Kenny Hoang when former Lawndale High School Principal Damon Dragos walked into his class during a final exam.
Dragos interrupted the silence of the exam room. Hoang paid little attention to Dragos' entrance until he saw a classmate point at their AP literature teacher, Linda Lai, who just had read a note from Dragos.
“She put a paper over her face and started crying,” said Hoang, headed to the University of California this fall, referring to his teacher. “She is someone who has a lot of composure. You would never expect her to cry.”
She had just gotten the word that other teachers in the four-campus Centinela Valley Union High School District also received this spring: she'd been transferred out of her school. Hearing that their favorite teachers wouldn't be there when classes resume in September set off a spontaneous march that sent hundreds of students out of their classrooms and on to the school track on the west side of campus – the closest they could get to the CVUHSD school district building – to loudly chant in unison against a district administration that has invoked a level of distrust, suspicion and fear among school staff, parents and even students.
"There is an atmosphere of fear in teachers and administrators," said Kimberly Merritt, an English teacher at Lawndale High School who has been transferred to Leuzinger High School. "I feel like I’ve gone from a place where I was proud to work – where I cared what I did – to a place I don’t want to be. The only reason why I am here is because I feel it is important not to abandon our students."
The situation at Centinela Valley, an approximately 7,300-student district nestled near Los Angeles International Airport, has reached a near-breaking point. Teachers and parents talk about a school district that has taken full advantage of the autonomy granted by the state to school districts. And when they talk, there is fear about what will happen to students and their education and teachers and their jobs.
Those affected have decided to speak out against district officials, especially Superintendent Jose A. Fernandez and select school board members who opponents claim are intent on seeking revenge on district personnel who dare to question authority in any situation. They've contacted elected officials, as well as state and Los Angeles County education leaders, in hopes of getting some help, but to no avail.
Criticism comes at Fernandez and a school board majority that has lent a tremendous level of support to him and his administration. Current and former employees of the district said that in the two and a half years Fernandez has served as superintendent, the district has created an environment that has led to an exodus of longtime dedicated and talented personnel, harassed those who would stand up for accountability and educational progress, operated in a manner that has undermined educational progress at Lawndale, Leuzinger and Hawthorne high schools, and has held board meetings in violation of the Brown Act, the state open-meeting law.
“You’re playing these kid games for power,” said Frank Divanagracia, a 13-year employee of Leuzinger before he moved to DaVinci Charter School in the nearby Wiseburn School District last year because of what he called a lack of educational support – and excessive interference from a school board member – at the district level. “They make these power plays, and it’s the students that get hurt in the short-term and long-term.”
The Centinela Valley Union High School District got its start in 1905, first called the Inglewood Union High School District. Through the years, some areas have splintered off, forming their own district. It now houses students at the three traditional high schools, and in Lloyde High School, a continuation school.
Compared to the surrounding more affluent student population in Torrance, the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Redondo Beach, CVUHSD is diverse, with students coming from the more economically challenged Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox areas.
A few years ago, CVUHSD was on the brink of financial collapse. After years of financial instability, the district brought in Fernandez, a former Inglewood city councilman, to help change direction. It worked. While wealthier nearby districts are struggling financially, being forced to lay off teachers and increase class size, CVUHSD enters the new academic year financially healthy.
Fernandez parlayed his temporary role in the district to a higher position, even though he had originally stated he would only stay on in an interim capacity. A call for a nationwide superintendent search – recommended at the time by Los Angeles County Office of Education Superintendent Darline Robles — was never conducted, despite repeated requests made by a minority of board members.
Throughout the course of Fernandez's career as superintendent, board members Gloria Ramos, Sandra Suarez and Rocio Pizano have been integral in his rise to superintendent and continued support of his agenda, those interviewed said.
“We had eliminated his position,” former school board member Frank Talavera said. “He then went away to I don’t know where."
Within weeks of a new group of board members taking office in November 2007, with Talavera and Rudy Salas on the board, Ramos and Suarez joined with Pizano by a 3-2 vote to relieve then-Superintendent Dr. Cheryl White of her duties. This came not long after the previous board had extended White’s contract a year earlier. The decision at that time was supported by the South Bay Union of Teachers Executive Director Sandra Goins and union representative Jack Foreman, a Hawthorne faculty member.
By late January 2008, Fernandez was named interim superintendent. Within a year, he would become the full-time superintendent.
In 2009, Fernandez signed a new contract – signed by all of the board members except Ramos – that extended his term until June 2012. Fernandez salary of $236,000 is as much as superintendents in neighboring districts, those four times as large. Over the course of his three year contract, Fernandez will earn $81,000 in bonus, taking into account a nine percent annual “longevity pay salary adjustment… for his long-term service to the District.”
His contract also stipulates that Fernandez work year be 215 days and that he cannot be terminated unless there are four votes against him, an increase from the three votes that dismissed White.
But the cost of a Fernandez administration is more than money, his critics charge.
In the process of building Centinela Valley back from near fiscal insolvency, Fernandez has gained critics. Faculty members, former district employees and former board members speak in absolute terms: the district will not turn around and achieve academic success under the leadership of Fernandez. All say Fernandez has no academic vision to pull one of the lowest-performing districts in the Los Angeles area from its current standing. Those that have worked with the district said that Fernandez has idly stood by and allowed district employees and school board members to fulfill personal retribution against employees of the district that has undermined educational progress.
Leuzinger High School ranks near the bottom of the schools in the state in the standardized Academic Performance Index (API) test scores, scoring 577 in the latest report available, and the state could take it over. Hawthorne High School isn't far ahead with a 636. The shining gem in the district, award-winning Lawndale, scored 730 ― still far behind some other local high schools. In nearby affluent neighborhoods, students with more resources are performing at an expectedly higher level: El Segundo (861), Palos Verdes Peninsula (885) and the four Torrance district schools (793 to 852). Leuzinger scores are similar to some other Los Angeles County schools, including Gardena (575); Centennial (533), Compton (558) and Dominguez (564), all in the Compton Unified School District; and Morningside (589) in Inglewood.
All of this has come under the cloud cover of operating in a district with a disproportionate minority population with a college graduation rate that is below that of the state average. Given the high minority population, poor academic history, and high number of low income parents with children who do not use English as their first language, the board and district personnel have been able to work in near anonymity.
For two years, former board members Rudy Salas and Frank Talavera said they listened to Fernandez talk about nothing outside the budget, even as Leuzinger and Hawthorne ranked in the bottom 20 percent of high schools.
Salas said even when results of state-mandated STAR Testing and CAHSEE exams were released, the board would not hear anything on the matter.
“The conversation about student achievement was non-existent,” Salas said.
For the prior two years, Salas and Talavera worked under former superintendent White, a 10-year Centinela Valley employee before becoming superintendent in 2004.
White has been described as a micro-manager who always had an open door for employees, students, and parents. She also brought the district near financial collapse because she failed to have someone look over the finances at the department, former board members said.
“I wasn’t satisfied with the progress, but we were starting to see programs,” Salas said. “Programs were starting to go into the implementation phase.”
Talavera and Salas, both voted out of office in November 2009, said that after Fernandez came on board, the two were almost immediately sidelined from the discussion. Discussions during board meetings invariably turned toward money.
“It was frustrating," Salas said. “It has to be about academics. The budget is there to support the academic plan. If you don’t have an academic plan – all you are doing is looking at numbers—then you lose sight of what you are doing for business.”
Talavera said that the budget dominated discussion, even as he asked for information about educational plans being implemented or on specific issues such as how administrators were working to quell a truancy problem.
“I didn’t see anything,” Talavera said. “They did not even bring a plan to show they were dealing with the truancy issue. They said they were, but whenever we asked for data, we never got anything. “
Fernandez, current school board members Ramos and Suarez, and other district administrators all have declined requests for interviews.
Of all the issues facing CVUHSD today, the most talked about undoubtedly deals with teacher transfers.
Entering the 2010-11 school year, it is expected that 50 teachers -- or 16 percent of the district's teaching staff -- will be involuntarily transferred, according to the Daily Breeze, which reported that Centinela officials say their decision is aimed at improving student achievement.
Faculty and those associated with Centinela over the last two years question the district’s motives with these transfers.
Department chairs, union leaders, and those in leadership positions who work directly with the district, say they are especially susceptible for transfer, demotions or release if they speak out. Faculty members say that the mere presence at a board meeting can turn people into targets for retribution. Employees who speak out against the district, even if it in the best interest of the students, are put out of the running for a job promotion, or worse, they said.
Moves made by the district over the years have made for a poor teaching environment.
“I don’t think there is an incentive to keep anybody there, no matter how good they are, no matter how outstanding their reputation,” said Goins, the South Bay Union of Teachers director. “It doesn’t matter. They don’t care. They are not trying to retain anyone. “
Teachers' union leaders said the transfers violate their contract and decisions coming from the district have created a gulf of distrust between two groups that should be working as partners.
Erik Carlstone, a Leuzinger English teacher and the former president of the Centinela Valley Secondary Teachers Association, said trust and a lack of experience from senior personnel at the district level are two sources of concern that need to be addressed.
“Whether it’s laying off teachers when you have a 10 percent reserve (in May 2009), whether it’s contesting the outcomes of collective bargaining or refusing to bargain, whether it’s saying the transfers were a mandate from the county when it is plainly not, all of these are examples how (Fernandez) has destroyed trust between faculty and the district,” Carlstone said.
By many accounts, most of these personnel transfers and demotions have been instituted without any word of explanation to the employees.
“Here are people who stood up, who spoke out, who even raised their hand in board meetings – or were involved in board meetings or attended a protest – and they’re transferred, their programs are cut, their positions are no longer available,” said a Leuzinger faculty member who requested anonymity.
Divinagracia said he saw firsthand how quickly teachers could become targets for seemingly insignificant reasons as a faculty liaison at Leuzinger administrative meetings. Despite a strong relationship with Suarez prior to her becoming a board member, he was quickly sidelined after a meeting attended by Fernandez. He said he asked no questions at this meeting, but was still falsely targeted by Suarez.
Divinagracia said Suarez became “standoff-ish” with teachers who started to question Fernandez, even if it was done in a casual way.
“This has become their MO, where if you did something, said something or you were even perceived as doing something against their actions, then you were blacklisted," Divinagracia said.
Vincent Bravo, who spent three years as principal of Lawndale High School, was demoted to teach an E2020 class, a transfer credit course, at Leuzinger High School next year, after a year at the district office. It is widely believed that he was moved from the high school level to the district office to keep him out of the public’s eye for a year before the district extracted retaliation against him.
Former Lawndale associate principal Jennifer Garcia, who has been praised and credited with bringing the California Distinguished School Award to Lawndale High School, was demoted to a faculty position at Leuzinger this previous school year after more than a half dozen years as an associate principal.
Debbie Johnson, now a principal in another district, was supposed to be demoted to a PE teacher last fall after serving as director of instruction and curriculum for a number of years in the district office. She left the district instead.
Three teachers who have played a pivotal role in the highly successful Lawndale High School Marine and Science Academy – Merritt, Julie Ichiroku, and Tali Sherman— all were part of a recent round of transfers. Sherman and Merritt had worked together to oversee the program.
With Sherman and Merritt being transferred to different schools next year, the fate of a program that has sent students off to some of the top East Coast schools — like Williams College, Amherst and MIT — is now in jeopardy.
In the fall, Ichiroku will be teaching at Leuzinger. The program she helped grow for the last several years was pulled out from beneath her supervision when Dragos informed her with her class watching that she would be transferred.
Sherman, Merritt, and Ichiroku were not offered a position with an academy, despite their previous success.
In 2008, Centinela Valley had five national board-certified teachers. Of those five, only one of them still teaches in the district, according to sources.
“We look at those who we respected, and who we feel we have worked well with that are making progress for the school and they are not in the district anymore,” said the same Leuzinger faculty member who requested anonymity.
Last June, several teachers, such as Lai, were notified about transfers during class hours in front of their students. Others were summoned to the administrative office via the in-class telephone to get the news; officials sent security to oversee classrooms while the teachers were away.
This September, Lawndale will have had three principals -- four if you count interim principal Kelly Santos, an assistant principal who is filing that capacity while a search is going on, since 2008. Lawndale will have had seven associate principals (two of them because one assistant principal was on maternity leave) since 2008. Since 2008, Leuzinger High School has had five principals and nine associate principals walk through the school. This fall, Leuzinger will have three new associate principals to bring that total to 12 since 2008.
“Since there is no consistency, there are no set policies or procedures in place, and every year something changes,” said another Leuzinger faculty member. “It makes it impossible to know what is going on.”
Centinela Valley Union High School District has never publicly explained the procedure behind the hiring and demoting of staff.
A lack of an explanation isn't a surprise. This, after all, is a school district that critics contended doesn't always live up to the requirements of the Brown Act, California's open-meeting law.
Former board members Salas and Talavera spoke about how the board routinely broke Brown Act violations.
Notice of regularly scheduled board meetings must be posted at least 72 hours in advance; special meetings must be called no more than 24 hours in advance, and news of the meeting must be disseminated to local media.
Salas said meeting requirements would be routinely broken to avoid public scrutiny. At the average board meeting, Salas said only two people would regularly attend.
“When the students and community members started attending community meetings and vocalizing their disagreements with Fernandez and the board, we changed the meeting dates, meeting hours, and changed the frequency we met,” Salas said.
Faculty members have also said the current board will extend “closed session” for hours to keep interested participants waiting.
A former assistant superintendent who requested anonymity echoed the sentiments.
Fernandez "would tell me, ‘No, no, no. Trust me, trust me. I was in Inglewood a long time. Trust me on this stuff.”
Fernandez also rarely asked for feedback on the agenda from board members. Board members would not be notified until the day of the board meeting what was put on the agenda. The former assistant superintendent said she would not review the agenda until the night before the board meeting. Even when she suggested items be put on the agenda, there were times she said Fernandez would leave the information off.
“Jose never shared the agenda with us,” she said. “He would ask our input, but we never got a chance to review it until the night before the board meeting.”
Lack of input in decisions has proved a trademark of CVUHSD.
Instead, decisions are now handed from the district level down to the schools with little discussion. Programs that have been built up over many years are being pushed aside, even with a track record of proven success. Faculty members also said that the policy coming from the district aims to bolster graduation numbers, even if this is to the detriment of preparing college-ready students.
A summer reading program at Lawndale High School, which had been built up over six years, was disbanded this summer by Laurel Fretz, director of curriculum and instruction at CVUHSD. A Peer College Counseling program, designed to have upper-level high school students share advice with other students on how to get into college, implemented by former Leuzinger principal Sonia Miller was also put to an unexpected end last year.
Employees at Lawndale and Leuzinger both said they have been instructed to advance students to the next level in various subjects even if a student hasn't mastered their class, all in the name of moving students along to graduation.
“I think they know they need to show progress,” said Sherman, the former coordinator of the Marine Science Academy at Lawndale. “The easiest way is an increase in graduation rate. They are not concerned about improving the quality of education or graduate we produce.”
This summer, teachers have been asked to read a book called, “The Homework Myth: Why our kids get too much of a Bad Thing,” by Claudia Wallis. The book was assigned to teachers by Benjamin Wolf, assistant superintendent of educational services. While Sherman acknowledged that there are studies that say homework is a reason why students fail high school, she also said that there are other studies out there that show that homework is beneficial.
Goins, the director of SBUT, said she has approached district personnel several times to explain that teachers should be included in the conversation on changes instituted on education policy.
“I tried several times to talk to Benjamin Wolf, and I might as well have stood and banged my head against the wall,” Goins said. “I talked to him several times about including teachers in the changes he wants made.”
Critics also look at instituting an online credit recovery program, or E2020 course, as further evidence that the district is looking to promote graduation over a college-ready student.
The E2020 course will allow students to make up credits to achieve graduation in a lab setting while monitored by certificated employee. The class is not transferable to a California State University or University of California campus.
In January 2009, a needs assessment was conducted by the LACOE District Assistance and Intervention Team. In the report, recommendations were made in the area of fiscal accountability, curriculum, instruction and assessment to state standards and leadership.
Eighteen months later, faculty members said that the problems continue to persist, even though in April 29, 2010, the DAIT Lead, Dr. Yvonne Contreras, said that the district “has made major progress toward implementing the DAIT recommendations,” according to the letter.
According to many accounts, there was varying degrees of optimism when the county sent the District Assistance Intervention Team to CVUHSD to re-focus the district on education last year
“My immediate reaction was, ‘Thank god,’” said Carlstone, the former teachers' association president. “My immediate reaction was, ‘Great! Maybe somebody will provide academic focus because it had been severely lacking.”
“I was thrilled to have them come in,” said a former assistant superintendent. “I had felt the cavalry had arrived. We knew what we were doing. We knew we were on the right track. We thought here they were coming, they’re going to back us up and we won’t have to argue anymore (with Fernandez). We would get extra money to do these things.”
After several months of interviews with principals, key district staff, teachers, students, and teacher representatives, the needs assessment released by LACOE DAIT noted several statements: that resource allocation by the district was not aligned to measurable student achievement and instruction goals; the district does not work in a transparent fashion where accountability is held; the district is not aligned in the “establishment of instructional priorities” from the district level to the school level; and the district lacks an organizational structure that supports improvement from year to year.
Faculty members have expressed frustration and suspicion with Contreras' inability to reign in Fernandez from committing actions that could be destructive to school climate, resulting in short- and long-term lower academic performance. In recent months, parents and faculty said Contreras has stopped responding to e-mails sent to her.
“I just didn’t believe that she was strong enough to stand up to Jose,” said the ex-assistant superintendent.
Last year when a half dozen faculty members asked the two DAIT leaders, which included Contreras, for a private session at a Manhattan Beach restaurant to discuss concerns over stalled DAIT plan implementation, no more than several minutes after the entire group arrived at the restaurant did they see Fernandez walk inside and take a seat at a booth.
When members expressed shock and consternation about Fernandez's unexpected arrival to this impromptu meeting, Contreras brushed off concern.
Contreras refused to comment outside of a prepared statement.
“The state laws that have created and articulated DAITs give them no direct governance or administrative powers. Although the law states that districts are required to implement DAIT recommendations, the DAITs themselves cannot rescind or overrule a district’s executive actions and decisions… The approach that I have taken with this DAIT is to uphold its integrity at all times, to be direct and fair in doing its work, and to be transparent in its interactions among all the involved district parties.”
During this period, the district also updated the schoolwide Local Educational Agency Plan, to keep the state-mandated document in compliance with the findings of the DAIT assessment and state and federal mandates. The District Site Leadership Team, a team of nine individuals, met over a period of several months to brainstorm what would be included and what was already in place.
Of the LEA authors from a year ago, three have been supposedly targeted by the district. One of the district's top administrators was publicly fired during a board meeting in July 2009. Johnson, the former director of instruction and curriculum, left rather than be demoted to PE teacher. Jennifer Garcia, the former associate principal at Lawndale High School, will be a history teacher come fall.
The only one of the four LEA leads who remains with the district is Hatha Parrish, who is director of federal and state programs.
Discontent and exasperation with the district has grown as teachers say the district has become more aggressive in retaliation against teachers.
Merritt, the former co-coordinator of the successful Lawndale MSA program, said she was suspended in June with no thorough investigation for events related to the student protest in June. She has denied the charge that she had anything to do with the protest. A student leading the protest also said she had nothing to do with it.
Still, Merritt said she was prevented from attending graduation or setting foot on Lawndale on a flimsy case. She said a review of video tapes would also clearly show that she was not involved with inciting the student protest. She said the decision from the district was made without looking at evidence that would have instantly acquitted her.
"There is a culture of fear on the campuses after what the district has done. The culture is where administrators are afraid to say anything; where teachers are afraid to talk," she said. "Unfortunately, that is what has built Lawndale to where it is now. Teachers talked. They were not afraid to say when something was not working, so they could come up with a solution that does work."
Even students feel the frustration.
"It's not the parents, not kids, not the teachers," said Pablo Plata, a June graduate of Leuzinger, recounting how two of his most respected school mentors were transferred. "It's the district. It's them making moves, whatever they want. I want to have some hope that this is not true. I think there has to be some kind of change at the school. Either teachers have to do it, students, or parents have to stand up to the district."
More than two months ago, I started to report on the high number of suspensions and low academic performance of Leuzinger High School in the Centinela Valley Union High School District, a small high school district located near LAX.
In the course of my reporting, I learned that there were far more serious issues going on at Centinela Valley Union. After interviews with close to three dozen individuals associated with Centinela Valley Union, I feel I have identified serious, irreconcilable issues that prevent Centinela Valley Union from providing academic success for its students. These stated issues affect the quality of education provided by all three comprehensive high schools in the district.
I have reached out to those criticized for comment, but they have all refused.
The campaign against involuntary teacher transfers at Centinela Valley is using Facebook to spread their word against the district. They have 88 members at the moment. This ties into Leuzinger because it points to the direction where school climate is at the district. On such a major issue, you'd expect more communication between the district, board and its partners.
As I posted earlier, Schindler said there is a direct relationship between academic progress and school climate. In other words, you're not going to turn around a school if the school climate is toxic.
Posted by John Sakata on 06/21/10There is something missing from this article in the Daily Breeze (June 16), concerning a protest that included several hundred teachers and students at Lawndale High School to protest the district’s decision to involuntarily transfer 40 teachers throughout the district, some to Leuzinger.
The involuntary transfers "are based on county recommendations and coincide with reform guidelines laid out in President Barack Obama's Race to the Top program," the Daily Breeze reports.
The situation that unfolded that day included some serious incidents of mismanagement by district employees. All of this relevant information was not included in the article. You’ll want to read this post all the way through. Superintendent Jose Fernandez did not respond to my requests for comments after a special meeting on the involuntary transfers Friday. He recommended I contact Bob Cox, assistant superintendent, human resources for a formal interview.
Wednesday's protest came a day after parents, students and teachers packed a district school board meeting to speak out - adamantly, at times - against the district's decision to involuntarily transfer some of Lawndale's teaching staff to Leuzinger, one of the lowest performing high schools in the state.
The article seems to imply that the entire student body knew of the pending absense of faculty and reacted afterward. There was a remarkably different picture painted at a special school board meeting held by the district Friday afternoon.
I spoke to Kenny Hoang, a senior at Lawndale High, who was at the meeting and will be attending Berkeley next year. He was one of the top 10 in his class. This is how Hoang described the events unfold the morning of the student protest.
“Last Tuesday our principal came in and handed (his teacher Linda Lai) the (involuntary transfer) slip in AP Literature while we were taking the test. She is someone who has a lot of composure. She put a paper over her face and started crying. She is someone with a lot of composure. You would never expect her to cry.”
Apparently, not all of the teachers had been in attendance at the time of the meeting. These teachers learned they would be involuntarily transferred during school hours… several in front of their pupils, students they had known at the freshman level in some cases…
“After the incident, nobody in the class could concentrate,” Hoang said. “We couldn’t do our test. We were writing an essay for our test and we could not focus. She was crying.”
Here’s how Tuyen Le, another Lawndale senior, describe the events that took place. She spoke passionately (and very, very loudly) at the board meeting in defense of her teachers.
“When Principal Dragos walked in – he was walking slowly in front of the students—while they were taking a test. He talked to Mrs. Lai… She was holding the paper, trying to cover her crying. We could not focus on anything. I could not think of anything at that time. We got students together, and we went around and protested.”
And here’s how Charles Navarro, a Lawndale senior, who will be transferring to UC Santa Cruz, reacted after he saw one of his former teachers crying in the hallway.
“I got really close to that teachers,” Navarro said. “I myself started tearing up a bit. I gave her a hug. It got to me emotionally… A lot of students were crying. To know that one of the best teachers, one of their favorite teachers at Lawndale High School, one of the teachers that had always been there to support us, was going to be transferred to another school…”
The student body and faculty schoolwide had heard rumors about a pending teacher transfer, but there was no formal discussion outside of those rumors.
“The superintendent at the board meeting (the day before) said administrators were to immediately call up their teachers and tell them privately,” said Julie Ichiroku, chair of the Social Sciences department. “Instead I was giving a final to my seniors; someone walked in, handed me a letter and told me it had arrived an hour ago and then left.”
One of the questions I asked Hoang was if the student protest was orchestrated by teachers.
Hoang said no. He describes how one kid stood up and began pacing and cursing in class after witnessing this. At that point, a student in Lai's class stood up and encouraged others to follow him outside and participate in a protest walk.
“‘If you want to support me, let’s go outside and protest,’” Hoang recalls.
The student protest developed quickly at that point: "We started with one classroom and then it spread like a wildfire. Those students, they felt so moved that they went to other classrooms (to get more students)..." Hoang said.
This is a different story than the Daily Breeze recites.
All the students had many touching things to say about their teacher at the meeting. I pulled my tape recorder out to interview some students and before I knew it I was surrounded by 10 students, each with a story to tell about their favorite teacher. These students waited patiently -- some as long as 20 minutes -- to tell a story about their favorite teacher being transferred.
Hoang prepared a speech for his favorite teacher, Mrs. Lai, that he was unable to say before the board. I asked him to e-mail the speech to me.
There's a lot more to this post, but I'll save it for Monday.
Here’s what Hoang sent to me (unedited):
Hello fellow board members, parents, teachers, staff and audience. My name is Kenny Hoang. I am a student at Lawdale High School. Ranked three as a graduating senior this year, I am involved in a variety of extracurricular activities, programs and clubs. I will be attending the University of California Berkeley but before I go off, I still want to say: Lawndale will always be my home. My support will always be there.
I would like to talk about one of our many teachers being transferred. For the sake of discussion, I will talk about one teacher. Her name is Linda Lai. She is someone I full heartedly look up to and have grown to love in my past four years at Lawndale High School. Ms Lai is involved in as many programs and activities as time grants her. She is the AVID(Advancement Via Individual Determination) Club Advisor, the SRLA(Students Run Los Angeles) Advisor, AVID Coordinator, AP English Literature Teacher(along with other English classes) and my favorite, the club I serve as president in this year: Asian Club.
She has side by side ran with us in the Los Angeles Marathon. She has taught us about Korean BBQ. She has talk us the method of "falling leaf" when snowboarding. She has dedicated a countless amount of time, effort, sweat and blood for her students. No matter what family it is--I'll repeat that once more: FAMILY---AVID, Asian Club, SRLA, whatever it is, she'll be there.
This recent Tuesday, June 15, 2010 our Principal came in my AP English Literature classroom and came in and handed a slip to Ms. Lai. Our class was testing by finising up a timed writing on books we recently have read. Looking over I saw her face was unusual from the normal Ms. Lai. Now...Ms. Lai is someone who has very strong composure, perhaps the strongest you will ever see. When she recieved the slip, I saw her covering her face. She was crying. This teacher I have been for four years with is the last person I would have ever expected to cry. This leads into the topic of communication. So now why am I telling you this?
[Questions to the board]
Hugo M. Roja, of the board, today proposed that we make communication between the students, teachers, parents, staff and administration. This is how I want to approach this. Talk to me and let us have a conversation. I'll start by asking: I really would like to know why these teachers. Why Ms. Lai?
To President Gloria Ramos of the board: I can quote that she wants "Clear concise message" So as our signs and buttons say: "Save Our Teachers" and "Stop The Transfers" I really would like to know why these teachers?
You had annouced that you "felt sorry for us" because we were protesting. Please look away from the small minority of people who cause problems. They do not represent the majority. Even now, look at this great group of people who are right here. Feel proud of us and don't focus on the others all the time.
To Jose Fernandez, I am sorry that I will have to go home early today because I will have another responsibility to attend to. I will try to be "objective."
In response to what is happening in this situation, I advocate and propose the following idea my friend and I came up with who was too shy to speak yet he shared his voice and opinion to the board. Because you take great teachers from Lawndale to Leuzinger, does not ensure that you will have success at Leuzinger. I believe reforming the educational system at Leuzinger High School would push toward a goal. The transferring of teachers appears to be seemingly predicted to be inefficient. It seems unsafe and hurts not only our school's bond, connections and foundation but also hurts the foundation that has been built up by Leuzinger and Hawthorne as well.
To reform, teaching methods and motivating teachers to take the extra mile as our teachers have done should be encouraged. I believe teaching the methods of our school and sharing it with our neighboring sister schools will work its way up to a potential of success.
I will vote one of these days. Now show me what you can do. Communicate back with me and then we'll see what happens from there.
P.S. On a tangent: The president Gloria Ramos talked about how the meeting was a "business" Hypocritical, she came in 20 minutes late AND did not let all of us students, teachers, parents, nor even administration talk.
I have spoken to and heard from several of the district's partners. There appears to be a real communication problem between the district and the district's partners.
This article from the Daily Breeze, the primary news source in the region, adds further evidence in that direction. It shows some on faculty concern over big changes set to take place at Centinela Valley.
The district plans on transferring many faculty members next year from Lawndale to Leuzinger. Will taking faculty from Lawndale High, the district's gem, and re-locating them to struggling Leuzinger improve school performance, or bring academic performance across the district down (because you have a bunch of teachers in unfamiliar surroundings)? Also important, how much communication took place between district employees and district administrators about this move beyond the district's initial inquiry?
Studies show (fourth subject down) a quality teacher is one of the most effective and influential means in bringing about positive change in student academic performance. So, will this be a positive move, providing Leuzinger students with a more "effective" teacher into the classroom ? Or will you have disgruntled faculty members teaching in the classroom?
It's also worth noting Schindler's study at this time. Schindler, co-director for the Alliance for the Study of School Climate, said climate and achievement are so closely related that his team is now able to plot one if they have the other. Here are three of the eight variables he attributed to climate: faculty relations; attitude and culture; leadership and decision-making. Each of these variables are now put to question after this decision..
It's important to mention that Schindler said school climate might be just as important, if not more important, as educational cirriculum, achievement goals, and pedagogical studies in determining the success of a school.
I think that this article spells out nicely -- even though it fails to elaborate -- many of the big ongoing issues at Centinela Valley: struggles at Leuzinger; a communication problem between the district and its employees; and trust issues between district employees and the district.
I think this quote from the article needs to be elaborated on:
"It's a morale killer. Everybody is feeling undervalued," said Betty Setterlund, president of the Centinela Valley Teachers Association. "All we know are rumors."
Posted by John Sakata on 06/14/10
A few weeks ago, I heard from Dan Sackheim, an educational program consultant from the California Department of Education. Sackheim has assembled a large body of work over the years on suspensions. He also does a lot of work with special placement schools.
Here is the line on suspensions at Leuzinger High School and Centinela.
Keep in mind the high school has an API of 1. The lower the API, the more likely you are going to have a higher number of suspensions.
| | 06-07 | 07-08 | 08-09 |
| Leuzinger | 815 | 1273 | 508 |
| Centinela | 1486 | 2106 | 932 |
Here is some additional detail (violence-drug related) on suspensions recorded at Leuzinger. These numbers should also be looked at in context of the school's API.
Sackheim had two central points:
· Suspensions are often a byproduct of a communication problem
· Suspensions should be withheld as a tool of last resort
Sackheim talks with with the voice of Mr. Rogers. He studies and works out in the field with troubled students on a regular basis, and he has a lot of empathy and compassion for these students. Sackheim is against the use of suspensions as a means to punish students; he believes suspensions should be used as a tool only if there are no other options.
“Once they survive the suspension, some of these kids will be telling themselves they can survive this again,” Sackheim said. “They might be more willing to take on a suspension. At the same time, we are not addressing the anger management issues.”
He believes that the punishment should be specially tailored to the punishable action.
Generally speaking, Sackheim said all-too-often administrators hand out suspensions because it makes life easier for them, not necessarily because it benefits the student.
“The kid should be in school learning, Sackheim said”
Sackheim said administrators hand out suspensions because students ‘ did something I do not like, so now I want you out of my face.’
“I knew a kid who once said under her breathe that the teacher was an…. “ Sackheim said. “She told me she had been doing very poor academically. She then did fairly well on an assignment. His comment to her was “Oh, look what happened. Was this an accident?” She was proud of herself. She tried to say this (cuss word) under her breathe, with the hope nobody would hear her. She didn’t handle this the right way, but she should not have been suspended because of this.”
If there are a high number of suspensions at a school, it could mean the faculty are doing a poor job of engaging students, he said.
“If the children are really frustrated, and not learning, they are going to act out more,” Sackheim said.
For those schools with a high number of suspensions, Sackheim recommends the principal start with reforming a handful of classrooms at a time. He also said the faculty needs to do a better job of selling education, and teaching academic content in multiple ways.
“Where you are not reading off the page, but students see connections to their own world,” Sackheim said. “You need to sometime ask the kids how they would answer a question because they have a lot of wisdom and they might tell you.”
Sackheim also said that administrators need to understand cultural differences. He said some cultures are more expressive than others, which might lead to problems – and ultimately a suspension – for these students.
“The kid is saying this is who I am,” Sackheim said.
In the Native American culture, Sackheim said some children are taught not to make eye contact or speak. This kind of conduct might also lead to a suspension if an administrator has a short leash on acceptable behavior.
“They have a different style they have,” Sackheim said. “They developed a form of communication that is not appropriate, but you still need to listen to the message to and teach them an actual lesson of presenting and where it will get you.”
Sackheim said he goes out of his way to explain what he sees wrong in the student’s behavior. He also offers examples the children understand. Far too often, Sackheim said administrators assume these children “get it.”
Many of these children need to have this explained.
“If you ever cussed at your boss, do you think you would still have a job?” Sackheim said.
He said a level of patience and tolerance need to be applied for these students because these students only have one chance at an education.
“You need good professional development,” he said. “You need leadership. You need to remember we are not a processing plant – some kids make it and some kids get discarded. Professional development is one shot for educators, a continuing process.”
What are you thoughts?
Posted by John Sakata on 06/12/10I went in search of some additional information on under-performing schools, and I stumbled on John Schindler’s excellent paper on the importance and need to focus on “school climate” in turning around a school.
Schindler is co-director for the Alliance for the Study of School Climate at Cal State University, Los Angeles. He is also the author of the book, “Transformative Classroom Management” and an associate faculty member at CSULA.
In this study, Schindler has developed a series of questions that can accurately gauge school success.
“Climate and achievement are so closely correlated that we can now plot one if we have the other,” Schindler said.
What’s even more fascinating is that if you take any one of these variables that Schindler and his partners have identified, Schindler said you can fairly accurately identify the range where the other seven might be.
In other words, you can’t fix one of these variables without fixing the other; each of these factors are inter-connected.
Here is the recipe for a functioning school:
· Appearance and physical plant
· Faculty relations
· Student interactions
· Leadership/ decision-making
· Discipline environment
· Learning environment
· Attitude and culture
· School-community relations
This paper puts “school climate” on the same level of importance as pedagogical practices, achievement goals, curriculum, and teacher development in evaluating a school, a radical approach from “traditional” thinking.
“We manufacture the climate by the choices we make,” Schindler said. “Climate is not something that just walks in.”
This paper relates to Leuzinger because it shows that school decision-making is as important as the neighborhood where these children come from. Strong leadership at the school and district levels can overcome the socio-economic and ethnic barriers that might come from working in a low-income community like Hawthorne.
“What most people assume is that the socio-economic effect is 95 percent of the equation,” Schindler said. “What this data says is that it is more like 50 percent of the equation.”
Schindler encourages teachers to work with students, to challenge their creativity, to avoid the use of public punishment or penalties, and to promote self-esteem so these students trust themselves enough to take risks in life.
Too often though, underperforming schools “accept that kids are going to be behave poorly. They accept that these kids are not worth your trust. They accepts kids are not motivated. They get in that mind-set.”
At these schools, “if you look at the instructional practices, what you’ll see is a lot of these schools rely a lot on direct instruction, lecture, worksheets, and tests. You are going to see a lot of these teachers talking and directing over the course of the class. If you do that, nothing is going to change.”
We talked on a broard range of subjects, including the traps that large (3,000+) under-performing schools often fall into.
“I think the No. 1 challenge for changing large schools is that the teachers might be resistant to change,” Schindler said. “I think that a structure that does not have room for collaboration is a problem. You get a large school and there is a confusion of responsibility, a diffusion of decision-making. If you also don’t have enough leadership and instruction leaders this will also keep a school from making a change.”
If you could sit down with Centinela Superintendent Jose Fernandez, what would you ask him?
Posted by John Sakata on 06/12/10Here is some very interesting information from Dr. Tom Johnstone, Wiseburn School District’s highly passionate, energetic superintendent.
Johnstone and other Wiseburn community members are involved in a contentious argument with Centinela(translation: lawyers) to stop the flow of Wiseburn district students from attending Centinela. Johnstone is tired of the district’s enigmatic behavior (the district rarely puts out information explaining decisions) and low performance numbers.
The Wiseburn School District wants to open up its own high school.
If Wiseburn is successful in separating from Centinela , it would continue a “charter movement” in the area.
In 2000, the Lennox School District in collaboration with Loyola Marymount University and Green Dot worked together to open Amino Leadership High School, chartered by the Lennox School District. Lawndale School District followed suit with the Environmental Charter High School in 2001. Lennox added a second charter high school, Lennox Math, Science and Technology Academy in 2003. Hawthorne School District also added a charter that year to its district, Hawthorne Math and Science Academy in 2003. Wiseburn followed suit with the Da Vinci Charter Schools in 2009.
According to Johnstone, Centinela has been ineffective since the 1980s.
Here are some numbers Wiseburn officials provided:
2009 API SCORES FOR CENTINELA VALLEY AND CENTINELA’S FOUR FEEDER DISTRICTS
| | 2004 | Above CVUHSD | 2009 | Above CVUHSD |
| Centinela Valley | 554 | | 626 | +72 |
| Hawthorne School District | 670 | +116 | 765 | +139 |
| Lawndale School District | 674 | +120 | 763 | +137 |
| Lennox School District | 615 | +61 | 739 | +113 |
| Wiseburn School District | 779 | +225 | 828 | +202 |
It’s worth mentioning that Centinela has the tall responsibility of blending students from four school districts. Also, Leuzinger and Hawthorne high school both boast a student population of 3,000 students each. Those are two large high schools.
I would like to offer more information in defense of Centinela’s academic numbers, but I’ve been restricted in my access to district employees.
Here’s another graph courtesy of Dr. Johnstone. I’ll have some excerpts from a interview I had with him posted sometime soon.
FIVE LOWEST PERFORMING SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN LOS ANGELES
| 2004 | API | 2009 | |
| Centinela | 554 | Centinela | 626 |
| Compton Unified | 571 | Compton Unified | 643 |
| El Monte Union HSD | 593 | Lynwood Unified | 675 |
| Lynwood Unified | 600 | Gorman School District | 679 |
| Montebello Unified | 610 | El Monte Union HSD | 683 |
These numbers will grab a person's attention. I pulled these from the California Department of Education website a few weeks ago. Mind you, numbers don’t tell the entire story. That said, when the truancy rate is 90 percent at a school that says a lot.
My feelings are mixed on these numbers… the number of truancy has come down substantially over the last year (give the district credit), but I find it preposterous that conditions were allowed to get so bad. Also give a good, long, hard look at the number of suspension drug or violence related.
Quite a few of these students are getting suspended for reasons beyond casual delinquency.
| Year | Enrollment | Truancy | Truancy rate | Violence/ Drug-related suspensions | Total # of suspensions |
| 08-09 | 2943 | 1850 | 62.8% | 315 | 508 |
| 07-08 | 3091 | 2554 | 82.6 | 422 | 1273 |
| 06-07 | 3077 | 2624 | 85.28 | 459 | 815 |
| 05-06 | 3384 | 3004 | 88.77 | 419 | 625 |
| 04-05 | 3278 | 2961 | 90.33 | 494 | 934 |
My media access to district employees has been limited by Centinela Valley Union up to this point, supposedly because of end-of-the-year activities (testing, graduation planning, and the like). In the meantime, I’ve spent my time talking to partners of the District.
I’ll probably post my interview with one of the state department’s suspension experts over the weekend.
Posted by John Sakata on 06/10/10I had a conversation with David Kopperund, educational programs consultant for the California Department of Education. The information school districts have to report to the state on school suspensions is minimal, he said. The Uniform Management of Information and Reporting System, a part of No Child Left Behind, only asks for a small amount of information (all of this information unaudited).
Here’s what has been reported by Centinela:
· The truancy rate for the district was 51.26 percent last year. This is a big improvement over the 71.19 percent of students who reported truant in 07-08. A truancy is defined as missing more than 30 unexcused minutes three times in a school year.
· There were 49 drug-or-violence related expulsions last year.
· There were 1,002 cases of suspension in 2008-09, and 595 of those suspensions were either drug-or-violence related. The number of drug-or-violence related suspensions has come down from the previous year, 860.
There was another question I had for Kopperund: Do schools receive Average Daily Attendance money if students are suspended and away from school. His answer: No.
So, keeping these students in class is vital for Centinela to receive money. This is why in-school suspension programs are often encouraged by the state department. In-school suspension programs allow students to learn and still get disciplined in a classroom on campus. Also, more importantly, the districts continue to earn money.
Next week I’ll be talking to a lot of community leaders.
Posted by John Sakata on 06/01/10The latest Academic Performance Index numbers, using results from the spring 2009 Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) and the 2009 California High School Exit Exam, were released last week. The results were courteously sent to me by Bob Cox, assistant superintendent, human resources for Centinela Valley.
The index assigns a score for each campus ranging from a low of 200 to a high of 1,000, with 800 the ultimate goal.
Here are the results for Hawthorne and Leuzinger High School. It's deserves a mention that Lawndale High School is also under the jurisdiction of Centinela Valley, and annually posts higher results, but that high school is outside of my reporting.
Leuzinger: 577
The numbers fall in range with where the schools were last year. The results should also be kept in perspective of how California’s economy has impacted K-12 public education. Also, any plan for school reform takes time to implement. Mr. Cox also pointed out that the numbers Leuzinger and Hawthorne posted are similar to other schools in the area that carry similar socio-economic and demographic numbers.
Still, I know there is a story here because adding understanding to all these cases of suspensions (and what kind of an effect it has had on the other students at Leuzinger and Hawthorne HS) would also add some valuable context to academic performance and academic progress at these high schools. The number of cases of suspension might not be abnormal when compared to other schools, but it is a local issue because these are children in the community.
I spoke with Mr. Cox on the cases of suspension this week. I’ve been told that there are legal hurdles to recovering documents pertaining to suspensions and specifics on individual cases. I’ll be working with the Education Writer’s Association to find my way around the legal obstacles.
Posted by John Sakata on 05/20/10
