In Support of LAUSD Teachers: The Strike Begins

The rain is pouring in Los Angeles, but that's not dampening spirits on the picket line as teachers and supporters fight to improve the quality of education being offered by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Maria took these shots this morning outside the Blogger Teen's school.

Higher pay, smaller class sizes, more support staff. Our children, and the people tasked with preparing them for the future, deserve it. And as a society, we need to get our priorities in order. 

The fact that we rank so low in education funding is California's shame. Time to do something about it. It's truly unfortunate that we got to this point. In solidarity with LA's teachers.

Should School Really Start in Early August? Some Glendale Parents Say No

The Blogger Kids returned to school on August 10, earlier than just about anyone else in the region. To much relief of Maria... but was it fair to the boys?

Honestly, they didn't protest that much, and we had just about run out of things for them to do this summer, so we saw it as pretty much of a good thing. We did the family trip, they did multiple camps and were starting to get restless.

On the flip side, it seemed like summer had barely scratched the surface, and I had been working most of it, limiting my summer fun with the kids. But given our weather, it's almost always summer in Southern California, so that didn't bother me much either.

It bothered some parents in the Glendale Unified School District, however. According to the Glendale News-Press, they're hoping to push the school start closer to the end of August rather than the beginning:

As Montrose parent Sarah Rush was driving her daughter to Rosemont Middle School on Monday, it was Rush, not her daughter Amanda, who was experiencing a sudden sadness.

The start of the school year on Aug. 10 arrived one week sooner than it did last school year, and Rush felt it had interfered with precious family time with her daughter.

“Summer was over, and it just felt wrong,” Rush said.

Over the past few months, Rush’s daughter attended summer school to refine her math skills, then she spent a week at Camp Fox on Catalina Island.

That left the mother and daughter with only two weeks of summer to spare, Rush said.

Later on Monday, Rush created an online petition dubbed “Save our GUSD Summers.”

I find it interesting that it was the parent, not the kid, driving this! Here's what the petition says:

Please sign the SAVE OUR GUSD SUMMERS petition to have our schools' starting date be extended to much later in August (and as close to Labor Day as possible) for 2016 and subsequent years. This would not affect the mandatory 180 days of instructional teaching. We have only so many years to build summer family memories with our children. By losing a month of the summer vacation, the lives of our children and families are being negatively impacted in many ways. If our children are taking summer school, their summer vacation has been shortened to only 3 weeks. Our children deserve to have time in the summer for camps, sports, recreation, and most importantly, family time. In our society, the stress of our adult workloads are increasing, and our recreational time with our children is being lessened. We are a community who is very committed to the educational lives of our children. When the academic year begins, we are all invested in their well being and educational process. Kids need a break. Families need a break. If a teacher is interested in pursuing educational opportunities to build on their own expertise, those are also affected by the shortened summer hiatus. The stated "pro" for starting our schools earlier is so that our students will have taken their finals before the Christmas break. This goal could be met by adjusting other holiday dates in the calendar year, and still starting school at a later date. There are also parents who feel that their children do fine with the extra time to study and prepare for the exams. There is room for discussion. The GUSD school starting date is one of the earliest in the entire United States. It is affecting our children's internships and summer job opportunities as well. The warm temperatures are miserable for our kids in non air conditioned classrooms and for outdoor Physical Education. I don't know if any of the School Board members have children in our schools at present. Were any parents consulted when the decision was made for August 10th to be the starting date for GUSD? I have not found a single parent who is happy about the school year beginning so early. Next year the starting date is scheduled for August 8th. I know that our School Board leaders are committed to the children of this community, and are driven by their love for education. Let's send them a message that curtailing our summers does not benefit the family and the educational lives of our children, but hurts us all.

This seems more like an emotional debate than perhaps a logistical one. The debate over how long the summer vacation should be has waged for years, and honestly, it's a struggle for kids to return after too long of a break to basically re-learn everything they forgot over the summer months. I think this shorter vacation time is also beneficial to Glendale's growing language immersion program, as kids need to be surrounded by the target language more often for it to stick. Honestly, most schools in the region started a few days, or at most, a week later...

Spotted: CSI Spawns a Cottage Industry

Remember those old TV ads starring Sally Struthers and touting home schooling for trades like gun repair?

Oh, how 1980s of you. These days, via ads on the MTA buses, I notice that the hot new jobs are in the "CSI" field. (See above.) Yes, thanks to good ol' TV, these profit-driven trade schools are churning out a generation of wannabe Marg Helgenbergers and David Carusos. Apparently crime scene investigation is a growth industry?

Watch the LAUSD and Jamie Oliver Make Nice on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live'

LAUSD Supt. John Deasy made a surprise appearance on Tuesday's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in order to make nice with Jamie Oliver. Oliver's ABC series "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" famously clashed with the LAUSD schools -- but now Deasy is pledging that the school system will no longer serve sweetened (think chocolate or strawberry) milk. Hey, it's a start. (Watch above.)

Amabassador Cam: Robert F. Kennedy Schools and Pocket Park Finally Open

The LAUSD is finally taking down that ugly chain link fence in front of the Ambassador Hotel site -- making the new street-level "Robert F. Kennedy Inspiration Park" open to the public.

The new park is unveiled just as the long-in-the-making Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex officially opens its doors today.



The new schools, which sit on the land where the Ambassador Hotel once stood -- have been controversial, and not just because of how the hotel was razed. The Wall Street Journal just wrote a scathing editorial on the complex's price tag, including the park (pegged at $4.9 million).



Here's how LAUSD describes the park, via the Wilshire Center Business Improvement District:

The Kennedy Inspiration Park occupies a 19,000-square-foot section of the site fronting Wilshire Boulevard. The park slopes downward from the busy street, preserving views of the school buildings from the street, terminating in a focal stainless steel wall designed by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt. The rectangular sheet is etched with an image of Robert F. Kennedy in sandstone and displays an array of inspiring quotes from champions of social justice. The idea is to create a space that encourages contemplation of Kennedy's legacy of social justice. The park also provides spaces for eating lunch, playing chess and quiet contemplation.

Read our coverage of the Ambassador Hotel's demise here.

Attention Candidate: This Teachers Organization Endorsement Isn't Helping You

"GLENDALES' TEACHERS."

Seriously. "GLENDALES' TEACHERS."

What the hell are they teaching in Glendale? (The city's name is not "Glendales," despite this mailing's assertion.) Apparently not grammar.

This campaign flyer, for State Assembly District 43 candidate Nayiri Nahabedian, is now the most embarrassing thing I've seen in this embarrassing race.

Yes, it's more horrifying than that cheesy birth announcement that rival candidate Mike Gatto recently mailed to voters.

Pimping your newborn baby for votes? A bit annoying. Pimping the president of the Glendale Teachers Association, WHO DOESN'T HAVE A GRASP ON PROPER PUNCTUATION? That's just sad.

Nahabedian is selling herself as the education candidate, given her current role as a member of the Glendale school board.

But if you miss the most obvious, sloppy mistake on your mailing -- and its supposedly from two teachers... well, I don't know whether to weep for your candidacy or for Glendale schools.

Either way, these flurry of ridiculous mailings is a reminder that the best candidate isn't always the one who's actually running. Yay District 43!

New Yorkers in Training

You remember a few months ago, when Evan's preschool turned its play area into a mini-Trader Joe's?

They outdid themselves again, re-creating a small Times Square for the kids as they learn all about New York. The timing couldn't me more perfect -- as I'm here in the real Manhattan, busy covering the network TV upfronts (hence the lack of posts this week at Franklin Avenue), the Blogger Preschooler is getting to experience his own mini-New York. A few more shots:

Trader Joe's Shoppers In Training

Here's another reason why I love Blogger Preschooler's school: Every month, a corner of his classroom is transformed into a "Dramatic Play" area. Last month, the BP's teachers turned the area into an imaginary movie theatre. This month, they've outdone themselves in creating a mini, fake Trader Joe's.

Using empty TJ boxes donated by parents, as well as toy shopping carts, registers and even refrigerators, it's a good (and size-adjusted) approximation.

School Frenzy: What Are We Missing Here?

Around this time every year, the L.A. Times does a big story about the frantic last-minute frenzy among Angeleno parents to get their kid in a proper school; this year, it's also the basis of a story line on "Entourage."

An excerpt from the Times story:

By law, every child is ensured a spot in a public school. But for this mass of families, the neighborhood school typically is not the preferred choice.

The Los Angeles school district's magnet office tries to help. So does its open enrollment office. A call to a school — public or private — can uncover unexpected openings; informal parent networks also accumulate information. Parents often find that the local public school is better than first presumed, or has a special and worthy program within the larger campus that they can settle on.

Then there are parents who lie to get into a school, which can backfire if a school investigates.

"It was really difficult when my daughter didn't get a sibling permit" for an in-demand Westside school, said Kerry Allen. "Because I know families who used false addresses."

Other parents have worn out shoe leather, spent evenings poring over test scores and attended lotteries.

Debra, who lives in North Hollywood, visited seven public schools in recent months. Like other parents in limbo, Debra asked that her last name not be used, for fear that publicity could hurt her son's chances of getting into a school.

She had started at her neighborhood campus, where, she said she was told there was no advanced curriculum for her entering kindergartner, who can read.

So she turned elsewhere. Her son sits more than 100 deep on the waiting list at Sherman Oaks Elementary. At the Community Magnet, just west of the Bel-Air Country Club, he is so far down that "they said there's not really a chance."...

Debra's other favored options, at this point, are two private schools; each would cost about $20,000 a year. She's not sure she can afford that on her husband's salary as a stuntman. She once ran a modeling agency but currently works part-time.

There's also a desperate back-up plan: Rent out the family's North Hollywood house and move to a Malibu trailer park to qualify for schools there. But the seller wants $400,000 for the trailer, and hookups are at least $2,000 more a month, she said.

What??? Spending $20,000 a year on a kindergarten class? The paper goes on to mention the booming "educational consultant" business, in which parents hire an outsider to investigate what's going on inside the schools, and whether or not they've been blacklisted. (Yup, blacklisting really happens.)

Am I crazy? Am I doing Blogger Toddler a disservice by not getting caught up in all of this craziness? The elementary school close to our house is far from perfect, and is even lower-performing than other schools in the area. But I'm not losing sleep over it. I grew up attending mostly average public schools (ranging from a strong DOD elementary school to a rather weak high school), but managed to make the best of it all and turn out fine. Is too much made in L.A. of demanding the best school, no questions asked?

(Flickr pic by Confuzn.)

Angeleno of the Week: "Zoner"

(Pic from the L.A. Times.)

Launching a new Friday feature here at Franklin Avenue: The Angeleno of the Week. It could be a person, a place, an organization, a business... anything that made the week that was... well, the week that was.

And that brings us to teenage tagger "Zoner" (whose real name has been left out of news articles due to his age). The kid's 15 minutes of fame began earlier this week when he scrawled his nickname on a bus -- but not just any old bus.

Nope, Zoner, a Santee High School student, managed to unfortunately pick the bus carrying Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAUSD District Supt. David L. Brewer -- as well as a Los Angeles Times photog, who snapped the above photo. The luminaries were there to tout a new bus stop meant to help Santee students avoid walking through rough neighborhoods.

The irony was rich enough. But what happened after made the week even more bizarre. Zoner suddenly became the hottest commodity in all of local politics. Mayor Villaraigosa first argued that Zoner should suffer the consequences -- then suddenly scrambled to sign up as a mentor to the teen (who wasn't actually consulted on that scenario). The Santee principal was less than thrilled, and said Villaraigosa would have to undergo the same sort of testing and clearance that all mentors go through.

That didn't sit well with Villaraigosa, who suddenly had an itch to mentor Zoner today. The latest is covered by the LA Times here.

Meanwhile, according to the Times, sudden celeb Zoner has become a folk hero to his classmates at Santee. Coming next: A cover story in the L.A. Times' West magazine. (That's a joke. Or is it?)

Congrats to "Zoner," Franklin Avenue's first Angeleno of the Week!