"Parent Trigger" Law Bodes Ill For Emery Schools

Emeryville Schools To Be Turned Into A Charter School?

Opinion
In the ongoing Republican war on teachers and hijacking of the public commons, the California Board of Education has laid down the gauntlet: It must be made easier to fast track the charter school phenomenon at the expense of traditional public schools.  Although charter schools have shown no aggregate improvement in academic achievement over traditional public schools but has been shown to decimate the teaching profession; it seems those hostile to the teacher's union will get their union stripping agenda imposed on the entire State.
It's about privatization of the commons and power; do we grant it to those actually in the trenches doing the real work of teaching our children; the teachers?  Or is the power to be shifted to outside private political ideologues with profiteering in mind?  Of course this question is hidden with a phony narrative (as are most Republican agendas): parental empowerment.
Is there a private corporation somewhere, licking its chops, headed to Emeryville?

Please read the re-print from the Los Angeles Times:

Regulations approved for schools' 'Parent Trigger' law

The state Board of Education sets rules to clarify the law that gives parents the right to petition for new staff, management and programs.

July 14, 2011|By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

After months of controversy, the state Board of Education set out a clear road map Wednesday to allow parents unparalleled rights to force major changes at low-performing schools.

The board approved regulations clarifying the "Parent Trigger" law — the first in the nation to give parents the right to petition for new staff, management and programs at their children's schools. Organizations representing parents, teachers, school districts and other parties overcame sharp differences to reach consensus on such contentious issues as how to draw up petitions, verify parent signatures and ensure public disclosure about the petition process.

Disagreement over those issues exploded last year in the law's first test case at McKinley Elementary School in Compton. There, parents sought to oust the school staff and convert the campus into an independently run, publicly financed charter operation. The petition campaign divided the campus, sparked lawsuits and fueled charges of harassment on both sides.

Controversies also inflamed efforts to draw up regulations at the state board, with various charges that board members were trying to ram through rules favoring charter schools, teachers or other interests.

So when the board unanimously voted to approve the regulations Wednesday, the room exploded in cheers and applause.

"It's like a dream come true to know that I have a voice in my community as well as my state, and my children will have a better future because parents like these took a stand for their children," said Daniel Jackson, a Los Angeles parent who took an overnight bus to Sacramento with other advocates to support the regulations.

Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution, the Los Angeles-based education reform group that helped lobby for the law, said the regulations will allow parents to move forward with confidence and organize petition campaigns across the state. He said six to eight parent empowerment groups have formally filed papers to affiliate with his organization.

Even the California Teachers Assn., which opposed the law last year, supported the regulations, and board member Patricia Rucker, a former CTA lobbyist, voted for them.

But CTA spokeswoman Sandra Jackson said the union believes that parent trigger petitions calling for a charter school conversion must obtain support from half of the school's teachers, as is currently required under existing charter school law.

Board President Michael Kirst, however, appeared to reject that view in comments Wednesday.

"It's called the parent empowerment act, not the teacher empowerment act, for a reason," he said.

If no issues are raised during a public comment period, the regulations will take effect with no further board action.

The regulations require the state to create a website with information about the petition process, including a sample petition so organizers will not inadvertently make errors in drawing it up, as occurred in Compton.

They also require the public disclosure of organizations providing financial or other support to petitioners. In addition, the regulations ban payment per signature and require disclosure of those who are paid to gather signatures.

And, school districts will be required to verify signatures through written documents already on hand, such as emergency contact cards. That issue sparked a lawsuit in Compton when officials required people who had signed the petition to come in person with photo identification.

Not all contentious issues were addressed. The regulations do not require public meetings at the schools, nor specify which parents can trigger change with a successful petition. The law allows parents of half the students at the targeted school or those campuses that feed into them to force school districts to convert to a charter campus, replace staff, transform the curriculum or close the school. But the California School Boards Assn. and other advocates argue that the majority of petitioners should be from the targeted school.

The public meeting and petitioner issues are being addressed in legislation by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica), who heads the Assembly education committee.

Despite such continuing concerns, Sherry Griffith, the school board organization's legislative advocate, hailed the consensus.

"When you decide to roll up your sleeves and decide to work together, you can get pretty far," she said.

And Lydia Grant, a San Fernando Valley parent who also rode the bus to Sacramento, said the regulations would give children in failing schools a new start.

"Every parent like myself has had the door slammed in their face when they have tried to improve the education of their child," she said. "This legislation finally gives us that army behind us to stand up and demand that our children get a better life."

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times staff writer Michael Mishak contributed to this report.

Council Takes Baby Step Toward Family Housing

New Day In Emeryville?

Is The City Council Ready To Deliver Family Housing?

News Analysis

At first the Housing Committee was a solid block; unsupportive of family housing, but now there's a little crack in that block.  A single outspoken promoter of family friendly housing was appointed Tuesday to the key city body responsible for housing policy. The outlier joins a dozen other members on Emeryville's Housing Committee.  The council's surprising and unanimous appointment of Emeryville resident Sarah Harper to the committee may indicate the start of a far reaching shift in Emeryville's housing policy.

What exactly is 'family friendly housing' in an urban context?   The Berkeley city planning firm MIG and Associates, hired by Emeryville to advise the decision makers, tells us among other things it's homes, apartments and condos with real bedrooms for privacy, not wall-free open floor plans. It's affordable housing with two and three-bedrooms, rather than a single bedroom. It's housing with access to a small safe outdoor play area for unsupervised play so parents can take care of domestic chores.  It's housing on quiet pedestrian activated streets without car dominance.
Why is it important? Besides the virtues of a diversified populace, it's because city officials recently convinced voters to spend nearly half a billion dollars in principal and interest on new facilities for all 765 students enrolled in district schools. Factor out the 306 Oakland and Richmond children who attend school in Emeryville, and the $400 million school campus works out to $871,460 per Emeryville pupil. If the council, school board and residents want this massive investment to make sense, they must raise enrollment. Despite an explosion of new housing construction in Emeryville over the past 15 years, the number of local children attending our schools has been declining. Why? Because despite building several thousand new units, barely a handful are suitable for families.

Suburban model of middle class
family friendly housing.

Of the 13 committee members, only Ms Harper (nominated by Councilwoman Jennifer West) mentioned family housing as a worthwhile goal on their applications for joining the committee.

This newly added singular voice on the Housing Committee might represent the first inklings of a new culture at City Hall. On some future day, a loft developer might be told, "Thanks but no thanks, we're trying to build housing for families in order to support our schools".

Up until now, the Housing Committee has been a poor champion of family housing.  In June 2010, the committee finished an exhaustive 172 page update to the general plan entitled 'Emeryville Housing Element 2009-2014.' Providing family housing didn't even make the list of seven housing goals.  

Urban model of middle class
family friendly housing.

The city council is mainly responsible for the committee's general disinterest. Until now, the problem hasn't been antipathy to family housing on the council, but a philosophy that government shouldn't interfere with developers driven by the free market.  The problem is that it's simply more profitable to build lofts. Or for that matter to build five, one-bedroom condos instead of two three bedroom ones in the same space.  This 'hands-off-developers' council approach has created our current situation; awash in a certain childless younger demographic while actually losing families.  

The council's abdication of governance in deference to the profit motive of private developers has resulted in a critical lack of family housing that has created an urgent problem for the new school.  If the problem is to be fixed before the school's completion, a massive program of home building must begin immediately.  Whether it's too late or not, it seems this new appointment to the Housing Committee might indicate the beginning of a shift in governing philosophy by the city council. It could show that the Emeryville city council is ready to put the public back into public policy and begin governing.

Finance Report Reveals Schools Low Ranking

Snapshot of priorities:

Report Shows Emeryville's Values Laid Bare

The City of Emeryville collected building permit fees in the last six months that funded more than $23,000 for public art but only $221 for the schools according to a City Hall interdepartmental memo released last week.
The information in the memo shows how sometimes a seemingly innocuous bureaucratic staff report can serve a greater revelatory function than by all rights it was meant to.  Such is the case of the 'Financial Progress Report' memo that in a nutshell, starkly illustrates the real priorities of the city, politician's claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

The January 6th memo, addressed to City Manager Pat O'Keeffe from the Assistant City Manager is an accounting of fees collected as a result of the 399 building permits issued by the city between July 10th and December 10, 2010.  The total valuation of commercial and residential building improvements over the six months is shown to be over $35 million netting a total of $221.84 for the schools out of $874,441 total fees collected. The schools came out dead last in the fees collected for the second half of 2010, giving numerical value to the city's moral value as manifest by its fee schedule.

Highlights of fees paid to the City of Emeryville (last half of 2010):


General Plan Fee                 $170,716.00

Technology Fee                     $34,143.35 

Plan Review Fee                  $173,630.27 

Fire Department Fee             $51,820.81 

Traffic Impact Fee                   $2105.08 

Art In Public Places Fee        $23,352.07 

School Fee                                  $221.84 

  

School Academics: Is A New Building Very Effective?

Wake of $400 Million Measure J:

Why Couldn't Alternatives To Building A New School Have Been Investigated?

Opinion

If you talk with educators from anywhere outside Emeryville about the steps needed to effectively improve student academic performance, topping the list will always be the same two items: smaller class size and attracting better teachers.   Way down the list will appear new school facilities.  This wisdom is universal, yet here in Emeryville were going to do the thing that's way down the list, not the things on the top of the list.

We're going to build a new school, and ironically that will stop us from improving academic acheivement by killing any chance of hiring more and better teachers.

The two most effective ways to improve schools can only be achieved by spending money on teachers and that can only be done by the citizens electing to tax themselves more.  A new parcel tax could provide the money needed to help hire more and better teachers but in the wake of the recently passed $400 million Measure J Emeryville bond initiative, it's highly unlikely that Emeryville citizens will be up for another tax for the schools anytime soon.  After the existing parcel tax voters approved a few years ago and then the Measure J mandated new school building, the public's good will has probably reached its limit.

Unfortunately, the Emeryville power elite didn't allow differing ideas that might have averted this absurdity.  All the high minded talk from the city council and the school board about improving education and doing right by the children didn't leave room for this critical dissenting view: How about if we try the two ways at the top of the list that have been shown to most effectively improve student achievement?  Instead, the forces that wanted to build a shiny new edifice stopped any such debate and the city marched headlong into committing to build a new facility.  Those with dissenting views were literally not permitted to gain any position of decision making power, and groupthink replaced debate.

Educators Guide On How To Improve Academic Achievement:

1. Smaller class size
2. Hire quality teachers
3. Something else
4. Another thing
5. Whatnot
6. Flotsam
7. Jetsam
8. Incidental
9. Immaterial
10. Build a new school facility

It's easy to see how this happened.  The city council, with its ossified 25 year, ready for retirement majority, wanted a "legacy project", a grand edifice on which they can hang a prominent bronze plaque extolling their virtues.  Let's face it; building a beautiful new civic building is sexier than the quiet and humble work of hiring more and better teachers and let's face it; there's no way to hang a bronze plaque on the hiring of teachers.

All this is now water over the dam.  We've set our course and building a new school is what it's going to be.  The incessant Measure J campaign noted that the new school will help attract qualified teachers and there's no doubt some truth in that.  Many teachers will likely appreciate working in the new facility.  But it's not as effective an attractant as better pay is.  Not nearly so.  We may get some improved ability to attract better teachers but at a cost of $400 million to the Emeryville taxpayers, it's inefficient in the extreme.  It's a bad deal all around.

Be it in national politics or local, the public can always benefit by applying a healthy dose of scepticism whenever moneyed interests or the power hungry propose grand schemes, ostensibly set up for public benefit.  A sceptic might question if there are hidden agendas at play whenever large amounts of public money are flashing around.  With the entire power elite in the tank for Measure J,  Emeryville could have benefited by a little scepticism from the residents.

This unfortunately is all academic, so to speak, for there's no turning back now.  All we can do at this point is to hope against hope there will be a strong uptick in academic achievement for our sub par little school district.  Since we've torpedoed our best options, hope is all we now have.

Rationality Mysteriously Missing From Public Policy

Wanted: Rational Public Policy For Emeryville

Opinion

Emeryville's high school leaves much to be desired and we're good with bold, even out-of-the-box policy to correct the morass there but public policy should be transparent and above all rational; both missing in the November 2nd fix offered voters.  What we got instead was a transmogrify of certain aging politician's ambition into a conspicuously embellished grand public edifice with a bronze plaque, glorifying their names chiseled therein for the ages.

None of this was directly apparent of course.  But what else are we to make of a project sold to the voters as a place for Emeryville's kids when it demonstrably will be for Oakland's kids?  The Tattler has inveighed against some resident's attempts to demonize Oakland children; after all a child is a child, all need quality education and they rightfully don't care if they live on the other side of some invisible political border.  However, Emeryville voters should have been told the truth that there is no way to get the 700+ new Emeryville children promised by Measure J, needed for the school to function properly and that the new school they voted to build is really for Oakland's children.

The Tattler has shown how both politically and even geographically, there is no way for Emeryville to provide family friendly housing for the 700 children in the few years allotted, if ever.  Further, the extraordinarily high cost of the money for the project, a shocking 1:4 ratio of brick and mortar school to Wall Street fat cat payout gives one pause, especially since the project was being shamelessly touted by budget hawk council member Nora Davis and her infamously tight purse strings, now transformed into drunken sailor's pockets by this project.

This is the kind of public policy a town gets when there is no newspaper providing for real accountability and politicians are re-elected over and over again, decade after decade passing from spry middle age into their dotage, still at the helm.  At this point what they see is a large bronze plaque, front and center on a fabulous new public building, their names forever associated with governmental philanthropic largess flowing from their good graces and trickling down to future generations.

Unfortunately, this project has been promulgated with a scorched earth polity from the beginning, even still ultimately, a large conspicuous bronze plaque may be in order for the new school when it's completed but rational public policy for Emeryville should not be left in tatters to get from where we were to the day when the bronze plaque is affixed.  At least Emeryville voters should have been told what they were really voting for, then maybe those council members could have engaged in the real politicking necessary to fairly deliver such a large public project.  Had they done so, they would have properly earned their bronze plaque.