Election Issues

Greetings, Faculty and Staff

Big goings-on here at LAHS = Big opportunities.

The question is… our we ready to take advantage of them?

As a year round school with 200+staff and 4000 students, we have a lot of work to do. The changes on the horizon are big and they are potentially empowering. Together we voted overwhelmingly YES on the strike authorization vote; together we got a good contract with a raise (yes, big UTLA is suing LAUSD about the pay problems!) and other rights, including class size reduction and increased democratic rights; together we can re-catch that spirit of activism and agitate for the things we need here at LAHS. Get involved – you make the difference!

There is going to be a host of positions open for elections Friday, Monday and Tuesday including UTLA Chairs. As of right now, we, Felicia and Rebecca are running unopposed, but that does not mean that we shouldn’t have to campaign i.e. refresh people on the amazing things that have happened and gear up for the future. First, here are a few of the more pressing issues facing us right now.

Issue #1: Dr. Nishimura is leaving.

LAHS has the opportunity to participate actively with parents and classified in the choosing of the next administrators. We need to solidify this right and have an opportunity to do so with the SBM waiver process. Alongside other Local District 3 schools, we are going to push for more rights (as opposed to the fewer that the district would like to give us). We pushed for limited participation two years ago, but now is the time to push for more complete control. Not just over the principal, but ensure department, SLC, and council participation and control over other administrative positions, teachers and counselors. In the past we have been told that the local district will not grant us our waivers because we are a PI school. Our new contract language includes a waiver appeal process and there is a new director in charge of the LAUSD office on waivers. We believe that these changes may be just what we need to finally be granted the extended rights that so many schools have. The election for this waiver will occur in the next few days. We encourage teachers to vote yes on the waiver. In preparation, we will need to come to together to clarify our priorities around what we want to see in future administrators! It should also be noted that there is a 2nd waiver on the ballot for an additional conference period for our UTLA Co-Chair position. For the past 2 years our UTLA Chair has been given an additional conference period (as is the right of the chair to take if permission is granted from the department they are in) to work specifically on UTLA business. When our UTLA goes off-track our co-chair becomes the chair and has to take on all of the responsibilities with no extra conference. With the passage of this 2nd waiver we hope to bring some equity to the time and amount of work involved with these positions. Again there are several other high schools that grant this extra time to their co-chair. We know you may have a healthy concern about more ‘out-of-the-classroom’ personnel, but we want to do the best work possible. To us that means, not having you have to cover our classes when we get pulled out of our regular periods!

Issue #2: SB 1133
Huge amounts of money from SB1133 are coming into the school for overcrowding reduction. There is a very unfortunate history at LAHS of misdirection of funds. Teachers and community need to make the plan and School Site Council should approve and oversee the implementation. Part one of our plan needs to be to maintain EVERY teacher who wants to stay at LAHS. We have already sent a letter to Local District 3 with over 100 signatures of parents and teachers stating our intentions. The next few months is when we pressure them to front us the funds so we can lower our norm right away (and keep great LAHS teachers!) Part two is what we have to figure out – we have already done surveys to parents and teachers to get a sense of where people are at.

2006-2007 Victories
We were successful in giving ourselves only one big change to deal with at a time: wall-to-wall SLCs. The question of schedule changes, due to popular response, if currently off the table. The results of an UTLA survey were so overwhelming and published on our blog that they influenced the discussion. We now have an opportunity to personalize students’ learning experience, but we must do so in a way that does not divide teachers, eclipse departments or create conflict. This is going to be a process that has to remain open and democratic and we will fight to keep it that way. All of us should be involved as we are all going to be touched by this (and many of us participating in SLCs already have been.)

The new more participatory matrix procedure proposed by UTLA means that department chairs, administrators, lead teachers, counselors, and UTLA Chairs are all in the room together making the matrix. This gives us more and more of a possibility of equity for next year. This and other advances have occurred over the last year. The tardy sweep is moving students more effectively into class. Issuing of tickets to chronic ditchers has begun. The system lacks completely coherent consequences and also communication with parents/guardians is weak and therefore doesn’t allow parents to be full participants in correcting student behavior. SBM members and UTLA continue to struggle around this and the continued problem of ditching in the PE area.

Facilities improvements including new desks are on-going and we need to make decisions about even more – including potential new bungalows.

UTLA continues to fight to reduce the impact of traveling. Moving between three rooms seems to be a breaking point for us all and we are working toward moving between two rooms only per teacher. However, this has the impact of more teachers moving for one period. This is part of a whole struggle to begin (or continue) to be highly solidaristic, especially as the SLCs are implemented. There is a strong potential to become divided, not only physically seeing less of each other, but actually finding ourselves pitted against each other for space and resources. We must take a global view. We cannot fight for our own corner; we have to fight for our school and our students collectively. We hope that SLCs will help us personalize our students’ experience, but we must be united in that effort first.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Solomon
Potential UTLA Chair
Felicia Perez
Potential UTLA-Co-Chair

Dear Ms. Strauther;

To: Grace Strauther, Local District 3 Superintendent
Date: Monday, April 15, 2007
Re: SB1133 Funds


Dear Ms. Strauther;

In anticipation of receiving funds based on Senate Bill 1133, the Los Angeles Senior High UTLA Chapter has discussed the best way to utilize these funds. We have sought and continue to seek the input and support of students, parents and teachers. Our interpretation of the qualifications to receive funding has given us confidence that Los Angeles Senior High school will likely be receiving a significant sum of funds from SB 1133. [JT1] As we presently understand it, SB 1133 funds are for class size reduction at API 1 and schools that receive monies from the High Priority Schools Grant schools. Based on this analysis and the reality of an impending enrollment drop, we believe it is critical to make a plan right now and not wait until the final decision naming schools to receive SB1133 money is announced.

Accordingly, this letter serves as notification that we intend to allocate a large portion of the first years’ funding to retain teachers over the norm. Presently, we anticipate losing up to twenty-three teachers and two counselors due to a reduction in enrollment relating to the opening of West Adams Preparatory High School in the fall of 2007. Retaining these 20+ teachers over the norm will help our school reduce class sizes; avoid losing quality teachers; and reduce the burden that will be placed on our school resources of recruiting and hiring new teachers. We would like to use SB 1133 funds specifically to pay the teachers salaries without lapse starting in the summer of 2007.

We are concerned that SB1133 funds will not be available to pay teachers and counselors at the beginning of the school year. As we are a year-round school, we worry if positions are not financially accounted for before July 2, 2007, teachers and counselors at Los Angeles High School will feel compelled to secure positions in other schools. This would create disruption and make reaching benchmarks in class size and counseling ratio reduction, the ultimate objective of SB1133, more difficult to achieve in a timely fashion.

We have not yet received the actual numbers of teachers and counselors that we will lose to West Adams Preparatory High School. However, we are notifying you in advance so that there will be no mistake as to our intentions with these SB 1133 funds.

[JT2] We also are writing you because unfortunately, LAHS resources have not always been spent according to locally defined priorities. We’re hoping to preempt that scenario from happening with these funds. To that end we are also seeking an assurance that the that none of the SB1133 monies will be taken for administrative overhead. While we welcome and hope for Local District support from existing personnel as well as trainings around FRDB for our SSC and other councils, etc, we want to keep SB1133 funds for locally determined needs. We also want to make sure that we retain all other funding LAHS is slated to receive. These new SB1133 monies should be prioritized exclusively for overcrowding reduction, not made to serve multiple purposes.

To be clear, we are requesting a meeting with yourself and the local High School Director, Susan Allen, to discuss the following:

We would like to secure a commitment from Local District 3 and LAUSD that, regardless of the availability of SB1133 funds at the precise beginning of the 07/08 school year, that LAHS will be able to maintain and fund our current teacher and counselor levels right from the beginning of the 07/08 fall semester.

We would like to secure Local District assurance that SB1133 monies will be directed by our School Site Council in accordance with the [JT3] plan they developed along with the staff and community, not used for administrative overhead or purposes other than class size and counselor load reduction..

We would like to recommend the date of April 26th at 6 PM in order to allow both community members and teachers to participate.

Thank you for your consideration,

Sincerely,


[JT1]According to Nish on SAT morning, it’s official – we’re getting it.

[JT2]I made this a new paragraph. Just a thought to be more explicit – like we’re demanding more than just teacher retention…

n no money on administrative overhead

n no funding cuts elsewhere that force us to use this money for sources other than class size reduction and counselor load reduction.

[JT3]Single School Plan for Student Achievement