Hello!!

As many of you have probably heard or read, Brewer looks to be backing off of his 44 schools separate district plan. Whether that means he is backing off of a plan to give us 'special treatment' even without a special district remains to be seen. Thanks to the hard organizing work of LAHS and the other 43 schools, Brewer realized he was not going to get any support (even the president of the Principals' Union didn't back him up.) If this turns out to be true, it would be a great thing; however, what it doesn't guarantee us is the room and resources to implement the kinds of plans we have for LAHS. It also doesn't mean that Brewer will not try and get some of the more insidious pieces of his plan in through the back door. Romer didn't need a high priority school district to mess with the 10 schools. He didn't need that kind of district to implement Open Court (the scripted curriculum for elementary school reading and writing) Brewer will be presenting his plan on the 13th of NOvember and the board will be voting on it on the 27th of November. His plan seems to be back on the drawing board. So we should still be ready to counterpose our plan with any that come down from the district. There is already backlash - that the superintendent is a wimp; that he not doing enough to 'fix' schools. (See Diane Rabinowitz's great response to such a backlash that came out in the time - it is cut and pasted at the end of the email)In the meantime, the innovation division seems prickly but interesting and stands as Brewer's only currently more-or-less formed reform. Only a few schools are in it and a few school board members are not supportive of the innovation division because it means that those schools will be taken out of their district - losing those school board members the opportunity to claim success and making them obvious candidates to be called failures (as the schools would rather get out of the local district and the school board member's district than stay in them)

So the question remains, what do we at LAHS want to do?


Do we want to make a break for the innovation division? This will take a bit of work - you have to get a 3rd party partner to replace the local district in a support role; you have to get a 60% yes vote from your faculty; and you have to make a five year committment (arguably longer than the district's past committments to any other reform plan!).


Do we want to try and find leverage with the big district and local district to get them to provide us with the resources, support and space we need to implement what we already have going and continue to work our plans?


Is there another route we could try?I have attached some documents that might help provoke conversation - Crenshaw's reform plan and timeline, a little background on the Innovation Division and the Brewer article about the potential abandonment of the High Priority Schools District.

Yesterday's article: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-lausd1nov01,1,2035213.story?coll=la-news-learningEditorial Response:

http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-ed-brewer2nov02,1,4963675.story?coll=la-news-learning

This Saturday at 10AM at Felicia's house we are going to get together to talk about these issues, look at some materials and work on a strategic plan. there will be food and relaxed dialogue.

Hope to see you there

1769 Clinton St Los Angeles, CA 90026 (two blocks east of Alvarado; four blocks south of Sunset)

ThanksRebecca