NEWS

November 13, 2010

Huffington Post: Teachers Take Charge To Save Ailing Public Schools

LOS ANGELES — Four years ago, Francis Parkman Middle School was spiraling downward with plummeting enrollment, abysmal test scores and notoriety for unruliness. Then teachers stepped out of the classroom and took charge of the school.

Today, the rechristened Woodland Hills Academy, named for the school's suburban location north of Los Angeles, is run by a teacher-controlled committee where the principal carries the same weight as a teacher and the district has minimal say in operations.

Test scores are up 18 percent and enrollment has spiked more than 30 percent. The model works, teachers say, because everyone from the principal to the janitor is vested in the outcome. "Everybody has a stake," said teacher Bruce Newborn. "We all suffer and we all win."

Read the Full Article: Teachers Take Charge To Save Ailing Public Schools

December 17, 2009

Public School Choice Proposals

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), and the California Teachers Association (CTA) have made a commitment to assign and contract with top level school plan evaluators to read the first drafts and provide critical feedback to school teams submitting proposals under the Public School Choice resolution. The evaluators will provide feedback based on the specific RFP requirements in time for school teams to make revisions as necessary. In order to be reviewed, completed draft proposals must be submitted in electronic copy by December 24 and emailed to and .

November 17, 2009

Public School Choice Letters of Intent

This memo provides an update on the number of Letters of Intent received in response to the Public School Choice RFP and outlines the next steps of the implementation process.

Download: Letters of Intent Received (.pdf)

November 11, 2009

UTLA Newsletter Highlights LASDI

United Teachers Los Angeles recently highlighted LASDI in their monthly newsletter “United Teacher.” The article describes LASDI’s work and solicits school support from experts and specialists within the UTLA community.

Download: UTLA Newsletter (.pdf)

October 8, 2009

ANNOUNCEMENT: Los Angeles School Development Institute

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) School Board voted on August 25th to establish a process by which internal and external stakeholders, such as school planning teams, local communities, pilot school operators, labor partners, charters, and others who are interested in collaborating with the District to operate the District's new schools and PI 3+ schools in an effort to create more schools of choice and educational options for the District's students and families.

Superintendent Cortines has identified 24 new schools and 12 underperforming schools that will participate in the public school choice process for the current year. Letters of Intent are due November 15 and applications are due January 8. The School Board's Public School Choice motion resolved that the “Superintendent shall develop a plan to ensure existing internal stakeholder teams are positioned and supported to develop and put forth viable designs for new and existing schools identified.”

In an effort to provide capacity-building support to these school teams, the Los Angeles School Development Institute (LASDI) has been created to help with the process of proposal development, school design, budgeting and implementation at these school sites. LASDI is a partnership of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), LAUSD School Board and Superintendent Cortines, UNITE-LA and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Other supporting organizations include United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, the City of Los Angeles, many Institutions of Higher Education, and others.

The three Co-Directors of the Institute, representing UTLA, AALA, and LAUSD, are Day Higuchi, a retired teacher and former UTLA President, Michelle Bennett, a retired principal, and Shelley Weston, retired LAUSD Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Instruction. The L.A. Area Chamber's affiliate UNITE-LA will provide the initial resources for this effort, due to generous grants provided by the Ford Foundation and the Irvine Foundation.

LASDI's primary mission is to support the development of high performing schools. The organizations involved with LASDI fundamentally believe that the staff at each school are the strongest, most authentic and sustainable agents of change at each site. Therefore, in order to help schools produce exemplary plans, the Institute will unleash and support the talent and capacity of LAUSD teachers and administrators. Planning teams will be able to choose support through a variety of options, which will include: proposal writers, editors, advisors, school design consultants, project managers and other resources, based on the need of each school team. LASDI will also serve as a resource for parents and community members so that they can learn more about how to connect to teams and can contribute to the development of plans.