Socal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills

Some Things LAUSD Does Right - And Something It Does Not

You can tell it's back to school time.

They moved out all the patio stuff from our Target a few weeks ago and replaced it all with notebooks, backpacks, paper and pens. My niece in Northern California has already gone back, and I've been receiving all kinds of notices from our school district.

Four weeks from today, Megan begins her new Middle School. I'm busy cramming in doctor and dentist appointments, nagging her to finish her summer assignments and buying school uniforms. And we are starting to get mailings from the District: first, a report on how she did on her fitness test (our little gymnast "exceeds expectations" in all areas. For instance, a superior score on sit-ups was 27; she did 99 and only stopped because the form did not allow her teacher to enter anything over that).

Today, I received LAUSD's application for the Federal school lunch program.

This is a very confusing and poorly designed form -- which is unfortunately, typical of LAUSD. In fact, the first few years we attended school, I routinely threw it out (because our income does not qualify her for a free school lunch, so why bother with it?) and I would get irritated that her teachers would keep sending it and sending it. I discovered why when I began working at her school: our Title I status is determined by how many kids at the school qualify for the free lunch. Never mind that kids from affluent families also qualify for Title I if they have learning disabilities and that the school is expected to provide services for them... it is the percentage of kids getting the free lunch that determines whether or not the school will receive the funds. And the school had a problem with parents (often immigrants) who felt there was shame in taking the free lunch, so they would not apply, even if they qualified.

The form comes with complex instructions in both English and Spanish that tell you How To Apply --  There is a checkbox near the top of the form labeled, "NO, we DO NOT want to apply for meal benefits," but if it's mentioned in the instructions, it must be buried, because I've never seen it -- abd the box is kind of camouflaged amid all the instructions, places to list the names of your children, names of your household members, current monthly income brought in by all household members, etc.

It's a stupid form. And vital for any public school struggling to meet its budget.

This year's packet also included a form for parents to apply to LAUSD's Children's Health Access and Medi-Cal Program, which helps arrange low-cost health insurance with dental and vision services - regardless of a family's immigration status. This is a wonderful program and it makes perfect sense to bundle it with the free lunch application.

Did you know that 12% of America's kids have no health insurance? In California, the number is over 700,000. It's mind boggling - and shameful. Not only that, but it makes little economic sense as it costs a lot less to provide preventive care than to bog down our already crumbling system of hospital emergency rooms.

The movement towards a universal health care system in this country continues to gain steam, at least when it comes to providing a safety net for our children. The folks at Moms Rising are busy advocating for this (among other issues families care about). I just signed a petition urging the California Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger to make this happen. If you are a Californian, I urge you to add your name here.

In the meantime, I'm hunting down a pencil so I can mark off the "Do Not Want" box on the school lunch application. And I thank God that we are not in need.

A Quick Post Before I Go

I feel like I went to bed on Sunday night and woke up and now the week is over. Where did it go?

OK, I know today is Thursday, but in a frustrating move, Megan ended up in a gymnastics meet on Friday. Tomorrow. In SAN DIEGO. Couple that with the fact that Monday was a school holiday -- and you can see that I've been trying to cram five days' worth of juggling into just three days of actual time to do it in. And (of course), I have a couple of project deadlines I'm dealing with.

No wonder I'm feeling so scattered. No wonder I haven't posted anything since my Sunday complaint about cooking dinner. No wonder I haven't bothered with trying to cook anything since then. (In preparation for the meet, Megan has been at the gym until 8:00 three nights in a row. I'm going to do a roast chicken tonight, thank you very much.)

But I do want to follow up on a couple of items:

1. Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District came to an agreement with United Teachers Los Angeles, thus averting the strike I was worried about a couple of weeks ago. I am delighted -- that the school year won't be disrupted and that some effort (although not enough) will be made to reduce class size in the upper grades. Now I can go back to just being annoyed with the District and its byzantine bureaucracy.

2. I received this email from the CEO of JetBlue:

One Strike and You're Out

I'm feeling a lot better now. I mean, being a victim of a smash and grab is SO LAST WEEK.

All the concerned comments from my online friends helped a lot -- as did hearing about the experiences of the people I come into contact with all the time. In fact, I now consider myself extremely lucky -- it turns out that just about everyone I know has had some experience with this kind of crime (and the ones living in tonier neighborhoods may even have it worse; with their security fences, alarm systems and privacy hedges giving them meager protection from determined criminals). This is just life in the big city... and I thank God we only had our cars burgled.

I spent much of the week working on the PTA newsletter, which was like pulling teeth this month, mainly because the UTLA (the teachers union) has been working without a contract since June and is holding a strike vote in a couple of weeks. The ongoing negotiations have not been getting much coverage on the news, and I know a lot of parents don't even know that this is going on, and that when the TV stations finally wake up to this as a story, it will be presented in a way designed to put everyone in a panic.

Contract negotiations between the union and the school district are a five-step process... even if the union authorizes a strike, which is what is expected, there are three more steps they have to take before they can call a job action: (1) One of the parties must declare that they are at an impasse, meaning that negotiations are deadlocked, then (2) a mediator hears both sides and tries to come up with a resolution... and if neither side agrees to the decision, (3) they go to "fact finding," which is a kind of trial where both sides present their case to a "fact finder," who must also try to come up with a resolution. Only when THAT is rejected can a strike occur. And even though the head of the teacher's union is loudly telling anyone who will listen that UTLA will strike in March (just when everyone is gearing up for state testing!) -- I would think going through mediation and fact finding would take longer than a couple of weeks?

Anyway -- writing an article about this in the PTA newsletter is tricky, as I don't want to take sides and the principal (who must approve the newsletter before distribution), wanted me to include some material from LAUSD's website because I attributed the description of the negotiating process to UTLA -- because they were the only ones who published anything that did explain what was going on.  All LAUSD is doing is sending out press releases that paint the teachers as greedy and asking for too much. And of course, the teachers are downplaying their salary demands and getting the word out that the sticking point is reducing class size, which is, of course, something all of us parents would like to see.

I finally took out all attributions and included links to both LAUSD and UTLA, so parents can find the information for themelves, and hopefully, not be blindsided if a strike does occur this semester. I sincerely hope all the posturing ends and the two sides find a way to forge a contract they can live with. Ours is a famously troubled school district, and it does not need this on top of all its other problems.

Having worked for two years as a part time school employee, I can tell you that everyone there is under tremendous pressure. I got to know teachers who want nothing more than to do good by their students. And I got to know equally hard-working administrators who were sincere in their efforts to help our kids along. Good intentions all around - and a system that's impossible to work with. I am a firm believer in public education, but seeing our school district first hand makes me want to run to the nearest private school, and I would if I could afford to. But I can't, so I do what I can to make our public school better.

But all bets are off if our Mayor succeeds in taking control of the District. He wants to impose an eight-hour school day, which might be great for working parents who cannot afford to pay someone to supervise their kids after school. It might be great for students who are underachieving. It would not be great for my gymnast daughter, who is at the top of her class and already juggling school, Hebrew school and nearly 20 hours a week of training. My husband gets upset whenever I mention homeschooling as an option, but if they go to such a long school day while my daughter is still involved in this sport, that may be the only option we have.

I'll worry about that only when I have to...