Friday, October 31, 2008

The news that didn’t fit from November 2nd

WALLACE FOUNDATION GRANTS $1.8 MILLION TO TWO ORGANIZATIONS TO IMPROVE ARTS EDUCATION IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY

As part of its effort to support and share effective practices and ideas, The Wallace Foundation announced a $1.2 million grant to the Los Angeles County Arts Commission (LACAC) to advance the region's six-year-old coordinated arts education initiative, Arts for All, and a $600,000 planning grant to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to support development of a second 10-year plan for arts education to build on its first successful decade of expanding arts instruction throughout the district.

AN EDUCATIONAL SUMMIT/PARENT-COMMUNITY MEETING IN LOCAL DISTRICT 3 — THURSDAY NOV. 13, 6-8PM

Local District 3 is the Crenshaw, Dorsey, Hamilton, LACES, Los Angeles, University,  Venice and Westchester High School attendance areas including  their middle and elementary feeders and Marlton, McBride and Widney Special Education Schools

GOVERNOR SUMMONS LAME DUCK LEGISLATURE BACK FOR SPECIAL BUDGET SESSION Schwarzenegger calls back legislators for emergency budget session


With the announcement of the Governor’s plan to reconvene the lege on November fifth and his intention to cut the education budget, the a State  without a budget/a government without a clue 4LAKIDS BLOG ON THE STATE BUDGET MESS is back online after barely a month’s hiatus.


With California's revenue plummeting, the governor says lawmakers will reconvene next week. They will discuss solutions to the foreclosure crisis and an economic stimulus package.


Who’s afraid? - VIRGINIA WOOLF: A EULOGY TO WORDS

Virginia Woolf 1882 - 1941

Words Fail Me
29 April 1937  BBC
Virginia Woolf gives a eulogy to words 7 min 29 (requires real player)

●●4LAKIDS READERS: An apology: This has nothing to do with public education in Los Angeles; it has everything to do with public education in Los Angeles.

The BBC in its archive has the only known recording of Woolf delivering this essay. There are English Teachers among the readership, and English Majors. There are English Students and to them this gift for All Hallows and Dia de los Muertes.

With apologies to Edward Albee: Be unafraid …be very unafraid.  -smf

PARENTS ANGRY AFTER 2nd, 3rd GRADES MERGED

“But parents weren't a part of the discussion.”

October 27, 2008 -- A month into the new school year, 8-year-old Nathan Geddie and five of his classmates were removed from their third-grade classroom at Calvert Street Elementary School in Woodland Hills.

The students were told they were well-behaved and smart - and would be placed in a class with second-graders.

A letter to parents explained that the combination second- and third-grade class was for gifted students. However, parents later learned the class was created to ensure state funding that provides more than $1,000 per student in classes of 20 or fewer.

AGENCIES SPEND TAXPAYER MONEY ON POLITICAL MAILERS

The Fair Political Practices Commission warned that many government agencies are “pushing the limits with public outreach programs clearly biased or slanted in their presentation of facts relating to a ballot measure”.

25.OCT.08 -- Some local governmental agencies are walking a fine line when it comes to using taxpayer dollars to send out political mailers, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

$7 BILLION MEASURE Q WOULD FUND SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION AND MODERNIZATION + LUKEWARM SUPPORT AND LESS FOR LA UNIFIED BOND

LOCAL ELECTIONS

$7-billion Measure Q would fund school construction and modernization

The largest school bond in state history is also the fifth in 11 years for L.A. Unified.

October 27, 2008 -- The case for $7-billion Measure Q, the largest local school bond in state history, goes something like this: Now that the school district has built dozens of new campuses, it needs and deserves more dollars to fix up the old ones.

Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
Position on Measure Q: Support

United Teachers Los Angeles
Position on Measure Q: Declined to take position

Associated Administrators of Los Angeles
Measure Q: No official position but supportive

California Charter Schools Assn.
Measure Q: Declined to take position

California School Employees Assn.
Measure Q: Declined to take position

 

DWP TO REFUND $160 MILLION IN OVERCHARGES TO OTHER AGENCIES + DWP TO PAY $160 MILLION TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES + DWP TO PAY LAUSD, OTHERS $160M IN OVERCHARGES

DWP to refund $160 million in overcharges to other agencies

The municipal utility agrees to the settlement more than a year after a judge ruled that it had intentionally overcharged L.A. County, the L.A. Unified School District and other local governments.

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, PAUL VOLCKER? A NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO YOU.

Alan Greenspan has been discredited in a flood of mea-culpas; a desperate nation looks about for a new Oracle of Wall Street to make sense of the economy.

In a "pop quiz" interview with Suze Orman, the omnipresent blonde and tanned self styled “one-woman financial-advice powerhouse” - the October-November '08 Edutopia gives us this exchange as we grasp at straws for meaning in the ongoing fiscal and credit crisis.

Edutopia: Did you go to public school, or private school?

Orman: A public, inner-city school.

E: What was your favorite subject?

O: Math, absolutely -- math.

E: If you could change one thing about education in America, what would it be?

O: Easy: the cost and quality.

●●smf’s 2¢: We stopped reading here.   Cost and Quality are two things. Math is first+foremost about counting things, we learned that from the Count on Sesame Street.

No comments: