LAUSD fails its special students.
Byline: Naush Boghossian, LA Daily News, July 21, 2005

Jul. 21--For the second straight year, a federal court monitor has blasted lack of progress toward better special education in the Los Angeles Unified School District and warned that the district might not meet a June 2006 deadline for drastic improvement, according to a memo obtained Wednesday by the Daily News.

Calling the LAUSD's special-education performance in 2004-05 "haphazard at best," independent monitor Carl Cohn wrote to Superintendent Roy Romer that the absence of accountability toward achieving the goals is "inexcusable."

Cohn issued a reminder that 18 negotiated provisions of the court consent decree call for outcomes that district officials expected to be achievable and to establish high performance standards. A key problem, Cohn said, is that LAUSD officials have been focusing on central-office activities with little emphasis on the school level, where the plan's success will be determined.

"Large-scale change at the local district and school level that translates into progress toward the outcomes does not appear to be occurring," Cohn wrote in the June 20 memo.

"Time is short. Based on my review of current outcome data, I have serious reservations about the ability of the district to achieve the outcomes in this final year."

Cohn, who has the authority to make the provisions more stringent and order remedial actions, could not be reached for comment.

The attorney for Chandra Smith and other plaintiffs who won the consent decree nine years ago called for firing administrators standing in the way of compliance with the law.

"There need to be consequences for openly defying the law -- a number of school site administrators that should be fired," said attorney Robert Myers. "I think administrators need to know that, if they violate the civil rights of children with disabilities, they will lose their jobs."

The monitor's memo comes seven months after district officials promised to make special-education improvements a priority in response to an earlier scathing report from Cohn. In that report, Cohn said the district's first year under the modified consent decree amounted to a "lost year."

The consent decree came in 1996 after a civil-rights lawsuit was filed three years earlier on behalf of Chandra Smith and others. The lawyer for Smith, then 17, said the LAUSD violated federal law by allowing her to fail 10th grade twice before conducting tests to determine that she had the academic skills of a second-grader.

Responding to Cohn's latest report, district officials conceded that they need to step up efforts to meet the federal requirements, but said the challenge is immense -- so big they might not meet the deadline.

"We are looking carefully at the accountability of everybody down the line," Romer said. "Whether we'll be able to meet those goals has yet to be determined. We know the challenges right in front of us.

"I'm going to do everything I can to make this district perform under this (decree)."

Modified in 2003, the consent decree now sets 18 specific goals for gauging the success of the district's special-education programs.

They include:

--Increasing the percentage of special-education students who score at proficiency levels labeled "basic" or higher on state English tests to 27.5 percent by the 2006 deadline.

--Raising the percentage scoring "basic" or higher in math to 30.2 percent by the deadline.

--Decreasing the percentage of special-education students suspended for six or more cumulative days from the current 8.6 percent to 2 percent in 2006.

Board President Marlene Canter hopes to announce at next week's board meeting the creation of a select committee on the consent decree that will focus on an action plan.

"Obviously, whatever they have been doing has not (produced) ... the results in order for us to have this consent decree lifted. Whatever we're doing is not enough," Canter said. "I want to create some urgency around it. We need to be held accountable."

If the LAUSD fails to meet all of the goals by the deadline, officials do not face specific sanctions, but federal oversight could be extended.

According to a midyear progress report released earlier this year, just 17.8 percent of special-education students scored "basic" or higher on the language-arts test, 10 percent below the 27.5 percent mandated for 2006.

The report also showed that only 16 percent of students' individual education plans are translated into the parents' native language within 30 days, compared with the mandated 85 percent. Also, only 71 percent of 3,661 initial student evaluations were completed within 50 days, while the target was 90 percent.

District officials will make it a priority to target students identified for special education who have moderate to severe disabilities, said Roger O'Leary-Archer director of the LAUSD's special-education policies, procedures and modified consent decree monitoring.

With a goal of 52 percent, the LAUSD currently has only 34.1 percent of those students in general-education classrooms with special-education support 40 percent or more of the instructional day.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Daily News, Los Angeles

Romer's secret fund
Nonprofit created to talk up LAUSD
By Naush Boghossian, LA Daily News
Staff Writer

LINK

Saturday, July 09, 2005 - Days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his support for an effort to break up the LAUSD, Superintendent Roy Romer quietly created a nonprofit organization that has raised nearly $150,000 to tout the school district's accomplishments, the Daily News has learned.

Despite having the district's nearly $1 million public-relations operation at his disposal, Romer founded Friends of L.A. Schools -- with himself as CEO -- to counter criticism by Schwarzenegger and then-mayoral challenger Bob Hertzberg that the Los Angeles Unified School District was too large and inefficient.

"This began in February when there was a lot of criticism of the district, to disband the district, and I felt we needed to communicate positively about what this district was about and what it's doing," Romer said Friday in a phone interview. "And when you get into the area of communications, I like not to spend public money if I can avoid it.

"Everybody else in town was talking about LAUSD and we thought we should talk about it too. There's no secret or mystery about it."

Disclosure of the fund raised questions among school board members who said they had only a vague knowledge of it and would press Romer for a full explanation next week.

Hertzberg, whose breakup proposal brought education to the forefront of this year's campaign, questioned why Romer would need to spend money to promote the district.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "The best P.R. you can get is to do your job."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa knew nothing about Romer's organization but withheld comment until he gets more information, spokeswoman Janelle Erickson said.

Council President Alex Padilla, who worked with LAUSD board member Jose Huizar to create a joint committee to study district operations, said he was surprised at the Romer effort.

"We are trying to offer an olive branch to the school district to deal with its problems and the future of the district," he said. "I'm not sure what he has in mind with this."

In three months, Romer's charity raised $145,000 from donors that he and other district officials declined to name. They also refused to disclose other officers or provide copies of the documents creating the nonprofit organization.

However, copies obtained from the Secretary of State's Office list Cary Davidson as chief financial officer and Flora S. Yin as secretary.

Davidson is a partner and Yin is an associate at Reed & Davidson, a law firm at 520 S. Grand Ave., Suite 700 -- the same address as the charity's. The firm's Web site says its clients include the committee that organized the Democratic National Convention in 2000, when Romer was head of the national party.

The articles of incorporation say the purpose of Friends of L.A. Schools is "to educate and inform the public about the Los Angeles Unified School District, including its programs and facilities."

Romer said he's spent a total of about $70,000 of the $145,000 on his State of the Schools address and related community forums, as well as on a breakfast for schools that had increased their academic achievement scores.

"This is very much what any organization would do to say, Let's have people understand us," Romer said, "and you go to Friends to help us tell the story."

The district has a communications department with a staff of seven and a budget of $862,000, but it was unable to take on anything more than its day-to-day tasks, said Glenn Gritzner, special assistant to Romer.

Romer said he told the school board about the nonprofit organization, but members said they were unclear on the details.

"In this particular situation I do not believe we were fully informed and we need to be. Obviously we need more information and I'm going to work toward getting us fully informed," board President Marlene Canter said.

Board member Jose Huizar said the board is entitled to information from the superintendent on matters in which the district's name is used to form an organization.

"I would also ask questions as to who put in money for those funds and did it cross the line as to who had contributed," he said. "It's about transparency, and as trustees of the public, the superintendent should have the judgment to keep the board aware of its activities."

Bob Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies, said that while he's heard of public officials soliciting money for charities, he's never heard of one setting up a charity that he controls.

"The question is, where is he getting the money and how much money they're giving. He's a public official and he should be disclosing any money he's getting in relation to his job," said Stern, whose Los Angeles-based group looks at campaign financing and ethics.

"For example, let's say he's raising money from school contractors -- that's relevant. People should know that. The faster he discloses the donors, the better it will be."

The circumstances around the creation of Friends of L.A. are similar to those of the creation of the LAUSD Education Foundation, which Romer launched in 2003 to raise funds for his education-reform initiatives.

Shadow Cash: Los Angeles California Superintendent Roy Romer Funds Friends of LA Schools, Inc., With Improper Supporters