PUSD: Perception vs Reality

"PUSD testing scores improve: Teacher layoffs leave some wary of lasting results"

I picked up the Pasadena Star News this morning, and saw this headline.

When I turned to the opinion page, I found another headline:

"The culture of PUSD must change"

The opinion piece is a Guest View by Ross Selvidge who emerged as the leader of the No on CC campaign. First let me state that, while I supported Measure CC, I do not claim there are no valid arguments against it.

That being said, I read through his piece, and just shook my head through the entire thing. It's a smug, gloating indictment of PUSD based on the same cherry-picked data and tired old tropes use during the campaign. No surprise, to be sure, but it's frustrating that the only people who seem to get local media attention with regard to PUSD are the ones who can boil the complex issues down to meaningless soundbites. The local papers have been accused of everything from laziness to outright bias on PUSD issues. It seems that they often pick up the phone to get easy quotes from the same old nattering nabobs of negativism who make a sport of sitting on the sidelines and taking pot shots. So I appreciate the factual tone of headline and the story on the front page today, and it was a disappointment to see such an uninformed and negative opinion piece in the same issue.

PUSD School Board Elections

Well, the slate for Pasadena Unified School Board (on the ballot Tuesday, March 10, 2009) is pretty grim. Two seats are going uncontested. Here is the line up:

Seat 1:
Elizabeth Pomeroy

Seat 3:
Scott Phelps
Terri Darr

Seat 5:
Ramon Miramontes
Charles Nelson

Seat 7:
Ed Honowitz

Charles Nelson evidently isn't very serious about winning. He has no web site, he hasn't answered the PEN Candidate Questionnaire and he didn't appear at the Candidate's Forum on Feb 28th in Altadena. Even the candidates running for uncontested seats managed to do this kind of due diligence.

So as far as I'm concerned, the only contest is seat 3. Interestingly, Phelps, the incumbent and a former Muir teacher with children in the district, did not get the Teacher's Union endorsement. Somehow that makes me want to vote for him.

In an effort to get an even measure of all the candidates, PEN has created 10 questions which each has been invited to answer. You can find these and many other details in pdf form on their School Board Election page. I wanted to see the answers to their 10 questions side by side, so I have copied and pasted them in full below for those who are interested.

In a nutshell, I like Phelps because he's got young children in the district, he's got teaching credibility, he's got Board experience, and says things like "Our schools are not very user-friendly." I think we need people on the Board who think in terms of making the schools more "user friendly."

I've made my personal choices bold in the slate above.

Full PEN Candidate Questionnaire responses

Consolidated PEN candidate responses for Seat 3

PSN focus on Education

Pasadena Star News deserves credit (clicks and eyeballs) for giving us a dedicated Eduction section on their website to complement their new Tuesday section on the same subject.

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/education

This kind of substantial reporting about PUSD that goes beyond the scandal-du-jour is to be commended. Please vote with your clicks and visit it every week.

(One day maybe they'll even give us the Education article RSS feed I've been asking for)

Will Instant Runoffs Trickle Down to PUSD?

This article caught my eye today:

Senate committee considers bill allowing instant-runoff voting

By STEVE LAWRENCE - Associated Press Writer

Published 12:10 pm PDT Sunday, July 8, 2007

Voters could express their first, second, third, fourth and maybe even more choices in local government elections under legislation scheduled to be considered this week by a state Senate committee.

Read the full story here:
http://www.mercurynews.com/article/ci_6328234?

PUSD BOE election results

Here are the results from yesterday's election, according to the website of the City Clerk. According to the election rules, a candidate must get 50% or more of the vote to win, so despite a commanding lead, Cooper will have to go up against Mastromatteo in a runoff. As predicted, Bib and Bob will have a rematch as well.

In a result that surprised me, the Stonehill News favorite for a Seat 6 landslide, Roberta Martinez, lost in what turned out to be a close race to the better funded Tom Selinske. I had at first assumed that a disparity in campaign financing might be an explanation, but I just heard from Roberta who informed me that in the end she and Selinske rang in at about $11,000 and $13,000 respectively... so that takes that theory off the table.

Seat 2	Votes	%
George Loew	3,513	24.6%
Mark Mastromatteo	3,674	25.7%
Renatta Cooper	7,083	49.6%
Seat 4	Votes	%
George Lewis	720	4.9%
Bob Harrison	5,238	35.9%
William A. Bibbiani	6,783	46.5%
Milena Albert	1,831	12.5%
Seat 6	Votes	%
Roberta H. Martinez	6,881	48.3%
Tom Selinske	7,357	51.6%

How will you vote for PUSD BOE?

Find out where your polling place is at www.lavote.net, a website that let's you look up your polling location and view a pdf sample ballot if you like.

Follow the results as they are reported tomorrow on the Pasadena Star News tally

Tonight I compared notes with Isaac and Norah and wrapped up our opinions in a table with those other public endorsements I found which put a stake in the ground for all three seats.

Haven't made up your mind yet? Looking for a cheat sheet? Take a look at how the tiny sampling I took is stacking it up.

Updated 3/6/07 9:30am Stonehill News "finger-in-the-wind" poll results:

	Seat 2	Seat 4	Seat 6
Norah Small	Cooper	Harrison	Martinez
Jeremiah Small	Cooper	Harrison	Martinez
Isaac Garcia	Mastro...	Bibbiani	Martinez
Larry Harter	Mastro...	Harrison	Selinske
Steve Gerow	Mastro...	Bibbiani	Martinez
Gino Sund	Mastro...	Bibbiani	Selinske
Walter Olszewski	Cooper	Albert	Martinez
Catherine Anderson	Cooper	Harrison	Martinez
PW	Cooper	Bibbiani	Martinez
PSN	Mastro...	Bibbiani	Martinez
UTofP	Cooper	Harrison	Martinez
Rene Amy	NOTA	Bibbiani	NOTA

Seat 2 runoff with Cooper and Mastromatteo

Seat 4 runoff with Bibbiani and Harrison

Seat 6 for Martinez by a landslide

What is PEF?

On Wednesday, I invited the pasadenaschools.info email list to surf over to my BOE opinions on this blog. Readers will recall that in my summary of current BOE election leanings, I alluded to at least two of the three seats having candidates with close affiliations to PEF.

Drawing this correlation, elicited comments from "neal" (no last name provided) and sparked a thread on pasadenaschools.info.

Both discussions are highly recommended reading.

Tip: Yahoo Groups threads can be traversed chronologically by clicking "next message" and "prev message" at the top and bottom of each post, or you may use the thread "tree" at the bottom of each message to hop around.

Some BOE feedback

Some people are shy. Some people may have conflicts of interest. Whatever the reason, here are some worthwhile comments from people who emailed me but requested anonymity:

Anon: Why is being a current PUSD parent more important than being a public school parent, in general. Just being a PUSD parent doesn’t make you qualified to be on the Board. I think that you need a solid understanding of the education field, otherwise, you just become another bureaucrat telling teachers how they should teach. Don’t you think that it’s beneficial to have a background in education, as well as thorough understanding of the complicated social issues in Pasadena?

Me: True being a current PUSD parent in and of itself is not enough, but still it's a heavy plus for me. Proves a commitment to these schools and this community. Especially Harrison whose last 2 kids of 5 are almost through with high school.

Debating BOE over lunch with Isaac

So Isaac Garcia, Steve Gerow and I went to lunch on Yesterday and compared notes. Here are our early returns:

Isaac
Seat 2: Mastromatteo (very involved PUSD parent)
Seat 4: Bibbiani (incumbent; often a dissenting voice)
Sear 6: Martinez (community leader with a diverse perspective)

Jeremiah
Seat 2: Mastromatteo (very involved PUSD parent)
Seat 4: Harrison (very involved PUSD parent; associated with PEF)
Sear 6: Martinez (community leader with a diverse perspective)

Steve
abstained

Capsule summary of discussion:

Picking three for PUSD BOE

So March 6th, Altadena, Sierra Madre and Pasadena vote for three new PUSD BOE memebers.

League of Women Voters lists the candidates for seats two, four, and six, although the candidate information is pretty sparse there.

PEN (Pasadena Education Network) has been collecting and publishing information for a month already, and despite their election info presentation being a bit crude, the information is very comprehensive, so worth suffering the mashup of pdfs and awkward html. (In fairness, their web site has come a long way in the last couple years and at least the Microsoft Word docs are all been published as pdfs these days).

Update, Tuesday, Feb 13: I just visited the PEN website, and they have created a nicely updated election info page. The old content is still there for now, but you can see the new content by visiting the homepage or going to www.penfamilies.org/election

Texas kids trained to swarm

I read the article quoted at the end of this post in this morning's paper. Inexplicably, it elicited a kind of primal emotional response from me, much stronger even than the stories of the Amish school or any of the seemingly endless tide of stories of sociopaths/terrorists victimizing innocents.

I think this story in particular caused a notable emotional reaction in me because it underscores how numerous almost imperceptible shifts in reality have combined over time to the point where people are now beginning to train children in our civil society how to fight a gunman.

Whether the idea that our neighborhoods in the U.S. are more dangerous is real or imagined (aside: I am skeptical), there seems to be a shift in society's acknowledgement of (dare I say, obsession with) the fact that the world is a dangerous place. What I have always found irritating about typical media hype and irrational fear is the implication that innocence equals weakness, which this article does not. Somehow we generally think of an adult, and generally a man, when we think of the stereotype of "hero". So this story hits me from two sides. I feel righteous pride at the thought of innocents pooling their power to overcome evil, even as I balk at the thought of them having to be concerned with such things, which, while frightening, are unlikely to an extreme.

A penchant for PUSD

With just over 500 subscribers to their online newsletter, the Pasadena Education Network <http://penfamilies.org> may seem to have a small footprint relative to the 20,000 families in the district, but I don't think the impact of word of mouth should be underestimated. Word of mouth is how I first heard about PEN (before the even had a website). It seems to me that PEN families ripple the PEN message out to other families in their neighborhoods via the "mommy network," as I have heard it called. Many of these families may never subscribe to PEN's email announcement loop, but the advice of a family friend is far more robust than any form of parent outreach the district could hope to engage in itself.

This kind of message spreads slowly, but is strong if it takes root. Other parents we know started considering their education options years before they were ready to make a commitment. In my family's case, we started looking at schools almost three years before we were ready to enroll in kindergarten. According to a recent PEN newsletter, they are just two years old, so if my observation is true, the district should just be starting to reap the benefits of the seeds that PEN has planted.

Amy's offensive defense

In a strange tale of mistrust and dare I say paranoia, I was banned from posting to Rene Amy's "greatschools" email group last week, and over the weekend he kicked me out altogether.

After Amy's troubles stemming from being temporarily shut down by Yahoo! either due to allegations of violating their Terms of Service, or a hacker, he defensively closed his reincarnated list archives to the public.

I am guessing that Mr. Amy was suspicious that I was somehow behind his troubles. Not only is this false, but I think turning him in to Yahoo! was a counterproductive cheap shot. I reached out to Mr. Amy privately, offering technical support, etc, but I suppose these offers may have been viewed as a Trojan Horse if he suspected that I was somehow involved.

Anyway, given the circumstances, I emailed him privately to see how he felt about me quoting from his posts outside of his group. In his reply explicitly requested that I "*not* post material" from him.

PUSD: to give us pixels not pulp?

I just got back from tonight's PUSD "7-11 committee" meeting where I was promised pdfs of all the new demographic data that was compiled for the committee to use, as well as all the handouts and reports that were distributed tonight and here forward.

Let's hope this comes to pass and becomes the start of a new habit for the district, because I also came away with a 6" stack of historical reports that I had requested copies of, including the huge "District-Wide Facilities Master Plan" from 1999. Unfortunately these (recent) historical documents were not easily available in anything but paper, so that is what they gave me.

What do I want with a huge stacks of paper? I'm a pixel-pusher (as in pencil-pusher, not the other kind of pusher). I will just be digitizing them as time permits over the next few weeks (thank goodness we have access to high speed scanning, but even then it is a bit of a time consuming chore). And even then, the documents will be basically opaque to search. It would save the district plenty of money if they could satisfy even a small percentage of their information requests with pdfs instead of paper.

Clark takes Noyes off table

In response to the massive showing that Altadenans for Action mustered at last night's Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Percy Clark took a moment to speak on the non-agenda item.

Clark stated that he and the board officially withdraw Noyes as a potential site for a high school program. This proclamation was greeted by enthusiastic applause from the audience, and numerous Altadenans who had filled out public comment cards in anticipation of having to argue against the proposal, modified their comments to express thanks to the board for being responsive to the community's concerns.

During the comment period there was still broad concern conveyed by the community about the potential for segregation in the implementation of the proposed high school reform plans. It was evident that the board also strongly heard and agreed with this message in their discussion of Attachment R-1 titled "Priorities 06-07" which ensued later in the evening.

The board ended up approving a motion by Mike Babock to endorse the seven general priorities presented by staff, however specifically refrained from providing the weighted "A or B" prioritization staff was requesting. Noteably, they did make a special point of setting the high school reform plan aside as the one priority of the seven that specifically needed more study before it could move forward. It seemed that those on the board who had expressed concerns about the high school reform proposal at last month's meeting were emboldened, an any who may have been neutral or positive about moving forward for fall of 06 are taking a serious second look at the issue.

[greatschools]: "uncle!"

After three days of having his Yahoo! Group email list deluged by me, Rene Amy sent me a polite back channel communique requesting a cease fire. He peppered it with minor digs and rationalizations such as

"it seems that you don't know a lot of answers to simple questions about the district that longer-tenured members are already somewhat painfully aware of"

"I hesitate to respond to many of your posts because I do not
wish to alienate list members by boring them with the answers"

But for the most part it was a respectful and tactfully worded letter full of phrases such as

"I don't want to appear to limit you"

"your enthusiasm and concern are most welcome to the list"

In a follow up email in which I agreed to contain my "flood of politeness", Mr. Amy consented to my publishing of his request, saying, "I've always adhered to the principle that one should never put anything in print that shouldn't be expected to show up on the front page of the newspaper."

Surviving [greatschools]

In a (rather lengthy) open letter to Rene Amy which I recently posted to Amy's private Yahoo! Group called greatschools, and circulated to the media and other interest groups, I have consciously stepped into the debate with a challenge to all parties to reign in the rhetoric.

Amy's [greatschools] Yahoo! Group is archived online and can be searched by members of the group. Non-members cannot read the archives or post to the list, ostensibly to prevent spammers from polluting the list, although I am not sure why he also restricts read-only access to his archive. Anyone who wants to read it can subscribe to the Yahoo! Group for free. Access to the Yahoo! Groups archive requires a Yahoo! ID.

I was extremely ambivalent about weighing in on Amy's list, because he and his main supporters are often acerbic in their public and semi-public "discussions" which often seem more like drubbings. I came down in favor of engaging with him in the (probably naive) hope that I might be able to influence the general tone of things.

Altadenans for Action takes shape

Steve Escovar, Isaac Garcia, and I represented the newly formed Altadenans for Action (AFA) at the Pasadena Education Foundation (PEF) meeting yesterday which (I think) was originally scheduled as a fundraising and general community outreach event.

According to the host, Jeanne Register, the turn out was much larger than predicted, most likely due to the heightened community concern about the proposed use for Noyes.

In attendance were, PUSD Superintendent, Percy Clark, President of the PUSD BOE, Ed Honowitz, the PEF supporters (somewhat bemused), the usual cohort of angry parents and rabble rousers that seem drawn to controversy, and neighbors of Noyes with an agenda.

Coordinating opposition to Noyes proposal

Isaac Garcia set up a "Central Desktop" for collaborating and coordinating opposition to the proposed use of Noyes.

I contributed pasadenaschools.info as a shortcut in case anyone finds it an easier name to remember than the direct url.

Please forward any factual information you may discover (with complete provenance please) to Isaac or me if you don't see it on the site already and can't figure out how to contribute directly.

We would like to make a special point of avoiding all speculative, unsubstantiated, unattributed, mean-spirited, or generally useless information.

Let's stick to the facts and play nice. Many of us feel strongly about this issue, but it is still early, and I am optimistic that the practical problems are so obvious that this plan will founder under it's own weight. This is not to say we shouldn't speak out strongly and quickly, but again, let our voice be constructive and solution oriented.

Convert Noyes for 700 Troubled Teens?

An article in yesterday's Pasadena Star News reports that PUSD "officials want to turn the Noyes Elementary School campus into a continuation school for struggling high school students."

This is a major problem as far as I am concerned, and yes, I admit I am exhibiting NIMBY syndrome here, but an influx of "600 to 700 students in grades 10 to 12" into this neighborhood is not to my liking. Even if they can somehow find enough parking for that may high school students and support staff, it will still mean huge neighborhood parking overflow. This is not to mention the incoming commute-time crush of vehicles converging on Allen and Altadena. The thought of 700 teenage drivers flowing out and around this neighborhood does not make me happy.