While the state Assembly takes a leisurely look at education reform, California may miss its chance to compete for a share of $4.35 billion in education stimulus funds.

The federal government this week detailed how it will judge applications for Race to the Top grants, due Jan. 19. To boost its application, California must show it’s serious about judging teacher and principal effectiveness, improving its data systems and turning around low-performing schools. That all requires new state laws.

However, despite a special session called by the governor, the Assembly isn’t meeting and Speaker Karen Bass said she won’t reconvene it until Jan. 4.

That would leave 15 days to draft, pass and sign bills, then put together an application. It would be “very, very difficult” to submit a competitive application, said Rick Miller, deputy state superintendent of schools. “We can’t write a plan” for reform, he said, “unless we know what the law will be.”

That may set up Sacramento for an ugly political situation in January. That’s when the governor will announce multi-billion-dollar midyear cuts to schools and more sizable reductions for the 2010-11 school year, both forced by plummeting state revenues. At the same time, the state may be taking a pass on $500 million that could be California’s share in the Race to the Top funds.

Those funds are intended to advance the most promising ideas in school reform, as the nation tackles lagging achievement and 30 percent dropout rate.

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The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to adopt a controversial resolution that could turn a third of the schools in the nation’s second-largest school district over to private operators.

The proposal, which gives Superintendent Ramon Cortines 60 days to develop a plan, was approved 6-1 after a contentious four-hour public hearing and board debate.

Proposals will be accepted from private charter school operators, local communities and the mayor’s office for the operation of 50 new schools that will open over the next four years, as well as 200 existing schools that are chronic underperformers.

School board member Marguerite LaMotte cast the only dissenting vote.

“I haven’t seen any research-based study that says giving away schools improves academic achievement,” LaMotte said.

Read more: http://sify.com/finance/la-school-board-approves-school-choice-plan-news-business-ji0duAhaffg.html

The Los Angeles Unified School District plans to sharply raise the property taxes of hundreds of thousands of L.A. homeowners because the recession has pushed down tax revenues needed to repay school bonds. The economic downturn has also caused a potential cash-flow crisis for the nation’s largest school-construction program.

The district is allowed to raise taxes under little-known legal protections for bond holders. In essence, if revenues from property taxes can’t cover installment payments for bond debt, L.A. Unified can raise tax rates, even if they rise above past projections.

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/15/local/me-lausd-bonds15

Federal investigators are examining whether a labor-affiliated nonprofit improperly funneled consulting fees to Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar and former Board of Education member David Tokofsky, according to sources close to the probe.

The inquiry is looking into payments of about $30,000 each to Huizar and Tokofsky by Voter Improvement Program Inc., a nonprofit headed by former local labor leader Miguel Contreras, who died in 2005. Investigators want to determine if Contreras was, in effect, using the nonprofit as a slush fund to reward allies, said the sources, who declined to be named because the investigation is ongoing and confidential.

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/06/local/me-lausd-probe6

Redrawing the dire high school graduation picture painted just a few months ago, Los Angeles Unified officials announced this week that the district’s dropout rate fell sharply in 2007-08 to about 26 percent.

The new figures were a wide discrepancy from statistics released in May that showed the dropout rate at about 34 percent.

District officials attributed the change to a new system to track graduation, increased efforts to find and re-enroll students and a previous system that double-counted some dropouts.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said the figures also prove that district reforms are working, but he stressed that the data also point to a need to maintain better records.

“I hope people realize that there is a lot of good going on in this district,” Cortines said.

“This also talks about the fact that we don’t do a very good job at the school or the district level of keeping data. … This isn’t satisfactory.”

Cortines said the May dropout figure was a “blow to the morale” of hard-working teachers, administrators, counselors and parents.

“We cannot afford to be sloppy,” Cortines added.

Read more: http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_12993399