Meetings about proposed ICEF co-location: Stoner ES "empty" classrooms explained

     This past week, LAUSD held two meetings in the Stoner Elementary School auditorium for parents and community members to inform them of the proposed co-location of ICEF Vista on the Stoner ES campus for 2015/16. Since these were open meetings, I invited ICEF administration, teachers, members of the board and community to attend the meetings so that they could hear first hand the concerns of the Stoner parents and the neighborhood community about any co-location. A few ICEF parents showed up, but no ICEF officials attended.
    Once again, the Stoner community was told that "empty" classrooms on campus would be given to a charter school. Principal Stapleton explained that according to the Prop. 39  co-location assessment, Stoner ES had 15 "empty" classrooms. Prop. 39 methodology only counts as full a classroom with a teacher and a roster of students. Any set-aside rooms or special program rooms are considered "empty." 
     In reality, of the 15 "empty" classrooms, only 1 room is truly not being used. The other 14 "empty" rooms are being used for:  a 60 instrument orchestral music program, a computer lab, art classes, the parents center, a theater program, LA’s Best (after school program), a Speech therapist, a virtual dental clinic; a counselor, a psychologist, a teaching & learning PD, an AP office and adult English education classes for the community.
     Removing any of these rooms and resources would be devastating to the students of Stoner Elementary and the local community it serves.
     Next year, Stoner will also be starting a Bilingual Spanish Maintenance program and building a STEM (Science, technology, engineering & math) laboratory. These programs were not taken into account by the Prop 39 assessment. The bilingual program currently has enough students signed up for 2 classes of K for Fall 2015/16.

     ICEF is asking for 9 rooms. Which of these nine programs would you have us give up or reduce to make space for a co-location? Which programs would you give up if your children and community were involved? The bilingual program? the STEM lab? Music? Arts? Counselor, psychologist, dental clinic? The after school program or theater?
      What do you think the atmosphere will be like on campus? How do you think the Stoner students will feel knowing that they won't have orchestra or art anymore because of the ICEF students are in those rooms? How will the ICEF student feel on campus?

     This co-location would have the local Del Rey community fighting over resources in their own community with their own neighbors. The few ICEF parents who attended the informational meeting expressed concern and distress at what the co-location would truly mean not only for Stoner, but for their own children.
     I hope that ICEF is able to understand that this proposed co-location is a bad idea and the request should be withdrawn immediately, but the Stoner community is not taking any chances and is going to make sure that they hear our concerns loud and clear.

     This coming week, the Stoner community will be conducting a letter writing/emailing campaign and collecting signatures for a petition opposing the colocation to present to the ICEF Board of Trustees at their monthly meeting this Thursday, February 19.
     Our hope is that ICEF will drop its bid for rooms and not continue the colocation process past the March 1 deadline to respond to the Feb 1 preliminary co-location proposal.
   

LAUSD Report card released, confirms colocation created safety concerns

   In January, we received the 2013/14 report card for Stoner Avenue Elementary School. The results were good and the school improved on many measures. However, there was one measure that went down significantly: campus safety.

     For the school years 2011/12 and 2012/13, 84% of Stoner ES parents responded "my child is safe on school grounds." Yet for 2013/14, the year of the co-location, only 67% of the parents agreed "School grounds are safe." Why the drastic drop?
     The report card has been discussed at various meetings of different school councils and committees and when the issue of safety came up, the majority opinion was that the co-location of CWC Mar Vista was the safety issue.
    During the co-location, parents were concerned about what was happening on the CWC side of campus: CWC students bullying Stoner special needs students in the bathroom, CWC parents and teachers in the students' only bathroom; CWC leaving their entrance gate open and unlocked so that CWC parents could enter campus freely, a special needs child escaping campus; and most disturbing of all that a CWC student was stripped naked and hosed down on campus.
    All of this created great concern for the parents about the safety on campus of the Stoner students. The consensus opinion of the Stoner ES parents was that the co-location made the campus less safe for our children.

¿Co-location? ICEF requests space at Stoner for 2015/16

    After last year's disastrous co-location of Citizens of the World Charter Mar Vista at Stoner Avenue Elementary School, we didn't expect a co-location request so soon, but today we received notice from LAUSD that ICEF Vista Elementary Charter Academy has requested a co-location at Stoner ES for 2015/16.
     I hope ICEF knows what they are asking for. The previous co-location united the school and local Del Rey community against co-locations and galvanized both communities' opposition to co-locations at our community schools. The communities' mettle was tested and this time they are experienced and organized.
      The previous co-location was met with petitions, protests (#1, #2, #3) and gang activity. The school year ended with the co-location being terminated and the charter's executive director resigning. If you don't believe it, peruse this blog. It's all documented here. Plus, the story was reported in print media (here, here, here and here), on Television (here and here), and radio (here.)

_________________
 ***Is this really happening again? or has Stoner become LAUSD's  joke non-offer like the Horce Mann offer to CWC last year? You know they aren't going to accept, but at least LAUSD could say they offered something. Either way, we aren't taking any chances and will be opposing this co-location full force. For all involved, I hope that ICEF declines this co-location sooner rather than later.

Shifting gears: Amigos de Stoner Avenue Elementary

    Based on many of the anonymous emails and comments I received over the past year, it seems that many in the CWC community believed that the local community was upset by CWC's philosophy. In reality, the main problem with CWC last year was its location.

    The main reason the community wanted CWC off of Stoner campus was that if CWC stayed it would have limited the resources available to our our children and our school, but now that there is no co-location at Stoner, it's time to shift gears and focus on continuing to build Stoner up and to highlight the good that our local school does for Del Rey community.
     As such, I am extremely proud to announce the formation of the booster club: Friends of Stoner Avenue Elementary School/ Amigos de Stoner Avenue Elementary School.

     Yesterday,  Amigos de Stoner released its first newsletter. You can read it here: friendsofstoner.org
 
   The first newsletter contains stories on:
1. Spanish Language maintenance program for 2015/16
2. Stoner named REWARDS school
3. new music program shines at winter recital
4. Free pre-K morning & afternoon.

   In other news, tonight in the Stoner auditorium at 5:30 PM, there will be a meeting about the Spanish language maintenance program that will be starting in 2015/16. Anyone interested is invited to attend.

   I am very excited about everything that is happening at Stoner and look forwards to working with the Amigso/Friends to help make Stoner ES the best school for our community.

Latest news: book,CWC public records request, LAPD follow up to stolen CWC signs

Happy New Year 2015! I can't believe it been almost a full year since I started this blog. I would never have imagined the adventure that was 2014.

    I haven't been checking in on this blog regularly any more, but I see people still are  and there were big spikes in views around Christmas and New Years. I guess people were checking in since I had promised the book for Christmas.
   Unfortunately, it seems like you all were very naughty citizens in 2014 and so no Christmas book for you...

    As for the book, it's coming along. I was planning on self publishing, but I thought I'd pitch the book to publishers and see if anyone bites. Who knows, an academic press might be interested in the book since the book is basically a case study in school co-location and covers topics ranging from law, education, public policy and segregation.

    One of the last loose ends I would like to tie up is to review the CWC documents relating to the hosing of the naked student. Not surprisingly, Citizens of the World has not been forthcoming with the documents. I don't want to have to sue for the documents, but it is looking like that may be the only way CWC will comply with the law and release the documents. The case would be titled "Me vs Citizens of the World." It has a nice ring to it.

    Finally, in other news, last Friday, I received a phone call from an LAPD investigator following up to the report of the incident of the CWC Mar Vista family stealing lawn signs. As a law librarian, I am well aware that the wheels of justice move slowly and 6 months is not a long time in terms of justice, but it is good to see that the dangerous conditions and criminal activity that the Citizens of the World Mar Vista community brought to our neighborhood are being taken seriously.

After last year, I can't even imagine what kind of adventures 2015 will bring.

"Empty" CWC rooms in use right now by Stoner music class

I just went to drop my daughter off for afternoon Pre-K at Stoner Elementary. As I turned the corner on to Stoner Avenue, I was surprised to see the doors to the rooms previously occupied by Citizens of the World Charter open, and then I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard: music.
     A music class was in session. The children were finishing tuning up and I was able to hear the first two bars of a piece before having to continue along to make it to school on time.
     This year, Stoner began music and dance programs. The school community is very excited about both programs and is glad we have the space to accommodate them.
    It's sad to think that if the co-location had continued at Stoner, we wouldn't have had the rooms for the programs since the rooms they use are considered "empty" by co-location guidelines, and we would have had to scrap the programs.
   I am very thankful that we have these programs at our local school. Del Rey has a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Book follow up #1 : [FLASHBACK] Frying Pan News "Why Charter Schools Are Tearing Public Campuses Apart."

The book on the CWC Mar Vista co-location at Stoner Elementary is coming along. I'm not a full time writer. So, these things take time. There are revisions, fact checking and other details to look into before sending the book to press.

Archive.org capture of the Frying Pan article "
Why Charters Schools are tearing public campuses apart"

     In doing my due diligence on the matter, I came across an article in the Huffington Post titled with the question  "Is Charter School Co-Location Tearing Public Schools Apart?" The article was published on July 17, 2013.  It contained one sentence that mentioned the then up-coming co-location of CWC on the Stoner Elementary school campus for 2013/14.

     I'm an avid HuffPo reader and I read this article in the Los Angeles section when it came out.  Back then, it didn't mean anything to me. I thought, "Good, a charter should come in and fix things around here. Stoner...pfft! What kind of school is that?"

   Recently, I looked a little deeper into the article and found the original version that was published on the Frying Pan News. It had a slightly different title "Why Charter Schools are Tearing Public Campuses Apart" which is a statement as opposed to the question in the HuffPo version. The Frying Pan version included a cartoon by political satirist and my favorite cartoonist, Lalo Alcaraz.

    In the cartoon [click here to see], Alcaraz captures exactly what it felt like at Stoner during the co-location. Our local little American community school house was being squeezed off campus by a corporate "Saks Fifth Avenue" charter school giant that did not "play well with others" and was taking more than their fair share of the public resources yet claimed to be thankful we were "sharing."
   This article and cartoon foreshadowed many of the problems we would later see in the co-location of Citizens of the World Charter Mar Vista at Stoner Avenue Elementary. It is interesting that this article that came out a year and a half ago and meant nothing to me then, stands out and resonates so strongly now. I can confidently answer the HuffPo article title and state "Yes, charter school co-locations are tearing public schools apart." It's too bad I didn't understand this hot message when it first came straight off the Frying Pan.