Miramonte Elementary, which has been rocked in the past several days by allegations that two long-time teachers engaged in lewd acts with students, opened today with new teachers, front office staff and janitors.

Superintendent John Deasy elected to move the entire staff after one teacher, Mark Berndt, was charged with 23 counts of lewd acts against a child. He remains in jail on a bail of $23 million.

Three days after Berndt's arrest, a second teacher, Martin Springer, was accused of fondling two students. One of Springer's accusers has since recanted her story, the Los Angeles Times reports. Bail for Springer was set at $300,000.

In the meantime, the investigation at the 1,500-student school has turned up a 2009 case in which a teacher's aide there was accused of writing love letters to a student who was an 11-year-old fourth-grader at the time.

The mother told the Times that her concerns were dismissed when she first brought the letters to the attention of school administrators. From the article:

One letter, meant as a short-term farewell note, included a passage that the mother found especially disturbing: "When I was writing this letter, I was crying. My heart was breaking into pieces," wrote the teacher's aide, who has been identified as Areceli Luisjuan. "Oh! I didn't tell you that I like when you put your arm around my shoulder, and if I told you not to do that it's because I don't want to put you in trouble, but I like it..."

The episode has become the subject of a law enforcement inquiry and an internal review by the Los Angeles Unified School District. According to the mother, however, sheriff's deputies and the school system failed to take her seriously the first time she brought the matter to their attention.

From news reports, it seems that many parents were upset about the upheaval in staffing. One commenter on this blog has written that "Deasy decided to take control of the crisis... by smearing the reputation of the whole staff at Miramonte! He ordered them removed, because of the actions of two criminals. Deasy is the leader of the second largest district in the nation, and his brilliant solution was to punish the whole staff, by vanishing them to an unfinished school, until next year? Talk about deflecting and redirecting blame."

The Times, however, says he is doing his best. Please share your thoughts on the situation here.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The entire staff of a 1,500-student Los Angeles elementary school will be relocated while the district and police investigate allegations that two teachers at the school performed lewd acts on children enrolled there.

John E. Deasy, the superintendent of the 664,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, stated in a letter that prescreened staff members new to the school will start teaching at Miramonte Elementary School by Thursday, and stay until the end of the year. Each classroom will include an instructor and a counselor.

In addition, the letter says, the district will offer counseling services to all students at the school, past and present. The district also plans to work with an independent commission led by a retired California Supreme Court judge, which will "review our processes and provide recommendations so that every LAUSD school can learn from this experience."

"Some might see this as an extreme measure but this is an extreme circumstance. I need to take action within the scope of what I can control," Deasy said in his letter.

Monica Carazo, a spokeswoman for the school system, told Education Week that 128 teachers and front-office staff are moving to a school building that is opening next year and currently has no students. The janitorial staff is also moving, and the employees will stay there until the end of the school year or "until the superintendent sees fit," she said. The teachers who will be moving to Miramonte Elementary come from the ranks of teachers who had been laid off from the district because of a budget deficit, she explained.

The moves at Miramonte Elementary were made after the arrest Jan. 30 of Mark Berndt, who is described as a well-liked teacher who had taught at the school for 31 years. The Los Angeles Times reports that in late 2010, a photo technician at a convenience store saw pictures of young children blindfolded and with tape over their mouths, and reported the photos to authorities. During the investigation, police say they saw pictures of students with a blue plastic spoon with a milky white substance held near their mouths.

Police found a spoon and container in his classroom and they tested positive for Berndt's semen. The paper reported that Berndt told his students they were playing a "tasting game." Other pictures reportedly showed children with a three-inch Madagascar roach on their faces or mouths.

Berndt was removed from the school in January 2011 after district administrators saw the pictures, and as the district prepared to fire him, he retired. He was arrested a year later and charged with 23 counts of lewd acts against children. He is in custody, with bail set at $23 million. (Read Deasy statement on Berndt's arrest here.)

Three days after Berndt's arrest, a second teacher at the school, Martin Springer, was arrested on charges that he fondled two 7-year-old students in the classroom, the Los Angeles Times reported. Both teachers knew each other, and would sometimes take their students on joint field trips, according to the Times. Springer, who was charged with lewd acts upon a child, is being held on $2 million bail. (Read Deasy statement on Springer's arrest here.)

No statements were available today from either of the accused men or their lawyers.

The allegations shocked the school community, many of whom pulled their children from the classroom. Some demanded that all the teachers at the school be investigated. Deasy's letter does say that "every former Miramonte student and staff member" will be interviewed.

"I am not going to wait for any other surprises at Miramonte," Deasy said.

Photo: Parents from Miramonte Elementary School turn out to meet with Los Angeles School Superintendent John Deasy at South Region High School in Los Angeles on Feb. 6. (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times/AP)

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Mississippi State Superintendent Tom Burnham has asked the state legislature for $2.5 million to launch a training program for district leaders, saying some of the leaders have "been asked to do things they don't know how to do."

The request was reported by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, which noted in the article that 60 of the states'152 school superintendents are new this year. Seven of those districts have state-appointed conservators.

The turnover comes from retirements and elected superintendents either choosing not to run again, or being defeated in their re-election bids. From the article:

"Many of the new superintendents have worked in education as principals or central office administrators, including some assistant superintendents, said Dwight Luckett, superintendent of Canton schools and president of MASS [the Mississippi Association of School Superintendents.]

MASS also offers training that new superintendents who are members are encouraged to attend. What also would help would be more collaboration between superintendents, Luckett said."

That opinion is shared by Joyce B. McNair, the executive director of the Delta Area Association for Improvement of Schools and a former elected superintendent. From from 2000 to 2007, she led the 1,800-student Humphreys County School District in Belzoni, about 70 miles north of Jackson.

McNair told me that the state offered a training program that allowed her to focus on administration issues during monthly meetings with other new district leaders. "That was the best training we could have had," she said.

McNair said she didn't know if the Mississippi was planning to follow a similar model for this new superintendents' academy but having a cohort of fellow leaders to talk to about problems and concerns was valuable to her, even though she became superintendent after working in the central office. "When you become superintendent, there can be so many things hitting you that you never think about," she said.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The recession forced both New York and New Jersey to make changes in how they allocated education finances, but the results were strikingly different between the two states, according to reports released by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The recession is officially considered to have begun in December 2007, the report notes. In New York, statewide spending on instruction showed little difference between 2008-09, the first school year after the recession's start, and 2009-10. However, there was a drop in spending on transportation, utilities and maintenance in districts in New York over the same period, according to the data. The region that saw the largest drop on spending relative to trend was relatively affluent Long Island.

In contrast, New Jersey had more severe cuts in both instruction and in transportation and other non-instructional spending. And the New Jersey regions that showed the largest drop in spending compared to previous trends are home to the state's poorest districts.

The Federal Reserve Bank posted its New York report Monday, and the report on New Jersey today. The federal reserve bank also released a document in slide form that compiles key factors from both reports.

Rajashri Chakrabarti, a regional economist for the reserve bank and the lead author on both reports, explained to me that both reports measured spending against previous trends. Using data from prior years, the economists were able to estimate what spending would have been, had the economy remained healthy. A downward deviation from that trend line was noted as a decline, even if there was little change in absolute numbers.

Chakrabarti said that both states showed a shift towards federal funding and away from state and local funding soon after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which funneled $5.6 billion to New York and $2.2 billion to New Jersey in federal economic-stimulus funds.

She said that high-poverty districts in New Jersey had the biggest declines in instructional spending compared to trend because those districts had extensive capital improvement programs that were planned in better economic times and that had to be paid for. In contrast, more-affluent districts in New York saw the largest drop compared to previous trends, because with few poor students, they did not get as much stimulus dollars as other districts.

The bank does not offer any policy prescriptions, but it does plan to follow school finances as part of its charge to monitor its local economy, Chakrabarti said. The bank is one of 12 in the country, each of which is in charge of monitoring a different region.

But with the bulk of the stimulus money spent and the economic recovery still very weak, "the future may not be that rosy" for finances in the region, she said.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Chester, Pa. Community Charter School and the Chester-Upland School District are partnering to come up with a way for the district to stay solvent through the end of the school year.

The funding would come from new money and a shift in previously allocated money, Thomas Persing, Chester-Upland's acting assistant superintendent, told me today. All told, it would bring about $28.5 million to the district.

Chester-Upland has laid off its top leaders, so Persing, a former superintendent who has made a second career out of being a turnaround specialist for troubled Pennsylvania school districts, is running Chester-Upland at the cost of $800 a day. Without more funds, the district will run out of money by Wednesday, he said.

The K-8 charter school educates about 3,000 students in this small city between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., and the Chester-Upland district has an enrollment of about 3,700 students. For years, the district has struggled with academic achievement and financial stability, finally stating earlier this month that it wouldn't be able to meet its Jan. 18 payroll. A federal judge ordered that the district be given $3.2 million from the state, which gave the district a few more weeks of operating funds.

Teachers in the beleaguered district have said they will stay in the classroom for as long as possible, a stance that earned one Chester Upland teacher, Sara Ferguson, a visit to Washington as a guest of the president during the recent State of the Union address.

The charter school has named the district as well as the state in a lawsuit it filed late last year to get education funds it says it was owed. The Chester-Upland district has also sued the state. But the district and the charter school have put aside their differences to present this proposal, Persing said.

The state has not responded to district and charter school's proposal, but Gov. Tom Corbett has said that the students of Chester-Upland will finish the school year in the district. Persing said he doesn't see how that can happen without an infusion of cash.

"It's imperative that the student and the parents and the citizens know what's being planned for them," he said.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The federal Race to the Top competition rewarded states for tying teacher evaluations to student performance, a movement that has been picked up by other school reform advocates.

But some principals are saying that these sorts of evaluation systems are creating a tremendous workload—and there's no proof that it is creating better teachers. From a story in the Christian Science Monitor:

Sharon McNary believes in having tough teacher evaluations.

But these days, the Memphis principal finds herself rushing to cram in what amounts to 20 times the number of observations previously required for veteran teachers—including those she knows are excellen—sometimes to the detriment of her other duties.

"I don't think there's a principal that would say they don't agree we don't need a more rigorous evaluation system," says Ms. McNary, who is president of the Tennessee Principals Association as well as principal at Richland Elementary. "But now it seems that we've gone to [the opposite] extreme."

In New York, which is also beginning to implement a new teacher evaluation system this year, many principals are even less constrained in their opinion.

"There is no evidence that any of this works," says Carol Burris, a Long Island principal who co-authored an open letter of concern with more than 1,200 other principals in the state. "Our worry is that over time these practices are going to hurt kids and destroy the positive culture of our schools."

The New York Times explored the same issue in a November article, also using Tennessee as an example. Tennessee comes up often in these articles because along with Delaware, it was one of the first Race to the Top states. (I wrote a story about Memphis' teacher evaluation system in November.)

I'm curious to hear from other school leaders who are in states or districts that are implementing these reforms. Are you given enough time to perform evaluations on your teachers? Are these processes useful?

Want to keep up with school district news? Follow @district_doss on Twitter.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As the number of charter schools increase and the sector matures, these institutions that were created to be free from seemingly burdensome district rules are finding themselves collaborating more often with those same districts, says a report released this month from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, associated with the University of Washington Bothell.

Hopes, Fears and Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2011 says these connections come from the realization on the part of school districts that a "centrally delivered, one-size-fits-all approach simply is not viable," and that charter schools can play a role in providing quality options for students at risk of academic failure.

CRPE, which has produced five previous editions of this report, supports what it calls a "portfolio" approach to district management. Portfolio districts include schools operated in the traditional way as well as schools that have new education models and follow different rules.

Some examples of partnerships mentioned in the report include a collaboration involving the IDEA Public Schools charter network. the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District, and Teach for America to recruit and train high-quality teachers. As another example, the report notes that the Denver district used bond funds to build a facility and lease it to the Omar D. Blair Charter School, which serves K-8 students.

The report also talks about how districts and charters have worked together on fair enrollment systems, systems that ensure special education students are served equitably, and methods of sharing facilities and finances.

"Together, districts and charter schools are working on some of the most difficult problems that choice creates in order to reap the deepest and most widespread promise that choice offers," the report states.

The report also notes that for the 2010-11 school year, 5,275 charter schools enrolled 1.8 million students, or about 4 percent of all public school students. Charter schools, though still primarily located in urban areas, are enrolling a larger percentage of students in small towns and rural locations, according to the report. Those students now make up about 20 percent of charter school enrollment. The percentage of Hispanic students enrolled in charter schools is also increasing, from 19 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2009, the report states. And the number of freestanding charter schools is increasing faster than the number of charter schools run by charter-management organizations.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The board that runs Philadelphia schools has created an entirely new management structure for the 146,000-student district, in hopes that the new leaders can help the district deal with a looming $61 million budget shortfall.

Kristen Graham at the Philadelphia Inquirer has the details on the moves of the district's School Reform Commission:

The SRC named Thomas Knudsen to a new title of chief recovery officer—he will function both as superintendent and chief financial officer. Knudsen, who previously led a turnaround at the Philadelphia Gas Works, will work on a $150,000, six-month contract.

...

Penny Nixon, formerly associate superintendent for academics, becomes chief academic officer. She will report directly to the SRC.

Leroy Nunery, the former acting superintendent, and Michael Masch, former chief financial officer, are both staying on as special advisers, but will take pay cuts.

Nunery will report directly to the SRC and focus on examining how business and services are delivered to schools—essentially heading an effort to decentralize some of the district's operations. Masch will report to Knudsen and continue to work on financial matters.

The Philadelphia Public School Notebook also has a thorough article on the changes.

After former Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman resigned in spectacular fashion last summer, Nunery was appointed as acting superintendent. Now with Knudsen assuming that role, district leaders are hoping they can fill the shortfall with salary cuts and cuts to programs such as gifted education and bilingual education.

Knudsen has no background in education; his previous position was as the chief executive officer of Philadelphia Gas Works. In this Inquirer profile, he's praised for his business acumen and ability to turn around struggling organizations.

"It's certainly not going to be easy," he told the newspaper. "We cannot allow it to fail."

Posted by Christina Samuels at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the Atlanta school system has been directed to repay more than $363,000 it received from the federal government for having schools that scored well on the state Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.

Those high test scores were called into question in a extensive investigation that said close to 200 educators cheated on the CRCT in order to achieve those results.

The schools received anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for appearing to make adequate yearly progress three years in a row. But because those schools are not accused of test tampering, they don't deserve the award, state Superintendent John Barge told the newspaper. "It is the right thing to do," he said. From the story:

The unexpected repayment is only a small part of the school district's budget of about $600 million, but it comes as APS is absorbing other costs from the cheating scandal. In addition to almost $700,000 in legal fees, the district pulled $6 million from savings to pay the salaries and benefits of educators on paid administrative leave as a result of the investigation. Those salaries amount to $600,000 per month.

The district also is anticipating a $60 million shortfall next budget year if it doesn't curb spending or pull from savings.

Still, Atlanta Superintendent Erroll Davis said the district should not have a problem repaying the bonus money.

"We have quietly done a good job of budget discipline and cost cutting," Davis said. "So even with this unanticipated amount, I am comfortable we'll be able to meet our budget for this year."

Posted by Christina Samuels at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Nearly 200 New Jersey school board members who were at risk of losing their positions because they failed to comply with a new law requiring a criminal background check have been granted a reprieve by the state.

The school board members who have not finished the check now have until Jan. 27 to register with the state and get fingerprinted.

The state gave board members until Dec. 31 to comply with the law, which was signed by Republican Gov. Chris Christie in May. But because of delays in implementation and confusion about what was required, some members put off submitting their fingerprints to the state, said Frank Belluscio, the spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. "There was just a lack of urgency," he told me.

By late last week, the state released the names of 185 school board members and charter school trustees who were deemed ineligible to stay in office because they lacked a background check. The state has 4,702 school board members and about 600 charter school trustees, Belluscio said. Other board members declined to participate, saying that the law was an invasion of privacy. Even the lawmakers who had supported the bill said they were concerned about the law's implementation.

By late Friday, Christopher Cerf, the acting commissioner of education, said the board members would be given more time.

"Our priority throughout this process is to ensure compliance with the law while minimizing disruption to boards of education," Department of Education spokesman Justin Barra said in a statement.

New Jersey is unique among the states in requiring school board members to submit to a criminal background check, Belluscio said. The school board association wasn't in favor of the bill, saying that school board members, unlike teachers and volunteers, do not work directly with children. However, because the association supported background checks on school employees and school volunteers, it felt it could not fight efforts to bring school board members under the same policy.

So far, nine school board members and three charter trustees have been deemed ineligible to serve on their boards because of information turned up during their background checks, Belluscio said.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend