Daily Report: K–12

Joanna Lin/California Watch Mary Nixon is one of two school nurses in Trinity County. The number of school nurses in California has dropped 13.3 percent in five years.

California is issuing fewer credentials for public school service positions such as librarians, school nurses and administrators, and its schools are employing fewer service staff, according to a recent report by the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The commission issued 11 percent fewer service credentials between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 school years. The number of people employed in service positions declined 9 percent during the same period, according to the report.

The findings [PDF], released last week, track credentials and employment in five areas: administrative services; teacher librarian services; school nurses; speech-language pathology, and clinical or rehabilitative services; and pupil personnel services, which include school counselors, psychologists, social workers, and child welfare and attendance workers...

Eric Paul Zamora/The Fresno Bee Donell Stiers reviews documents related to her son's expulsion from Fresno Unified School District.

Fresno Unified School District Superintendent Michael Hanson said he never told a special education student's parent that he would have the district pay his legal fees if he fired his attorney.

Hanson spoke to California Watch on May 4 – the day it published a story about the district's ongoing dispute with the student's family – after declining repeated requests for comment for more than a month. 

Hanson zeroed in on a claim made in a court declaration by Pablo Lopez, a longtime Fresno Bee reporter, that in August, while Lopez's son was pending expulsion, Hanson offered a deal: The district would pay Lopez's legal fees if Lopez fired the attorney he hired to handle a special education complaint against the district. The family said it declined the offer.

"Never did I say – I don't think I would even use the phrase – 'to fire your attorney,'" Hanson said. "There was not,...

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After failing for the eighth straight year to meet service delivery targets for special education, Los Angeles Unified School District has begun interviewing staff to understand why records indicate thousands of students with disabilities are not receiving their prescribed services.

The effort, led by the district's Office of the Independent Monitor, seeks to determine whether the shortcomings are due to documentation problems, actual failures to serve students or both. Jaime Hernandez, the office's research director, said the goal to show a student received any service was "really a very low bar to meet."

"We would have expected some more progress," said Hernandez, who believes the problem is likely both bad data and lack of services.

Attorneys who represent special education students and their families said many children with special needs receive few or no services and that the true service delivery rate in LA Unified, which enrolled more than 82,000 special education students in 2010-11, could be worse than records show.

"My guess is about 60 percent of services are being delivered," said Valerie Vanaman, an attorney with Newman Aaronson Vanaman, a Los Angeles firm that joined the American Civil Liberties Union in filing a 1993 class-action lawsuit that led to ...

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Prompted by a scathing audit and proposed legislation, the state's top construction administrators are scheduled today to discuss ways to improve the seismic safety and oversight of public school building projects.

State Architect Chester Widom and Lisa Silverman, executive officer for the Office of Public School Construction, will appear before a special meeting of the Senate Select Committee on Earthquake and Disaster Preparedness at 10 a.m. at Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley.

The hearing will be the first public update on state reforms initiated in the wake of a California Watch investigation and a California State Auditor report that found serious problems in how the state ensures the earthquake safety of its schools...

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Persuaded that school discipline policies are far too harsh, California lawmakers are moving closer to enacting reforms aimed at stemming a rising tide of suspensions and expulsions in the nation’s largest state.

“I have seen too many children removed from school under the mandatory suspension and expulsion regime, when an application of common sense and an alternative punishment or appropriate interventions could have kept them on track and corrected their behavior,” Tim McKinley, a former FBI agent-turned-lawyer in Bakersfield, said yesterday during testimony before state Assembly members.

McKinley, who investigated criminal gangs at the bureau, was testifying before the Assembly Education Committee. Speaking in favor of a proposal to reform zero-tolerance policies in California schools, McKinley recounted the case of an 11-year-old boy he defended whose fight against expulsion for sexual battery was featured in a Center for Public Integrity report in December...

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Civil rights groups recently intervened in a free-speech controversy at the San Francisco Unified School District after a school suspended three high school seniors and banned them from graduation and prom over comments they made online.

The students were suspended from George Washington High School after a teacher learned about postings on a Tumblr page called "Scumbag Teachers." Some of the comments allegedly linked to the students included: "Teaches Pink Floyd for 3 Weeks; Makes Final Project Due In 3 Days” and “Nags Student Govt About Being On Task; Lags On Everything.”

The school principal accused the students of cyberbullying. They were suspended from school for three days, banned from prom and told they couldn't walk with their classmates during graduation. One of the students was kicked off the student council.

The Asian Law Caucus and ACLU of Northern California said they were concerned that the students' rights were being violated and wrote letters to district officials questioning whether the students and parents were given due process. The district then reinstated the students.

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A new bill that seeks to crack down on illegal school fees is moving through the state Legislature, but it faces a lukewarm reception from lawmakers and some education groups.

With a 6-3 vote last week, AB 1575 [PDF] made it out of the Assembly Education Committee and is now being reviewed by the Appropriations Committee.

But influential groups, like the Association of California School Administrators and California Association of School Business Officials, criticized the measure, saying it would increase the burden on struggling schools. That argument picked up steam as Assemblyman Donald P. Wagner, R-Irvine, asked if the bill was too similar to a previous one that Gov. Jerry Brown killed for "going too far."

Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-San Ramon, questioned the bill's suggested process for complaint resolution. Buchanan also voiced concerns that the repayment requirement would be too harsh for some schools that simply might have made a mistake. She ultimately withheld her vote.

"Children are entitled to a free and appropriate education," Buchanan said. "I just want to make sure we are dealing with it in a fair and rational...

Anfuehrer/FlickrGround beef (pictured here) purchased by the USDA for its national school lunch program may contain "pink slime," or lean finely textured beef.

Tomato, tomahto. Pink slime, lean finely textured beef. Whatever you call it, one thing is clear: Many consumers say they don't want it.

Yesterday, following growing public disgust, the primary producer of the textured meat, Beef Products Inc., said it is suspending operations at three of the four plants that make the product. Its announcement came after fast food and supermarket chains dropped the product, even as federal regulators and the meat industry affirm its safety.

Schools, too, have been quick to distance themselves from the cotton candy-colored controversy after revelations that the U.S. Department of Agriculture buys the product, commonly used in ground beef, for its national school lunch program...

Flickr/heraldpost

At Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School, students are taught lessons every week in a combination of Spanish, English and Mandarin. The public school, which has more than 400 students on its wait list, is hoping to eventually add a fourth language, the principal says, to better prepare pupils for the global economy.

“I think as we become more and more globally aware, we’re realizing that kids need to be prepared to be competitive in world markets,” said Principal Jorge Ramirez. “Kids need to be multilingual and multiliterate.”

From Chula Vista to Laguna Niguel and Sacramento, public schools are creating dual-language immersion programs at a fast pace. The California Department of Education estimates there are 318 bilingual immersion programs in the state, up from 201 in 2006.

“We have more research now that shows students who develop two or three languages to a high level have certain cognitive advantages,” said Julie Sugarman, a research associate with the Center for Applied Linguistics, a Washington, D.C.-based organization. “They do as well or better than their peers in English-only programs.”

California has long been considered a leader of the programs, establishing its first in the early 1980s...