Or: Taking the “Public” Out of “Public Education”

I think as a student, you always expect your fees to go up.  But 32%?  Oof.  Students and those with supportive parents are going to face a mid-year increase of 15 percent to student fees and tuition, then (ouch) another 15 percent increase effective summer 2010.  A panel of UC Regents meeting today – in front of hundreds of students protesting on campus – just agreed to the fee hikes.  This comes at a time when the same Regents are asking $913 million from the state to cover budget shortfalls and, um, in the middle of a recession that is so bad that student lenders are playing hardball when it comes to renegotiating student loans.  The full UC Regents Board will meet tomorrow to approve the approval, at which time more protests are planned.

What should the Regents do instead of barricading public access to education?  Some helpful suggestions here at the Remaking the University blog.

Actual flyer. Please print, copy, and post wherever coyotes may see it!

A coyote snatched Jessica Simpson’s dog before her very eyes, per a tweet she sent Monday evening.

@jessicasimpson: http://twitpic.com/hrudr – My heart is broken because a coyote took my precious Daisy right in front of our eyes. HORROR! We are searching. Hoping. Please help!

Clearly, this is incredibly urgent. Coyotes aren’t known to keep malti-poos as pets for very long, and according to urban legend, will often sell these dogs to NFL players to be used as “playthings” for their rottweillers and pitbulls.

“Mommy” Jessica Simpson is offering a reward for Daisy’s safe return, NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

In case this turns out badly, I’m asking all Metblog readers to chip in with me for a gift that will help protect any of Jessica’s future canine pals: a leash.

Ah, simpler times.

Books and media about the modern-day dilemma of finding the “right” private school for your 4 year old to attend is so overdone.  Someone needs to write a book about the travails of not interviewing, and not being interviewed by, elementary teacher-professors; about having to live with the fact that your horrible neighbors spawned their demon child the same time you did, which means their child is in your kid’s class, and there’s no imposed playroom interview to evaluate whether Chucky “fits in” with the class of ‘09; and about not receiving weekly newsletter reports about how much the class is learning about organic farming.

Enter Sandra Tsing Loh, who makes an appearance on Tuesday at the Santa Monica Public Library to promote her newest book, Mother on Fire.  Mother on Fire is a memoir of her experience touring private and public school grounds in search of the right kindergarten for her daughters and (spoiler alert) chooses the public school and becomes a total PTA mom to boot.  It’s free, and you can pick up tickets an hour before the 7pm showtime.

I’m personally hoping that Tsing Loh also will offer an editorial on “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” an essay published in this month’s issue of The Atlantic Monthly.  There, she uses her extramarital affair and subsequent divorce  (“Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance”) as a vehicle to rail against marriage (“…isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?”).  Even though she would have a bit more credibility if she wasn’t writing this in the aftermath of a tumultuous divorce, it is a fascinating read.  Much more interesting than the kid’s story, anyway.

Viewers who enroll in “Lost University” will be able to study languages, such as Korean, Latin, and Iraqi Arabic, Hieroglyphics, Time Travel, and Jungle Survival, among other topics that fans will immediately see the importance of, as well as philosophy and psychology classes that will use show references as analogies.

Los Angeles “Lost” fans should be especially proud that most of these classes are taught by actual professors and teachers from USC and UCLA, including fellow blogger Clifford Johnson (Asymptotia.com), a USC physics professor who will be presenting a course on time travel along with Sean Carrol of the California Institute of Technology and Nick Warner, another Trojan.

UCLA’s Dr. Kara Cooney and Ph.D. student Eric Wells will be presenting lessons on hieroglyphics; the Beverly Hills Lingual Institute Eunhye Kim and Muriel Szkocki will be teaching basic Korean and French, respectively, while advanced language lessons on Arabic and Latin will be taught by UCLA’s Yasin Alkhalesi, PhD and Karen Gunterman. Psychology lessons all come via USC professors, Sharon Lloyd, Shlomo She, and Stephen Finlay.

Alongside the class listings, Lost University also provides a reading list for each class for anyone hoping to get a headstart on their studies. For a quick directory on how to browse and purchase some of these books, check out my “Lost University Reading List” page on CreepyLA. If nothing else, “Lost” fans will appreciate the curiously familiar names of authors of some of these tomes.

Classes and lectures through “Lost University” are apparently all via video,  either presented online, included on the upcoming Blu-Ray release of Season 5, or a combination of both, along with class schedules, tests, and progress exercised on the website, although I’m sure many Southern California Losties wouldn’t be tardy if some of these courses were held in real life… minus the massive tuition fees of UCLA or USC.

Here’s the promo video for Lost University:

Breakaway by Elizabeth Herndon, used under Creative Commons.

Yesterday Queequeg wrote about the 2009 Echo Park Lake Paddle Boat Regatta. I’d like to expand upon that a bit, including how you can get involved from the cool comfort your own internet connection.

I have entered a team in the regatta, and I would like to encourage everyone to join me in supporting Team Flotsam & Jetsam (so named for the floating debris after a shipwreck.) Follow that link to the sponsor page and make a donation to help my team raise the most money for 826LA. Any amount is greatly appreciated and will help 826LA provide free services for local kids. I know the economy is tough for everyone right now, but non-profits and charitable organizations have been hit particularly hard. They need our help now more than ever.

Follow me past the jump to learn why 826LA is my favorite non-profit.

Before going on about 826LA, I’d just like to mention that you can help my teammate Derek and I raise much needed funds for this fantastic organization by sponsoring us here. And, it’s tax deductible.

Here’s a brief video of 826’s founder, author/publisher Dave Eggers, explaining how the program began. (First three minutes are the most relevant.)

MetBlogs has written about the Echo Park Time Travel Mart in the past. I did some investigation, and it turns out the Time Travel Mart is just a front covering up something far more insideous in the back room. Sure, you can fulfill all of your time travel needs from dinosaur eggs to robot milk (except the slushy machine always seems to be out of order; come back yesterday to see if it’s fixed.) The real operation goes on behind the scenes, though.

What 826LA is really doing is running a volunteer-driven drop-in tutoring center for local kids ages 6-18. Students can come to the Time Travel Mart after school, where adult volunteers give one-on-one help with homework. They really focus on creative and expository writing skills, and the stuff the kids are writing is really good. So good, in fact, that 826 periodically publishes books of the students work.

The value of the tutoring that the students get at 826LA goes beyond good grades. The one-on-one attention is something that many teachers simply aren’t able to offer, given large class sizes. In addition to getting help with their homework, the students are receiving validation and encouragement from adults that their creative writing really is good. That encouragement may be just what the students need to stay engaged and keep working toward further improvement.

This is a great cause, and in case I hadn’t mentioned it, you can get involved by sponsoring my team in the Paddle Boat Regatta. Just go to the sponsor page and donate any amount that you are able (no more than $5,000 though, please. That would just be an embarrassment of riches.) With just a couple of fundraising days left, the event is still a little shy of its $30,000 goal, so please go donate and help push 826LA over the top. For the kids.

Once you’ve donated, come back and leave a smug note in the comment section about how cool you are, and that others would do well to follow your lead. You’d be surprised how satisfying it will be.

Whether you donate or not (do!,) it’s going to be great fun, so come out to Echo Park Lake on Sunday afternoon at 4:00pm and cheer Team Flotsam & Jetsam on to victory. I’ll keep an eye out for you.

This week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed cutting health care for low-income children under the Healthy Families program.

And in a further effort to address the fiscal incompetence that is sui generis to California politics, Los Angeles Unified School District announced it will cancel most summer school classes this year. After all, kids don’t (and can’t) vote.

In addition to putting working parents in the position of having to find day care for younger children (as well as paying for it), an article about the cuts in today’s LA Times points out the greater toll to society. According to state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell,

“For kids who want to take challenging courses, for kids who need basic courses in order to graduate, these choices will contribute toward the dropout rate and we will have a less competent workforce.”

The article also states that LA Community Colleges have canceled their second summer session this year.

The snazzy postcard they sent me can be embiggened from the thumbnail.  Registration is required and you can do it here now.

Address: 101 E Huntington Dr, Monrovia CA 91016

Today, I happened to be at the North Hollywood Home Depot, when I overheard a conversation between the cashier and a guy in line. He asked how she was doing. She said was just making the best of it. Picking up more hours here, because they keep cutting her hours at her other job – a school.

I don’t know what she does at that school. But, it’s hard to stomach the idea that her position is in any way expendable. It’s a SCHOOL, for crying out loud. That’s where the next Barack Obama could be getting his – or her – education.

I’m going to be thinking of that woman this holiday weekend. While many Angelenos are out with family and friends, grilling hot dogs, she’ll probably be picking up whatever shifts she can. A lot of people will probably be doing the same.

Hang in there, friends.

• Infrastructure: Street lights, sidewalks, repaving
• Afterschool programs
• Gang intervention programs
• Community centers/senior centers
• Permanent housing for homeless
• Neighborhood beautification: medians, plantings
• Foreclosure prevention & counseling
• Career training centers

So. What will you vote for? I chose gang intervention, afterschool programs, and permanent housing for homeless.

There’s also a field where you can make suggestions–do you have a write-in idea for how to spend the stimulus cash? Ha. Hahaha. I just bet you do.

In order to face the upcoming deep LAUSD budget cuts, we need to make some hard choices.

Which of the following services do you believe we can afford to lose the least? Please mark these in order of priority – 1=most important, 7=least important:

• Academic coaches
• Technology/computer program
• School library
• Physical education
• Kindergarten aides
• Teacher training to match instruction to student skill levels.

Here’s the pathetic part – these are all services funded BY US BECAUSE LAUSD DOESN’T PAY FOR THEM. Our school community had to raise $150,000 last year just to keep the three (vital) academic coaches. Now we have to try raising more than $320,000 to keep them AND all the other stuff.

Dozens of parents have been laid off from their jobs their district, and it’s plain that we’re not going to hit our mark.

And we’re in Silver Lake, in one of L.A.’s most affluent school districts – I can only imagine the horrible choices being faced at more-average schools in L.A. where people can’t afford to backfill the gaps left by a stingy, short-sighted and horribly mismanaged state educational policy.

For years now, the Legislature has been underfunding education across the state and in Los Angeles in particular, and the Los Angeles Unified School District has been squandering what little money we have on a bloated bureaucracy and wishy-washy, half-assed improvement initiatives without ever attempting the bold innovation or real top-down reforms.

<Everyone in power – from the district leadership to the teachers’ union> – seems to be doing what it takes to maintain the status quo and cover their little slice without considering what all this is doing to the people who will be working in and running Los Angeles 10, 20 years from now.

As a result, California ranks almost dead-last in education among the United States.

And what’s the solution to the basic bottom-line debacle that all this adds up to? Pull seasoned teachers out of the classroom and replace them with Beaudry Street bureaucrats who haven’t held a piece of chalk in years.

Yes, I’m ranting.

But that’s because it’s plain to me that this situation no longer deserves simple pitchforks-and-torches-to-Sacramento anger. We’ve tried that.

This warrants prosecution because it is a fucking crime.