placed on paid leave<\/a> Feb. 27, two days after FBI raids linked to an investigation of a failed artificial intelligence project propelled him and the school district into the national education spotlight and threw the district into a leadership crisis. <\/p>\nFederal investigators have not charged Carvalho with wrongdoing, although sources have confirmed he is one target of their investigation into Boston-based AllHere, the now-bankrupt startup behind the failed initiative. <\/p>\n
Acting Supt. Andres Chiat, a veteran district administrator, presided over his first public meeting but rarely spoke.<\/p>\n
Green Dot Locke High charter denied<\/p>\n
In the most heated issue of the day, the board rejected the charter renewal for Locke High, operated by Green Dot Public Schools.<\/p>\n
The denial, if not overturned at the county level, means the school will have to shut down at the end of the school year.<\/p>\n
The board vote was 4 to 3 in favor of denial \u2014 in line with the recommendation from district staff, but a disappointment to well more than 100 Green Dot backers who cheered on speakers in support of the school. <\/p>\n
Locke High, located in Watts, reopened as a charter school in 2008 after a political battle between forces for and against charter schools, which are privately managed public schools, most of which are nonunion.<\/p>\n
Locke was one of the district\u2019s lowest-performing schools based on academic proficiency \u2014 and remains so \u2014 in large measure because it serves families dealing with deep socioeconomic challenges: extreme poverty, uneven healthcare and limited family education.<\/p>\n
Green Dot took over Locke during a time when charter advocates wielded considerable political power \u2014 which is no longer the case.<\/p>\n
Green Dot styled its education mission differently from many other charters. Charter founder Steve Barr insisted that employees would be unionized \u2014 and they remain so, despite periodic tensions. The Green Dot employees are affiliated with the California Teachers Assn. rather than UTLA. <\/p>\n
The charter also embraced a mission as the neighborhood school \u2014 automatically accepting all who showed up at its doors. In contrast, while many standard charters serve challenging school populations, they typically appeal to motivated families that make the choice to attend, which can give these charters an advantage in terms of student performance, in the view of some experts.<\/p>\n
Charters must be renewed every five years or so. On this round, the district\u2019s oversight division recommended against renewal based on data looking at the scores of about 250 of Locke\u2019s students who would have attended other schools if they\u2019d stayed in their neighborhood of residence. Students at those other schools are doing better on some key measures than their neighbors who decided to enroll at Locke. About 1,000 students attend Locke, 750 of them from its immediate neighborhood. <\/p>\n
Green Dot did not make excuses for low achievement. Instead the charter pointed to substantial progress made by Locke students. In other words, students arrived with low achievement scores and improved markedly \u2014 much faster than L.A. Unified and the state as a whole \u2014 even if the absolute scores remain below state averages, according to data presented by Green Dot.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday was not the outcome we expected,\u201d said Cristina de Jesus, president and chief executive of Green Dot, \u201cbut I think Locke and all of the community showed up in the way they always do, which is full of strength. We\u2019ll see at the county board in a month, and we\u2019re ready to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Progress with some labor groups<\/p>\n
The school board on Tuesday approved four labor contracts with some of the district\u2019s smaller unions \u2014 as negotiations continue with the teachers union and service workers that together represent more than 60,000 employees. <\/p>\n
The terms of the deals vary and provide limited insight into what the district final offer could be for the remaining unions. Deals have been reached with: <\/p>\n
Teamsters Local 572, which represents cafeteria managers, office managers and plant managers, who supervise maintenance at schools; Local 500 of the California School Employees Assn., which represents elementary school library aides and school clerical staff;Two unions that represent school police \u2014 the rank-and-file officers union and the senior officers union. <\/p>\n
Members of both United Teachers Los Angeles and Local 99 of Service Employees International Union have approved strike authorization resolutions \u2014 meaning that their leadership has the authority to call a strike at their discretion. <\/p>\n
Another union still in negotiations is Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents principals, other school administrators, many middle managers and some central-office workers. <\/p>\n
Pro-Immigrant Resolution<\/p>\n
One area of speculation in the Carvalho investigation has been whether his strongly pro-immigration stands made him a target of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
If Trump officials were trying to send a message to L.A. Unified leaders, that message was ignored on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
The school board approved \u2014 by a 7-0 vote \u2014 a resolution seeking to end business ties with vendors who cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis resolution ensures that the district has the information needed to understand those kinds of relationships when evaluating vendors,\u201d said board member Rocio Rivas. <\/p>\n
The resolution does not ban vendors or disrupt essential services, Rivas said. Instead, senior administrators must develop guidelines to evaluate vendor disclosures to determine any business ties with immigration enforcement actions. <\/p>\n
The resolution names no specific vendors, although some board members and public speakers made accusations against specific businesses.<\/p>\n
The resolution is strongly worded but also filled with caveats \u2014 noting that the district will comply with contracting and procurement laws. The superintendent\u2019s office is supposed to return with a plan to carry out the intent of the resolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles school officials took action on major issues Tuesday during their first public board meeting after an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17246,98327,26350,33210,98325,48,52,51,98329,98324,47,50,49,346,8420,4192,37318,98326,4574,98328,18029],"class_list":["post-214338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-alberto-carvalho","tag-charter-advocate","tag-charter-school","tag-federal-immigration-enforcement","tag-green-dot-backer","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lausd-meeting","tag-locke-high","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-office","tag-other-school","tag-resolution","tag-school-district","tag-small-union","tag-student","tag-teamster-local","tag-vendor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}