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  • LAUSD considers adjusting its Black Student Achievement Plan amid complaint

    LAUSD considers adjusting its Black Student Achievement Plan amid complaint


    Students at La Salle Avenue Elementary listen to a class presentation. The school is one of 53 schools in the first tier of the Black Student Achievement Plan.

    KATE SEQUEIRA/EDSOURCE

    The Los Angeles Unified School District is considering broadening the language associated with the Black Student Achievement Plan in an attempt to avoid investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, a move supporters fear could steer the focus of the program away from Black student achievement and wellness.

    The potential change in the Black Student Achievement Plan comes after Parents Defending Education, a conservative group with a track record of challenging schools’ efforts to promote equity, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in July, claiming the program violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because it specifically supports Black students.

    “We are just starting to see the positive impact of BSAP, creating a positive and welcoming learning environment and greater access to culturally and racially responsive coursework and field trips due to dedicated BSAP staff members and community partners,” said school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin in a statement to EdSource.

    “With continued investments and support — not diluted or threatened programming —I look forward to seeing our Black students achieve in the ways that we all know is possible.”

    While program supporters say the complaint by Parents Defending Education is largely unsubstantiated, they fear any efforts to alter it in response could have consequences for students in Los Angeles and beyond.

    An LAUSD spokesperson said in an email to EdSource that the mission and operations of the program will not change and that “the district is ensuring that the associated language aligns with the law and practice by clarifying that BSAP operates in accordance with the District’s Nondiscrimination policy, based on applicable federal and state laws.”

    The Education Department has already warned districts to avoid programs that focus on one student group. In August, a month after Parents Defending Education filed the complaint, the department released a guidance letter to school districts in response to an uptick in complaints.

    “Schools may violate Title VI when they separate students based on race or treat individual students or groups of students differently based on race,” the guidance reads. “Schools also may violate Title VI when they create, encourage, accept, tolerate, or fail to correct a racially hostile educational environment.”

    The letter also adds that “a school-sponsored or recognized group or program with a special emphasis on race, such as a student club or mentorship opportunity, that is open to all students, typically would not violate Title VI simply because of its race-related theme.”

    The complaint  

    The complaint lodged by Parents Defending Education claims LAUSD’s Black Student Achievement Plan discriminates against students of other races. EdSource reached out to Parents Defending Education requesting an interview but did not receive a response.

    The program “directly responds to the unique needs of Black students but not students of other races,” the complaint alleges.

    “The District makes clear that the program is designed ‘to address the longstanding disparities in educational outcomes between Black students and their non-Black peers.’… And the District notes that the program is meant to address ‘[t]he perennial trend of black student underperformance; and to achieve ‘racial equity.’”

    The complaint against LAUSD includes two pieces of documentation: screenshots of the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan website as well as an overview of the program.

    But supporters of the district’s plan say the complaint lacks teeth — especially as it does not include a claim that anyone suffered or was discriminated against because of the program.

    Amir Whitaker of the ACLU of Southern California’s Senior Policy Counsel said he doubts the U.S. Department of Education will choose to investigate the district.

    Parents Defending Education’s goal, he said was about creating “hysteria about the complaint.”

    Parents Defending Education, which describes itself as a “national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas,” has levied complaints against educational agencies throughout the country, including in Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont and Oregon.

    “I think a lot of other districts and states are really reluctant to kind of engage in something that’s very race specific because of the ways in which we as a country …are not comfortable with having race conversations, despite the disproportion of Black students who are in special education … the number of Black students who are suspended, the high rates of Black students who are chronically absent,” said Tyrone Howard, a professor of education at UCLA.

    “So I wish we had just as much energy and anger around those data as we do around the fact that we think that (a law) might be violated.”

    Program’s impact 

    The Los Angeles Unified School District board approved the Black Student Achievement Plan in February 2021 after widespread community calls to action and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial reckoning that followed.

    The Black Student Achievement Plan cut the district police budget by more than 30% and vowed to uplift Black student achievement, create “culturally responsive curriculum” and fund a team of counselors, climate advocates and psychiatric social workers at 53 top-priority schools that collectively educate a third of LAUSD’s Black student population.

    “The ultimate beauty is that commitment to BSAP will … not only serve the Black students that have been disproportionately underserved for far too long. It has lots of implications on the district just improving as a whole,” said Christian Flagg, the director of training at Community Coalition, a foundation that aims to “upend systemic racism” and played a key role in the plan’s establishment.

    In 2011, a decade before the plan was established, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — which also received the Parents Defending Education complaint — conducted an investigation into LAUSD.

    The investigation found discrepancies in the treatment and experience of Black students in comparison to their peers, including the percentage of students admitted to the Gifted and Talented Education program, availability of technological resources, newness of textbooks, prevalence of teacher absenteeism and rates of discipline.

    In response to the investigation, LAUSD offered to enter an agreement to resolve the concerns.

    A survey of 2,300 students across 100 LAUSD campuses found that since the Black Student Achievement Plan rolled out, 87% of Black students had benefited from the program. Still, nearly half the students also said their schools do not have enough resources for Black students.

    Lindsey Weatherspoon, a senior at Venice High School who said she has benefited from the Black Student Achievement Plan, credits her campus BSAP counselor for helping her and her peers attend events at which some Historically Black Colleges and Universities made on-the-spot admissions offers to seniors.

    Weatherspoon said she strongly hopes LAUSD will “stand strong in their decision to have BSAP and fund BSAP, and it’s not a situation where BSAP gets cut back.”

    “I hope, in fact, it gets expanded continuously to more schools, and the program constantly evolves because BSAP is not just something that happened overnight. It’s been years in the making. And it’s been the labor of love of several groups and community members and students and teachers pushing to get this program made.”

    The BSAP counselor, she said, gives students more personalized counseling and creates opportunities for Black students to spend time together, which is essential because “it’s really easy to feel disconnected from other Black students when you barely see any.”

    Weatherspoon said, “The thought that it could … be degraded from its original purpose or its original use is just mind-blowing and heartbreaking.”

    Moving forward 

    The Black Student Achievement Plan being compromised, either as a result of board action or the complaint itself, could lead to greater consequences for both the district and for the nation, the program’s supporters say.

    Channing Martinez, co-director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, said that the program is “not saying that Latinx students or white students or other students don’t deserve equal access to opportunity, but it is saying that Black students have not had equal access.”

    He added that while the district may be concerned about Parents Defending Education’s complaint, LAUSD could also face lawsuits or complaints from organizations supporting the program if they dilute the program.

    “In 2020, you had George Floyd, and it was pretty easy in the board’s mind to defund the school police as a measure of saying that they’re going to stand with Black students, but this year we don’t have George Floyd. But that doesn’t mean that the lives of Black students don’t matter,” Martinez said.

    “It does really put us in a really tight spot in which we want to believe in the Black Student Achievement Program. But at the same time, it almost feels as if we are stuck in this program, and that they are using this program to say ‘Look, we’re doing something for Black students.’”

    Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed an “equity multiplier” that would grant $300 million in ongoing funding to the state’s poorest students in an effort to uplift Black student achievement. But some critics of the proposal said it would not do enough to specifically support Black students.

    Howard, the UCLA education professor, described the nature of the complaint by Parents Defending Education as racist because there has been little opposition to other programs designed to support different groups of students who are more vulnerable, including students with disabilities and those struggling with homelessness.

    Programs like the Black Student Achievement Plan are hard to come by, Howard said. And if the complaint succeeds, he is concerned it could deter other schools throughout the state and nation from developing similar programs.

    “Essentially, it says we’re fine with Black failure. We’re fine with Black underperformance. We’re fine with Black students consistently not experiencing schools in a way that their peers do,” Howard said. “That’s to me the bigger takeaway message. And why do we feel so comfortable with that?”





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  • LAUSD considers limiting charter co-locations on vulnerable campuses

    LAUSD considers limiting charter co-locations on vulnerable campuses


    Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource

    The Los Angeles Unified School District school board drew a mix of gratitude and frustration from communities throughout the region during its discussion of a policy that prevents charter schools from sharing a campus with its 100 priority schools, Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP) schools and community schools. The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), along with charter supporters, said the board policy was discriminatory and threatened lawsuits against the district. 

    Borrowing from a previous resolution, the proposed new policy encourages the district to avoid co-location offers that “compromise district schools’ capacity to serve neighborhood children” and that “result in grade span arrangements that negatively impact student safety and build charter school pipelines that actively deter students from attending District schools.” 

    The policy would come into play when the district evaluates new charter schools, when charters request different or new sites or when “existing conditions change for reasons including, but not limited to, insufficient space, addition of grade levels, and other material revisions.”

    LAUSD’s school board directed Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to develop such a policy through a resolution passed last September, and the board is slated to vote on it in February. 

    The goal of the resolution, according to board President and resolution author Jackie Goldberg, is not to undo anything — but instead, to prioritize the needs of district students who are more vulnerable. She cited hostility on campuses and challenges with sharing spaces, including those used for enrichment activities and basic needs support. 

    “We’re on the right path to get past, shall we say, discomforts and disagreements on what it means to have a charter school on a campus,” said school board member George McKenna during Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole Meeting. 

    “Everyone may not be satisfied all the time, but I think the guidelines are a great opportunity.”

    Charter supporters, however, have claimed that the policy discriminates against roughly 11,000 charter students by closing off roughly 346 district campuses. These restrictions, they say, could lead to more school closures and instances where schools are split between various locations — leading to longer commutes and accessibility issues for disadvantaged students. 

    “If the board adopts the proposed policy presented today, CCSA will be left with few remaining options but to, yet again, meet LAUSD in court and enforce the rights of charter school students,” said the organization’s CEO and president, Myrna Castrejón. 

    Co-locations in LAUSD 

    As a result of Proposition 39 — a statewide initiative — public school districts throughout California are required to share space with charter schools. 

    While there are several ways for districts to share space with charters — such as pursuing private sites or long-term leases — LAUSD has opted for years to co-locate its campuses, meaning that both a regular public school and a charter school share one campus. 

    “What we have at play here in Los Angeles is very unusual. … We know how we got here, so we have a golden opportunity here to fix it, to make it better,” said district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho at Tuesday’s meeting. He added that the district should be “vigilant and honest about unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies.” 

    To secure a space, charters request facilities from LAUSD. The district then evaluates the request and comes back with a preliminary offer by Feb. 1 every year. 

    Charters are given a month to respond, after which the district has until April 1 to finalize the offer. 

    Currently, there are 50 co-located charters across the district spanning 52 sites. About 21 charters are located on sites that would be protected under the new policy. 

    While the proposed co-location policy has not yet been approved, several district officials said during Tuesday’s meeting that the proposed guidelines were considered when making this year’s offers. 

    And of the 13 new requests from charters this year, only two offers will likely be made on the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, community and priority schools. Meanwhile, the district did not have an estimate on the number of charters that failed to receive an offer on their requested campus. 

    “Co-location is one of many ways to deal with the legal obligation to share space and our moral obligation to make sure kids are treated equally; and, we have a myopic focus on these co-locations, which are really difficult even in the best-case scenarios,” said school board member Nick Melvoin on Tuesday. 

    “This district, LA Unified, traditional schools, has lost a couple hundred thousand kids in 20 years. We definitely have enough space for everyone. We just don’t allocate it properly.” 

    In fact, as the district experiences declining enrollment because of larger demographic shifts — in both non-charters and charters — the number of facilities requests and co-location offers has also declined. 

    Specifically, over the past five years, Castrejón said charter schools’ need for space has gone down by more than 50%. 

    Instead of focusing on solutions, Melvoin claimed both charter supporters and opponents have attempted to “articulate the pain for political gain on one side or the other.” 

    “I remain disappointed in the unwillingness to actually try and solve this,” he said. 

    Support for the policy 

    The policy’s supporters have repeatedly emphasized that avoiding co-locations on Black Student Achievement Plan, community and priority schools is critical to promoting equity and protecting the district’s more vulnerable students. 

    “That’s not a political issue, that’s an issue of equity,” Goldberg said. 

    “An issue of equity says that the schools that are struggling the most to educate our students should not be given continuously more things to do, like figure out a bell schedule and how to share the cafeteria and how to share the playground and how to share the bathrooms. … That’s an additional burden on everybody on that school, really on both sides.” 

    Goldberg added that in order to avoid co-locations on vulnerable campuses, the district will need to reevaluate their definition of a “reasonable distance.” 

    Members of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing district teachers, have historically sided with the district on matters concerning charters and have voiced support for September’s resolution. 

    “It’s been months since the School Board passed the resolution on co-locations, but we have schools that are in the process of losing valuable classroom and learning space. Without action, there are schools that will soon have to hold counseling sessions on the playground, or will lose their computer lab,” reads a Facebook post from the union. 

    “Enough is enough. LAUSD needs to stand by its own resolution and protect our amazing programs.”

    Yolanda Tamayo, a teachers union leader from the East Area, said during public comment that Lorena Street Elementary, where she teaches, used to be co-located with a charter. 

    During that time, 10 years ago, the school allegedly “endured the dismantling of our computer lab, lost a full-time use of our library, auditorium, eating area, yard, plus the gutting of our important resources that our school desperately needed back then and now.”

    Another speaker, who teaches at an LAUSD community school, said he fears his campus could be co-located with a charter, which he believes would cost them space used to house clothes for students in need and preclude them from opening a health center and food pantry. 

    Concerns from charters 

    Supporters of charter schools have claimed, however, that the policy discriminates against charter students and could lead to “charter deserts,” harming students from marginalized communities, who make up the bulk of charter students, according to Castrejón, the CCSA president. 

    “Charter schools do pay a fee for the use of district facilities,” Castrejón said, noting that several at-risk charters are also community schools. “The cost of going to an open market in a place that is as overbuilt and as expensive as Los Angeles could actually … result in some school closures if Prop. 39 co-location is not made available.” 

    Another potential impact of the policy is an increase in multi-site offers, where charters are split across multiple LAUSD campuses, which would force families to weigh what is feasible against what they feel is right for their children, according to Keith Dell’Aquila, CCSA Greater Los Angeles local’s vice president. 

    Dell’Aquila added that split schools also lead to longer commutes and accessibility challenges for lower-income families. 

    “You may see a charter school forcibly relocated by the district that forces a family to make a choice: Are you the type of family who can travel across Los Angeles, can travel 45 minutes, has access to private transportation to get your family to that car or not?”

    Split campuses also pose challenges for school communities, he emphasized. 

    “You start to look at a school that has to do more with less with their budget, and they’ve got to have two administrators across two different sites. They’ve got to make programs work, you’ve got to make teacher [professional development] work,” Dell’Aquila said. 

    “You have a divided school culture. We’ve talked to every one of our schools who has experienced this split site offer and have said, ‘yeah, life is harder across the board.’” 

    While they cannot fully anticipate how the policy will be implemented and its effects, CCSA sent a letter to LAUSD’s school board Monday evening addressing several of their concerns with the policy, ranging from the alleged limits placed on charter school growth to the district allegedly ignoring the intent of Proposition 39. 

    The letter also threatens legal action if the board adopts the policy. 

    “A public school policy is a promise you are making to the public,” said Shawna Draxton, who has served as an educator in both regular Los Angeles public schools and charters for more than 25 years, during public comment Tuesday. 

    “My students are watching. They admire you; they care about civics; they’ve been to these meetings. And whether or not they agree with your decisions, they are looking to you to be courageous leaders.” 

    Editors’ note: This story has been updated to add a statement from UTLA.





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  • Amid faculty objections, UC considers limiting what faculty can say on university websites

    Amid faculty objections, UC considers limiting what faculty can say on university websites


    UCLA campus in Westwood on Nov. 18, 2023.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    This story was updated on Friday to include that the UC Academic Senate urged the regents to reject the policy.

    In a move faculty say infringes on their academic freedom, the University of California will soon consider a policy restricting them from using university websites to make opinionated statements. Such statements have come under scrutiny since last fall, when some faculty publicly criticized Israel over its war in Gaza.

    The proposed policy, which goes to the system’s board of regents for a vote next week, would prevent faculty and staff from sharing their “personal or collective opinions” via the “main landing page” or homepages of department websites, according to a new draft of the policy. Faculty would be free to share opinions elsewhere on the university’s websites, so long as there is a disclaimer that their viewpoint doesn’t represent the university or their department.

    The final version of the policy may not be complete until next week. Regents accepted feedback from the university’s Academic Senate through Friday. Following a systemwide review, the Senate’s Academic Council is asking the regents to reject the proposed policy.

    Whatever the final version says, the fact that regents are considering the issue at all is alarming to some UC faculty. They argue that issues of academic freedom are outside the purview of the regents and question how the university would enforce the policy. And although the policy doesn’t explicitly mention a specific issue, faculty see it as an attempt to prevent them from discussing Israel’s war in Gaza.

    “At a moment when across the country, academic freedom is being challenged, we’re worried that the regents have lost their way on this issue,” said James Vernon, a professor of history at UC Berkeley and chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association. “I think it’s out of their purview, and I think they’re doing it for very obvious reasons. It’s about Palestine and the political positions of some regents.” 

    UC officials have said action is needed to ensure that faculty opinions are not interpreted as representing the views of the university as a whole. The regents previously discussed a similar policy in January but delayed a vote until March. At the time, one regent said the board was considering the policy because “some people were making political statements related to Hamas and Palestinians,” seemingly referring to the statements made by some faculty last fall in support of Palestine. 

    By only disallowing statements on “main landing pages,” the latest version is less restrictive than the policy initially proposed in January, which would have banned statements made on any “official channel of communication.”

    To some faculty, the issue was already settled in 2022, when the Academic Senate determined that UC faculty departments have the right to “make statements on University-owned websites,” so long as the statements don’t take positions on elections.

    “The Academic Senate came out with very clear recommendations,” said Christine Hong, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz. “We have a group of regents who are running roughshod over what you would think would be the core commitments of the university to academic freedom and to the principle of shared governance.”

    Some faculty find the revised version of the policy to be an improvement, including Brian Soucek, professor of law at UC Davis and previous chair of the UC Academic Senate’s university committee on academic freedom. While he remains concerned with the regents “micromanaging” what faculty departments can say, Soucek said the revised policy “is not a major threat to academic freedom,” given that it only limits what can be said on the main landing pages of websites.

    UC officials declined to comment on this story, saying only that regents would consider the policy at next week’s meeting. 

    Traced to Oct. 7 attack

    The new push to limit faculty statements can be traced to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza. The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, with about another 240 taken hostage. Since Israel launched its military response, more than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children.

    On Oct. 9, UC system leaders issued a statement condemning the Hamas attack as an act of terrorism resulting in violence that was “sickening and incomprehensible.” Several of UC’s campus chancellors also issued their own statements condemning the attack.

    In a letter the following week, the UC Ethnic Studies Council criticized UC’s statements, saying they lacked context by not acknowledging Israeli violence against Palestinians, including “75 years of settler colonialism and globally acknowledged apartheid.” The ethnic studies faculty also said UC’s statements “irresponsibly wield charges of terrorism” and called on UC to revoke those charges. UC later said it stood by those assertions.

    UC ethnic studies faculty then engaged in a back-and-forth with regent Jay Sures. Sures wrote a letter responding to the Ethnic Studies Council letter, saying it was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.” The ethnic studies faculty subsequently criticized Sures for not condemning Israeli violence and called on him to resign.

    Sures also wrote in his letter that he would do “everything in my power” to protect “everyone in our extended community from your inflammatory and out of touch rhetoric.” Now, Sures is the regent most fervently pushing the proposal to limit what faculty can say on UC websites.

    Since last fall, some faculty departments have displayed statements on their websites condemning Israel. The website for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department, for example, includes a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” 

    Involving faculty

    UC isn’t the only university to move to restrict faculty from making political statements on department websites. 

    At Barnard College, a private women’s liberal arts college in New York, the department of women’s, gender and sexuality studies published a statement last fall expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine. The college removed the statement and then rewrote its policy on political activity to prohibit faculty departments from posting political statements on college-owned websites. The quick response prompted an outcry from some free speech advocates who criticized the college for making the policy change without consulting faculty.

    The American Association of University Professors, an organization that advocates for academic freedom, doesn’t have guidance regarding whether departments should take political positions, a spokesperson said. However, if universities are to create such policies, they should “be formulated through shared governance channels, with substantial faculty input,” said the spokesperson, Kelly Benjamin.

    In that regard, UC officials have made progress since January, Soucek said. 

    Prior to the January meeting, Soucek co-authored a letter to the regents urging them to reject the policy being considered at that time. Among other criticisms, Soucek wrote that the development of the policy was “sudden, opaque, and seemingly devoid of any collaboration at all” with the staff and faculty it would impact.

    Following the January meeting, regents shared a revised version of the policy with Academic Senate leaders, requesting their thoughts and giving them until this Friday to share that feedback.

    In an interview, Soucek commended the regents for “taking a breath” and accepting feedback on the revised policy. “That’s a great thing, and that’s what they should have done from the beginning,” he said.

    Even with the changes to the policy, some faculty still see it as a major threat. Hong, the UC Santa Cruz professor, is concerned with the intention behind the policy, even if the latest version is less restrictive than the original.

    Hong pointed out that UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, said during the January meeting that the intent of the policy was to “make sure that landing pages wouldn’t be associated with types of speech that the university would feel uncomfortable with.”

    Hong called that a “really striking disclosure,” saying that it violates the principle of academic freedom. 

    “Whatever revisions they make, we have to address what the intention behind this policy is,” Hong said. “This is a joke of an exercise. Why are we being forced to go through this?”

    Faculty also say it’s unclear how UC would enforce the policy. The revised version doesn’t define what constitutes an opinionated statement and states that the “administrator responsible for maintaining the website” will be responsible for “assuring compliance with this policy.”

    To Soucek, that suggests that the policy will be managed by UC’s IT staff. 

    “That’s how it sounds,” he said. “Our IT staff has enormous expertise. For most of them, it doesn’t extend to issues of academic freedom.”

    Whoever is ultimately in charge of scanning the many departmental websites across UC’s 10 campuses will have a “gigantic task,” said Vernon, the UC Berkeley professor. 

    “And then the next question is, who’s going to enforce it once they’ve actually found someone who’s violated this policy? That is really important to have clarified,” he said.





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