Excellent Work Done at Gage Middle School

Check out this very creative video.

This is the winning entry in the LAUSD InfoTech Student Video Competition 2008. Project X is our students vision of what Gage Middle School will be in the year 2015. The theme of the
competition is Excellence through Innovation.

Power Play of Week

Mayor Villarigosa has played a very shroud political move with the new LAUSD bond measure. Not only is he requesting additional funds, but he is tying those funds to both school improvement, and charter school expansion. What the mayor has done, is to tie two opposing forces (teacher union and charter schools) to getting additional funds for the district. A very dangerous move, but one that takes guts and a little muscle. If The Mayor can get the teachers union and the charter school community to publicly back the bond, he will have a team of spokes people that the fiscally conservative can not readily attack. Smart move Mr. Mayor! Good luck with keeping these two opposing interest in-line and on message.

P.S. Work on the transparency issue. It will be very difficult to push through, if LAUSD is not forthright and exact on how the funds are to be spent. The tax payers have not forgotten about Belmont.

Make Classroom Posters With Excel

We thought this might be helpful with BTS approaching. Our only advice is to be creative...........and laminate, laminate, laminate. It saves you money and time.

You Know Gas Is High When.........

Schools eye four-day week to cut fuel
costs

Facing a crippling increase in fuel costs, some
rural U.S. schools are mulling a solution born of the '70s oil crisis: a
four-day week.
Cutting out one day of school has been the key to preserving
educational programs and staff in parts of Kentucky, New Mexico and Minnesota,
outweighing some parents' concerns about finding day-care for the day
off.

Step in the Right Direction

We didn't know The Mayor reads TCI. A day after tackling the subject of the LAUSD & the Community College District exploring partnerships. This announcement appeared in the L.A. Times.

L.A.'s Santee school to team up with Trade-Tech College
Mayor Villaraigosa announces a program to train students in culinary arts and tourism while they complete high school. The goal is to prepare them for both a career and further college education.
A $1.2-million program designed to curb galloping high school dropout rates will send Santee Education Complex students to Los Angeles Trade Technical College to train in culinary arts and tourism Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Tuesday.

We think this is the first step in the right direction. We hope the Mayor's office keeps good account of where the money goes. Let's make sure that the 1.2 million is EFFECTIVELY spent.

Rhetoric

I was reading the attached article when I read this quote from our Mayor:


Villaraigosa said dropout rates are one of the factors he will look at with his partnership schools. "We are going to track the dropout rates and focus on what it takes to keep kids in school. Our goal is to graduate every student and see them go on to college."

Yeah, and my goal is to win the lottery.
We here at TCI have yet to understand why the Mayor would want the albatross of LAUSD hanging anywhere on him. But since he decided to embark on this challenge of reform, his goals aren't quite realistic.

Every child going to college is unrealistic and impractical. If it were to happen, how much would it cost to go to USC? The better option for the District & Mayor to consider is implementing teaching these students a trade. What happened to schools teaching auto-mechanics and wood shop? The reason these subjects were taught, it was understood that not every student would go on to college and in order to be able to take care of yourself, students would have to have some type of skill.

Auto-mechanics and wood shop would be a good start. But it is 2008, what about culinary, computer graphics, cosmetology, child development, and office technology classes. I hope what the Mayor was thinking, trade schools and community colleges.