We're #1

According to the LA Daily News, Jordan High School has the highest paid principal in LAUSD. At $168,549.64 that makes our principal top dog, well, ok, top Bulldog.

Top 10 LAUSD Paid High School Principals:

STRACHAN, STEPHEN $168,549.64
VELASCO, SALVADOR $143,931.57
MC EWEN, KIMBERLY $142,753.94
GEE, MYRON $142,350.42
TARIN, ALFREDO $141,414.34
DOWNING, JAMES $140,557.84
PRIZANT, RICHARD $140,157.15
CALVO, LINDA $140,118.51
HIGGINS, LARRY $134,317.20
BISHOP, FONNA $132,477..84

http://lang.dailynews.com/socal/lausdpayroll/

According to the same source, LA Daily News, our LAUSD administrators are top earners in the nation, yes, nation (How does the LAUSD compare in salaries?, 9/28/08). Taking into account that Jordan High School has the top paid principal in the top paying district in the nation for administrators, it could very well make him the top paying high school principal in the U.S.

Others making the JHS list:

Gary Martinez $116,491.92
Cori Waters $115,669.64
Marvin Avila $112,308.01
Robert Whitman $105,100.68
Candice Waters $101,879..88
Rosa Trujillo $96,222.60

The figures speak for themselves, and they are deafening when you consider that, according to the same source, the picture for LAUSD teachers is the contrary. LAUSD teachers are at the bottom of the barrel when compared to other large districts in the nation.
Los Angeles Unified teachers on average earn $63,000.

Gathering the payroll data was no easy task for LA Daily News. LAUSD hired an outside attorney who confirmed that the information was public (apparently LAUSD attorneys didn’t know). I could have shared with the LA Daily News what I have known for years: getting information from LAUSD is like requesting information from Home Land Security.

For instance, try getting a breakdown of everything that is spent at JHS and who gets what? Good luck getting it. What you will get is some list with budget codes and figures and told to go figure it. Really, should it be that difficult to request such level of fiscal accountability? Should it not be easy in our high tech present to make all funds spent at JHS and other schools easily available for the public to access if they wish? Apparently not.

But going back to the salaries. What should we conclude from the information? I am not sure, but I am certain that making it public is good. Valid questions can arise from the information. Are the public and students getting what they deserve from such salaries? Are teachers getting the support we should be getting from such high paying salaries? Or do such high paying salaries simply result in positions whose primary function is to find ways of justifying their existence and make themselves unexpendable?

What such high paying salaries should be buying for parents, students and teachers is the guarantee that the educational container at Jordan High School promotes and supports teachers and what they do in the classroom. A good start would be to put an end to the hundreds of daily late student arrivals (I personally counted over 600 students that arrived late to school on Friday, September 26). Our high paying administrators are not even keeping records of these late arrivals. Isn’t this data important enough to track? I need not inform you that the educational container is the very first thing Charters get under control. They know how critical a role it plays in education. Why are we not supported similarly?

Lack of Trust

Left to ourselves, we do well among our colleagues. On rare occasion, there is disharmony, but this is, for the most part, the exception. Left to ourselves, we do quite well, accept constructive criticism and depend on the support of fellow teachers. This support is critical for educators and when it is undermined, students are affected. It is fair—I would say, necessary—to ask ourselves if we are content professionally as teachers here at Jordan.

Are we having fun teaching because our students are receiving the life-long benefits of our efforts? Learning is, by its very nature enjoyable, fulfilling and satisfying. Likewise, so is teaching and when it ceases to be, it should raise a red flag of warning. And, please, discard the thought (if it dare arise) of “Well, if you are not happy here at Jordan Mr./Ms. Doe, why don’t you find another school where you can teach?” We should enjoy teaching, and when this joy is not present, it is a symptom on an educational illness. What is the source(s) of our illness?

As teachers, we are not trusted to, for one, mess it up, and, two, fix it when we do. It’s a simple “We trust you to mess it up and we trust you to find your way back to make it right. In the meantime, we will support you in this process for we understand the long-term benefits it will bring to Jordan.” Sadly, after all these years of SLC’s, PLC’s and their benefits, all the talk about distributive decision making and how there can be no real accountability without autonomy, talk about fiscal transparency and accountability, how critical is collaboration, it is amounting to a hell of a lot of hot air. Left to ourselves, we do well with one another, if we have real support. Instead, the support we have is pre-determined. We are told what our needs are and no one is really listening to what we have to say. We are getting the bad end of an understanding that was full of promise and genuine reform is increasingly heading in the wrong direction. At present, we are more dependent than ever on our administrators and coaches. This is a bad sign.

Dependencies, especially in education, should only exist temporarily. The best teachers have a workable balance between a stubborn individualism and independence that inspires students, and an ability to collaborate with their colleagues on shared objectives. They are advocates for their students’ needs and do whatever is necessary to fulfill them. This balance at Jordan is continually undermined. The very kind of teacher that Jordan students need most all too often leaves out of lack of support and compounding frustration. The supports we have are not the ones we ask for, but no one is listening.

When teachers are not allowed to fail and, subsequently, figure how to fix it, collegiality is cut at the root. Yet we will be informed that we were granted control over millions of QEIA spent, curriculum taught, student discipline, the bell schedule, professional development, participated in the hiring of new teachers and administrators, so on and so forth...and, we blew it!

“Let me tell you what you really need…” followed by a resounding “No Se Puede (No, We Cannot),” is what we get when we express our needs and concerns as teachers. No one is listening. If it walks like duck, acts like a duck, talks like duck, it is not an SLC. It is also not autonomy...or distributive decision making, or a PLC. Do you see a Green Dot in your future?

There is a solution for us.
Want to know what it is?

MLK

I am going to exercise my imagination, a bit. I imagine MLK would tell us to throw the race thing out the window immediately. He would say that JHS is not a black school, never was, and that if ever was perceived as such, it should not have been. He would also say that JHS would not be a Mexican /Latino school even if it were 100% so—or for that matter white or Chinese. MLK would say this because his understanding of what it means to be human.

For MLK, to be human is to be able to transcend all categories. Most important of these is about how we view ourselves. The Dream he spoke of is possible because humans, as individuals, are extremely difficult to categorize. People are neither this nor that—neither Black, Mexican, White or whatever—yet they might very well be, superficially. I believe this is the Freedom MLK talked about: There is no concrete self or ego apart from other. This is why the greatest gift we can give our students is to, first, help them find confidence in who they are, only to help them rid of who they think they are and go beyond. Our students are not Mexican, Black or what have you, they are beings waiting for someone or some thing to awaken their true nature. For me, each is a Buddha but does not know it yet. I truly believe this. All you have to do is look directly at your students, you will find it there. It motivates me daily.

I believe MLK was a bodhisattva. A being that chooses to incarnate in order to liberate others from suffering and ignorance. They are ordinary beings by most measures but their activity transforms the world. I believe people like MLK want for us to do likewise. We too can be bodhisattvas in our own way.

MLK would encourage us, as teachers, to help our students grasp that what limits them is not their circumstances, but the choices they make and attitude surrounding their circumstances. Martin, like all great men and women, understood that humans are equipped with all the tools needed to elevate above circumstances.

He would require of us personal accountability. Having this, he would demand it necessary that our kids knew the importance of self discipline and its connection to right-speech, right-action, and their connection to right-living. He would be big on discipline indeed, compassionate, but without the idiot part. He would be a good teacher, tough but kind.
I choose to celebrate Martin Luther King this time of year for personal reasons. For me it speaks of things having to do with going beyond small mind; limitations and obstacles can be overcome; internal demons can be tamed; enemies can be won over; it speaks of transcendence while remaining grounded; helping yourself but finding oneself in others; avoiding idiot compassion yet not giving up on people; conducting oneself with confidence yet doubting our own certainty; predispositions and biases are human, yet can be liberated; truth frees us from ignorance and that justice and compassion and two sides of the same coin.

Martin Luther’s Dream belongs to the world. We still have a ways to go, but we are heading up that staircase he mentioned.
And yes, he was a strong union supporter.

Chapter Unity = Better Teachers

I was just thinking and came to a small but not insignificant realization. If we unionize, there is not much beyond that we need do. After all, we are not here to generate union activists running around doing union things, beyond organizing, that is. Well organized union chapters in education make better teachers. Our union activity is to organize, but we do this because it allows us to be better teachers.

Teachers teach best, in large part, due to the security that contractual rights provide. Trust me, if I knew I could be fired tomorrow for being an outspoken union chair, I would be a ’yes sir, anything you say papi chulo’ kind of guy in no time. I would be bringing our principal and his administrators tamales and hot champurrado all the time. Well, not really, but you get the point.

Teachers are better at what they do knowing their union chapter is well organized and ready to advocate for them. A disorganized chapter contributes to bad education. Well organized union chapters make happy, less stressful, more productive teachers by creating a protected work environment that is responsive to their needs.

Unorganized union chapters contribute toward an aura of instability, uncertainty, a sense of not being able to depend on those procedural rights the union safeguards. Rights and justice are not enough without that reserved energy ready to snap into action in their protection. In the world of our political system this ability belongs to our executive branch which oversees police powers—and these are checked by the legislature and judiciary. Unions are that potential to act when individual or group rights are infringed. Unions , of course, do not have police powers, but they do have the ability to act when well organized.

Unorganized chapters and their members have rights via the contract, but limit their ability to enforce those rights due to lack of unity. Teachers in such chapters feel isolated, vulnerable to being individual targets, they hold back, dare not dissent, unmentionables are not openly engaged, and by so doing valuable contributions that can act as catalysts of change needed at a school like Jordan are muted.

One would think that administrators would use this to their advantage. One would think that because of their keen sense of how well organized chapters contribute to teacher well being, and how this impacts the quality of education, they would encourage union activity and participation on their site. One would expect them to see that a divided faculty may be on the short easily manipulated, but on the long, pushed unto the future contributions that unified faculties provide. High performing schools have well organized chapters in common, among other factors.

Unions are natural allies to administrators in a school site. Eventually—yes, even here at Jordan—this fact will be embraced. On one of my recent issues, “Hug your Administrator,” (read it on mylausd.com) I wrote on the importance of wishing our administrators success at what they do. Let them know this is still our wish.

Blog Before Transforming!

Given that information is the currency of democracy, and citizens use information to guide how they vote, we at Jordan High School must make sure we are adequately informed before we are asked to vote on the Partnership model presented to us. I have invited Walter Rich and Dana Escalante to help me manage the blog. The idea is to post questions, invite Marshall Tuck to respond and then allow the community to engage. Marshall obviously does not have to respond to all comments. It is just a means for all stakeholders at Jordan to get the information needed before the vote. As with all else, participation by all is key.

Support + Discipline = Instructional Time

In the classroom, time is that elixir that makes instruction possible and of which there is never enough. Anything that takes time away from classroom instruction must be seen as anathema; mortal sin of the instructional kind. So why are disruptive students being allowed to time-jack instructional time from us? Answer: No real support to teachers from administrators resulting in no real consequences for students when they interrupt instruction.

I’m sure it’s just me, but every time I hear excuses for why teachers should not exercise their right (Ca. Ed. Code 48910-11; UTLA/LAUSD Article XXIV, Sect. 2.0) to suspend disruptive students here at JHS I can’t help but translate it as: ’These are poor minority kids from the barrio/ghetto and we should not expect of them the same level of self-control as the white or Asian kids from high performing schools.’

Right, we shouldn’t, we should expect more self control from them! Those white and Asian kids from high performing schools can afford being lax on self-control. The chances are they’ll still graduate from high school, go to a university and go on to care for their families with a middle class income. This luxury is not available to our students. We owe it to their hard working parents, and especially to those students at Jordan ready and eager to learn, to have high expectations concerning self discipline and real consequences when not exercised.

What is the end result when teachers suspend students for continual disruption of instruction and these students are sent right back? Answer: The ability of the teacher to manage his/her classroom is severely undermined. Result: Less time for instruction. Category: No Brainer. Reaction: Bewilderment! Song: “We aren’t going to take it...anymore.”

So, what should we do as teachers? First, recognize that we have options given to us by the California Ed. Code. It’s much the way federal and state laws work. Simply, no state law can undermine federal law. Similarly, no school discipline policy can prevent teachers from referencing and using Ca. Ed. Code (§ 48910-11) to suspend students that disrupt the performance of their duties or willfully defy their authority in the classroom. Please read the Ca. Ed. Code to be better informed.

Given the connection of self-discipline and learning, why is this taken so lightly as given by the lack of support offered to teachers at Jordan? Never mind the model that says that unobstructed freedom leads to that creative learning that is most high and desirable. This type of learning is the fruition of discipline to begin with. Why are students brought back into the classroom in clear violation of Ed. Code? The number of disruptive students that we are talking about represents a relatively small percentage of Jordan students, yet they take away the majority of instructional time.

It’s good we have school uniforms, finally. Why did it take so long? Uniforms are part of the structure and form our kids need. Now follow it up with real support for teachers in the classroom. So far it’s been wimpy, wimpy...very wimpy.

Lack of Accountability

I was going through the usual morning routine reading the Saturday paper at Coffee Bean when the words jumped out of the LA Times Saturday (April 21, 2007) front page. “The most apparent and inhibiting deficit standing in the way of instructional coherence in LAUSD today is a lack of accountability.” I almost spilled coffee on myself. The report by Evergreen ordered by Supt. David L. Brewer was making evident a critical point about LAUSD that UTLA has cried out for a long time. There is no accounting for when the ball is dropped. The buck stops in a virtual world of smoke and mirrors in which key players make believe all is well. It’s a culture that refuses to die and makes it impossible for proven education models to surface. Brewer recognizes that this culture needs to change. “The culture is going to change.”

What is this culture that needs to change? The kind that plays lip-service but does not really implement programs that are successful. The study mentions the inability of the district to ’replicate programs that are successful.’ Why is this so? The answer is embarrassingly simple: “Successful programs empower teachers and discourage micro-managing by administrators.” Successful programs also recognize the importance of teacher retention and use the experience of veteran teachers, especially as mentors to new teachers. I admit, when a school such as JHS has lost over half of its seasoned teachers over the last 3 years, the list is short. How many total teacher will we lose this year? Yet enough of us are here, and will continue to be here, to make a difference.

Critical concerns mentioned:

Adopted policies are not implemented; no linkage between planning and budgeting; lack of accountability is pervasive throughout all levels; no responding to priorities and deadlines; no sense of urgency among managers; directives are given but no consequences for noncompliance; multiple/duplicate/conflicting programs.

No elaboration is necessary. The most troublesome ramifications of the Times report is that the ripple effects reach all the way down to the classroom level. It affects us as teachers and, most important, impacts our students. As teachers we can raise above and take accountability for what we can influence. If district hot-shots refuse to be accountable, let us contribute positively to our realm of influence. To start, we can pay attention to our body, speech and mind. We can dress appropriately. We can watch what comes out of our mouths and reflect on how it will impact our colleagues and students. Yes, it means not participating in spreading gossip and hearsay without foundation. We can be our worst enemy when we participate in the type of speech that degrades our colleagues. Bite your tongue, reflect before speech. This alone would go a long way in uniting us. But this should not be mistaken for not questioning or succumbing to apathy.

Glitch in the Matrix

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I have to inform you that there is a glitch in the JHS Matrix. Humbly submitting myself to the authority of the contract in order to discover the why’s of its prerogatives, I have arrived at the conclusion that they’re there for good/sound educational reasons (well, for the most part).

Having a matrix in a timely manner is the first step towards setting the right tone for the new academic year, and in doing go, for each mester.

A complete Matrix four weeks prior to the end of the school year allows teachers in their departments/SLC’s to meet and determine, in a fair and equitable manner, who will teach what next academic year. In determining, seniority and educational program needs should be taken into consideration. This is consistent with SLC models that hold critical relinquishing decision making affecting education, as much as possible, to teachers in their respective SLC’s.

The advanced posting of the Matrix allows teachers to plan ahead for courses they’ll be teaching next year. This provides time to address errors, recommend changes and tie loose ends before the start of the new mester. These are not small matters for they impact teachers and students alike and give the school the image of being less then efficient when not adhered to.

Further, not posting the Matrix as prescribed is tantamount to promoting mediocre teaching. Consider, if teachers are not given ample notice of the master schedule and not allowed to determine among themselves course distribution, preparation/planning is, simply, undermined. The consequence of this is the start of a new mester lacking the king of preparation that produces good teaching. This, colleagues, is indeed tantamount to mediocre teaching. Now, one might assume a veteran teacher not be affected much by this

(I disagree), but how about the way it impacts a new teacher? No teacher, much less new teachers, should be placed in this predicament.

I can almost anticipate the response from our administrators on the matter. “Señor Nava, but we do post the Matrix in advance!” It may be so, but it’s the changes later made that are problematic. What happens when you let a good teacher know August 28 that instead of teaching US History he/she will now teach Government? You risk that this good US History teacher will now be a mediocre Government teacher. I’ll select not to inform on what happens to a less-than-qualified teacher when this occurs.

Changes to a timely posted Matrix should rarely occur! It should be difficult for changes to happen. I know, all sort of reasons/rationales will be provided making the need for changes necessary. Some of them, admittedly, are understandable. One can say that there are challenges here at JHS that are not shared by most high schools. These challenges (high class failure rate, etc.) require a certain flexibility with the matrix. This is true about JHS. It is also true about the 22 program improvement schools. These schools have much in common and precisely what they have in common is what needs to change with them. If, as we see, a timely and well planned matrix is so impacting, and if our present way of preparing it is not working, then our approach needs to be reevaluated. No matter what is the rationale, a badly planned matrix, unfortunately, regretfully, sends the message that ‘mediocre teaching and on-the-fly-as-you-go preparation is acceptable.’

No, it’s not.