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The amount of learning lost during the pandemic, especially among students who were already woefully behind, needs to be treated as an emergency a disaster that requires immediate and lionhearted effort and resolve. That is not what’s been happening in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
L.A. Unified finally got middle- and high-school students back to classrooms, but to do what? Zoom in a room remote instruction in a classroom where kids have to sit in one place most of the day, masked, taught by a teacher in another room. At home, at least, they can keep the mask off, stretch and move around. No wonder the vast majority of families more than 90% for high school and 88% for middle school have declined to return.
Steven Greenhut
May 07, 2021 8:00 PM ET
Now that public schools finally are moving toward a return to classroom learning, teachers unions are getting more demanding. As The Sacramento Bee reported, school employees are seeking extra pay, safety measures, and child care assistance to offset the challenges imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The extra challenges are the ones faced by school employees, not the schools supposed customers.
I ve been reading teachers union statements and it s hard to see where the disputed Shanker quotation got anything wrong. As millions of working families…have been forced to leave home for work and scramble to find childcare throughout the pandemic, it s become more clear than ever that we as a society must do more to provide affordable childcare options for families with children too young for school, said a United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) statement.
When Eli Broad died recently, Los Angeles lost a civic leader and California lost a passionate advocate for charter schools, columnist Dan Walters says.
The district's staff this week dropped the recommended extension of the school year in response to strong opposition from teachers, administrators and parents.
CALmatters Commentary: Eli Broad a passionate school reformer
Dan Walters: CALmatters Commentary
Los Angeles’ most prominent civic leader, billionaire businessman Eli Broad, died last Friday, sparking an outpouring of praise for his many philanthropies.
Broad had come to Los Angeles as a young entrepreneur in 1963 and made his fortune in homebuilding (KP Homes) and in finance. He saw it, he told one interviewer, as “a meritocracy (and) one of the few cities you can move to without the right family background, the right religious background, the right political background, and if you work hard and have good ideas, you’re accepted.”