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The Associated Administrators of Los Angeles recent election produced two candidates for the presidency who are heading into a runoff after falling short of a majority.
With 1,152 active members voting for president, the top two finishers from a field of six were Juan A. Flecha (28.5 percent) and Randall V. Delling (20.3 percent), according to AALA’s newsletter. Delling beat out third-place finisher Debbie Dillard by two votes.
The runoff election will be held March 13 through March 19.
LAUSD Eastside Arts Festival
Students from over 40 schools will be showcasing a wide array of talents at the 4th annual LAUSD Eastside Arts Festival this Saturday. Theatre, dance, film, visual arts, music and other artistic endeavors are all part of the event, which is free and takes place at Eagle Rock High School from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Board member Bennett Kayser, City Councilman Jose Huizar and other district leaders are expected to be on hand.
The district offered some details on what to expected in a press release: “Student bands playing latin, rock and jazz; instrumental music groups; dance teams; and theatre and choral groups will be showcased. Guests can also walk through a gallery of K-12 student artwork or make their own creation at the Chalk Art area. Plus, professional workshops on West African drumming, improvisation and Hip Hop fundamentals will be offered.”
Go to www.eastsideartsfestival.com for more info.
weUpstanders
Last month a group of Arleta High School students won a grant from as Aspen Institute after competing in the Aspen Challenge, a competition that asks students to come up with solutions to big problems facing the world.
The group of eight students from Arleta have taken on bullying and created the organization weUpstanders, which is dedicated to spreading an anti bullying initiative through social media and community work. The weUpstanders group is holding a community forum tomorrow at Arleta High where it will make some video and interactive presentations, starting at 11:20 a.m.
Go to weUpstanders.com for more info.
Chang to Boston
The recent selection of Tommy Chang, a regional superintendent at LAUSD, to become the superintendent of Boston Public Schools has brought about a few interesting comparisons of Boston schools to LAUSD schools.
Several reports suggest that a big reason Chang was hired was due to LAUSD students performing academically on the same level as Boston students in areas such as graduation rates and SAT scores despite Boston’s spending much more per student while having a much lower class size average.
From the The Boston Globe:
And even though Chang oversaw just a section of the district as a local instructional area superintendent, he was in charge of several more schools — 135 — and many more students — 95,000 — than there are in Boston. Boston enrolls about 57,000 students across 128 schools.
The Boston district isn’t only smaller, it also spends more per student.
Boston spent about $20,099 per student compared to $13,993 spent in Los Angeles in 2010-11, the last year for which district spending figures are available from the National Center for Education Statistics. Meanwhile, in 2012-13, the pupil-teacher ratio in Boston was 12:1 compared to 23.6:1 in Los Angeles, according to national data.
Chang was selected for the job Tuesday night by the school committee after beating out three other finalists.