Our Schools Are Put to the Test, and Here Are the Scores
The state has told us that seven of our neighborhood's eight public schools have indeed met their goals for improving their performance in Readin', 'Ritin' and 'Rithmetic. The Academic Performance Index, as the state's listing is called, is scored from 200 to 1,000 and is based on a combination of state and national standardized English and mathematics tests. The results for last year were released on Oct. 22.
California has established that each year a school should improve by a certain amount (which is separately set for each school) until the school's Index reaches at least 800.
In our area, only Mar Vista Elementary School reached the coveted 800 level — it hit 822 during the 2002-2003 school year (up from 776 the year before).
Next was Beethoven Street Elementary School, with 791 (up from 766)
Third, Richland Avenue Elementary School, with 697 (up from 674).
Fourth, Walgrove Avenue Elementary, 690 (up from 688).
Fifth, Grand View Boulevard Elementary, 687 (up from 635)
Sixth, Venice High School, 608 (up from 582).
Seventh, Mark Twain Middle School, 566 (up from 544).
Eighth, Daniel Webster Middle School, 557 (up from 530).
There were no results for University High School because of a statistical problem.
For comparison, the median scores in the entire Los Angeles Unified School District were 534 for high schools, 592 for middle schools and 685 for elementary schools.
Walgrove Avenue Elementary was the only local campus that did not meet its schoolwide "growth target" last year.
A "growth target" is set by taking 5 percent of the difference between a school's 2002 Academic Performance Index score and the performance target of 800. Improvement targets are met when members of racial, ethnic and economically disadvantaged subgroups also show significant improvement.
Walgrove had a growth target of 6 points, but it actually improved in mathematics and English by only 2 points. On the brighter side, growth targets were exceeded for the 252 Hispanic or Latino kids at Walgrove (11 points growth to 681 vs. a target of 5 points) and "socioeconomically disadvantaged" children (287 of them), whose target was 5 points; the actual gain was 6 points.
For more on Mar Vista and Westdale schools, go to this Westmar Sun page. For much more on the 2002-2003 Academic Perfomance Index, go to this California Department of education page.
MV Community Council plans to make over its Web site
The Web site of the Mar Vista Community Council is going to get a face lift, courtesy of two of the area's residents — Diannah Morgan, who has done feature films, music videos, documentaries and other such stuff for the past 14 years, and Julie Jaskol, the public relations director for UCLA Extension. Go here to see the present Community Council site.
What puzzles us, though, is the stand taken by the Community Council's board of directors on Sept. 9 to set aside upward of $1,000 of the public's money (one-fiftieth of the entire first year's allocation to the council by the City of Los Angeles) to pay the council's present Webmaster, Bill Scheding. The board OK'd $250 for the names of the two Web sites he paid for out of his own pocket before the council was certified (marvistacc.org and marvistacc.com) "plus expenses he has incurred along the way, not to exceed $1,000."
In the first place, those two wimpy Web addresses are worth about $25 on the open market. And they could easily be traded in for something a little crisper and more inviting. Here's what $12.84 per year can buy: marvistacouncil.org, marvistacouncil.info OR marvistacouncil.us. To be a little less Mar Vista-centric, how about www.marvistawestdale.us? Sorry, marvista.org is already owned by local realtor Ron Wynn, who is on the board of the Westdale Homeowners Association and might be persuaded to part with that really fine address for, well, probably nothing.
As for that thousand bucks, the city attorney has ruled that it would be illegal to recompense anybody for expenses made without the Board of Directors' prior authorization.
It was dismaying, but not surprising, to hear a board member recommend a subterfuge to get around that little matter. The board, after all, is composed of volunteers without a lot of background in handling ethical or gift-of-public-funds problems, so let's not jump too harshly on anybody's inexperience. This is an exact quote, but in fairness we are omitting the name of the board member because the member probably didn't realize our tape recorder was running.
"Legally we cannot [pay city funds for anything not authorized by the certified and elected board of directors]. But we could buy the whole thing from him as a package unofficially, informally recognizing that he has put in a lot of work beforehand, and we can choose to pay one hundred or two hundred and unofficially . . . You can buy a Web site if you think it's worth that much . . . we value that domain name as being two hundred dollars or one hundred dollars; unofficially we would just be compensating him for work that we know he did that unofficially — or officially — we know that we cannot."
It's a pleasure to note that Bill Scheding did not take part in the board's Sept. 9 vote, although he undoubtedly should have fled the community room at Mar Vista Park and stood outside looking at the sunset when the subject — unofficially or officially — came up.
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