Classrooms

"Sometimes they don't see how things are." -- Handwritten student posting on a bulletin board at Locke High School, explaining why the media don't always tell the truth about inner-city schools It requires a second or even a third look at Locke High School to discern the changes this fall, one year after it was taken over by charter operator Green Dot Public Schools. The uniforms are still an ensemble of chinos and polo shirts. The teenagers still gather in the quad for lunch.

More Los Angeles campuses will have to make room for charter schools, even if some teachers are forced to give up their classrooms and become roving instructors, under a litigation settlement approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday. The agreement requires the school district to inventory all properties and work directly with charter schools to find space on or off campus. Charter advocates say finding and paying for facilities is their No. 1 challenge.

The Los Angeles Unified School District asked for a court order Wednesday to prevent teachers from skipping class next week to protest proposed budget cuts, leaving students under the supervision of aides and administrators. The one-hour morning demonstration, organized by United Teachers Los Angeles, is scheduled for June 6. Teachers plan to picket outside their schools before signing in and going to class, sacrificing an hour's pay to draw attention to the state's education funding levels.

The videos started popping up last month on YouTube. In one, secretly videotaped by a student, a teacher at Malibu High School loses control of the class and raises his voice while students laugh at him. In another, teenagers make fun of fellow students, who also appear to be taped without their knowledge. The videos have roiled the high school and sparked a debate among students, parents and administrators about what to do.

Classroom space in California public preschools is at such a premium that 21% of eligible 4-year-olds would be unable to attend if they all attempted to enroll, according to a statewide study released Thursday. The survey, released by Advancement Project, a national public policy and civil rights advocacy organization, found that if California public schools were to provide universal preschool, there would not be enough room for 117,000, or 21%, of 4-year-olds.

A Santa Ana Unified School District administrator has apologized to grade school teachers for a district policy that called for falsifying class rosters in order to retain state funding for small classes, and pledged that rosters would be corrected to accurately reflect the number of students in each classroom, according to teachers and a union official.

Santa Ana Unified School District trustees voted unanimously Tuesday to spend as much as $25,000 to audit their class-size-reduction program, an investigation prompted by reports that teachers were asked to sign falsified class rosters and that the district misused substitute teachers in an attempt to qualify for $16 million in state funds.

The Santa Ana Unified School District will lose $2 million in state funding because it improperly implemented the state's class-size reduction program in the first, second and third grades this school year, according to the preliminary results of an independent audit released Tuesday night. "It's regrettable," said Supt. Jane Russo. "We will do everything we can to correct it, see where errors occurred and make sure it doesn't happen again."

Two of the city's more successful charter-school companies sued the Los Angeles Unified School District on Thursday, alleging that the school district has failed to make space available for their students as required by law. Two separate suits, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Green Dot Public Schools and PUC Schools, assert that the school district violates state law that stipulates "reasonably equivalent" facilities for charter schools. L.A.

The Virginia Tech building where a student killed 30 people and himself was reopened for limited daytime use of engineering labs, although access was restricted because of refurbishing work. The closure of Norris Hall after the April 16 shooting rampage had stalled research by about 50 graduate students. The second-floor classrooms where Seung-Hui Cho shot 25 students and five faculty members will not be used again.