85.7 F
San Fernando
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Local Adult Education Programs Survive, but will Shrink

The North Valley and West Valley Occupational Centers will survive another year, as will the region’s aviation school at Van Nuys Airport. But all the Valley adult education programs will see about half of their classes eliminated this fall while the Van Nuys aviation mechanics school will lose its evening and summer programs, school officials said. Smaller programs mean smaller staff. Some 1,837 teachers out of 3,617 in the entire LAUSD Division of Adult and Career Education have been laid off, including hundreds in the Valley region. The fate of the programs was finally decided by negotiations with the United Teachers of Los Angeles, which in June agreed to a 10-day furlough in exchange for the preservation of more than 4,000 jobs and some of the adult education and early childhood education programs. The division will be left with a $105.4 million budget, according to Michael Romero, executive director of the adult education programs. LAUSD passed a $6.08 billion budget in June, but about $255 million of that still hinges on a $298 per parcel tax increase that will go before voters in November. If the initiative fails, the schools could lose still more funding, in which case the adult education programs may see ever steeper cuts. The schools train some 17,000 Valley residents for practical jobs in fields such as auto mechanics, health care and photo voltaics. Also still unresolved is the fate of the aviation school’s lease with the City of Los Angeles. Under the terms of the deal with the teachers union, all adult education programs that leased space from an entity other than LAUSD were to have been shut or moved. The survival of the aviation school “is great,” said Curt Castagna, president of the Van Nuys Airport Association, which waged a campaign last fall to save the school. The school has had a long tradition of training mechanics for many of association’s members at the airport. Castagna said Van Nuys Airport businesses were “glad to see the wisdom that went into the decision to protect the aviation and other NVOP programs that will remain and benefit all of the Van Nuys and LA residents/students.” But he cautioned that it’s not a done deal. “It may be a short-lived victory,” Castagna added, “because the next major issue will be the lease renewal on the school site.” Carlyn Huddleston, principal of North Valley Occupational Center, said she is in talks with Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) and City of Los Angeles, which own the building housing the school, to permit the aviation school to remain in its current space. “This facility was designed just to be what it is,” she said. “We will see if we can get industry funding to keep it up.” While it’s expected to survive, the aviation school, like the other adult education programs, faces severe cutbacks come this fall. Three evening instructors have had to be laid off, Huddleston said. The summer program also has been scrapped in order to keep funding for the more popular, daytime fall and spring programs. “We’re sorry to let those go,” Huddleston said. “But you ask how we make these decisions about what to keep and what to close: we choose the programs that have more people attending and the programs from which more students graduate.” Huddleston and her counterpart at West Valley Occupational Center — incoming Principal Kathy Javaheri — are spending the summer months making precisely such difficult decisions. North Valley has decided to keep the aviation school and its licensed vocational nursing (LVN) program, both of which have high student interest and success in graduating students into fairly well-paying jobs. The schools have been told to make high school credit recovery classes — classes that give students who have flunked classes a second chance — a top priority. Also a priority will be English as a Second Language for non-English-speaking parents of LAUSD students. Of lesser priority going forward will be career technical education classes, Huddleston said. About half of such classes will be eliminated in the fall. Least priority will be given to classes where enrollment and graduation rates are low. Virtually eliminated will be programs for older adults, such as senior exercise, parent education classes and classes for adults with disabilities. To contend with their reduced budgets, 30 occupational schools will be reorganized around 10 hubs throughout Los Angeles, with those centers becoming administrative centers under which other sites will fall. Both the North and West Valley centers will remain hub schools. In the North Valley, several programs will come under the purview of the school including, the Kennedy-San Fernando Community Adult School, the Rinaldi Adult Learning Center, the Pacoima Skills Center and the North Hollywood Polytechnic Community Adult School. Those principles have been laid off and Huddleston will oversee those campuses. “Between those four schools, there were four principals and 12 assistant principals,” she said. “We will be able to reap the savings and put that money back into classrooms.”

Featured Articles

Related Articles