Politics & Government

One on One With Burbank Principal Arturo Valdez

In his second year, Valdez predicts major progress from his students.

Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch spoke to Principal Arturo Valdez following the second day of school on Thursday.

Burbank is in the midst of district mandated , the fallout of years of failing to meet state standards in math and English. Community members have also raised concerns about gang violence at the school and divisions among parent groups.

Despite all that, Valdez said he sees "untapped potential" at Luther Burbank, and believes he can turn around the school that has historically struggle with the help of talented teachers and committed parents.

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Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch: How much has the teaching staff changed due to reconstitution?

Arturo Valdez: Three quarters of the teachers are new. That includes teachers, special education teachers and resource specialist program (RSP) teachers.

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How do you integrate new policies and new staff at the same time?

You can bring teachers who you think are superstars, but that doesn't mean they're going to be a team. So, quickly, I envisioned that would be the biggest challenge. These are highly accomplished people, so the thing was to bring them together and make them a team and establish trust.

It's not as simple as just bringing in the best people. It just doesn't work that way. You really have to make sure you have a unified plan. We're all on the same page and have the same beliefs.

It has been fun because we've gotten some support from the district. We had 10 extra professional development days, so that gave them a chance to come in over the summer.

How do you identify who is a “dream team” teacher?

Well, a lot of it has to do with connections you've made over the years. I relied a lot on the administrative team, our fellow teachers that were going to be staying and did a lot of visiting people and meeting in coffee shops to try to deliver the vision of what we wanted to accomplish.

We spent to whole summer time doing that, and it was volunteer time on my and my assistant principal's part to visit the fairs and go to the schools and call people and the payday was going to be the first day of school. It worked out better than expected.

How can you recognize a difference in one day?

It’s from this year to last year. Something so simple as, I have visited each room four times in the total of two days. Just what I'm seeing in the room: the engagement, the focus--it's totally different. I couldn't be happier about it. There's no traffic on the outside, when class is in session.

There's nobody walking around. Just really focused and centered in two days.

What are the measuring sticks you’ll use to track progress?

It really depends who you ask. If you ask parents they will have a whole list of what they think success is. If you ask teachers, they'll have a list. If you ask LAUSD, they will have a list. Every constituency has their viewpoints on what would be successful, but the bottom line is, we want to make sure the instruction going on in the classroom is engaging, relevant and rigorous.

And we're working toward our standards. Hopefully, that is going to start paying off when we look at periodic assessments and other things of that nature. Our kids being sent down to the office, and stuff like that, there are little things that let you know if things are working or not. The bottom line is that tracking what happens in the classroom is most effective. If you have that, everything else will fall into place. If you don't have that--forget it.

Now, if you ask students, they say something totally different. They say, “I want learning to be fun. I want to be interested and I want a good sports program.” You have to make sure you provide a school that has an array of things that meets everybody's needs.

How do you make sure parents are engaged?

from former board member Yolie Flores Aguillar for a parent center and we fully stocked it, we have an employee assigned there. We brought in more adult education classes from , so they have all the levels at Burbank during the day to provide services to parents in addition to parenting we're going to have.

We also have a contract with an agency to do some parenting around English language learning. That is a big one. Part of what we're going to do is make sure we meet with this parents on a regular basis in a small group in order to make sure they know what they need to do in order for their child to be successful.

We only have them for six hours, but we can work with parents to say, "When you have them at home, you have to do this, this, this and this." Something so simple as encouraging them to come to back to school or parent conferences is very effective. If you took a poll of every parent who ever came back to parent conferences, I guarantee you those kids are in the upper echelon. It's not a coincidence.

Some parents have said they’ve felt by other parents at Burbank, in the past.

There's a reputation issue that I am well aware of because I went to every single feeder elementary school and talked to all the parents to find out what their main concerns were, and that was their number one issue. I needed to hear that, because parents are a critical part, and sometimes within those groups there's a lack of agreement of how to go forward.

It's been a struggle, last year was a struggle, and we're looking to make improvements in that area.

What you do is you laser focus on your goal, almost like a tunnel vision. Here's what we're doing, say “support us in this way” and that's it. You don't go into left field and you don't go into right field. Because they may take it into a place it might not want to go.

Just to get focused on the classroom would do a lot to refocus their energy on what's important. I mentioned that advocacy group that's going to come in and help us with those EL parents--that's laser focused. That has nothing to do with anything else, and that's what I want. And If I'm going to channel the parents' energy, I'm going to do it right into the classroom.

Can you explain the compact that teachers will have to adhere to as part of reconstitution.

The compact was being generated the year before. And the staff that was there struggled with the compact content. So now there's a whole new group there, and they look at the compact and say, "Where do we sign, what's next, let's move on?"

It's a good thing, it's a positive thing. There's nothing in a teachers' compact, let alone a parent compact, that can't be achieved without being rational about how we move forward. I told you about the 10 days in the summer.  We talked about the compact with teachers then. They were all supportive and said, "Sign us up, let's get going."

What kind of provisions are in the compact?

It talks about lessons, engagment, intervention--we're talking about the type of professional development we're going to have and how we want to see it reflected in the classroom. It’s just common sense stuff, not out-of-the-way radical stuff. Just hardcore, here's what has to happen in the classroom, stuff.

The accountability with the homework, with the assignments, with the attendance, I mean, all of that. But the group I'm talking to, you have to approach it differently because they don't have a history. They saw this for the first time, and said, “looks good to me.”

How do you determine if the compact is being followed?

You have to go back to what happens in the classroom. Are the kids engaged, is it rigorous, is the pedagogy that the teacher is using appropriate and effective? Are they doing the professional development that we talked about, are we seeing it in the classroom?

During the summer, we focused on Kagan Cooperative Learning. That's where you were in groups of four, and everybody has a role and students teach each other. The teacher is the facilitator. It's a way to get more kids engaged and talking and participating.

So when I go to the rooms these two days, I've already seen some of that, and that is very encouraging. They had two full days and they were ready to implement. That tells me they are complying with the compact.

So it's not a matter of needing to do X task X times per day?

If you want to kill something with teachers--do that. "You will do this, You will that." It doesn't work. I'm serious. What I want is creative, innovative, progressive people, and if I'm the one telling them, “You must do X,” then I'm limiting them.

If I say, "Go out and get it done, and here's the template were going to use," they have more creative ideas collectively and more experience than I or my assistant principal would.

Student behavior and are major concerns. What role do you have in addressing them?

When I went to the elementary schools, the number one issues were reputation and safety. What I saw last year, and what I see this year, does not connect with what they're telling me. A lot of what they're telling me is what happened in the past. Nobody wants to be quoted as saying, "We don't have a gang problem."

What we have are rambunctious kids, but they are very well behaved. We don't have kids that are being harassed by gangs or crews. I didn't see it last year, and I don't anticipate it being a problem this year.

At that age, they're very impulsive. We need to be aware of that, we need to respond to that and need to make sure kids are safe and that we have adequate supervision.

I come from Virgil Junior High School--it's a different culture. You want to talk about gangs, go there. They’ve got everything. Over here, it's not as prevalent.

Regardless, I'm not going to tell you everything's hunky-dory. We just have to have rules, and the teachers and I have to be together in enforcing them. The kids will comply with what we put out there. We just need to have high expectations and not low. Our new uniform code was a big success--we told kids no jeans, and I am very happy to say there was very little problem with that. It let the staff know that if you ask, they'll provide.

Do you have a in your sites now?

Oh, please. That's a guarantee. We will surpass it. We went up 29 points last year. We got up to 690-something. We know we can do it. We can match the quality of the other schools. It's because the quality of our teachers, who are really laser focused. You take last year with some gains and you take this year, and it’s really going to get a lot better.

Why has this school historically struggled?

I know that if you change people a lot, is not a good thing. You do have to have a laser focus and I think we have that now. I think it’s the right combo right now and maybe in the past that wasn't the case. I think our focus on professional development is big and it’s undervalued. I think we do a great job and now we're seeing it reflected in the classroom.

What are the biggest challenges overall?

In clerical, I used to be at eight. Now I'm down to four, and by October I'll be down to three. I used to have five days of nurse, now that's gone. Psychiatric social worker, down to one day. School Psychologist, down to a few days. These were four of five-day workers. It has been a struggle to provide the same level of support, because the need is still there. That's the biggest hurdle for me. Trying to achieve more with less.


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