Say What? Library Program Promotes Teen Poetry

Free teen poetry workshops are being offered at the Arroyo Seco Library throughout the month of May.

Librarian Amy Bradley is introducing poetry to Highland Park's teenagers, one reading a time. Bradley, a librarian in residence at the Arroyo Seco Branch Library, has launched the Say What? Teen Poetry program, which for the last month has been bringing renowned Angeleno poets to Highland Park to lead workshops for local high-school students.  Among the poets to already stop by the Arroyo Seco Branch Library are Douglas Kearney, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo and Aaron Belz. Also appearing for a special reading last weekend was critically acclaimed poet Luis J. Rodriguez, whose autobiography It Calls You Back, earned rave reviews from the Los Angeles Times. Bradley explained that, as a librarian in residence, she was tasked with spearheading a …

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Confusion Surrounds Co-Location at Franklin

The district on Tuesday approved spending more than $10 million for 51 charter school renovation projects, one of which would create classroom space for California Academy of Liberal Studies at Franklin High school.

It appears that a charter school could be moving on Benjamin Franklin High School's campus after all, according to a report released by the Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education on Tuesday approved allocating more than $10 million in Measures K, R and Y funds to pay for 51 co-location renovation projects, which would provide facilities for charter school students on LAUSD campuses. Among the projects approved was $450,000 to create eight new classrooms and a new office on Franklin's campus for students from California Academy of Liberal Studies (CALS), which is currently located near Downtown. The board approved the motion 8-0, with five members abstaining. According to …

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Franklin Unranked in List of Nation's Best High Schools

Franklin's standardized test scores disqualified the school from consideration.

Franklin High School was ineligible to be ranked in U.S. News' recently released list of the nation's best high schools, due to student performance on standardized math and English tests in the 2009-2010 school year. Schools were considered eligible for ranking by U.S. news if students of all demographics were deemed to be succeeding at a higher level than than their peers state-wide. The report used Academic Performance Index (API) as well as its own formula that gauged "college readiness" to determine student success. Franklin achieved an API of 661 during the 2009/2010 school year--11 points lower than the median API of schools deemed demographically similar by the DOE. Franklin's API grew to 664 in the 2010/2011 school year, about 31 …

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Mount Washington Residents Warn of Magazine Subscription Scam

Residents says youths posing as students of Franklin High School may be trying to scam residents.

Several Mount Washington residents have in the last week raised suspicions about young adults claiming to be students from Franklin High School, who have been going door to door in the neighborhood pretending to sell magazine subscriptions for a school fundraiser. Residents have reported that the alleged scammers--who appear to be high school aged or slightly older--have appeared at their door after dark, saying that they were raising funds to restore arts programs at Franklin High School. In an e-mail to Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch, one resident said that the two youths did not attempt to prove that they were affiliated with the school in any way. "They went into a spiel presenting themselves as my neighbors, from "over on San …

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Major Changes Ahead At Franklin High School

Through restructuring, Franklin will be devising new academic plans, and possibly turning over its staff.

Franklin High principal Joseph Nacorda has a comparison he likes to use when talking about the state of the 96-year-old school. "We have a classic Chevy, and we need to overhaul it so it can race and be competitive tomorrow," Nacorda said. Narcoda said the teachers at Franklin have become very familiar with the metaphor over the course of the 2011/2012 year, as the school prepares to overhaul its educational plan as part of Public School Choice Version 4.0. Through the LAUSD Public School Choice initiative, schools that fail to reach academic benchmarks are required to realign their academic strategies, and teachers are required to reapply for their jobs. Luther Burbank Middle School, which is currently in the first year of its own pubic …

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Susan R

9:15 pm on Thursday, May 3, 2012

Yes. Relooking means firing. And I hope the vice-principals and administative staff also have to reapply for their positions too.   more ›

Cypress Park Students Produce Video Requesting Bike Lanes

Students from Florence Nightingale Middle School's D3 lab have been persistent in their demands for bicycle lanes.

Charter School Will Not Move To Franklin Campus

The decision was made by LAICHS during a board meeting on Friday.

Citing concerns for student safety, Los Angeles International Charter High School (LAICHS) officials have rejected an offer from the district to move onto Benjamin Franklin High School's campus. "We had a board meeting last Friday, we mulled it over, it was a long meeting, and [we] decided that were going to reject the offer," said Tony Torres, director of planning and development at LAICHS. "It's important to note that the offer was rejected for fear of safety of the students, also for the hostility that was created." LAICHS applied to move onto Franklin's Campus through California Proposition 39, which, among other provisions, allows charters to operate on under-populated public school campuses. "It was a good offer," Torres said, noting…

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Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor: Support Franklin's Academic Decathlon Team

The Academic Decathlon team at Franklin High School is thriving, but funding cuts have put the program's future in jeopardy.

This letter to the editor was submitted by Frankling High School teacher and Academic Decathlon coach Samuel Kullens. Academic Decathlon is the largest academic competition in the United States. Thousands of high schools across 42 states contend in what is undoubtedly one of the most intellectually grueling and time-consuming endeavors a young person can undertake. All decathletes are tested in ten subjects: Art, Economics, Essay, Interview, Math, Music, History, Literature, Speech, and Science.  Each year, the competition centers on a single curricular theme: the theme of this year’s competition was the Age of Empire, and next year’s will focus on Russia. While the decathletes are tested on the basic elements of art history, music theory…

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