It is with great anticipation and excitement that we open our second year of operations at West Adams Preparatory High School. This school year we will graduate our first class in the school’s history. There will be many memorable student body and senior activities on the way, spearheaded by our brand new student government representatives. I am expecting many of the initiatives and programs we started last year to continue to blossom and grow, including our 7 to 7 after school program, and look forward to introducing our new round table professional development days. I want to especially welcome the many new staff members who have joined our West Adams Prep Panther family.

I thought we had a terrific opening of our 2008/2009 school year. While we are not facing the enormous challenges we faced in year one, there are still many issues that need to be addressed. Close to 500 more students are enrolled this year, which created new challenges for us as we are now at our full capacity. More importantly, we are now a fully functioning public high school that is becoming a true centerpiece of service to the West Adams community.

This month we have some very important events on campus, including an accreditation visit on October 13. We also are beginning our journey in the iDesign Division. We made an impressive presentation to the LAUSD Board of Education that was supported by our teachers, students, and parents. What followed was an unexpected 6-0 vote in favor of our entering. I am looking forward to completing the on campus voting as requested by the president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, and even more excited about the great year ahead!

We are in the final days of completing a very eventful and I believe very successful historic first year. It was a huge amount of work. We have had some great successes but more importantly we have laid the groundwork for continued improvement for years to come.

Our Visual and Performing Arts department just completed four spectacular performances of the Odyssey this past weekend. It was a great way to finish out our first school year. This ambitious project required the collaborative effort of many teachers. Mark Brodie (director), Thomas Gamboa (orchestra), Sharon Shaker (dance), Roderick Leverett (stage crew), Lorien Eck, Doreen Barsky, Jesus De Dios (wardrobe, props, flyers, make-up, sculpture), Kevin Lum, and Charla Austin (producers) deserve great credit for putting this production together in a few short months. Also, a special thank you to Mr. De Dios and his class for their outstanding work on our first annual yearbook—a fitting summary of West Adams’ inaugural year of existence.

Last Friday night we had a spectacular first awards ceremony for the ROTC program. Many parents attended. Our cadets were extremely competitive in their competitions all year against established and successful programs. First Sergeants Williams and Rogers deserve great credit for starting up our program with not only high participation rates but achieving high performance levels as well.

Student elections that were just completed were extremely successful. We had nearly 150 students attend meetings and submit applications for positions of student leadership. This is like nothing I have ever seen in my nineteen years working in high schools. The foundation has been laid for an outstanding Leadership class next year that will facilitate all students taking pride and ownership of their school. Anne Busacca-Ryan, next year’s Leadership teacher, and Brandon Abraham deserve great credit for their work this year.

Our testing has gone well this year. Testing Coordinator Phillip Gedeon deserves much credit along with the counselors and other personnel that helped with organizing the many tests we administered. The preliminary results from our California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) exam show our 11th graders ranking three points behind the district cumulative average (71%) of students passing both exams, sixteen points (40%) from the district average for 10th graders. While we should certainly be looking for improvement as we move forward, we are already ahead of most schools with similar demographics. We should receive our first API score in August.

36% percent of our ELL students scored a 4 or 5 on the CELDT test administered in October. The district target was 29%. Our Coordinator Ana Alvarado and Department Chair Timothy Hayes have done a great job this year.

Student attendance has stayed at or above 90% every month this year. Our outstanding PSA, Stephanie Lartelier, predicts our final attendance rate may be above 91%.

The International Baccalaureate Program (IB) continues to move forward at West Adams. LAUSD has decided to fund some of our training next year. More importantly, the District is supporting two of our feeder schools to become IB schools. Magnolia Elementary and Berendo Middle schools were chosen based on my recommendation. Both are our biggest feeder schools. Both schools are enthusiastic about moving forward with us.

Four more of our faculty members received Teacher Innovation Grants for important curricular and cultural initiatives that will be developed over the summer. Congratulations to German Gurrola, Victoria Theissen and Marco Martinez (in partnership with Mario Galindo), and Anne Busacca-Ryan.

Thanks to the organizational work of MLA, I hosted a meeting several weeks ago of our feeder school Principals. We had a great turnout. We also had several Superintendents participate including the Local Superintendent of Local District 3. The groundwork is being laid for an MLA Partner Schools zone that will serve all students and families in our neighborhood.

I am looking forward to a very exciting 2008-2009 school year. We will continue to improve. Our newly hired teachers for next year are outstanding. We had a theater full of incoming 9th grade students and parents last Saturday for a family orientation. They are extremely pleased with the opportunity of attending West Adams Prep. Most will take classes here in the summer.

While I am excited about next year I feel it is very important that we celebrate our accomplishments. A year ago I was optimistic when I approached prospective students, parents, community members and funders. While we certainly had some challenging moments and lost some battles, I feel strongly that thanks to your hard work and talent we more than delivered on our promises to the community. Our recent dialogue about West Adams moving into iDivision also indicates how unified our community is around our mission and protecting the cumulative work that has been accomplished this year. We will soon submit a petition with over two thousand West Adams Prep community names to the District that will put an exclamation point on our first year as a Panther family.

I am looking forward to celebrating all of these achievements with you and your family members this Friday at our Community Cookout.

I want to start my update by thanking our counseling staff for a superb performance in opening up our 3rd quarter. Managing the master schedule using a 4 by 4 schedule requires skill and effort, especially going from the 2nd to 3rd quarter. Many improvements and electives such as the NFTE business class were implemented. We will continue to make adjustments based on recommendations from the small schools as we move forward with next year’s master schedule.

West Adams’ first Winter Formal was a great success. The leadership class led by Advisor Brandon Abraham with assistance from Doreen Barsky, Anne Busacca-Ryan and Monica Cardona along with many parent center volunteers planned a beautiful event at the Natural History Museum. I have been supervising these dances for ten years and I have to say this was the best one I’ve attended.

The winter sports teams have just finished their seasons. I’ve stated before that any varsity wins are bonuses the first year. All our teams were very competitive and improved as the year went on. Our girls and boys basketball teams had a chance to make the playoffs. Our boys soccer team led by Coach Jose De Jesus Torres exceeded all expectations and finished with 8-4-2 record, a second place finish and a playoff berth. They finished the season with a tough loss in a close game at Grant High School.

Spring sports are now starting. We have had a great turnout for most of our teams. The girls softball team had over 100 girls try out. The most exciting sport may be the swim team led by coach Cesar Zapata, a new TA on our staff. It is great to see our young people working hard in our nice heated pool on cold rainy days at 7:00 in the morning! Our baseball, softball fields and stadium bleachers are close to full completion and should be ready for the spring season.

One of the toughest challenges we have faced has been the many students we inherited who were behind in credits. While we have many outstanding 11th graders, more than half of our juniors (based on grad year) were behind in credits. We have seen much progress in this area. Many of these students are now doing much better in school and almost half passed the CAHSEE for the first time this year–which is noteworthy since many of them had failed it multiple times in their previous school environments. Another nice progress indicator has been the popularity of our Adult School and Saturday Beyond the Bell classes. We have over 300 students now taking classes and making up credits at night! In addition, the launch of the “7 to 7″ program at West Adams has been another great cultural development. “7 to 7” brings together tutoring, clubs and activities, Adult School and optional classes taught by industry professionals all under one programmatic umbrella and quarterly catalog. The music production class had over 30 students attend and the Latino and African American Student Unions have gotten off to a strong start thanks to many committed faculty members.

I am also pleased to announce the first recipients of MLA’s Teacher Innovation Grants (TIG). These awards represent some of the most entrepreneurial classroom teaching projects in LAUSD. The grant recipients and projects are listed here. I look forward to the next round of applications as the program grows in scope.

We are fast approaching our spring break. Our big test before we leave will be the California High School Exit Exam to be administered March 12 and 13. Please encourage all of your 10th grade students to prepare and do well on the test. As always, we are striving for all of our students to succeed and achieve a level of collective excellence.

Thank you for all of your efforts to build our culture and spirit as we pass the halfway point of our historic first year.

As we approach our holiday vacation I want to take this opportunity to thank you for all your hard work. Opening up a school, as we have observed, can be very stressful at times. I believe it has been well worth the effort. Many visitors to our school over the past few months have made very favorable comments on our successful opening. Our student attendance remains high. We actually have 12 more students enrolled now than what we had on norm day in October. The data I had seen several years ago showed every high school in the district losing significant enrollment by this time. While this may create problems concerning our capacity, it points to some great things already happening for our students here.

One of the things I have been stressing over the past few months is the need to put policies and systems in place. In talking with many educators who have opened new high schools, they say it takes several years to get to a smooth operating position. One area in which we have made significant gains over the past few months is the hiring of new staff members such as teacher assistants, educational aides, parent and community representatives, and security personnel. Most of these positions come from recently released budgets. I want to commend School Site Counsel, Title I Coordinator Erica Nava and ELL Coordinator Ana Alvarado for their efforts in drafting our single plan and preparing the budgets.

Every new school that has opened has had a significant “punch list” of items to be completed by construction after the school has already opened. Our school was no exception here. Significant projects that are scheduled for completion in January are the baseball and softball fields, football/soccer bleachers, security cameras and computer-ready TVs in all classrooms.

I want to congratulate our fall coaches and players on their recently completed season. Wins are bonuses in our inaugural season, especially our varsity teams that competed without seniors. Our boys freshman and sophomore basketball teams actually posted winning records and our girls volleyball team nearly made the playoffs. The boys soccer team has helped get our winter season off to a roaring start with 3 wins, including a big 3-1 victory over league rival Los Angeles High School. West Adams ROTC and Academic Decathlon teams have placed very competitively in early competitions.

The leadership class has just finished negotiations with the Natural History Museum to host our first dance. It will be on Friday, February 15. Also, Teacher Innovation Grant awards will be announced on January 22, so there will undoubtedly be good news for many faculty members shortly after our return from break.

Finally, I want to close by wishing everyone a well deserved, safe and happy winter vacation. The administrative staff, parents and MLA staff will be hosting a holiday breakfast on our last day of work for 2007. We look forward to seeing you there!

We have just completed our first few months of school. I want to congratulate all of you on a superb opening. We were faced with the huge challenge of bringing together almost 2,200 students from dozens of different schools with a brand new teaching staff. Student attendance has been high, the student uniform policy has been hugely successful and student grades from our first report card were competitive.

We opened the school with a name, school colors and a mascot. Teachers are leading co-curriculum activities such as football, basketball, volleyball, leadership, yearbook, school newspaper, ROTC, marching band, cheerleading and academic decathlon. The Parent/Community Center is already functioning at a high level. Small schools are beginning to create their own culture with assemblies and events in the planning stages. There is so much more to accomplish but the amount that has been accomplished so far has been truly amazing.

The Block Party was a huge success. Many parents commented to me on how this was the best event that had ever happened in our community. Mentor LA has been a terrific partner. They have worked side by side with us for nearly two years on this project and certainly deserve much credit for our successful opening. We look forward to a strong partnership for many years to come.

I want to welcome our new staff members: Teachers Doris Carrola (English), Tina Cruz (Special Ed), David Curtiss (Math), Ishak Elguindi (Math), Catherine Gurrola (ESL), Jessica Ramirez (Spanish) and Tiogranyan Arusyak (Math), Vincent Rogers (ROTC), Special Education Assistants Cheryl Ball, Juan Garcia and Milerna Zapada, and Assistant Plant Manager Dave Figueroa who have joined us since we opened. Robert Steinmetz, a new Mentor LA staff member will be assisting our Deans. Ramon Saldana our Plant Manager has received a promotion and will be replaced by Miguel Osorio. We congratulate Ramon. He will certainly be missed. The good news is that Miguel our new Plant Manager is coming to us with the highest recommendations.

Again I want to thank all of you for your effort. I am looking forward to a very successful historic first year for West Adams Preparatory High School. Go Panthers!