Monday September 10 2007
Kathleen Duba
PUSD
Superintendent’s Office
Ms. Duba:
Now that the Pasadena Star News has confirmed what we’ve been saying about Nia (they’re not accredited),
what is the PUSD going to do?
These children, our children, are wasting their time, and our taxpayer money, and our Edison facilities.
What are you going to do?
Also, we noticed that Nia put out a request for virtually a total replacement of its staff on Craig’s List August 27.
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/edu/403235321.html
Why would they do that?
Thank you again for assisting us in delivering quality education to the children living within the PUSD
Elliot M. Gold
Head of the La Corona-Palm “Upside-down T” Neighborhood Association
Altadena Above It All 
September 11, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I (heart) this blog.
September 11, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Mr. Gold-
I neither endorse nor am I opposed to NIA Charter School. They have, I can say in all honesty, not received fair or equal treatment from the PUSD as compared to Odessey, or the new charter, Avison, over at Noyes. NIA in order to have their charter granted was forced not to ask for space until after space was let. It was an incredible battle to get them out of the small temporary classrooms and into a legitimate site. NIA’s test scores can not be understood without knowing the level of the kids who go there when they entered NIA. The test scores during the time those kids have been at NIA show dramatic improvement. The behaviors of those kids do too. NIA’s director does have a excellent RECORD of student achievement and improvement in this community, and it is a record that spans more than twenty years.
At present, RoV has no record. They have no test scores,they have operated now for less than a month, so no comparison can be done. They can posture all kinds of wonderful things, and hopefully they will achieve them, but there is no proof as yet of what they can do. I believe they are sincere in their efforts and desire, but that doesnt mean we should get involved in pitting RoV against NIA, thats exactly what the PUSD, who totally abandoned the students of both schools would have you do. The PUSD has a long and unfortunate history as a institution taht has gone way out of its way to disadvantage African-American kids at every turn.
The real problems for this community are that the (1)PUSD has worked hard to disadvantage BOTH of these predominantly African-American schools, while advantaging both Aveson and Odessey. Aveson also has absolutly no record, and Odesssey’s record for its first several years when they were down across from PCC was very rocky and uneven. These schools have predominantly white students. (2) The PUSD had absolutley no concern at all for the traffic and parking problems placing RoV and NIA together at the same site would cause for the surrounding Altadena neighborhood. They paid a LOT of attention to the desires of the neighborhood over at Noyes. It wasn’t that they didnt hear from your neighborhood or the West Altadena community, it was that they just didnt care what we had to say.
The answer isn’t in what school do we destroy, but how do we find each of them appropriate space that will allow each to grow numerically and in quality, while not adversely effecting the surrounding neighborhoods.