One small step forward: On Wednesday June 10th Kyle and I headed to Beaudry to meet with Mr. Cole-Gutierez and Mr. Bravo to talk about some of our concerns with Charters and school choice. We had a great time, it was amazing to work with the existing LAUSD structure to make substantive change in school access (more conceptual, but moving tangible). We learned a few new things at our meeting. 1. We have incredible support from the Charter office in our mapping endeavor and our indexing of Charter school information, including admission information and the Charter School Petitions. 2. Change will happen, it will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen within a few months. 3. Change will be collaborative, both HCC and Charter Office leaders will be working together to compile Charter School profiles and making that information available to the public using open formats. We hope to this process next with Magnet schools and eventually all LAUSD schools will be easier to locate and compare.
What do you think are important bits of Charter data that you would like to see in our next map. We plan to add links to API data, LAUSD report card, and the full charter school petition. Leave a comment and we will take your input.
June 22, 2009
This is a great effort and I applaud your work towards making public school choices more informed for Los Angeles. I would suggest trying to collect and add, if possible, information on the charter schools’ waiting list. This data has not been publicly available and may be difficult to collect, but would be really valuable. I would also like to see the principal and/or director’s name on the map.
Thanks!