Date: Monday, May 18, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:15PM
Place:Galpin Ford - 2nd Floor meeting
Room,15555 Roscoe Blvd. (at the 405)
Parking: Free parking in the Galpin Lot on the West side of Orion
Please do not park in the customer service areas.
Agenda
6:30PM- 7:45PM
Networking
Introductions
Reports by Valley VOTE Committees
(~5 minutes maximum for each including Q&A )
Housing Vic Viereck
Land Use Pauline Tallent
Taxi Issue George Truesdell
DWP Billing Richard Bort
DWP update Jack Humphreville
LAWA Denny Schneider
7:30PM- 7:45PM David Hernandez
Los Angeles T.V. Public Cable Access Status
David Hernandez has been working with a number of community activists on the issue of reestablishing Public Cable Access for Los Angeles residents. Leslie Dutton of the Award winning Public Access show "Full Disclosure Network" and Ed Asner the former President of the Screen Actors Guild have been involved in this important effort. Asner has appeared before the L.A.City Council challenging them to stop the neglect of the public access television channels and to start funding facilities in L.A.
David will bring us up to date on the progress of this important issue.
7:45PM-8:15PM Ben Austin and Louis Pugliese
Empowering Parents in the Education Process
Luis Pugliese a lecturer in Educational Psychology for CSUN's teaching credential program, as well as a National Board Certified and former LAUSD teacher and education writer. He currently serves as a Commissioner for the Los Angeles Commission on Children, Youth and Their Families. He was narrowly defeated in the last election for the District 6 seat of the LAUSD.
Ben Austin is the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Parents Union, an organization working to empower parents to take back their schools. The Parents Union is kicking off the Parent Revolution, an unprecedented campaign to give parents leverage over the LAUSD bureaucracy running our schools.
The state of our schools is unacceptable. Barely 50% of kids from LAUSD graduate high school, and only 11% get to go to college. Yet bureaucrats and special interests stand by the status quo. The Parent Revolution promises any area where 51% of the parents demand change will receive a great school within three years, with or without LAUSD’s help.
Prior to joining the Parents Union, Ben directed the successful takeover of Locke High School, taking the worst public high school in LA away from the bureaucrats, and turning it into a college preparatory model of reform. Ben will describe how the Parent Revolution works, and how parents can empower themselves to fix our schools.
We thank Luis and Ben for accepting our invitation to speak and look forward to their presentation on this important education issue.
Questions from the audience, as time permits, will follow each speaker's remarks. The public and press are invited to the meeting.
The next Valley VOTE meeting will be on Monday, June 15, 2009.
Valley VOTE Mission Statement
Valley VOTE, a diverse coalition of San Fernando Valley residents, business people, educators, community activists, and organizations, is committed to exploring and fostering the implementation of programs that empower the people of the San Fernando Valley and the City of Los Angeles, to improve local governance, education and public participation on policy matters.
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