Received this morning:
Short: http://j.mp/12nVmuG
http://www.laschoolsmatter.info/2013/07/venceremos-join-community-search-for.html
¡Venceremos! Join the community search for a new LAUSD superintendent!
An open letter and call to action to our LAUSD community and national education experts regarding the urgent search for a new LAUSD Superintendent
If the union is sound and the teachers voted of their own free will, then the relationship between the school superintendent and the teachers is not simply bad, but dysfunctional of historic proportions. — Professor Bill Tierney
When John Deasy was proffered by Eli Broad and Mayor Villaraigosa as the sole candidate to replace the retiring Ramon C. Cortines, there was no attempt to consider the appropriate superintendent for the community. Even the typically equivocating Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) Board Member Steve Zimmer voiced serious concerns:
“We didn’t have a process — internal or external — for the most important job in public education in the United States right now,” he tells the Weekly. “It has nothing to do with John Deasy. I’m a big fan. … But I can’t be sure that I got the best person for the job if I didn’t get to even talk to anybody else.”
Democracies depend on processes. There was no process with Deasy. No vetting. No considering the pro and cons of multiple candidates. The only words that could begin to describe his installment are coronation and ordination.
Far more corporate executive than educator, Deasy’s reign as LAUSD Superintendent been an abject exercise in neoliberalism. Marked first by a rash of school closures, reconstitutions, and new school giveaways to private institutions, Deasy made it clear to Los Angeles that he would indeed put his ideology derived from his stints at at the Broad Superintendents Academy and the Gates Foundation before the needs of students and community. There’s a litany of complaints against Deasy, most of which are related to callous cuts to vital programs, wasteful and inappropriate spending priorities, adoption of discredited and unproven policies, defiance towards our publicly elected schoolboard, and open hostility towards the very educators tasked with teaching our community’s children.
However, this isn’t the space to discuss Deasy’s glaring shortcomings and myriad failures as superintendent. Given that his only supporters are billionaires, nonprofits that are funded by those selfsame billionaires, and the disgraced former Mayor, there is no longer any reason for this individual to continue his neoliberal project of dismantling our public commons. Instead we are commencing the search for a new superintendent now so that we don’t end up in the same situation as we did when Deasy was crowned.
To that end, we are soliciting a list of viable superintendent candidates we feel will best serve the students of Los Angeles. We are also soliciting a list of attributes the community wants our next superintendent to have. Some starter items are here, but it’s important that this is a community project, so we want people to email their suggestions. Both of these lists will be continually updated here. Join us. We can identify the next superintendent candidates who will serve our community. ¡Venceremos!
Candidates for LAUSD Superintendent
James Morris
Currently superintendent of The Fremont Unified School District. Several well respected community leaders, administrators, and teachers have suggested Mr. Morris, who worked in LAUSD for many years.
Qualities we want in our next superintendent
Believes in educating the whole child
Bilingual or multilingual
Willing to listen to the community
Social media campaign
We intend to launch a social media campaign in support of this historic community project to find the right superintendent for our community. Stay tuned for details.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I love this idea and I hope it will get the board of ed thinking that we need to start now to look for a new superintendent. Hopefully, all those who read your blog can suggest some names as you can Diane. What we need most of all is a superintendent who believes in public education. That is the first priority. A superintendent who believes in reinvolving the community(parents, teachers, students) in the decision making process. A superintendent who works with the board and these stakeholders to formulate good educational policy that benefits all students. One who can’t be brought or controlled by outside interests but realizes that he works for Los Angeles, not Broad or Gates or Bloomberg. A superintendent committed to class size reduction and educator lead reform. Sounds like a lot but someone out there fits this bill for Los Angeles. We can hardly wait for this person.
We need the process as it was for Ruben Zacarias to become superintendent. That was a process whereby all who wanted to be superintendent had to go around the district to town hall meetings and present and be questioned by the public. Therefore, the public had a large impact on who became their superintendent. This is the only fair way to do this and is the proper way in the largest school district in the U.S. still run by an elected board of education. LAUSD must show the way with this new board to the country. They need to “Show us the Beef.”
“the typically equivocating Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) Board Member Steve Zimmer”
Unkind. But spot-on accurate.
With Monica Ratliff sitting next to him, the equivocating will disappear.
Maybe. I hope I hope.
We all saw what that “hoping for change” thing did from 2008 on and it ain’t pretty.
They should consider recommending Bill Mathis