The power elites of Los Angeles won again. Read this editorial in the Los Angeles Times. even his strongest supporters are concerned about his ill-planned $1 billion commitment to buy iPads whose content is unfinished.
But to really get the story at ground level, read the comments.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a joke. They completely let him off the hook for the tablet failure, and then capitulated to his self-created drama.
They taught him he’s untouchable. Why should he compromise now? He just found out he can do anything he wants and they’ll back him.
As usual with reform-created community fractures, self-indulgent hissy fits and constant chaos, the big losers will be kids in public schools. He wins, they lose. Bravo, “adults.” Good going!
Regardless of the length of his contract,
it still remains that at any time, a majority
of the current seven board members (as
little as FOUR, for you math-impaired folks
our there) can vote to send him packing.
Two of them will fight to the death
to keep him. Three will do anything
to get rick of him. All that’s needed
is one of the remaining two—both
veteran teachers, and very sympathetic
to teacher concerns, by the way— to
vote the other way next time.
Time will tell…
While Tuesday was a setback for the
folks who want Deasy out, he is, by
no stretch of the imagination,
“untouchable”, except perhaps in his
own mind.
This is called: PAY OFF!
Is there still some way to stop the iPad deal? Is the Howard Jarvis group still around? Somebody needs to file a lawsuit.
Do any of Deasy’s or the Boards behaviors and the subsequent editorial surprise anyone? What did you expect? Does anyone have any concrete thoughts or an action plan on how to resist this plan to rake over public school education in Los Angeles).
Venting feelings via angry (and rightfully so) blog comments goes only so far. It will not impede Deasy and his masters from moving forward with their destructive plans.
Reallyl, does anyone consider the LA Times a quality paper? It does no type of investigation and unfortunately is only concerned about its own survival. Like the teacher’s union and the board of Deasy, they only want to keep what they have and therefore are beholden to moneyed interest in the city. The mayor also is nothing but a politician. Taxpayers, the only way these people will learn is for us to terminate their contract with us. Fire Deasy, the board, the mayor and get some people in these positions that want to work for the public good. That’s right, for the good of the public, not the civic elite.
Who owns the L.A. TImes now?
I live in small town Tn. While we are small we have consistently scored in the top 1 percent on ACT/SAT tests. This from a public school system that realized 30 years ago the value of education. In a system that graduated 28,000 students last year we were offered 128 million dollars in scholarship money and accepted 86 million. I have 2 students in private school ON SCHOLARSHIP and one 8th grader that is wringing his public school out for all it is worth. What , (you may ask) makes us who we are? It is parents and educators (I don’t use teacher because that connotates a union gobot and not one who educates children) that work together for the benefeit of our children. It is parents and teachers that trust one another to always be involved, and up front about a childs academic progress. Our teaching staff county wide makes less money than their urban and private counterparts that are literally accross the street. Why is this so, you may ask.Because of the parents. We demand academic excellence from our children and our teachers know it. They know that they are supported by us. They know that if they bring an issue to our attention , we will not go off the deep end , and accuse them of some inability or malfesience. We have a connected and involved superintendant, executive staff, principles, and guidance that support the efforts of teachers to teach and parents that desperately want our children to learn.
“It is parents and educators (I don’t use teacher because that connotates a union gobot and not one who educates children) that work together for the benefeit of our children. It is parents and teachers that trust one another to always be involved, and up front about a childs academic progress.”
So that parenthetical thought holds for all your writing, eh?
Please explain what an “union godot” is!
Same sort of show meeting just occurred in Tampa where the Gatesian, reformy superintendent received zero on her evaluation from two Board members. At the meeting where her contract was to be discussed, many big dollar players were there to sing her praises. Not a one of these speakers had ever attended a Board meeting before. A superintendent who spends money is a good thing. A superintendent who brings in 100 million $$ from Bill Gates is a good thing. Money follows money. There is always the opportunity to move some from their pile to your pile.
Now they are stuffing the next Board races with Superintendent friendly candidates who will be EXTREMELY well funded. I expect to be outspent 20 to 1 in my race. I still intend to win however, and hope that some of these outrageous expenditures manage to stay within our community…
Of course, the LATimes has ignored the fact that over 91% of teachers and health and human services professionals who were polled expressed a vote of No Confidence in his leadership.
It doesn’t help that, at the time, according to the Dailynews.com, “Even before the results were announced, Deasy dismissed the no-confidence vote, saying in an email: “I am far too busy working to serve all students and assure their right to graduate college- and workforce-ready to pay attention to this nonsense.”
David , I helped you get elected to UTLA. While you have done more than every other officer combined ( not saying much) to help teachers in jail, fought the BIC nonsense and tried in ways to do what you were elected to, it has only gotten worse. I do not fault you for this; however, we both know UTLA eagerly enable the atrocities, even helping Deasy get away with his criminal antics by ignoring them. Duffy was a buffoon, an embarassment but he gave us stats and made a scene when things were not kosher. He also sold seniority out to the ACLU ( another beneficiary of billionaire’s generosity with strings) and lured teachers to walk out over nonsense about a a nominal differential in HMO s amd PPOs that was very reasonable. I stayed with students. If I had a PPO I would have happily paid the difference between it and an hmo. And the docked pay was a windfall for LAUSD besides. We looked bad, but that was before your time. And Duffy did not like it at all but they had him by the… He was a junky too, so…
You were sort of on your own when you ran and as you are in office, so I know you are not of this even though your in it. I also know you are a coward. Most teachers are. Comes with the territory. Can you man up now? With Fletcher proposing a wild cat strike and teachers so bitterly disappointed by the outcome this week, it behooves you to intervene. That is a trap!
Fletcher works for Deasy. They do photo ops and the astro turf scam transcripts on another post in this blog betrays an unlikely deference to union leadership. Ad hom the errant board member or two, and slam teachers by all means but not utla’s top guns? I can give you more reasons to believe they are in bed together( eeeek that is a dreadful image) : no contract and yet a strike? , no pERBs for RIfs,Jailed, etc, Jailed teachers denied due process, real skelly, board review and assistance from reps who are rude and indifferent, claims of no stats on teachers jailed, rifed, retired etc(LIE!) crazy class size, no defense from unconscionable campus witch hunts, reprisals, no deference to safety or cleanliness without nurses or custodians ( more work for teachers), well constructed initiative alluded to but truly contradicted by Fletcher as excuse to strike, no negotiator hired as primised to get fair eval deal, no support for Ratliff who stood her ground, instead utla backs creepy vlad and sketchy zimmer. Backing billionaire choices board candidates? Then pretending utla endorsed the dark horse winner? No support when she alone took the high road either! There is more and it will all be out soon, but let me make this request from you: tell the truth, man. Come out with it! Tell Diane, Post on hemlock, in your usual blogs, HP, and Oped for wider exposure. I will help you even though half the troops will hate it. They hate you. But I think you are worthy of a chance, so break the chain, Lyell. You cannot stand in the muck of corruption and not be complicit. Besides, there will eventually be indictments. Does not matter that you are not doing what the crooks do. If you do not expose them now, you are just as guilty. You know how to find me,
David,
I have a question regarding Steve
Zimmer, who had the power to vote to
fire the I-pad promoter Deasy two days ago,
but chose not to.
I stayed up all night transcribing a transcript
of Zimmer’s speech to UTLA members last
August… an excerpt actually… that will blow
you—or anyone else—away as you read it.
Here’s the question:
——————————-
“What The-Hell Has Happened to
THIS Steve Zimmer?”
———————————–
Here’s a link to the speech:
Here’s he exact minute where the following
transcript excerpt starts:
07:35 – to the end of the speech
Witness the total contrast between
what Steve Zimmer says here, and
what he did with his vote to retain
John Deasy, and in his most recent
public comments to the local papers.
This speech is like Dr. Ravitch’s book
summed up in 10 minutes or so. He
attacks everything from Deasy, to Walmart
(Deasy’s backer and helped organize
Tuesday’s astroturf rally outside to the
LAUSD Board), to Teach for America
(Steve was TFA, by the way) to the
true meaning of his election victory
of corporate and privatization interests.
He also gives a historical context to
the attack on teachers, linking it to the
attack on the middle and working classes.
It’s simply staggering that the same guy
who wrote and who spoke this in August,
can do what he did just Tuesday, just two
months later.
–
Again, this starts at 7:35 at:
– – – – – – – – –
STEVE ZIMMER: (at the August
2013 UTLA Leadership Conference
at some hotel near LAX airport):
“The budget crisis (of 2008 and on) was absolutely intentional. It was caused by corporate greed… corporate greed! It was caused by privatization, and it was caused by radical de-regulation of the housing market, of our economic system, and of our banking system. It was very clear. People got rich as our kids suffered. That’s what happened. It wasn’t an accident.
“It was intentional. It was purposeful.
“And the same folks, the same millionaires and billionaires, and privatizers who caused this economic crisis that our school communities suffered so much from…
“… are the very same people who are donating millions and millions of dollars to the privatization movement, to charter schools, to Teach for America, to everything that is intended to privatize and corporatize this last vestige of a public sector, of unions.
“They did NOT come after just ME in this last election. They came after ALL of us.
“Throughout the 1990’s… and my long-time friend and sister in the struggle, Cheryl Ortega is here today as well, and she’ll remember that when were out fighting against Proposition 187… we always use to say to our brother and sister teachers to motivate them, to get more involved:
” ‘That when they come after our kids, and when they come after our families, they come after US! They come after our profession! They come after public education!’
“And that’s what we said during the 1990’s, when the racists, and the xenophobes, and the Republicans were coming after immigrant children and their families. ‘When they come after our families and our kids, they come after US!’
“And now in 2013, we give the same speech in reverse, and that is that when the come after our teachers, they come after our children, and our families, and the whole thing has come full circle.
“So when we oppose Academic Growth Over Time, and Value-Added, we are not afraid of accountability, we are not afraid of responsibility. We just want a system of training and support. Let me say that again—training, support, and evaluation—that is based on improvement of instruction, and is based on real information about children and their academic growth. We did not come into teaching to check off boxes. We came into teaching because we believe in our kids and because we are about student growth and academic improvement….
“But student growth and student improvement can never be measured by a single standardized test score, and what we suffer from in this district is what I like to call a ‘data addiction.’ It’s what I like to call a ‘religious addiction’ to ‘the numbers,’ and to a ‘spread sheet,’ and to a ‘bottom line,’ and we’re taught that this is ‘objective,’ that this is ‘fact,’ and that everything else is ‘soft’… that we should go into ‘The Temple of Data’ and kneel down, and that we should bow down at an ‘Altar of Objectivity.’
“But we WON’T and we CAN’T because the gods that WE believe in teach us that EVERYTHING that is wondrous and beautiful about children cannot be measured by a standardized test score!
“We know!
“The beautiful names… and stories… of our kids—we never met a kid that was named ‘Proficient,’ and we CERTAINLY never met a kid that was named ‘Basic,’ and NEVER ‘Far Below Basic!’
“Our children have names, they have stories, and if we are to fight the battles against corporatization and privatization, we must be the warriors of re-humanization of public education that is about our children, their families, our communities, and their stories!
“And that starts with humane school communities!”
“We are not opposed to charter schools because we are opposed to choice for parents and families.
“Choice is a core value in public education, and we are creating more and more in-district programs (i.e. teacher-led schools, not private charters, Julie) for choice, and options that are built around instructional pipelines that we (unionized teachers) create with families and children.
“What we oppose… is radical de-regulation.
“What we oppose is the attack on the basic promise of public education, the basic contract of public education. That is we serve EVERY child who comes to our door—EVERY child who comes to the schoolhouse door.
“And if you don’t serve EVERY child—those who are the gifted to those who have the most special needs, and the entire spectrum in between.
“If you are not about EVERY child, then that is NOT public education, and we stand against it, and we stand against the corporatization and privatization that is embodied in the charter school takeover.
“The thing that I want to also impart to you is that this fight is a fight across our city, across our nation, and it is a pitched battle, and we need to stand in union solidarity.
“We need to stand with our brothers and sisters who are our hotel employees, and if we can give a hand to all the H.E.R.E. (hotel union) members that are here today hear serving us.
(APPLAUSE)
“We need to stand with carwash workers.
“We need to stand with our brothers and sisters from the UFCW who are at our supermarkets unpacking our groceries, and packing them up very day.
“We need to stand with the union families and the non-union families that are the parents of our children.
“We need to be out there, just like we were in the 1990’s, and in the many strikes—whether it was the UFCW, H.E.R.E., right here on this boulevard (Century Blvd., a strip near the airport where the high-end hotels are… Julie) , or the ‘Justice for Janitors’ strike right here in 1999.
“The Labor Movement needs to see that our teaching force is a force of social justice for ALL families in the city of Los Angeles.
“But let me say this… to my friends… and my brothers and sisters in the (L.A.) County Federation of Labor. If you ask, and if you expect us to stand against Walmart during the DAY, you had better stand with us as we fight Walmart’s effort to take over our schools by NIGHT.
“It is the SAME fight, and we need to hear our labor leadership across this city defend public education, as we defend the rights of workers and our parents and our brothers and sisters
Audience member: “FIRE DEASY!” (Oh the irony of that… Julie)
“The last thing I want to share with you is that we almost lost in this election the promise of public education.
“And in this room are teachers, families who slept on the floor of my campaign office, people who had the courage to go out and speak truth to power.
(Julie here… And what was the point of all that hard work and sacrifice to re-elect you, Steve, if you’re just going to cave to the very same privatizing, corporate forces that you are condemning in this speech, and thus, choose not do fire Deasy like you did on Tuesday? My children deserve better than that from you, Steve.)
“We didn’t change who we are, or who we were. We became more of who we were through this election cycle.
“The promise of public education is at great risk.
“But I need to tell you, and we need to be honest with ourselves, that the promise of public education has not been realized for all students, and we know this.
“It’s been realized for some, but not for all.
“… and until the promise of public education has been realized for ALL students, it’s a broken promise for EVERY student.
“It’s not going to change by corporate or private sector intervention.
“It’s not going to change by some performance metric come up by McKinsey Company, and produced by John Deasy.
“It’s not going to change by competition, but it is going to change by us working together.
“In a few days, we’re going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The March on Washington’…. I feel like I can say this… ”
——–
and Steve continues on with quotes from
King…
Kudos Julie. I heard this speech and the victory speech that he gave before the United Teachers Los Angeles. I’VE BEEN HAD, I canvassed voters for Zimmer and I heard him declare that he is a friend to teachers. Thank god I don’t have more friends like Steve Zimmer.
I don’t know Zimmer, but all I can conclude is “typical politician”, who says one thing to one audience, and another to another audience.
He wants to please everyone. He goes to a UTLA meeting and tries to please us with rhetoric we will like. When the deformers hold a rally, when bigwigs like Garcetti come to speak to him, he wants to please them as well.
We need to make clear to him that he has totally lost our support.
Note that UTLA never says that their ‘survey’ was an on-line survey among self-selected participants. Any 6th grade teacher worth their salt knows that self-selected surveys have no statistical basis. Further, they say 17,000 of 31,000 union members took the survey, but did the UTLA have any control to keep people from taking the survey twice? Fraud, lies and BS — my union continues to break my heart and do a poor job of representing me to the public and at my job site.
Respectfully, the survey was not conducted on-line — the survey was conducted at all school sites, and voting was open to all UTLA members.
David,
What you write above is certainly true. And your recent article about Deasy is very good, as well as statements from Warren about him.
However, I would like to respectfully remind you– When news of this October Surprise was coming out a few days in advance, about the rally in support of Deasy Tuesday, etc., I wrote to all UTLA board members, including you, a few times, and requested that UTLA also call a rally for Tuesday afternoon to protest Deasy, and explain to the public why he is so bad, to try to mobilize teachers to knock on doors and try to get parents involved in contacting the school board, also come to the anti-Deasy rally, etc.
Although I did receive a couple thank you notes from UTLA board members (including yourself) about my letter to the LAUSD board, there was no reply to my suggestion for a counter rally, etc.
Sure, not much time to organize this. I think the deformers were planning the October Surprise for months, but we only had a couple days notice, first lulled into happiness with the first reports that Deasy had resigned. But it was an emergency urgent situation, and if UTLA had pulled out all the stops to try to get a counter rally going, I think it could have been pulled off.
Would it have made a difference in the outcome? I don’t know. Perhaps not. But it certainly would have made a difference in the news coverage, to have another rally that day with thousands of teachers (compared to the hundreds of deformers, who were neither teachers, parents, nor administrators of LAUSD), hopefully we could have got some parents to participate as well, and the media would have had to cover it, interview participants, etc. That would have made a much stronger impact than commentary from a couple of union officials, and a survey from months ago, to have footage on the TV news of thousands of teachers and parents in protest of Deasy.
I would guess too, that most likely I was not the only one who made such a suggestion to the UTLA Board. Why was it ignored?
Thank you, Mike, for the thoughtful, well-reasoned reply.
Given that UTLA has repeatedly communicated the many concerns that members have regarding the Superintendent’s conduct, and policy decisions, we need to continue to hold accountable those who are responsible for making the decision to extend his contract:
The current LAUSD school board.
UTLA simply doesn’t have the tens of millions that Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg (he personally donated over $1 million to defeat Steve Zimmer) and everyone who wishes to destroy unions — has, at their disposal.
Prop 32 was a major struggle to overcome for organized labor — an attack on the working class — and we simply don’t have the same resources as those who wish to – literally – decimate collective bargaining rights.
One person: One vote.
One question, one of a zillion:
Patrrena Shankling, a former LAUSD Substitute Teacher, who followed the lesson plan, was fired by the Superinentendent following her encounter with him. She spoke at the school board prior to their decision to extend his contract by one year?
Why was her voice completely ignored?
Of course, the teachers are always at the bottom of the list. Why bother with them, all they do is interact with the children. Education is all about the administrators.
I was at the BOE meeting and I was barred from speaking as were two of my colleagues. I also asked the “demonstrators,” one by one if they were parents and they all answered no. They appeared to be high school age and should have been in school on Tuesday afternoon. There goes our ADA. The speeches of the “community members,” were very well scripted and hit all of the “reformy,” buzzwords. Ben Austin came by slumming in his $100,000 FerrariMaserati but at least he was dressed in jeans. Note to Ben; drive a FordHondaToyota and you might be able to fool people into believing that you are a “man of the people.” Hey Ben, it could help your political career. More to follow.
3 simple thoughts.
1. this faux resignation act was fully crafted to distract the emergency board meeting from the real issues, one of which is the possible criminal (at the very least unethical) action surrounding the iPad catastrophe.
2. the board was threatened into compliance of awarding a satisfactory rating in exchange for…something
3. it is a total mystery to me how respectable newspapers, the national reports, the general LA parent population, families with special needs, the economically underrepresented, the shiny westsiders, the creative hollywood community, and the usually dubious investigative reporters on every local and national network are in a deep fog and therefore unable to distinguish the snake oil salesmen who are selling out our kids for corporate profit. I’m not a particularly enlightened person, but Tuesday’s outcome is completely illogical and dare I say sinister, to me.
Utla is in turmoil and can’t help teachers because there’s so much in fighting among the groiups running for election. People you think are supporting teachers and their lack of confidence in deasy are not the ones actually supporting teachers. You would be surprised at how many of UTLA’s top officers support Deasy even though he is decimating the teacher rank and file. Is this the leadership we want, that publicly supports us and behind the scene, lap. Up to deasy? The leadership I’m referring to does not include David Lyell or Warren.
Also,the new utla that they name themselves is really the old utla under Duffy. These cowards can’t even come out and acknowledge their support for this deform superintendent for political reasons while thousands of their colleagues have been unfairly dismissed and jailed. I guess they also agree with Deasy that we are the disposable ones, veteran teachers with years of service to the district.
No Paula, I do not think any UTLA officials support Deasy, not at all. I don’t see how you could possibly conclude that.
I think one can question how effective leadership has been in fighting Deasy, in educating the public about how negative that man’s reign has been (not only for teachers, but for the children of this district), etc. But I think totally wrong for you to imply that any UTLA officials are somehow allied with Deasy.
Mike, r u craZy.Teachers don’t have to have the union to show or tell them about how bad deAsy is. They live this everyday thru his poor policies that affect every school. Their is a disconnect between rank and file when we say we want him gone and campaigning officers are aupporting him behind the scene.
Perhaps they don’t support Deasy explicitly, but they do implicitly, Warren Fletcher especially. Which are more important, actions or words? Please list WF’s actions in support of the profession or shut up. We don’t need apologists, we need leaders. Who’s more to blame, an abuser- Deasy- or the witness that remains silent, Warren Fletcher?
I imagine that steve zimmer knows he is going to take a beating here but we must resist the impulse to bash him until we have a fuller story of what went on behind closed doors. perhaps he was trapped into this vote by circumstances we have yet to learn. I am as angry and disappointed as all of you but I don’t think pulling support for him is constructive. what is constructive is to rally publicly and DEMAND to know how and why the outcome was for corporate thugs and against common sense.
Mike, I’m not blaming Warren, in fact in an earlier post I specifically said that the officers supporting deasy we’re not Warren or David. I think you’re rude to tell me to shut up . This is an opinion blog. If you do’t like my opinion,oh we’ll.
Warren is a traitor. No two ways about it. http://www.hemlockontherocks.com
I d o not see Zimmer coming up with an adequate explanation. If he does, I am all ears.
was/is there a strategy in place if deasy was/is ousted?
One hopes. It certainly may be possible with an iPad meeting Tuesday. We tend to not see our school boardulling a scam like Deasy has, but maybe it is more proceedural than anything. Deasy issues a thinly veiled threat to sue the board on his rag LA School Report. There is some reason to seen this as the BOE ‘s error as well as Deasy’s , so maybe this dram was smoke an mirrors designed to let Deasy off the hook, but to get rid of him too. If that is true, we could speculate that Zimmer bit the bullet publicity wise to help the plan fly.