The LAUSD board voted unanimously to select a veteran educator in the system as its new superintendent.
Michelle King, a 30-year veteran, will succeed Ramon Cortines. She will be the first woman and the first African-American to lead the school district. She was previously a respected high school principal, and served as deputy superintendent under both John Deasy and Cortines.
Board members said that she impressed them in their long interviews behind closed doors. They said they appreciated her knowledge of L.A. Unified, which, they concluded, would allow her to tackle the school system’s problems without delay.
The board will eventually have to confront Eli Broad’s effort to take control of half the children in the district by opening 260 charter schools.
The big showdown will come in the school board elections in 2017, when the billionaires can be counted on to pour millions into school board races in an effort to gain control of the board.
In the meanwhile, Michelle King will have her hands full trying to steady the district after years of disruption, budget crises, and declining enrollments.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ll say she has her hands full. It’s like the Little Dutch Boy putting his finger in the dyke.
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Here’s something worth three minutes of your time …
… a quick montage of speakers at the LAUSD Board Meeting last Tuesday, just prior to the vote to oppose the Broad-Walmart plan to privatize Los Angeles schools through the expansion of unneeded charter school:
Lots of sharp commentary from Board Members Monica Ratliff, Steve Zimmer, and especially Scott Schmerelson.
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I’m finding a lot of good stuff on the internet today.
Here’s a short video about / fighting the attempt to foist unwanted and unneeded charter schools on Burbank Unified (bordering LAUSD.) It’s especially relevant and applicable to LAUSD in recent months, with the Broad takeover and the LAUSD Board’s motion to oppose it.
In the opening of the video, all those pins on the map are charter schools in LAUSD — yet. that’s how many LAUSD ALREADY has — with almost none in Burbank.
Also, there’s a woman named Hannah telling of how her brother with autism was denied entry to an LAUSD charter school.
Finally, there’s some great horizontal pictographs dealing with charters low numbers of Special Ed. and low-income students:
Good job, whoever made this!
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Michelle King is also an LAUSD parent. She sent all three of her daughters to LAUSD schools. She has dedicated her entire 31 career to teaching and administrating schools. She has the respect of teachers and principals on school sites and is known as non-ideological and not a grandstander. I’m grateful for the choice, which was not looking good for a while there. Congratulations Michelle King! Put me to work!
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Ditto…by far the best choice. Wish the district had not spent another $1/4 M to do a search….Michelle is ready to take over.
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She portends to earn my loyalty with her loyalty to the district over outsiders. Put me to work indeed! I would like to take a moment here to appreciate the nearly full passing of an era I did not think I would survive as a teacher. For a while there, I was subordinate to two different reformer principals, John Deasy, Antonio Villaraigosa, Arnold Schwarznegger, and George Bush. May this be the dawn of a new day… yet more elections to come. I survived Eli Broad’s secret funding/placements of leaders of Los Angeles and all I got was this lousy tee shirt. Hee hee!
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…and with the SCOTUS deciding for the plaintiffs in the Friedrich case (following both the Harris, and Garcetti cases)…King will not have to deal with the unions for long. The Supremes will guarantee that teachers’ unions, and all unions, will very soon be a faint memory of when the country had hope for a Middle Class.
Kennedy is indeed suffering from dementia like his cohort Scalia. Good luck to us all…..
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I thought and thought and thought. I do no understand why my reply got deleted.
LeftCoastTeacherrrrrrr
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While not the first black superintendent in LAUSD, being chosen at this time is similar to Obama coming in to clear up all the mess Bush created. Michele King is probably the most knowledgeable candidate where the district is concerned but can she mend all the damage of Dz and his ilk and get the support of an abused and depleted teaching staff. If she fares anything like Obama, it won’t happen, the divide is too big, even for her.
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Paula, at least she’s less arrogant! You may be right, the horse may be too far gone from the barn. Then again, analogies only go so far. She seems to just stick her nose to the grindstone and plod along. I can only presume she’s no spring chicken in the politicking department since she’s still here after all these years. She’s at the top now and all that’s in her way up there is Mr Broad. Well, that and say the little matter of insolvency. But apart from that Mrs. Lincoln…. [to mix a gazillion metaphors and analogies and the like].
We’ll see. While we wait at least my nails won’t have to be chewed to the quick before we even start.
I don’t feel confidant, but I don’t feel shafted and hopeless. Could be worse. 😉 And FWIW this is _not_ what I felt like with Obama. I remember the morning-after signs that proclaimed “Thank you America” but as a graduate of the UofC, I sure never did feel that sort of confidence and quietude. The business school especially but also the law school have never been hotbeds of leftist ideology at UofC, Jane Addams’ influence never did reach that far. Michelle King is not an outsider come to wow TPTB in the halls of power; she’s no whizz-kid. She’s been a turtle all along and we can all only hope that she’s perfectly poised now to win this race. There are a lot of charter applications to keep at bay.
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Slight correction:
While Michelle King is the first African-American WOMAN to serve as LAUSD Superintendent — an amazing landmark event, no doubt — she is not the first African-American. According to L.A. School Report, there were two African-American men who preceeded her:
“While the district has been led by an African-American before — Sidney Thompson from 1992-to-1997, and David Brewer from 2006-to-2009 — no woman has served in the position in nearly 90 years.”
http://laschoolreport.com/countdown-is-in-to-name-next-superintendent/
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