A reader writes:
Shakedown Artists
A number of billboards have gone up recently in LAUSD board member and candidate for re-election, Monica Garcis’s district two months before school board elections. They read, ‘ Dream Big – Arts education fuels creative thinking’ and include a picture of a thirteen year old Monica Garcia. This billboard was funded by LA Fund (lafund.org), a non-profit group founded in 2011 by her political allies LAUSD Superintendent and former Deputy Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, John Deasy and Megan Chernin. One of the LA Fund projects is Arts Matter which was started in response to the deep cuts to arts education in Los Angeles. Their website points
out that ‘In four years, the LAUSD has gone from running a nationally recognized arts education program’, to today struggling to piece together a drastically reduced and inequitable program. However, neither the website nor billboards point out that it was Monica Garcia and John Deasy who cut the arts program to the bone and created this crisis in the first place!
The LA Fund website points out how the arts promote creative thinking while at the same time, Deasy and Garcia have supported a stripped down curriculum focused on standardized tests. To put it simply, they have created a phony crisis by cutting the arts and are now using that very crisis to ask for monetary donations to be made to Deasy’s foundation. And how is that money used? The LA Fund website states that ‘All proceeds raised throughout Arts Matter will directly support arts integration in LA. public schools’ when in fact, a great deal of their money is being used to create billboards of Monica Garcia! This is the same Monica Garcia who recently let the school board know how she feels about funding programs supported by the community. She suggested that, instead of funding the arts, adult and early childhood education, LAUSD should spend $500,000 on ipads for each student! It is also important to point out that Superintendent Deasy is an employee of LAUSD supervised by Ms. Garcia who has voted in favor of a number of raises for Deasy in the time since he founded the LA Fund.
The bottom line………Deasy created a crisis, created a non-profit to collect money to fix it and instead spends it on political ads for the woman who helped create the crisis and is responsible for his employment.
Matt Kogan
BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EDUCATION!!!!!!
Disgusting! Reprehensible! Sleazy shysters!
Banish bloviating bumbling billionaires!
LAUSD parents are sick of testing!
What they really want is a return to those thrilling days of yesterday when education of all subjects not tests scores rode supreme; when the only tests in elementary schools were Spelling tests on Friday; when there was time for singing, dancing, performing, discussions, weekly art, and fun; when handwriting was taught and used; when there was time for teachable moments; when a lesson was not confined to a specific number of minutes; when a lesson could be stopped and continued another day if the class was not into it; when there were letter grades in elementary school; when field trips were more prevalent and you could watch educational movies even if they weren’t about the current subjects; when elementary classes went to Physical Education daily to learn the games, skills, and rules and to have fun; and when education was not API’s, not driven by test and textbook publishers, data and consultants, but by the need to prepare our children for their futures as leaders of the world.
http://www.examiner.com/article/lausd-parents-are-sick-of-testing
Fleecing the flock, so to speak. Are there politicians who actually support a well rounded education instead of just paying it lip service?
Billboard companies sometimes get a nice tax break for donating their services. But even if that is what happened here, it doesn’t change the fact that Monica Garcia is getting free publicity courtesy of Deasy’s organization.
In checking out this further, it appears that LAUSD “loaned” 2 employees out to this fund for free. And, guess who is paying their salaries? It’s LAUSD!!!!! Could Deasy have had a say in this and did he had to give final approval? Is this a possible conflict of interest? What a nice way to spend tax payer dollars!!!!!!
These two are dangerous and they have to go now. On top of the lies that you illustrate they also encourage administrators to make up child abuse allegations against teachers that they don’t like – usually older, disabled, and “just not our kind of people.” The LAUSD then ignores due process and summarily dismisses the teachers. Deasy even says that we are “egregious child abusers” and “arrested for prostitution.” 300 of us are in “teacher jail” now at a cost of $2.2 million per month!
CHECK OUT OUR PETITION
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/379/874/347/stop-l-aunified-school-district-from-persecuting-teachers-and-fire-john-deasy/
@tskware…if only ’twere true. Most politicians have zero classroom experience and lip service is ALL they are going to pay. Like Bill Gates, they are not actually interested in real reform, just the illusion of reform with the end purpose of self-gratification.
Wanna read something REALLY scary? Check out my blog post on the extensive teaching/education experience of the members of the US House Education and Workforce Committee. *fair warning* You may be incensed afterwards:
http://alternative-edukation.blogspot.com/2013/02/education-is-broken-part-ii-or-where.html
Once more, the billionaire boys club strikes again, painting their efforts to dismantle public education as a ‘good work’ on behalf of ‘the arts’ and arts education in a major school district in California. Just as with their efforts to immunize third world nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does more harm than good, depicting their work as ‘saving lives’, when the reality is that they’re introducing new diseases to whole continents while providing a new marketplace for Big Pharma, and limiting population growth in impoverished nations… Similarly, the Gates Foundation plants the Trojan Horse of ‘arts education’ whilst dismantling the public school system…
These people clearly have no conscience, and they are the vanguard of a shameful era in America…
@tskware….as I’ve written in my own blog, politicians don’t care because they aren’t qualified. Do you know how many members of the House Committee on Workforce and Education have K-12 teaching experience? ZERO. Twenty-three representatives and not ONE has ever taught….or been a principal or a superintendent! It’s frightening to think that they are the policy makers.
My mother-in-law was a SUBSTITUTE music teacher in LAUSD schools in the 1960s and ’70s. She was a fully credentialed music teacher, so the program was rich enough that even the substitute was a fully credentialed music teacher with specialized training.
“Billionaires out of education” is right. There’s just WAY too much power in the hands of a select few.
Thank you!!!! You your heroine status continues to soar!
Robin Lithgow
An excellent post by Mr. Kogan. One thing, though. With over 600,000 students in LAUSD, Monica and the District would have to spend a lot more than $500,000 on ipads for all of them. I’m not certain, but I think the figure brought up by board member Vladovic was closer to $500 million. And this while Deasy and the Board have been bemoaning LAUSD’s budget crisis for the past two years.
And one other thing. Would it ever occur to Deasy, Chernin and LA Fund to use some of their assets to reinstate any of the more than 3,000 RIF’d teachers, particularly those who teach the arts? Of course not. Much better that LA Unified loan out a couple of its employees and let our tax dollars pay for their work at LA Fund.
Thank you SO much for sharing the truth about this! I am an LAUSD elementary art teacher who has been personally affected by this disastrous combination (Deasy/Garcia/LA Fund) for the past four years. It makes me happy to know that not everyone is falling for their BS, though once again we are all wondering if there will even be an in-district arts program next year. Please help us continue to educate the public.
For some objective research, I suggest http://nepe.colorado.edu/publication/opions posted today 2/7/2013 by William Mathis, Research-Based Opinions for Educaton Policymaking, School of Educaton, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Co., 80309-0249, Telephone 802-383-0058, NEPC@colorado.edu http://nepc.colorado.edu wmathis@sover.net. Several summative evaluattions are posted by William J. Matthis (802)383-0058. See restrictions for use posted on this web. I sincerely hope the policy makers read this objective research.
@ John Vlaun, thanks for the link! What a crazy-making and dangerous game being played out. I’m glad you’re on the case.
Check out my petition, if you like, feel free to sign it, if you support it too.
http://signon.org/sign/repeal-no-child-left-1