When the Los Angeles school board prepared to elect a new president, Superintendent John Deasy let it be known that he might resign if Richard Vladovic won the election.
Vladovic won by 5-2. The two nay votes came from outgoing president Monica Garcia and her ally Tamar Galatzan.
Before the election, there were rumors that Vladovic was under investigation for verbally abusing board employees, and newspaper accounts suggested that Deasy was trying to derail his candidacy. That did not help their working relationship.
The new board passed a resolution endorsing class size reduction, a measure opposed by Deasy. Deasy favored a motion by Galatzan proposing more money for high-needs students, which was postponed by the board.
In a show of defiance, Deasy said he would comply with the resolution that was not passed because the board did not forbid him from doing it. Deasy opposes reduced class size because it will mean hiring more staff.
This is what he told the LA School Report (a pro-corporate reform newspaper):
“The Board voted down the directive to have me come and do it,” said Deasy, referring to Galatzan’s local spending resolution. “[But] they can’t stop me from doing it; we’re doing it anyway. If they had voted to prevent me from doing it… well they didn’t think of that.”
“The Superintendent explained that the future spending plan the Board ordered him to produce will comply with the Board-passed Kayser resolution regarding staffing (or as Deasy derisively called it, a “directive to hire every human being on the West Coast”) but will also include some form of the local spending plan he and Galaztan have been advocating.”
When the unions learned that Deasy would ignore the board vote, they wrote a letter to the board.
They raised the question about why Deasy intended to flout the authority of the board he works for.
With a number of strong wills converging, this will be worth watching.
Bottom line: How long will Deasy last as an employee of a board whose leadership he does not like or trust, and how long will the board tolerate insubordination by Deasy?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What authority does the board have over taxes/revenue?
In terms of how to spend it, they have all the
authority.
For your convenience, here’s the text of the two
union presidents’ letter to Deasy:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“July 10, 2013
“Honorable Richard Vladovic,
—President, LAUSD Board of Education
“Honorable Marguerite LaMotte,
—Board Member, District 1
“Honorable Monica Garcia,
—Board Member, District 2
“Honorable Tamar Galatzan,
—Board Member, District 3
“Honorable Steve Zimmer,
—Board Member, District 4
“Honorable Bennett Kayser,
—Board Member, District 5
“Honorable Monica Ratliff,
—Board Member, District 6
“Dear Board Members:
“We are writing on behalf of the members of our two
organizations: United Teachers Los Angeles, which
represents the 36,000 classroom teachers and health
and human services professionals of LAUSD, and
Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, exclusive
representative for over 2,300 certificated and
classified administrators within the District.
“We wish to raise a concern about recent statements
by Superintendent John Deasy, related to his
obligation to abide by the policy positions and
directives of the Board of Education.
“On June 20, the ‘LA School Report,’ published a
story entitled, ‘Defiant Deasy Says He’ll Push
Targeted Spending Plan Anyway.’ In that article
Mr. Deasy clearly indicates that it is his intention
to circumvent the Board vote on use of new state
LCFF monies.
“Specifically, Mr. Deasy is quoted as stating that,
” ‘The Board voted down the directive. . . ,’ referring
to Ms. Galatzan’s recent local spending resolution,
” ‘[But] they can’t stop me from doing it; we’re doing
it anyway.’ ”
“To date, we have not been able to locate
any report that Mr. Deasy has disavowed these
public statements, nor has he indicated that he was
misquoted.
“The Superintendent is an employee of the District,
and is legally required to operate ‘under the
control of the Board.’ The California courts have
recognized that a Superintendent does not
‘exercise independent powers’ (Main vs.
Claremont, Unified School District, 161
CalApp 2d189, 204).
“As the presidents of two organizations charged
with representing and bargaining for a large
proportion of District employees, we do not
expect that Mr. Deasy’s statements and policy
positions will always align with those of our
respective organizations.
“However, as both District employees and as
taxpayers, we do expect that the
Superintendent will, at all times, discharge his
duties in a manner that is consistent with his
role as the District’s chief executive officer.
Statements and conduct to the contrary can
only erode public confidence in the Board
and the District.
“California law clearly places both the power
and the responsibility for ultimate leadership
of the District in the hands of its elected
governing board. Regardless of Mr. Deasy’s
motives or intentions, no district, and no
community, is served when this democratic
authority is undermined.
“Please contact either of us if you have any
questions. We are thankful for your time and
attention to this matter.
“Respectfully,
“Warren Fletcher
President,
United Teachers Los Angeles
“Judith Perez
President,
Associated Administrators of Los Angeles”
I meant in terms of how you raise it.
Jack,
I think you meant to say…
“the two union presidents’ letter TO THE 7 LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS,”
.. NOT “to Deasy.”
Other than that, thanks for posting…
Allie
If a teacher were insubordinate, what do you think would happen? Board of Ed, cut your losses now. This superintendent will only continue to undermine you and your decisions.
How do I know? He thinks he is above the law. He feels he is special as indicated by his path to a phony Phd. If your teachers and administrators have warned you about this betrayal,what more do you need?
David Sirota has an excellent article up today at Slate; he cites Larry Cuban. Sub-heading asks : “Why are cash-starved school districts sending public funds to Apple — while laying off teachers? Follow the money” He also mentions the giant lobby system and the buying of political elections so that the technology triumphalism can become triumphant. This may be the wrong place to put the comment but look Slate July 12 for David Sirota’s article.
The David Sirota article Jean refers to above appears to be at salon.com (not Slate):
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/12/steve_jobs_was_not_a_school_teacher/
Excerpt: “Indeed, following smaller districts from across the country, the Los Angeles Unified School District – the second largest in the nation – just generated big headlines by becoming one of the 600 districts handing over public money to Apple in exchange for iPads.
How much money, you ask? In Los Angeles, many millions of dollars. If that sounds a bit vague, that’s because it is, thanks to the hard-to-estimate total costs of all the variables in technologizing schools. In L.A., for instance, school officials approved an initial $50 million in bonds (read: public debt) to finance the first stage of its iPad-for-every-student program. However, according to the Los Angeles Daily News, those officials quietly acknowledge that the plan will cost a whopping half-billion dollars when fully implemented.
Today’s article by David Sirota is on Salon, not Slate. See: http://www.salon.com/2013/07/12/steve_jobs_was_not_a_school_teacher/
Speaking of Apple, Slate does have a good article about Steve Jobs’ sleezy swan song and the court ruling regarding his collusion with publishers to force price increases on Amazon ebooks, in order to increase his own profits: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/apple_e_book_price_fixing_federal_judge_rules_in_amazon_s_favor.html
I sure hope there is justice in the afterlife and that greedy billionaires who are never satisfied with the fortunes they have and feel compelled to squeeze as much as possible out of those who have a lot less are assured a special place in hell.
I have never bought an Apple product due to Jobs’ price gauging practices and I never, ever will. Rot on, Steve.
Was Deasy trying to threaten the board or teachers with resigning? LAUSD teachers, from what I read on this blog and other edublogs, may not cry over Deasy leaving his post. His decision Might result in a major block party. Wonder if Pitbull is available to emcee? Or Donna Summer. She could sing “I will survive.”
Deasy has a powerful P.R. organization paid for by the Gates Foundation… getting countless glowing stories and TV interviews with and about him being the savior of LAUSD. However, those stories never seem to include the observations and opinions of those in the prior districts Deasy led previously—Santa Monica-Malibu, Prince George’s County (Maryland), etc. If the writers and TV reporters had, you’d get a different story.
As a result, he polls well in certain neighborhoods—particularly the more upscale communities. Teachers have no such P.R. apparatus to offer a counter-narrative.
Thus, the threat to leave was also an implied threat to scapegoat the teachers union and their allies on the Board, and blame them for losing Deasy’s “awesome-ness” (to borrow a phrase from Edushyster), and thus sway the vote to someone other than Vladovic.
Also, the leak about allegations of Vladovic’s verbal abuse was just days before to the vote for Board President, where Vladovic was the front-runner.
The timing is more than a little suspicious, as is the probable source of this leak.
BTW… Gloria Gaynor—not Donna Summer, God rest her soul—sang “I Will Survive”, which is the most popular karaoke song of all time among women:
Good catch! Sadly, Donna Summer died last year, too, but maybe Last Dance would be appropriate in this case:
I don’t have Kindle or an IPad so, for those who do, I have a question. Can ebooks be printed out on those devices?
I ask because my students regularly tell me that, when ebooks are provided to them for courses, they can’t stand them and print them out from their computers, Of course, that transfers the cost of printing to students, but they say they prefer hard copies and are willing to absorb it. (Although anecdotal, this is contrary to the notion that people don’t want to have actual books they can put in their hands.)
VE,
My question to you: Do ALL the students have access to printers or are they printing them at school?
We were instructed to put three lessons and a quiz on edmodo this year. I responded that not all students have access (I surveyed my students and 18% did not have any access to the internet). They didn’t want to hear that and said I should use the technology labs. Well the wireless internet connection that we have is so bad that we wasted about 3 hours of “professional development” time trying to set up the edmodo accounts (and many of us not succeeding). I wasn’t wasting valuable class time on something that was that difficult to use and that would probably be a waste of time.
For me, it was an issue of access. With 18% not having access and the school access so bad I don’t believe it is fair and equitable to throw this in the face of the students. Got downgraded on my “usage of technology” part of my evaluation and accused of wasting “instructional time” because I surveyed my students about their access (took all of 2-3 minutes to pass out, fill out and turn in the 1/4 page survey question). I didn’t “go along to get along”.
DS: My students have access to the Internet and printers, but printing costs can run high and I wish they didn’t have to pay for that.
I believe it’s a mistake to think that ebooks are an adequate substitute for real books, especially when so many students in my experience want hard copies.
Any idea if ebooks can be printed on Kindle or on IPads?
I don’t think there’s anyway to print ebooks that are in the Kindle or iBooks format. By design, naturally. ePub format, I assume you could print that. But the answer is basically no.
Thanks, Flerp! Most of the ebooks for my classes are .pdf files, often one file for each chapter.
1. Apple tablets are designed with GPS trackers – all those ipad users can be monitored. It’s a stunning waste of money… but the board voted for it.
2. What’s stunning about Deasy is that he brags to the press that he’s going to be insubordinate instead of just quietly doing it. Now it’s up to the board to see if they have any spine and will do something or change their tactics with him – because it’s true they only made a toothless resolution not something stronger.
What more does the city need to understand that Deasy must go? Please, Mr. D., just leave LA and let the real leaders (ie. Zimmer) improve education opportunity for students across the board.
Why do you think Zimmer is a leader? He went to the dark side two years ago and Vladavic who was one of the King Tony, Villaraigosa, people and then he woke up and is now superintendent. Lucky for us. Bad for Deasy. We now know who cannot take the heat and it is Deasy. Deasy’s puppet masters obviously told him to shut up as they need him there for their agenda and if he leaves it is over for them. When Deasy is gone we need to go back to the process there was for Ruben Zacarias and that was all running for the superintendents office had to go present to the public before the board vote. In that process the public had a lot of input into who would be superintendent. Zacarias won and they he goofed on the toxic school Belmont, now Roybal Center, and he lost the position even though he was warned that this would happen. We need the process back without the secret superintendents deal again. Whose district is it anyway. Zimmer now has a serious decision to make and that is does he want to be irrelevant? Garcia and Galatzan will continue to be on that side or they will never have political life again as their backers will cut them off. That is how it rolls in politics. Galatzan who is an asst. D.A. does not believe in “Due Process” for teachers. She has no business being a board member or a member of the bar and more important with that attitude being an asst. District Attorney. Due Process is one of the most important parts of our government and freedoms and protections. Galatzan is at the forefront of taking away teachers rights along with Garcia who will never again be board president. Now Garcia will have to deal with the revolutions at Roosevelt and Santee High Schools both in her district and part of King Tony’s PLAS group of schools which are tragedies both financially and in student performance since PLAS took over. We have the 11 year spreadsheets to prove it and the documents and statements from PLAS also.
This year LAUSD has over $11,600/student. This is more than ever before. When they complain about the total budget going down it is because there were last year over 117,000 students who did not come to school everyday for a total loss of revenue that year alone of over $1.35 billion as you are only paid for those who show up not enrolled. As with N.Y., Bridgeport, Philadelphia, Chicago and D.C. it is not about the revenue/student it is what they do with the money.
The fact is that it is illegal to use school construction bond money for any equipment that will not last at least 10 years. I-Pads might last 3 years which is the Apple guarantee stated at the board meeting. This means a replacement cost of $200,000,000/year in ongoing expenses since they cost now $1,000/student and Apple was just convicted in a price fixing game. Why are we dealing with them?????? Bond money is for 30 year renovations and new construction not for day to day general fund responsibilities or for paying any employees for anything but construction not education services. The General Counsel, Holmquist, is always giving the board bad, illegal advice and constantly breaks the law. This is normal at the RICO organized crime school district LAUSD. We will soon see who the new board is. No one knows until they start making decisions and what they do with the phony PHD and work record Deasy and his puppetmasters really running LAUSD and all large and medium size districts in the U.S. Gates, Broad and Walton. Throw them out the door with a big boot in the @$#%^. Teachers who lost their jobs at LAUSD equals students who do not come to school everyday or who just do not come anymore. Every year LAUSD loses 8,000 in enrollment and 10,000 to charter schools. Where does this lead? 10 years ago only 14,500 did not come to school every day or 2% not the 17% now.
Would be interested in your comments about Belmont, which I read was a disaster.
Thank you, Ratliff, La Motte, Kayser, Zimmer, and Vladovic for standing up for students, not big money. And, of course, to you Diane, for leading us all out of the path of darkness.
May the force be with you.
I’ve never gotten to vote for my own school board because my district has been under mayoral control for 18 years and has a mayoral appointed board. I contributed a little something to Monica’s campaign in LA and now I feel like I have finally had my say. What a worthy investment. Here’s to thinking like Michael Bloomberg but without the self-serving profit motive!
George, you bring out all the relevant issues that this new, reconfigured board will have to deal with. First of all is the Deasy issue. If the board doesn’t replace him and his privately funded gang, the same downward spiral will continue in Los Angeles. The nerve of this man to thumb his nose at the board and say he’s going to do what he wants. If the board allows him this latitude, public education will continue to be crucified. The teachers and administrators want class size reduction, ipads are a waste of time and money and the initial outlay is only the tip of the indebtedness the district will experience with upkeep and most importantly, software. Teachers don’t want breakfast in the classroom. Sanitation is already compromised with staff cuts to our janitors and groundskeepers, do we really need rats and infestations also. These top down decisions were wrong and a strong, board would exercise leadership and reverse these bad decisions for the good of the district. Yes Vladovic and Zimmer endorsed some of these programs but now is the time for them to reverse course. Otherwise, what good are they, just continue to let Deasy destroy public education in Los Angeles.
Deasy may be a Broad Academy graduate, but he sure as hell didn’t major in public relations.
This must be more of Deasy’s cage-bustin’, much beloved by Rick Hess.
For example, when John Deasy, now superintendent of Los Angeles, was superintendent of Prince George’s County, Maryland, he transferred hundreds of teachers to new schools and initiated a pay-for-performance system despite the traditional belief that these moves were prohibited by the collective bargaining agreement (CBA). When asked how this was possible, Deasy would smile. “Nothing prohibited any of this,” he said. “Why does it not happen? [Because] most people see the contract as a steel box. It’s not. It’s a steel floor with no boundaries around it. You’ve just got to push and push and push.
http://goo.gl/oYVP0
As is noted in the comments, Deasy’s story is false. He did not transfer hundreds of teachers.
That’s exactly what he’s doing in Los Angeles. No CBA, law or board policy is sacred or valid to him. He just keeps pushing and violating everyone of them and encourages his administrators to do the same. Unless he is stopped, he will continue to do things his way. The board of education has to realize this and provide the end to his arrogance and destruction of public education, now!
He should stick to his word and resign.