In this post on the New York City parent blog, activist Leonie Haimson explains the hard-fought battle for control of the Los Angeles public schools, and what is at stake.
The reform crowd doesn’t care about class size; the anti-status quo board members do.
The reformers do nothing to slow the pace of privatization.
We will see if the new board majority is able to create true accountability standards for the city with more charters than any other in the nation.
Up until now, the privatizers controlled the board and escaped any oversight, supervision, or accountability.
But they lost control in the last election, and a new majority means fresh thinking and a rejection of the status quo.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree, now is critical for this Board of Ed. Will they take control of public education in LAUSD or will they continue to be lead by Deasy and his deformers. I hope a change is coming because our students should not have to wait another day for smaller class sizes and reemployment of their highly qualified classroom teachers.
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I’m moving over a great COMMENT from Leonie
Haimson’s blog / article on LAUSD being Ground
Zero in the battle against privatizaion, and
Haimson’s analysis of the battles in LAUSD to
lower class size:
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/07/los-angeles-ground-zero-in-fight-over.html
Here’s the COMMENT… the third one down:
———————————————————————————
redqueeninla said…
Excellent, spot-on debriefing.
There is not a parent in the room or across
the district who could possibly be fooled by
the Big Lie that ‘reducing class size is just
a personnel issue’. It is nothing short of
surreal that anyone entertains this notion
for an instant. Let alone votes in support of
it for years.
Children need to be taught, by human teachers,
who care about them so that the children can
form a connection with that teacher. This is an
impossibility in a classroom with too many
children. period.
Period!!!! No one thinks otherwise, as evidenced
by all the walking with their feet parents have
been doing for schools where their child has a
functional teacher “in front of them”.
The real question is:
Who could have the temerity to suggest some
special children don’t actually have the same
need as others to low class-size?
Who could possibly have the audacity to suggest
that what’s critical for their own kid — low class
size — is not important for another’s child???!
This notion of “special-ness” needs some long,
serious close looking at.
July 14, 2013 at 3:01 PM
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And now, Douglas County Colorado needs to follow LA’s lead. We have a mail in ballot election that ends in Nov. If we don’t reclaim the 4 majority in our school board, we’re in big trouble.
They have so much money and spin. It’s going to be very hard. They are also good at marketing.
Let’s hope truth and heart win back our public schools here in Douglas County.
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I will report here later in detail, but Diane, please review my long email to you in the past few minutes about LA and Parent Revolution, and my group of professional educators who are fighting back through Joining Forces for Education. Feel free to use any of that info.
I have been invited moments ago to be on KPFK radio this Friday to talk about privatization and how we can join forces to educate the public on ways to combat this insidious movement by Ben Austin and his corporate, union busting, funders.
If any teachers want to help in this battle with boots on the ground activism, and not just blogging to our own, please contact us at
JoiningForces4Ed@aol.com
We already have chapters starting up in six other states (so ‘tutucker’ in Colorado contact us to get our info), and No. California. We are an awakened sleeping giant of educators who know how to teach the public to the issues and how to fight for our public schools.
Read the recent NEA article on teacher participation in fighting back.
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Sorry to contradict, but Los Angeles is only at the forefront of the push-back (and a fine thing that is too.) The next big front in corporate “reform” will be inPhiladelphia in a little over a month.
The contract for the PFT is up and we are facing demands from the state-controlled School Reform Commission and their hand-picked Superintendent William Hite, a graduate of the Broad Academy. I and my fellow teachers are facing a demand that we give up $133 million in salary and health benefit concessions, which is bad enough. But we’re also looking at proposals to eliminate seniority, institute performance pay, eliminate contractual caps on class size, and virtually every other fond wish of the “reformers”.
State and city leaders have engineered a budget crisis and passed only sham fixes, all to set up the PFT to be broken no matter how we react. If we give in to the concessions, we will have lost almost everything the PFT has gained for the schools and teachers since 1968. If not, we will either have a contract imposed on us or we will be forced to strike, but that in itself is illegal according to the law that allowed the state takeover of the district in 2001. The no-strike clause is unique to Philadelphia within the state, so we may be able to successfully challenge it in court, but any way this plays out the SRC and their political masters seem to think that it will give them a free hand to go full bore with every kind of corporate reform. If they succeed, they will have remade the 8th largest school district in the nation into a goldmine of corporatized “education”.
Unfortunately, they are probably right.
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This needs to be an infectious disease. The new board knows they have a window to prove who they are. I even put in writing to them they have 6 months “To Show us the Beef.” We hear real good, but we see a whole lot better. Talk is nothing, action and positive outcome is all that matters. The new city govt. feels the same thing from the public. We have been behind stopping major action in this state already and are ready for “War” if necessary to stop them if they try to sell us out again. This is not some nice game being played in a house with no relevant bad possibilities. This is the highest stakes gambling there is. This makes Vegas look like a joke. When you do high stakes gambling you always put as much in your favor as possible and know when to get out and when to lay it down. With big things you must take big risks. Just don’t do it illegally as they do. Just today we lined up another LAUSD school to revolt.
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