A Teacher in LAUSD on the Board’s Decision to Extend Deasy Contract

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1. bluewombat says:

   October 30, 2013 at 9:08 am

   As an LAUSD teacher, I can’t imagine a more worthwhile goal than striking to rid ourselves of the cynical, ill-tempered corporatist bagman John Deasy.

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   • KrazyTA says:

     October 30, 2013 at 12:02 pm

     A good working definition of hypocrisy, from the LATimes, 10-29-13:

     [start quote] “Roosevelt High School teacher Lisa Alva, a former Deasy supporter, said, however, that the superintendent has talked consistently about data, applying it to the fates of teachers and principals. Since he failed to meet his targets, he should possibly be put on probation, she said, and questioned whether his pay should also be docked in keeping with executive practices tying pay to performance.

     “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Alva said. “If we’re going to be held to standards that include test data and all kinds of metrics, so should he.” [end quote]

     Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lausd-deasy-20131029,0,2199450,full.story#axzz2j57NzKVh

     Superintendent [soon to be Consultant] John Deasy should walk his own talk.

     It should also be noted that Patrena Shankling, the substitute teacher fired by Deasy in a fit of Rheemanagement, er, mismanagement, spoke briefly. One link (among many possible about Ms. Shankling) follows:

     Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/14/local/la-me-0414-banks-20120414

     Deasy is an edubully.

     But he sure is piling up lots and lots of $tudent $ucce$$…

     😦

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2. Serge Vartanov says:

   October 30, 2013 at 9:08 am

   I wish this letter had more specifics. The roll-out of iPads to replace textbooks, while poorly executed, wouldn’t really be “abusive” or “destructive to public education.” Feels like a lot of hyperbole and emotion with little fact to back it up.

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   • Concerned Citizen says:

     October 30, 2013 at 9:17 am

     More specifics here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/john-deasy-lausd

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     • bernie1815 says:

       October 30, 2013 at 11:38 am

       I see nothing in your link that pertains to Serge’s question. Can you provide a more specific link? The report on the meeting cites largely those favorably disposed to Deasy.

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   • chance la rue says:

     October 30, 2013 at 1:48 pm

     1. Thousands in teachers jails on bogus charges without due process, treated terribly then stained and fired because they are close to vested. After decades of unstained service a stull an accusation a bit of soap in class is their ruin. And for the record, UTLA facilitates this horror.

     Rifs that will not be returned despite their legal right to.
     89 Marimonte teachers housed for no reason, accused of not reporting abuse, which is what Deasy did. To keep them from media and cops, he paid $5 million to restaff the school even though parents protested to keep them.

     Breakfast in Classrooms cost teachers 12 days of instruction. Whay shoulkd they serve breakfast when free healthier food is available in cafeterias? A deal with Walmart for stale cereal and expired milk. The clean up is crucial as no more custodians are on campus.

     Deasy went from $270k to 330k in 3 years. Teachers have been furloughed out of pay everyone of them. Sometimes more than 10% cut. They have not had a raise in 6 years.

     Class size is insane.
     Campuses are in states of terror and upheaval as Broadie admin spends all its time hunting teachers and torturing them with horrible and useless PD

     Whistle blowers whisked off to teacher jails to see pervs protected

     LIES about teachers in jail. They are not all pervs, junkies and prostitutes. Most are innocent.

     Comes to classes and publicly reprimands teachers in front of reporters, students and other teachers.

     States that after 5 years teachers are worthless to him.

     Sent campus cops after DAC parents, threatening deportation, banning them from schools because they questioned his misuse of title 1 money.

     Deasy takes credit for drop out stats improving, lies about truancy which is worse, and acts as if better scores are a result of his leadership.

     Chooses to demote officials who concealed child abuse,endangering other kids. They still earn $150 k or more while teachers are fired for grabbing a wayward child by his hand too firmly, walking too closely to another teachers’ chair, calling a student black boy. (Teacher is black and Nigerian). Teaching 6th grade mythology standards including the Tale of Eden. Allowing little kids to jump on his lap during teacher funded Xmas party. Asking to transfer. The principal decided she was crazy.

     Holding arts, adult school nurses etc hostage despite a billion dollar surplus. He likes to barter like that.

     FIRED adult ed leader for protesting cuts in big show down at his office

     MONICA GARCIA refused to let 8th graders graduate because they protested cuts

     SEGREGATING ESL kids, blaming teachers it cannot be stopped because the failed to complain in time. They had no idea it was going to happen.

     Closing schools without telling parents about choice or hearing them out.

     This big drama of his about resigning this last week. GUT WRENCHING
     Back and forth. Then the humiliation of seeing people say he was great, he must be saved, when they are merely minions following orders. We teachers and parents are working so we were not heard above the media hype, his buddies and the lies.

     Intimidating teachers and staff when investigations arose.
     The Vlad antics were creepy, but what Deasy did with those decade old accusations was disturbing.

     He spend a lot of time orchestrating these ugly situations. How can he lead well?

     THERE IS MORE BUT I gotta RUN

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   • Susan says:

     October 30, 2013 at 6:00 pm

     Serge, the district is using construction bond money to purchase the iPads, money that will now be unavailable to fix crumbling schools, schools with corroded gas lines, broken toilets, peeling paint, deteriorating playground equipment, etc. You don’t think it’s abusive or destructive to public education to house schools in dilapidated structures?

     http://www.lamag.com/citythink/citythinkblog/2013/10/29/the-lausd-needs-an-operating-system-upgrade-not-ipads

     “One of the most common causes of fires after an earthquake is the rupture of old and corroded gas lines. Addressing earthquake hazards was one of the selling points of those three school bond measures, all of which included the words “Safe Healthy Neighborhood Schools Measure” in their titles. The official text of the initiatives, which stretched on for dozens of pages, devoted a couple of clauses to computers and network upgrades. And yet here, years after the bond measures passed, Monte Vista Elementary’s gas lines, which had failed repeatedly as a matter of course, hadn’t been replaced in their entirety, while the school district is poised to run up $1 billion in debt to purchase iPads.”

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3. Chiara Duggan says:

   October 30, 2013 at 9:21 am

   They’re terrible managers, reformers.

   Education issues aside, good and effective managers don’t alienate and enrage the very people who have to “buy in” to whatever changes they are instituting.

   Incredibly, we got the worst of both the business world AND the education world in this shotgun marriage. Eli Broad turns out lousy educators AND poor managers.

   For goodness sakes, who uses long-term debt to finance devices that depreciate and lose value every month? The tablets will be all but obsolete in 2 years. He’s financing that purchase over time? Forget “education” what about sound business and management practices?

   Eli Broad should stop worrying about MY local public school and take a look at the management training going on in HIS own academy. Something is very, very wrong there.

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4. Chiara Duggan says:

   October 30, 2013 at 9:30 am

   I hope the next school district that buys in to the reform “tablet craze” hires someone besides a Broad-trained manager to negotiate the terms of the deal.

   Surely the public can get a better deal than Mr. Deasy got. Are the folks peddling the devices and programs drafting these contracts? Is there ANYONE representing the public? Vendors went into this “competition” knowing that Deasy had unequivocally backed a tablet purchase from “some vendor” and then it was simply a matter of getting him to sign onto A specific vendor. Is that Negotiation 101 taught at the Broad Academy? Tell the vendor you WILL be buying and it’s simply a matter of which offer you accept? No wonder he got ripped off.

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5. Geronimo says:

   October 30, 2013 at 9:40 am

   Boy…yesterday’s decision of the LAUSD School Board to retain John Deasy brought to mind that bleak December evening when the Supreme Court ruled on Bush v. Gore and awarded the presidency to George Bush.

   Feeling just as defeated.

   First off, it feels like the teachers and community leaders who have been appalled at John Deasy’s leadership got completely outplayed. Whether it’s Eli Broad, the United Way, the Chamber of Commerce or the LA Times’ editorial board–these economic behemoths are all on one side of the fight. They can buy their way into any conference on education and pontificate on what our kids need as they send their own kids elsewhere. They can buy their way into the school board meeting. Teachers are working. Kids are in school. Parents are at their jobs.

   So who would speak for them?

   You would think UTLA would have been savvy enough to have foreseen this and make some sort of counter resistance but our union is too often inept and toothless. Watching the spectacle yesterday it brought me back to the way the Dukakis campaign was run against a Lee Atwater…the way the Gore campaign was run against a Karl Rove.

   The vision of the paid “we-the-people” of the Bush campaign pounding the windows on the ballot re-counters demanding Democracy came rushing back. At the time, the media “bought” the narrative that Karl Rove created.

   And George Bush became president.

   Flash forward to yesterday’s board meeting. Would love to know the behind-the-scenes drama of how this script played out from Deasy’s initial resignation letter to the “grassroots” groundswell of support to keep him…the authenticity of what happened is worthy of dissection. This was not a reality series but a scripted drama.

   We all now pay a brutal price for the carpet bombing that was brought in to support Deasy. Moneyed people love this sort of behavior in a School Superintendent to shut down dissent. Look at any school system in the country where you have these authoritarian commanders and see who backs their pedagogy.

   Not teachers. Not students. Not many communities who rely on public education to be the great equalizer in a country whose class divisions grow sharper by the day.

   To School Board members Steve Zimmer and Monica Ratliff–why did people elect YOU over Karen Anderson and Antonio Sanchez respectively? Why do you think all the millions of dollars that Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee, Jamie Alter Lynton and the Coalition for School Reform raised against you failed? It was the regular people in your community who said ENOUGH. Now that everything was on the line, why would you vote identically to the people who you defeated? Why did you run for office in the first place?

   Who’s interests are you fighting for?

   You now have a vested interest in supporting Deasy and it now makes everything we have brought up opposing his tactics that much harder to win. You have strengthened him immeasurably and given him cover for not only his past abuses but what he will bring to us in the future.

   His agenda has won because of what happened and yes, the country has taken notice. Deasy’s supporters, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, John King, Rahm Emanuel are emboldened. They heard you loud and clear.

   This post is not to challenge every distortion that Money is saying are the reasons to support John Deasy (and how one achieves/manipulates those variable test scores or rising graduation rates). Part of the Education Reform movement’s tactics are the complete bulldozing of these factors in advancing their arguments. Where they really excel is in their ability to manufacture consent by making their agenda appear like a populist one. This has ALWAYS been the strategy in every election where corporations or whatever Koch Brother-ish billionaires make it seem that THEIR interests are actually being championed by the ones who they hurt the most.

   Those “hand-painted” signs of support and earnest folks there to back Deasy were part of the machine that Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith rails against and we side with in a Hollywood fantasy, but when it plays out on Beaudry Street in downtown LA we nod our head and suspend disbelief.

   To Deasy supporter liberal LA Mayor Eric Garcetti I ask: You went to UCLA Lab School and then Harvard Westlake for your K-12 education. Look at that tremendous advantage you received and how you were educated. Does ANYTHING John Deasy prescribes for kids less fortunate than you were look at all like the rich education pedagogy you benefited from? Why are Deasy’s methods better for my kids than they were for you or your daughter?

   Today there will be earnest calls for reconciliation. I imagine Deasy will read the identical script George Bush read when he was anointed president and put the most let’s-all-pull-together-for-the-sake-of-the-country spin on what just happened.

   We see how long that lasted.

   If anyone wanted a lesson on how often Democracy works, the disheartening events on the micro-level of one municipal school superintendent yesterday proved very informative.

   It speaks volumes about who really controls this country.

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   • bluewombat says:

     October 30, 2013 at 10:22 am

     Right on the money, Geronimo. When I heard the Deasy chorus at the school board meeting chanting “You must be crazy to get rid of Deasy” or whatever they were saying, I also thought of all those Congressional Republican staffers at the Florida 2000 recount pounding on the windows chanting “Let us in! Let us in!”

     I understand that there was a fantastic amount of pressure on board members: Broad and his billionaire buddies, LA’s “liberal” mayor, the LA Times, the right-wing echo chamber…But I was still hoping they wouldn’t melt like butter on a hot stove top. Not only did they retain Deasy, they EXTENDED his contract — that’s the cherry on the ice cream sundae.

     The union worked hard to keep Zimmer in place. I personally put a lot of effort into the Monica Ratliff campaign. To hell with them.

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   • MeiLi says:

     October 31, 2013 at 1:03 am

     Outstanding post.

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6. Dienne says:

   October 30, 2013 at 12:20 pm

   “So I guess from what I hear on my case constantly on this blog I am a total idiot and don’t know what I am doing.”

   Projection much? I believe you’re the one who’s been saying that to everyone else. Just in this post you call this Warren Fletcher guy “dumb”. The point that’s been made to you is that you are alienating allies (or at least potential allies).

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7. Ellen Lubic says:

   October 30, 2013 at 12:51 pm

   Geronimo and Blue Wombat are both eloquent and tell it all exactly as it is.

   Thank you both. Geronimo, I suggest you send your statement to the LA Times and our other few print media. It is true testimony when LAUSD teachers and counselors speak truth.

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8. Ellen Lubic says:

   October 30, 2013 at 1:07 pm

   George…I have tried to ignore the continued insults, defamation, slander, and libel you have posted about me for many weeks. You ask where was I for the past decades when you, a dilletante, were at BofE meetings.

   I was working for a living. I was teaching students, I was writing educational texts and curriculum, I was doing educational research with longitudinal studies in states across the nation, I was a professional mediator in schools in the inner cities, I was on the Human Relations Commission, I was on many professional commitees, and in addition to my day job, I then went home and did my other full time job as the primary breadwinner in my family, raising my child and running my household. Many working women hold down these two full time jobs.

   I did not have the time to be a gadfly such as you, for I was actually in the trenches of a real life.

   You are a rude self aggrandizing annoyance here, and deflect our serious conversation. No one would miss you if you just go away.

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   • chance la rue says:

     October 30, 2013 at 1:59 pm

     ignore him. you do not need to defend your self from his lies.

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9. chance la rue says:

   October 30, 2013 at 1:55 pm

   teachers work, you miserable old troll. they cannot be there. had they gone, they would have had reprisals.back off buzzeti

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10. tonenotvolume says:

    October 30, 2013 at 2:33 pm

    We had an abusive director who lasted about 2 years. Those years were filled with nepotism, age discrimination, cronyism, and “reform” implementation. Finally, the director was revealed as a power monger and incompetent, then booted. This person had little educational experience but managed to last for those two years due to the higher ups. They only “allowed” the termination after the evidence became too grossly apparent.

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11. Nancy T says:

    October 30, 2013 at 2:47 pm

    Another example of a “hostile work environment”!!!! Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 13:01:33 +0000 To: nancyturnbo@hotmail.com

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12. susannunes says:

    October 30, 2013 at 10:54 pm

    Sounds like the board is in old Eli’s pocket.

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13. Regina Nunley says:

    October 31, 2013 at 12:40 am

    Our biggest problem yesterday, was, if Superintendent Deasy would have resigned, who would have been the next business – controlled leader thrust upon us??? No one who actually TAUGHT in Lausd is worthy of trying to run it, right….???? We shouldn’t just point fingers at Deasy’s leadership – our ELECTED School Board and Utla Board have helped him in every way to destroy our colleagues, destroy our profession, and destroy our will to keep up the fight…I am pretty done with Utla, the School Board and anyone who suggests teachers fight for the kids in LA..The game is hopelessly rigged, and I am not compromising my health or my life to any more. IF the parents of LA students want this kind of leadership – IF they are unable to mobilize and fight for their own kids, then they are writing the future – Teaching is no longer a profession – it has been reclassified to a j-o-b…one that as Deasy has stated, should only be pursued for about 5 years..

    Parents of LA, it’s YOUR turn to organize, walk neighborhoods, and get this mess right…Teachers can’t do it anymore – This all affects YOUR kids – and a shiny piece of technology will NOT make your kid smarter – only a fairly treated, respected and paid human can do that – Do the research!!

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14. MeiLi says:

    October 31, 2013 at 1:05 am

    Teachers were told that they could not use sick days or personal days to attend Board meetings. Doing so could result in disciplinary actions. Yeah, the whole thing was rigged.

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