Superintendent John Deasy made a deal to buy an iPad for every student in the district, at a cost of $1 billion.
The money will mostly be drawn from a 25-year construction bond issue approved by the voters on the assumption that the money would be used to repair the city’s schools. The iPads will be obsolete in 2 or 3 years, but voters will be paying the cost for 25 years.
The iPads are loaded with content from Pearson. The license for the Pearson content expires in three years, at which time the district will have obsolete iPads without content.
Meanwhile, as this teacher writes,
“More and more people are realizing that this iPad deal could ultimately bankrupt the district since the general fund is at rock bottom and has left our district with 40-50 kids in a class, no librarians, less counselors and less custodial and office services. The only pot of money big enough to fund the resupply of iPads and updated software is the general fund, and those costs don’t even address the massive numbers of extra support staff and professional development needed to keep the tech project going.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who knows, it should be looked into since it is an illegal use of prop 30 funds.
The ipads were not purchased with Prop 30 funds, but rather Measure R, Q & Y. Look them up and you’ll still find plenty of room for criticism.
Critics of the iPad debacle have complained that this massive expenditure sets the wrong priority. We have higher priorities like class size reduction, reopening libraries and implementing the broader curriculum the board supports. But bonds cannot be used for these kinds of expenditures. However, when the school district is sued for inappropriate use of bond funds, it will have to repay that money out of the general fund. Money that could have been used to reduce class size, reopen libraries and implement the broader curriculum. Voila! A cash strapped school district just found $1 billion to spend on digital toys or testing devices.
Karen, you just incited my third epiphany of the day. Because there is obtuse and furtive wording employed to define the budget and most of us are inclined to give up when the nimbers and sluppery words beget a migraine, LAUSD expenditures are notoriously difficult to follow. Most teachers cannot make sense of theor paychecks which tend to have an unstable, irregular quality so you can make 4200 one month and 3600 the next.
Indeed after the payroll disaster a few years back, teachers had to get loans from the district to keep their families fed. Teachers I worked with were furious at how they were herded in these offices and treated as if they had to beg when this mess was not their fault. To hear LAUSD tell it, EVERYTHING is teachers’ fault!
In 2011 The district started to send us letters saying we were overpaid.
I did not disagree with the first couple of requests, but after Deasy was in charge, the regularity of the letters and amount I owed increased. I started to balk. I learned that others were going in to payroll demanding to know when these overpayments occurred and being told “we cannot tell you that, we do not have that information.”
What?
How can they garnish our wages then?
How did they determine there was an overpayment?
Given the district’s propensity for reprisals, most teachers took the lumps.
Now you discuss the general fund and legal expenses in the way a very informed person would and I see your point, it makes perfect sense and I am pretty sure they will say it just as you did if it plays out as you say. For a minute I was going along with that too; the only problem is the district has a huge surplus of funds set aside to handle legal costs as Holmquiest alludes to in articles about Miramonte parents settling.
You should know LAUSD will spend 100 x the cost of settling to figh a case becaise it losthes to set precedents. NO wonder their law firm is writng letters that lie on Deasy’s behalf, attributing small gains to him and alluding to truancy in a positive light when the numbers were dismal ( Today there is a bogus story aabout district stats improving but how likely is it that they have those numbers so soon sfter the stae stats , or that they actually monitor that data?)
My how giddy lausd thugs were, how eager they were to pay out Miramonte victims. They were happy to hand out that mere pittance because LAUSD knows the notoriety of the case alone woukd generate a lot of interest and they do not want secrets to come out nor do they want to revisit the scandal too closely because Deasy concealed child abuse, a fact obscured much like the bill Gov Brown made law, which Brown directly applied to events at Miramonte ES alluding to a superintendent who endangers students by failing to report to parents and CTC.
LAT ran the story with a headline that read something like New Law Passed Concerning TEACHER Misconduct.
Sorry I digress, but the synapses get carried away when these things start coming together. The reformers will not just bankrupt LAUSD, they’ll do so on purpose! That is the plan, thus the term “vulture philanthropy”. These very affluent folks, letter writng lawyers and parent trigger pawns have no idea what their astroturfing will enable. At first I believed the plan was to bankrupt.LAUSD and privatize so they could feed at the test scam trough, cut teachers off and cut costs with TFA which is in effect but it is just part of the evil plot.
Dr. Lois Weiner lays it out in herb important work and Noam Chomsky saw it coming when NCLB reared its hideous head. But I think it is worse than we can fathom if you look at Detroit and Philly. When a teacher in Detroit noticed the devestation left by school closures, the disenfranchised colleagues and Eli Broad with his hand in all of it , he began an earnest effort to defendeducation.com there is an apocalyptic tone in his writing that will haunt you. But that is what we have to look forwatd to.
Detroit is where Broad grew up. He was able to capture an American dream, but he has always done so by stealing it from others.
With property values ( like teachers’ jobs) profoundly impacted by test scores that are notoriosly inaccurate, unreliable and biased
( nevermind the way reformers are prone to skew numbers) and Eli Broad’s zeal for gentrification, I am very very sure, we need to get these people out of our schools , out of city politics and into orange jumps suits before they will send Democracy packing. If we don’t we will all be looking at what I call the futile system.
If it comes up as an issue again he’ll float the idea that he plans to resign, again, and his defenders will create another “grass roots rally” to distract from the IPad debacle.
This must be the “accountability” I’ve heard so much about 🙂
This is actually a reply to Rene Diedrich’s “If we don’t, we will all be looking at the futile system.”
Sad to say, I think you mean “feudal” system.
Actually, I think “futile” is exactly what she meant. She prefaces that description with “what I call” indicating that what follows is a play on words.
I have a better question regarding Steve
Zimmer, who had the power to vote to
fire the I-pad promoter Deasy two days ago,
but chose not to.
I stayed up all night transcribing a transcript
of Zimmer’s speech to UTLA members last
August… an excerpt actually… that will blow
you—or anyone else—away as you read it.
Here’s the question:
——————————-
“What The-Hell Has Happened to
THIS Steve Zimmer?”
———————————–
Here’s a link to the speech:
Here’s he exact minute where the following
transcript excerpt starts:
07:35 – to the end of the speech
Witness the total contrast between
what Steve Zimmer says here, and
what he did with his vote to retain
John Deasy, and in his most recent
public comments to the local papers.
This speech is like Dr. Ravitch’s book
summed up in 10 minutes or so. He
attacks everything from Deasy, to Walmart
(Deasy’s backer and helped organize
Tuesday’s astroturf rally outside to the
LAUSD Board), to Teach for America
(Steve was TFA, by the way) to the
true meaning of his election victory
of corporate and privatization interests.
He also gives a historical context to
the attack on teachers, linking it to the
attack on the middle and working classes.
It’s simply staggering that the same guy
who wrote and who spoke this in August,
can do what he did just Tuesday, just two
months later.
–
Again, this starts at 7:35 at:
– – – – – – – – –
STEVE ZIMMER: (at the August
2013 UTLA Leadership Conference
at some hotel near LAX airport):
“The budget crisis (of 2008 and on) was absolutely intentional. It was caused by corporate greed… corporate greed! It was caused by privatization, and it was caused by radical de-regulation of the housing market, of our economic system, and of our banking system. It was very clear. People got rich as our kids suffered. That’s what happened. It wasn’t an accident.
“It was intentional. It was purposeful.
“And the same folks, the same millionaires and billionaires, and privatizers who caused this economic crisis that our school communities suffered so much from…
“… are the very same people who are donating millions and millions of dollars to the privatization movement, to charter schools, to Teach for America, to everything that is intended to privatize and corporatize this last vestige of a public sector, of unions.
“They did NOT come after just ME in this last election. They came after ALL of us.
“Throughout the 1990’s… and my long-time friend and sister in the struggle, Cheryl Ortega is here today as well, and she’ll remember that when were out fighting against Proposition 187… we always use to say to our brother and sister teachers to motivate them, to get more involved:
” ‘That when they come after our kids, and when they come after our families, they come after US! They come after our profession! They come after public education!’
“And that’s what we said during the 1990’s, when the racists, and the xenophobes, and the Republicans were coming after immigrant children and their families. ‘When they come after our families and our kids, they come after US!’
“And now in 2013, we give the same speech in reverse, and that is that when the come after our teachers, they come after our children, and our families, and the whole thing has come full circle.
“So when we oppose Academic Growth Over Time, and Value-Added, we are not afraid of accountability, we are not afraid of responsibility. We just want a system of training and support. Let me say that again—training, support, and evaluation—that is based on improvement of instruction, and is based on real information about children and their academic growth. We did not come into teaching to check off boxes. We came into teaching because we believe in our kids and because we are about student growth and academic improvement….
“But student growth and student improvement can never be measured by a single standardized test score, and what we suffer from in this district is what I like to call a ‘data addiction.’ It’s what I like to call a ‘religious addiction’ to ‘the numbers,’ and to a ‘spread sheet,’ and to a ‘bottom line,’ and we’re taught that this is ‘objective,’ that this is ‘fact,’ and that everything else is ‘soft’… that we should go into ‘The Temple of Data’ and kneel down, and that we should bow down at an ‘Altar of Objectivity.’
“But we WON’T and we CAN’T because the gods that WE believe in teach us that EVERYTHING that is wondrous and beautiful about children cannot be measured by a standardized test score!
“We know!
“The beautiful names… and stories… of our kids—we never met a kid that was named ‘Proficient,’ and we CERTAINLY never met a kid that was named ‘Basic,’ and NEVER ‘Far Below Basic!’
“Our children have names, they have stories, and if we are to fight the battles against corporatization and privatization, we must be the warriors of re-humanization of public education that is about our children, their families, our communities, and their stories!
“And that starts with humane school communities!”
“We are not opposed to charter schools because we are opposed to choice for parents and families.
“Choice is a core value in public education, and we are creating more and more in-district programs (i.e. teacher-led schools, not private charters, Julie) for choice, and options that are built around instructional pipelines that we (unionized teachers) create with families and children.
“What we oppose… is radical de-regulation.
“What we oppose is the attack on the basic promise of public education, the basic contract of public education. That is we serve EVERY child who comes to our door—EVERY child who comes to the schoolhouse door.
“And if you don’t serve EVERY child—those who are the gifted to those who have the most special needs, and the entire spectrum in between.
“If you are not about EVERY child, then that is NOT public education, and we stand against it, and we stand against the corporatization and privatization that is embodied in the charter school takeover.
“The thing that I want to also impart to you is that this fight is a fight across our city, across our nation, and it is a pitched battle, and we need to stand in union solidarity.
“We need to stand with our brothers and sisters who are our hotel employees, and if we can give a hand to all the H.E.R.E. (hotel union) members that are here today hear serving us.
(APPLAUSE)
“We need to stand with carwash workers.
“We need to stand with our brothers and sisters from the UFCW who are at our supermarkets unpacking our groceries, and packing them up very day.
“We need to stand with the union families and the non-union families that are the parents of our children.
“We need to be out there, just like we were in the 1990’s, and in the many strikes—whether it was the UFCW, H.E.R.E., right here on this boulevard (Century Blvd., a strip near the airport where the high-end hotels are… Julie) , or the ‘Justice for Janitors’ strike right here in 1999.
“The Labor Movement needs to see that our teaching force is a force of social justice for ALL families in the city of Los Angeles.
“But let me say this… to my friends… and my brothers and sisters in the (L.A.) County Federation of Labor. If you ask, and if you expect us to stand against Walmart during the DAY, you had better stand with us as we fight Walmart’s effort to take over our schools by NIGHT.
“It is the SAME fight, and we need to hear our labor leadership across this city defend public education, as we defend the rights of workers and our parents and our brothers and sisters
Audience member: “FIRE DEASY!” (Oh the irony of that… Julie)
“The last thing I want to share with you is that we almost lost in this election the promise of public education.
“And in this room are teachers, families who slept on the floor of my campaign office, people who had the courage to go out and speak truth to power.
(Julie here… And what was the point of all that hard work and sacrifice to re-elect you, Steve, if you’re just going to cave to the very same privatizing, corporate forces that you are condemning in this speech, and thus, choose not do fire Deasy like you did on Tuesday? My children deserve better than that from you, Steve.)
“We didn’t change who we are, or who we were. We became more of who we were through this election cycle.
“The promise of public education is at great risk.
“But I need to tell you, and we need to be honest with ourselves, that the promise of public education has not been realized for all students, and we know this.
“It’s been realized for some, but not for all.
“… and until the promise of public education has been realized for ALL students, it’s a broken promise for EVERY student.
“It’s not going to change by corporate or private sector intervention.
“It’s not going to change by some performance metric come up by McKinsey Company, and produced by John Deasy.
“It’s not going to change by competition, but it is going to change by us working together.
“In a few days, we’re going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The March on Washington’…. I feel like I can say this… ”
——–
and Steve continues on with quotes from
King…
Cool speech… but talk is cheap.
This guy talks the talk, but when it counts—
i.e. in Tuesday’s closed session—
he can’t walk the walk.
No guts, man.
Thanks for this post. I really appreciate your time and effort putting this together. Many great talking points and values. Very inspirational.
Yeah, a big thanks from me
too, Julie… but why couldn’t
this guy Zimmer have lived up to his
own words and replaced Deasy…
as Deasy is someone whose
agenda, and whose
backers’ agenda is diametrically
opposed to everything that is
professed so eloquently
in that speech?
What happened to turn Zimmer?
He’s doing exactly what his
corporate shill oppenent, Kate
Anderson, would have done,
had she been elected.
Check out this video that
helped Steve defeat Anderson:
Right now, you could photoshop
in Steve’s head, and graphic
over Kate’s head and name in this
video, and dub in “Steve Zimmer”
whenever”Kate Anderson” is
mentioned in the audio.
In the video, that’s Steve Zimmer
sitting on the stool next to
Kate Anderson. If you watch
the whole debate, Zimmer
pretty much destroyed Anderson:
But now he’s following what would
have been Kate Anderson’s agenda,
had she defeated Steve in the election…
that is, the corporate reform agenda Zimmer
campaigned against and promised voters
that he would fight against, if we were
re-elected to the LAUSD board.
What’s up with that?
And here’s a low-budget commercial
back during the campaign
where Steve is condemning Gates,
Broad, Walton, Mike Bloomberg, etc.
and their efforts to privatize schools:
But now, he’s backing Deasy, the very
agent of those same billionaire privatizers.
Something’s up. What’s going on?
Julie can you email me!? It is very important. I have some information you need asap. Thanks. Radaxis7@aol.com
“Starve the beast.”
So he threatened to resign? He should have been FIRED!
Diane, I loved your segment on the Daily Show. Thanks for getting the word out!
The iPads will cost $1 billion, the majority of which will come from the bonds which were supposed to be used for construction of new or rehabbing old school buildings. That’s out of $7 billion left in the bonds – or almost 1/7 of the pool. I have heard there is over $400 billion work that needs to be done. Here is a heartbreaking report of a school where the gas lines are corroding and the district’s solution is to cap it off so there’s no heat in the classrooms in the winter. Do children want an iPad or heat? http://www.lamag.com/citythink/citythinkblog/2013/10/29/the-lausd-needs-an-operating-system-upgrade-not-ipads
Ed Week had a great article on just this subject a few days ago. There are many districts trying to figure out how to fund increasing access to technology. Sadly, the biggest reason is due to the Common Core and its computer based assessments. So, perhaps this post could include not jus Los Angeles, but other districts across the country. Did the creators of the Common Core take this into consideration? Could they have actually planned for this on purpose? After all, look what has happened in cities like Los Angeles with the massive budget cuts……less services, more students in a class, more first year inexperienced teachers, attacks on unions, reductions in pay, etc.
At some point, all the kids will have is a computer. So, all that’s left is to just switch to online learning and cut out everything else. Sure, rich districts will always be able to raise enough money for the kind of education Obama and Duncan insist on for their children.
It still remains to be decided if it was legal for LAUSD to use 25 year bonds for a short term product. In the Ed Week article, it describes that other districts used bonds specifically voted on for technology and also that must be paid back in 5 years. Sadly, these districts also have NO idea what will happen in 5 years. Will they be able to go back to the public to pass another 5 year bond? No one knows.
As for Los Angeles, Deasy did not insist that a plan for the future to replace the hardware and software was included in the iPad plan. It still remains unimaginable that this major flaw was not discovered well before anyone voted.
So, yes, the drive to put iPads in every child’s hands could indeed have a major impact. And please, don’t forget that iPads can’t be used without massive professional development and a massive staff to maintaining and monitoring them. The budget for phase I of the rollout contained funds for both, but again, this money will run out and in the future, it will have to come out of the general fund.
As has been discussed over and over, the public does not support this use of construction bonds, and the support of future bond measures is bleak.
As a teacher, user of Pearson’s products, and a long time integrator of tech in the classroom, I’m watching our district relinquishing Microsoft Exchange and shifting to cheaper Google products, passing on tablets, and finally understanding the strangle hold corporations like Pearson have on education in curriculum and assessment resources. The tie between corporations and school reform is slimy and disgusting in it’s thirsty for profit and disregard for real education.
Where or where was the oversight on this? Just makes you want to move to LA, doesn’t it?
I left LA but the fight will not leave me. With this said I highly recommend getting out . Life is better elsewhere. Choose wisely.
But if you do, you must understand this is not just LAUSD or even a national issue. It is a global nightmare. Every country save Finland seems embroiled in war upon education declared by obscenely wealthy swine like Broad and Gates and Walmart heirs. I live in a small town in northern CA. There is a huge scandal here because a member of the school board read a graduation speech he did not write and failed to offer a credit before he did so. A contractor, he probably did not mean to plagiarize. or know he could have mentioned the writer and source to avert this diaster. But you see what I am getting at. My kid is loving this after urban life.
Kathleen Carroll a whistle blower attorney and my hero is fighting billionaires, reformers, Pearson and lets just call the kettle black EVIL. She says this will infect other area schools. It has already by way ofCommon Core. In fact the reform movement is entrenched in the bay area and beyond. It will be here soon enough, she warns, and when it is, I plan to have the mob assembled with pitchforks and flaming torches to keep the monster out.
As corporate raiders ram public education into defense industry molds, you can think of these iPads as the $600 toilet seats their political cronies are flushing our tax dollars through.
Was the I-Pad project done to intentionally bleed the public schools dry? I have not heard anyone say that, but is that a possibility being discussed?
I’ve wondered the same Joanna — I think Diane posted a piece by a teacher asking just that, no? It’s a pretty terrifying proposition. As a parent, I am very, very afraid this move will bankrupt LAUSD. As a citizen of a democracy, I can barely stand this prospect. This is a very scary thought.
As I recall, Deasy (the man from Gates) pulled a similary type of scam just before jumping ship in Prince George’s County? Here’s my post from 2008: http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-did-superstar-superintendent-bail.html
“Truth” resides in technology, not in comprehensive research by experts in their field. It seems as if this is the new “truth”.
People to people discourse, teacher and student interaction? Passe?
Dehumanizing homo sapiens.
Anyone see the latest Scientific American article about how “paper” is better than “screens”?
This is the plan. It may sound crazy but Deasy is absolutely there to financially undermine the city. Take note: Detroit was infiltrated by Eli Broad and other bullies of corporate education reform before it went belly up. Broad was born and raised there but LA is his kingdom. He intends to own this city and already has control of art, government, charities and more as it is. LAUSD is infiltrated and wobbling under the weight of his mercenaries disruptive white chalk crime spree. This week an aggressive AstroTurf and media assault was launched to keep Deasy in his pposition despite obvious concerns about his bold innovative roll out of iPads and billion dollar scam being pulled on the people of LA. Even Deasy’s welled heeled backers and legal sharks are probably unaware of what is supposed to follow. One hopes even affluent elitist would disapprove of such an evil and insidious plot. Eli Broad will own everything when he swoops in on the dying district to privatize. He will call his agenda philanthropy. But what will happen is oligarchy. All this talk about civil rights and poverty is a political correct smokescreen. When Deasy is done, LA will have fewer civil rights than it did in the days before MLK marched and poverty will be a condition suffered by people of all colors. This is progressive in true speak If we don’t stop Deasy now, we will be part of Broad’s brave new world order please google theBroadRspirt, Dr. Lois Weiner and Noam Chomsky with the words public education to learn more.
Also visit http://www.defendeducation.com to learn more about Detroit and Broad.
For an irreverent renegade perspective on LA and beyond
http://www.hemlockontherocks.com
Many links and a variety of resources are available there
The financial problems caused by this iPad fraud will be blamed on teacher pensions. This is happening in state after state and city after city. Scapegoating active and retired teachers as they are slowly bled of their deferred compensation (pensions) has become the lie-of-the-month. Corporate tax incentives, refunds, and other give-aways are never mentioned, so this massive waste of money will not be mentioned in connection with financial problems approved by corrupt politicians and their minions.
It’s possible California school districts such as LAUSD cannot be shamed into backing off of their plans to buy personal technology devices (such as iPads) from money borrowed through the sale of Proposition 39 (2000) construction bonds. Nevertheless, the Riverside Press-Enterprise published an editorial on October 30, 2013 critical of the practice:
http://www.pe.com/opinion/editorials-headlines/20131029-editorial-spending-bond-money-on-ipads-rates-an-f.ece
Prop. 39 bonds are authorized under the state constitution for “the furnishing and equipping of school facilities.” See California Constitution, Article XIIIA, Section 1(b)(3). Perhaps the Attorney General can be convinced to issue an opinion about iPads as legitimate “equipping of school facilities,” or maybe the State Allocation Board can adopt a restrictive policy.
Below is a link (on my web site) to a letter Assemblymember Curt Hagman sent to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee on October 17, 2013 asking for an oversight hearing on the LAUSD iPad program. Hagman sent similar letters to the Accountability and Administrative Review Committee and the State Controller’s office.
Click to access 2013-10-17-Hagman-Letter-to-Joint-Legislative-Audit-Cmte-LAUSD-iPad-investigation.pdf
This is an issue for which the Left and the Right can work together as a coalition against entrenched interests that found a new way to borrow money for their latest vision.
Here’s one gap in information that needs to be filled: does anyone have a link to any written correspondence to a school district from bond counsel or other legal counsel about the legality of buying personal technology devices using proceeds from Prop. 39 bond sales?
Not only bankrupting the district, but they’re starving schools. All expenditures are placed on hold as Deasy claims that principals were using moneis from budgets that were “illegal.” We are in the last days of Caligula.
Bravo Deasy. You got the board to fork up inflated price for old release just before the introduction of the new iPad Air. Apple probably would have given them away.