The Los Angeles school board failed to reappoint Stuart Magruder, the appointee of the American Institute of Architects, to its 15-member. Bond Oversight Committee. Magruder was an outspoken critic of Superintendent John Deasy’s decision to use funds from a 25-year bond dedicated to construction and repairs to pay for his purchase of iPads for every student and staff member in the district. The failure to reappoint Magruder set off a firestorm, as he was doing his job, overseeing the use of bond funds. The entire membership of the Bond Oversight Committee signed a letter of protest to the board. Here is a description from Scott Folsom’s blog. He is a member of the Bond Oversight Committee.
ALSO ON THURSDAY, at the Beaudry Boardroom there was bit of dissent about that well-run/voter+taxpayer supported program. The expenditure of those bond funds and all the transperant+accountable oversight was being questioned by the very Oversight Committee the Voters of California and Los Angeles placed to watchdog the process in a Constitutional Amendment, state law, five school bond packages and a Memorandum of Understanding between LAUSD, The Board of Ed and the Oversight Committee. As you read here last week the Board of Ed refused to reappoint a very vocal critic of the superintendent’s iPads effort. A critic, mind you, who had not been successful in quashing the program (and the successful effort to slow the program down was not his alone) – but who had only asked questions about it. Stuart Magruder is one vote and one voice in fifteen – and the Board refuses to re-appoint him.
Magruder’s fiercest critic says that that’s not the reason she led the charge against him – she continues to claim that Magruder’s hidden agenda is to employ architects!
I am just as guilty. I represent an association of parents, teachers and students …and I am big on putting them to work!
NONE OF ANY OF THAT “He Said/She Said” MATTERS. What matters is that a three vote minority of Boardmembers wishes to create a more agreeable Bond Oversight Committee …as in “agrees with them”. When an elected body appoints the folks in charge of overseeing their actions we can toss out any concept of Independent Oversight. We become the LAUSD School Construction Bond Citizen’s Lapdog Committee. We become Monica+ Tamar+ Dr. V+C’s poodles. I don’t think so.
►LETTER: May 29, 2014
Los Angeles Unified School District
333 South Beaudry Avenue, 24th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Dear Board Members:
We, the undersigned members of the LAUSD School Construction Bond Citizens’ Oversight Committee (BOC), urge you to reappoint Stuart Magruder as the representative of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA/LA) on the BOC.
Mr. Magruder has been properly nominated by the AIA/LA for reappointment and, under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding (§3.1.8) between the District and the BOC, the Board should reappoint him without hesitation.
Independence of the Bond Oversight Committee is vital to its proper function.
Disagreement with the comments, questions, and votes of a duly appointed member is NOT a valid justification for the Board to refuse to re-appoint that member when they have been properly re-nominated by a designated stakeholder organization. Stated simply, Stuart Magruder should be reappointed as the AIA/LA representative on the BOC as soon as possible.
[This was signed unanimously by the Oversight Committee at Thursday’s meeting.]
Did/will the Wall Street Bankers and Credit Raters note any of this?
What do you think?
LAUSD is sitting on the potential of selling $7+ billion in bonds in the future. We+the market-makers also know LAUSD has $30 billion in identified infrastructure+repair need. Eventually the District will need to go back to the voters …and the grassroots groundswell seems increasingly opposed. In 2012 this regime didn’t dare place a $255 million parcel tax on the November ballot …not just out of fear of defeat – but out of fear it would taint everything else on the ballot.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The blocking of the re-appointment of Stuart Magruder—the one person on the LAUSD Bond Committee opposing the use of voter-passed construction bond (building & builidng repair) money for I-pads and accompanying software that deliver Common Core testing and nothing else—was engineered by this corporate-funded, and Pearson-funded LAUSD Board Member Tamar Galatzan.
(If not the only person on the Bond Committee who objects to the use of bond money going to pay for I-pads / software, Magruder is the one Bond Committee Member who’s most vocal opposed to Common Core… so vocal, in fact, that his being vocal just got him canned.):
http://laschoolreport.com/school-board-blocks-appointee-critical-of-ipads-lausd/
Magruder is also a parent of a LAUSD public school student, and is underwhelmed, to say the least, by what the insanely expensive ($ 1 billion TOTAL ???!!!) I-pads are actually delivering… apart from the idea that money raised by a voter bond to build new schools /repair repair existing schools was misused to pay for I-pads and software.
Note that the Pearson-funded Galatzan’s rationale for blocking and silencing Magruder is that he’s not “open-minded” about I-pads / software being purchased with bond money, and that the LAUSD Board needs to get someone else to serve on the committee who’s more “open-minded.” The fact is that, in silencing him, the Pearson-funded Galatzan is carrying out the marching orders of her “corporate reform” masters.
“Open-minded” is the Pearson-funded Galatzan’s euphemism for someone who just shuts the-Hell up and doesn’t make waves, or who does not dare attempt to block the corporate agenda pushed by the Pearson-funded Galatzan and her masters. The Pearson-funded Galatzan did this to shut up anyone else on the Committee who dared object the way Magruder
BELOW is the testimony that cost Magruder his job / position on the Bond Oversight Committee: :
(after he’s done, stick with this video to hear LAUSD teacher Julie Carson speak after Magruder about the same issue)
There’s a great comment, critical of Galatzan, in the article about Pearson-backed Board Member Galatzan’s canning of Stuart Magruder.
http://laschoolreport.com/school-board-blocks-appointee-critical-of-ipads-lausd/
It’s written by one Rene Diedrich:
RENE DIETRICH:
“It is frightening to me that (Galatzan)’s bullying is permitted to derail Socratic discourse. The fact that Ms. Galatzan is a prosecutor unwilling to hear other opinions is one thing but to be a member of the BOE is by definition a Democratic concession to the people . Mr. Magruder is one of ‘them’ as a citizen, a politically active father and a righteous member of that committee.
“Why shouldn’t someone be allowed to criticize the iPad roll out? That is the freaking point. Looking at things from many angles is what makes ‘community’ and collaboration viable. Moreover, a lot what Magruder says is accurate.
“Btw, It is encouraging to see this reported so clearly and objectively, thanks.”
so what else is new???? Politics. Follow the money.
I think we have entered the 2nd stage. When the Nazis took over France, people resisted at first, but once they realized power had shifted, they started to collaborate. I know excellent teachers who are dropping out of public school teaching to start charter schools. They don’t agree with the idea, but they have to feed their families. The writing is on the wall. America is all about survival now, and if you don’t do it, someone else will. Nobility is one thing, but having kids who are hungry or need health care, is another. The TV show “Breaking Bad” is just an allegory for the entire middle class in America. It’s sad.
Finally, CTA has produced a good commercial and it is airing on the prime TV channels as of today. The Magruder battle is almost at the point of mayhem….but so many people have spoken out to reinstate him…however, a huge margin spoke out against renewing Deasy’s contract, but that did not influence the LAUSD BoE. We’ll see. Thanks Diane for helping to expose this to the whole country.
PETITION: SIGN. THE. PETITION. PLEASE. HERE IT IS:::
https://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/reappoint-lausd-bond-oversight-committee-citizen-member-stewart-magruder-as-a-watchdog
mike – it’s possibly true that all this privatization is in an end game and it’s all over. I don’t know, without history’s hindsight we none of us will. We are too in the middle to see a bigger picture clearly. But we can keep on fighting til it’s all over.
ADDING YOUR NAME to the current 500 hundred signators in defense of an independent bond oversight committee will matter. It WILL help to have on record that people out here do notice and care that their money gets spent as they intended it to be, and not how some random rogue renegade superintendent of the 1% wishes instead.
Maybe thanks are in order to Tamar Galatzan. After all, she has just done the public a great service in bringing up the iPad fiasco once again and adding another reason to attack the project.
As a LAWYER and a full time Los Angeles Neighborhood Prosecutor(besides her part time board position), she should have considered that the “LAW of unintended consequences” could play out here.
There is little doubt that her actions were meant to send a message to present and future Bond Oversight Committee members. “If you mess with us, we will stop at nothing to attack you and your professional ethics.”
WELL DONE all you interested stakeholders!!!
The LAUSD BoE just voted to recognize the AIA’s re-nomination of Magruder to the BOC.
An excellent article about an intelligent reform effort that is actually working!!!