Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times has written column after column that make sense about the accumulating disasters at the Los Angeles Unified School District.
In this one, he describes the latest series of embarrassments for the districts. So the FBI carted off 20 boxes of documents connected to the plan to spend $1.3 billion of bond money dedicated to school construction and repairs to buy iPads.
What about the other huge wastes of money in a district that has none to spare?
I’m wondering why the feds didn’t kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. While they were rummaging around at district headquarters, they could have grabbed another 20 boxes of documents related to the disastrous multimillion-dollar electronic student tracking system that created chaos in August and still hasn’t been fixed.
And speaking of the FBI, district officials were oddly complacent about the storm troopers, if you ask me. You’d think someone would have enough self-respect, even if it was just for show, to put up a fuss or demand an explanation for the raid. But I watched a district lawyer tell a TV reporter, with a smile, “I have no idea what it’s about.”
I’ll tell you what it’s about.
It’s about a disastrous year for the nation’s second-largest school district, which has managed — thanks to bungling, sloth and political squabbling — to let down more than 600,000 students.
And the iPad and MISIS (My Integrated Student Information System) failures were not the only things that went wrong. The district paid out a staggering $139 million last month to settle claims against a teacher who fed his own semen to elementary school students, among other monstrous behavior, some three decades after the district received its first complaint about him.
And he adds:
The challenges in school districts like LAUSD are largely about socioeconomic issues, and that’s the purview of county officials. So why is it that L.A. County supervisors, whose constituents fill L.A. schools, act as if LAUSD is somebody else’s problem rather than everybody’s responsibility?
We don’t need a politician to hijack the district, as former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa tried to do, or to stock the board with lackeys. But there’s middle ground between Villaraigosa’s hostile takeover bid and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s unapologetic invisibility.
Where’s the leadership and collaboration in one of the richest cities in the world, home to some of the greatest universities on the planet, as well as some of the largest nonprofits devoted to lifting up communities?
I’m not a fan of blue-ribbon panels that have no authority and produce voluminous reports nobody reads. But I’d be willing to temporarily waive my bias if a team of good people got together to help the district find a new superintendent and map out a plan to turn things around in 2015, especially if no one on the school board is going to lead or get out of the way.
There’s too much at stake to plod along, business as usual, as a horrible year ends with the FBI at the door.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Lobbyists, lawyers, and public relations—more LAUSD waste–Tear it down http://www.examiner.com/article/lobbyists-lawyers-and-public-relations-more-lausd-waste-tear-it-down-1?cid=db_articles
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LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez, is one of the few journalists/columnists who has not only the attention of the preponderance of readers, but he also is the rare person to whom the LAUSD BoE members will actually respond. The BoE is notorious for not responding to the citizens who elected them and pay their salaries. With four members up for re-election in March, the voting public must view these members more carefully.
This BoE operates, as does the District, with virtually NO transparency, which is much to the detriment of the students, parents, voters, and the taxpayers. The waste at LAUSD from the bad decisions of the leadership is now viewed and discussed nationwide, mainly due to bloggers posts
The interim Superintendent Cortines was appointed with no voice from the public who often called for either Michelle King, or Jackie Goldberg, both with good credentials, to be appointed. It is public knowledge that the edicts of Eli Broad rule many of the decisions imposed by the BoE on the community. Deasy was imposed on the District by Broad with no other search…and his inept leadership led to the FBI now investigating LAUSD and the iPad debacle at the eventual cost of $1.3 Billion. All the taxpayer money lost through mismanagement, potential fraud, and lawsuits, in the last 4 years is shameful.
To avoid more Broad imposition, this lax BoE should immediately appoint a committee of citizens, NOT a Blue Ribbon panel, to partner with them in the search and vetting of a permanent Superintendent. This beleaguered and cheated community deserves transparency in this choice, and the assurance that the District does not play any more politics with the taxpayers financing.
Last week Cortines met with the infamous Ben Austin who has led the Parent Revolution group in implementing parent triggers to charterize inner city schools for free market privatizing on the backs of We the Peoples payout. This week, Austin resigned as their leader. I am jaded enough to wonder if there is a new insider agreement for Austin to be a leading candidate for Superintendent of Schools? This is a gig that pays even more than his old Walton/Broad financed salary of about $250K plus their donations to the 501c3 Parent Rev of over $14 Million.
What next for the people of Los Angeles?
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No, not ever for this guy. Lopez’s idea of a citizen panel to search for a new superintendent is good. I definitely support this and it should proceed as soon as possible.
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Paula…Lopez did not come up with the Idea of a citizen panel. I have been asking for it for over a year, and if you check me on google, you can see that I was demanding it on City Watch Today and other sites as early as Sept. 8 for a Deasy investigation.
Otheres too sent out petitions to this end, and various of us went before the BoE asking that this occur, including a well know UTLA rep.
Lopez picked it up from the serious LAUSD muckrakers….thank goodness.
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A money quote from the column linked by the owner of this blog.
[start quote]
Is there anything good to say about LAUSD?
Yes, as a matter of fact. For all the distractions, most teachers and principals care about their jobs and do them well, and students have continued to show gains in recent years. And as for graduation rates and go-to-college rates, UCLA education professor John Rogers says the numbers “seem to have improved significantly.”
But clearly, there’s a long, long way to go.
“What we have right now is complete dysfunction,” said Antonia Hernandez, director of the California Community Foundation. She and other community leaders have tried to agitate for better leadership, and she thought Deasy, despite his missteps, was rattling many of the right cages.
So what next?
“We don’t know what to do anymore,” she said.
But doing nothing, as she knows, is unacceptable.
[end quote]
Leave aside the myth-making stats and focus on what an enabler of self-styled education has to say when confronted with the predictable results—hugely damaging, catastrophic in some ways of her actions—and is asked to reflect and respond and come up with something better—
“We don’t know what to do anymore” — and that’s what happens when you drink the Kool-Aid of “education reform” solutions of the self-proclaimed “new civil rights movement of our time.”
You don’t do something as simple as pick up REIGN OF ERROR by Diane Ravitch or THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH by Anthony Cody or the like and get down to the basics of what it is really going to take to provide students, parents and communities with well-resourced and well-supported effective public schools.
No. You abandon even the pretense of “grit” and “determination” by throwing your hands up in the air, grabbing your pearls and finding the nearest fainting couch when your false idols fail at putting proven failed policies work properly, and begging for sympathy for your inability to be all in “for the sake of the kids.”
If I seem a bit hard on Ms. Hernandez—just remember what their hero, whose every cruel move elicited barely a peep of discomfort if any at all, did at the beginning of his beat down of LAUSD.
Goes into a classroom led, that day by a fine substitute teacher, Ms. Patrena Shankling. He is disrespectful and disruptive, and gets her fired. An exemplar of what Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.”
So I remind all those living in the glass house of EduRheephorm: don’t be throwing stones at others.
What goes around, comes around.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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I so agree. Many so-called parent reform groups are mouth pieces for education “reform” groups, often funded by the Broads and the Rhee led groups. Why do parents ever think their enemies are the teachers?? We both want the same thing – a good education, a clean and safe environment, qualified teachers, for their kids!
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Yeah, how could parents think that those adults who are closest to their children don’t want to protect them and assist them in learning. In place of parent is real for most teachers. Whenever a student asks me a question, I always ask what does their parents say or think. Parents, we are not the enemy, we are your closest ally in your child’s education.
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Love you TA…right on.
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Have you all noticed that the media/press people seem to have forgotten that they have been glorifying Deasy for the last few years? That they attacked everyone who questioned his decisions and his management methods? It’s like all these things resulted from bad weather or . . . ?
Privitization brings corruption and incompetence without accountability. Everyone who made money from the Deasy regime is going to keep the money. It was all a big win for them. For students and teachers in LAUSD, not so much.
NB – Steve Lopez doesn’t really care either.
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That is not true of Steve Lopez at all. As Diane stated in her post here, he has made sense of LAUSD to the people of Los Angeles and beyond. Here, he talked on NPR about Deasy’s downfall. I don’t always agree with him, but he has never been one of the journalists making excuses for the powerful. http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/which-way-la/john-deasy-steps-down-from-la-unified
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Plus, his own child attended LA schools and his wife sat on all those committees we parents sit on to try to make our schools a better place. He does care.
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Really? I don’t recall Lopez or anyone else at the LA Times challenging Deasy until he was fatally wounded. I can’t say I’ve read every column, I would do so if I knew of a source, but my recollection is that Lopez is a standard-issue, LA Times, anti-union, pro-corporate schools writer.
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James E Powell, LATimes has been awful but Lopez has maintained independence somehow. A couple of notable examples among several:
Sept 2013: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/28/local/la-me-0929-lopez-ipad-20130929
June 2014: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0615-lopez-magruder-20140615-column.html
And lo-o-o-ng before that, he alerted readers to the shenanigans of Eli Broad. http://articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/02/local/me-lopez2
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At the risk of sounding like Lopez’s agent, that’s just not true. We have good reason to call out reporters and editors who have a solid pro-reform stance. But we’d do better to recognize those who see it differently and will inform readers rather than generalize that all journalists are advancing the pro-reform agenda. Lopez just isn’t.
June 2014 http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0615-lopez-magruder-20140615-column.html
Sept 2013 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/28/local/la-me-0929-lopez-ipad-20130929
Lo-o-o-ng before Deasy, he was warning readers about the shenanigans of Eli Broad.
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/02/local/me-lopez2
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Short term expenditures are merely an investment in building an entity to inundate the public and/or children’s minds with their agenda. It is like spending several thousand dollars to “buy” a politician which through laws passed will gain their corporate entity a million dollar profit. They have the money to invest. Use it to buy power and more money. Obviously money is the bottom line, not benefits for people.
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I’m afraid that for many people, Deasy and his theft, malfeasance and generally inept running of the school system will just become conflated with the idea the reformsters are always promoting: public schools are no good. It will be the teachers’ fault (see Vergara), precisely the outcome Eli Broad and his ilk are seeking.
I appreciate Steve Lopez’ shout out to teachers and principals as he calls out politicians and blue ribbon panels, but I fear it won’t be enough to keep perceptions clear that this is due to the actions of those in charge, not those on the front lines.
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I share your concern Christine. It’s our job to keep sending info to reporters and columnists, and writing letters to the editor.
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We need to remind ourselves over and over that Deasy’s former supporters are no where to be found. This is the best proof that he is now damaged goods and that no one has been able to find any reason to continue to support him.
We also need to reestablish how he got foisted on this district and demand that the board put in place requirements for hiring a superintendent that call for a public process prior to any decision.
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We do need a public process for the hiring of the next supe. Let’s hope they get with it.
As for Deasy and his bandwagon, my guess is they are laying low til he is cleared by the grand jury. Then, he will come out swinging with cheers in the background. DOE?
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I will no doubt get quashed in fallout from saying this. Tell me I’m a prejudiced old lady, I’ll listen to the info. But just from my sheltered NE outpost: we’re talking about (1) CA, long a peculiar coastal amalgam of far-lefties & far-righties, which managed to give birth to both Jerry& Pat Brown– and Reagan… (2) LA, land of Hollywood stars-cum-politicos like Reagan, Schwarzenegger & others… (3)back to CA, land of 1978’s Propisition 13, which so crippled the state’s public ed that, on asking a young 1990’s CA emigre neighbor why on earth she would send her kids to an exp private sch despite hi NJ prop taxes & super local schools she responded: you have to understand I was raised in a state where no one w/pride & the $ would ever use public schools…
Why are we surprised that CA is in thrall to neolib ed policy? Seems they have been headed in that direction for a very long time.
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Do I actually care? Seems to me the LA area of CA has ever catered to whichever big mfg or celeb-star had the power– this is traditionally an area in thrall to power schemes, e.g., water-utilitiy, Enron energy– meanwhile following a subrosa anti-union, anti-Mexican agenda. What’s happening today there re: education is fallout from all that plus 1978’s Prop 13. Reap what you sow.
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You might reconsider whether you should care. LA is the 2nd largest school district in the country and has outsized political influence on a national level. California has more elected congress members than any other state and more political donations come from California than any other state. It matters to every other district what happens here. Do you think it was just coincidence that Vergara came from LA and is now headed to New York? Do you think it was just coincidence that the reformers spent millions and millions on ed reform here? The changed landscape post-Prop 13 certainly matters, but Los Angeles is the western front in the national war called corporate education reform.
We have every reason to feel confident though. We have beat back the corporate privatizers in election after election on the school board of the second largest school district in the country. Our governor and state superintendent have stood up to Arne Duncan and their leadership helped California pass a tax measure to fund our schools. We are building coalitions to continue the fight. UTLA for the first time in my memory is working with parents to improve schools.
Seems to me writing it off as celebrity gaga is a little dangerous.
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Agree 100% Karen…writing off California shows simplistic bias and does not show an understanding of the political climate of the most complex state in the union. We have some of the best universities in nation, both public and private, and voters had the good judgement to vote two women into office in the Senate. We have historically some of the greatest statesmen in history, e.g. Earl Warren, Stanley Mosk, Pat Brown, etc.
But we also have a large group of the ultra wealthy (e.g. Broad, Welch, Jobs, Zuckerman, Perrenchio, and lesser knowns, see Forbes billionaires list) who think they own everything and everybody.
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We care, our kids care.
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