The billionaires are circling the Los Angeles public schools again, trying to gain control of the school board so they can shift half the students into privately managed charter schools that are free to pick the students they want and kick out the ones they don’t want.
They have targeted Steve Zimmer, the current president of the Los Angeles Unified School District, as a barrier to their insidious plans.
The Network for Public Education Action Fund enthusiastically endorses Steve Zimmer for re-election. He came in first in the primaries with nearly 48% of the vote against several competitors. Now, he is running against the runner-up, who has been funded by the privatizers of the California Charter School Association.
If you live in District 4 in Los Angeles, please volunteer to help Steve. If you don’t, please send him a contribution so he can get his message out.
School board elections are notorious for low turnout. Help Steve reach parents and concerned citizens.
Stop the billionaire putsch!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
DISTRICT 4 VS. PROGRESSIVES:
OUR WRESTLE OF CONSCIENCE
One of the things that Diane Ravitch’s blog has done is provide a forum for civil discussion and debate on the direction of public education. This blog has been perhaps the most essential crossroad for all concerned educators who found an alliance with others in the face of Ed Reform’s horrific narrative, policies and big-moneyed advocacy.
As a National Board Certified Teacher with a child within LAUSD, my stake as an activist in public education, like so many others, is both local and national.
Currently, the school board race that is being touted as the most important in the country (and certainly the most expensive) is LA’s 4th District. It pits NPE’s-endorsed LAUSD school board president Steve Zimmer against the charter backed challenger Nick Melvoin.
It is a very divisive race–not the least of which it calls into question the split among Democrats on Education policy.
Diane’s blog is probably the perfect place to discuss the nuances of this race and invite comments from all those who read and benefit from this “inside baseball” site since the average LA voter is not turning here to make their decision.
This long piece is addressed to the people in LA who are following this race. You know who you are.
It goes without saying that the very concept of Public Education is under attack throughout the country. That attack is coming from very huge corporate interests who have gone into urban school districts to disrupt and plunder. In LA, the duel tycoons Eli Broad and former GOP Mayor Richard Riordan, although not as boorish, still have plenty in common with Donald Trump in the ways they have wielded their money to use anti-democratic back channels to advance their causes.
Nick Melvoin is the benefactor of both these LA plutocrats, including their moneyed- ideology and their methods. Melvoin cannot escape the fact that he is the choice of ALL of Los Angeles’s Republicans and also corporate-backed Democrats. This may be a winning combination for him. Riordan has given him $1 million while Broad has funneled vast sums into the fundraising groups that are backing Melvoin.
LA’s charter organizations embody the destructive corporate Democrat-backed Neo-liberal Economic policies put into Education policies. These are the Education policies of “Democrats” like Michelle Rhee, Rahm Emanuel, Cory Booker and Andrew Cuomo.
Here in blue, blue, blue Los Angeles, to embrace anything of Donald Trump is toxic. Thus, even though the California Charter School Association gave a fawning embrace to his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, no candidate in LA can realistically do so even when they are backed heavily by all these charter forces.
So Melvoin, who yes like any sensitive and sentient LA citizen is against discrimination on LGBT issues, immigration, women’s right, health care access…blah, blah, blah social issues, he still embraces the economic and education policies of the Wall Street Republicans AND Democrats.
In California, Ed Reform candidates have, alas, had President Obama to hide behind hoping the in toto portrait of Obama extends to his education policies which were consistently challenged by Education Progressives in the same way that Civil Liberties progressives challenged Obama’s abysmal privacy and drone strikes policies. His Education Secretaries Arne Duncan and John King were despised by Education Progressives for their embrace of Republican initiatives and policies put in place by George W. Bush.
THE NEW REPUBLIC called the single MOST important leak from the Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton’s chairman John Podesta’s emails was an October 6, 2008 letter from Michael Froman, an executive at Citibank, suggesting who Wall Street wanted to fill Obama’s cabinet. Wall Street got almost everyone on their wish list including Arne Duncan.
Melvoin and Duncan believe whole-heartedly in the Vergara battle and they both bragged of being big supporters of former LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. Although he can never say it, Melvoin’s (and Duncan’s) education positions have far more in common with DeVos and Republican Governors than with Progressive educators (who share NOTHING with DeVos and her ilk).
No surprise—Arne Ducan just endorsed Melvoin (along with fellow Charter advocate and LMU graduate Kelly Gonez in District 6). When Barack Obama was leaving this January, he put out a list of his administration’s Top 50 achievements. An Education success was nowhere on it.
Melvoin and the other LA Charter candidates (and their corporate-backed “grass roots” organizations) flight from DeVos is hypocritical. Under Donald Trump and DeVos, the charter community will get much of want they want–except the vouchers which the Charters eschew because it cuts into their take as well as the public schools. The Charter candidates are supported by ALL of LA’s Republicans including Dick Riordan–and across the country by every huge financial titan from the Walton family to the Koch Brothers.
As much as LA’s charter community tries to highlight their separation from Republican ideology on social issues, they are tied to each other on Education policy.
Again, ALL Republicans and the Big Money Corporate Democrats throw their allegiance to Charters.
If you are a Progressive in the matter of Education policy, then charters and are just one more part of Trump America where corporations and billionaires have out-sized influence and have the muscle to fund school board races around the country. The wealthy have always used their muscle to protect and enhance their fortunes and in modern day Trump America, we have witnessed how billionaires have used their clout to disrupt and command the narrative of public education.
Nick Melvoin is both a small AND big fish in their efforts.
And then there’s Steve Zimmer, and, if Progressives are really honest with themselves, he presents a problem.
Zimmer is being backed heavily by the UTLA because he is the perceived firewall against LA’s charter movement.
UTLA does what UTLA does because it is a political organization. As Progressives, we fully embrace most of the reasons why unions exist. In 2017 America, much of people’s economic woes are caused by not having access to organizations that protects their rights and conditions in the work place and pro-actively fights for economic justice.
Our belief in the tenets of unionism, however, does not mean we embrace everything UTLA does as “Progressive” because it simply isn’t.
In LA, UTLA failed miserably—horrifically–in allowing (and yes, “allow” is not too strong a word), the worst, most fervent Ed Reform advocate to win another term.
In LA’s 2nd District, Eli Broad/John Deasy cheerleader Monica Garcia won her seat with just 56% of the vote.
Garcia received 13,740 with $558,128 spent at a cost of $42.40 a vote.
Between her two Progressive Educator challengers National Board Certified Teacher Lisa Alva and parent advocate Carl Peterson received 9,640 votes with $15,212 at a cost of $1.50 a vote.
With just a minimum amount of effort—or even a damned endorsement of either which UTLA refused to give—they could have won this race.
Their tacit support of Monica Garcia’s campaign revealed UTLA as less than useless. It caused educators to justifiably wonder who they advocate for. UTLA’s hypocrisy became painfully real to the teachers, students and community of LA and cheapened their current rhetoric in support of Steve Zimmer.
If schools AND pedagogy are PUBLIC trusts that need to be defended from further Top Down Big Money priorities, then UTLA doesn’t always live up to that creed in their actions.
Zimmer has always had Progressive problems.
His speeches are usually fiery orations espousing all the right, albeit milquetoast, points of liberal education, but his actions and votes do not always reflect his words.
Current LAUSD School Board member Scott Schmerelson termed John Deasy’s tenure at LAUSD a “reign of terror”.
It was.
When teachers and educators were looking desperately for someone in some position of authority to combat John Deasy’s actions, methodologies and behavior, Zimmer was completely absent. In fact, he gave Deasy cover and support through much of his superintendence.
Zimmer was positively awful during that time.
And spineless.
Although there have been campaign flyers that have ludicrously blamed Deasy’s iPad scandal on Zimmer, it still doesn’t excuse Zimmer for voting for the project in the first place. Dedicating 20% of the school budget to such a venture proved to be a legendary disaster and was criticized for its ill-planned technical incompetence. But Zimmer, a former teacher, couldn’t even do the research on why the iPads was a pedagogical disaster and an obscene use of resources that might actually be detrimental to students.
It is sort of amazing that the Charter groups have demonized Zimmer like he was Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore. Zimmer has approved almost every single charter that has come before the board. His accommodation to LA’s Charters is almost complete.
Zimmer is running as the least corporate backed candidate. The narrative now has become UTLA Vs. Charters which is not how Progressives want the terms and definitions for a school board race to be fought.
It needs to be fought on Progressive Pedagogy and Values which can be articulated and won on if such a race were debated.
After the March primary where Zimmer learned he would face Melvoin, he said: “I think that while the individual candidates may personally reject that and may make every effort to try and have a real dialogue about the most urgent issues facing public education, the die has been cast and it’s cast with my blood.”
Good grief.
Who says something as narcissistic and silly as this?
Zimmer may be running to the Left of Melvoin, but his campaign literature and speeches only talk in vague, milquetoast terms about the value of public education. He is definitely NOT the fighter Progressives need.
Again, there may be a good case made that a Progressive voter HAS to support Zimmer, but only because no true education liberal ran against him and made the strongest possible case for Progressive education and community values.
The cost of Zimmer’s failure to be that person so will be a Los Angeles board made up of School Reform advocates whose policies were cooked at LMU’s corporate school philosophy where John Deasy and board member Ref Rodriguez received their degrees.
I’m sorry to say I am pessimistic. We may have lost already to the big money forces in all ways. Democratic Billionaires may now dictate the terms in LA and we are asked to accept this as we are asked to accept so much of our lives determined by those with wealth in our country. Our public education–its funding, its structure, its pedagogy–is now in the hands of very powerful others.
We all live in a country that it isn’t only Trump believes should be run like a business. Many of our Democrat allies share this ideology–although not the harsh rhetoric.
For Progressive education advocates, it is imperative to tie the charters and the organizations who support them to the larger right wing corporate movement, but if UTLA isn’t going to be honest about WHY they can support Zimmer and NOT support others fighting for liberal pedagogy, than who is representing PROGRESSIVE values?
I would love to see how much light would shine on a Progressive-sponsored debate between the candidates, but the other LAUSD school board races. In such a debate, both Zimmer and Melvoin would both squirm but it would be instructive and help point a path towards the future—and maybe make whoever wins District 4 consider what “Progressive” means in 2017.
100% correct, Geronimo.
Love ya Leftie…but Melvoin…NO WAY.
100% correct? Does this mean that only if the candidate is “100% progressive” (according to whom, that’s another story) s/he deserves to be elected?
It is clear that Melvoin is miles away from that standard despite his pious protestations that he voted for Hillary and Obama. At least Zimmer is a “fellow traveler” (make of that what you will).
Why then spread seeds of distrust and, essentially, torpedo his campaign?
Sure, there is plenty to grouse, but if you are going to grouse, you might as well come out and straight say so instead of beating around the bush as “Geronimo” is doing here (which I find disgusting, but, hey, he is entitled to his opinion).
But what’s the point in insisting on doctrinaire purity at this point? Isn’t that equivalent to letting the village be burned so that we can later say “I told you so?” That’s how we ended up with the current POTUS, you know.
Josh: Monday morning quarterbacking is a very easy tack. Speaking of spineless.
As a teacher perhaps you should consider joining UTLA’s political committee that makes these endorsement and backing decisions?
I too am disappointed — so disappointed!! — that Ms Garcia could not have been ousted; and once the dust settled it seems like the gap was so small it ought surely to have been able to have been done.
But I respect what I was told about UTLA’s decision; that they didn’t have enough money to spread in all the races such that being too thin would become a waste of the little that they had, and strategically holding Gonez to a runoff and maybe even helping avoid one for Zimmer was all they could do.
Recall that CCSA’s funds are essentially infinite. Instigating an arms race in both LAUSD4 and LAUSD2 as well as being involved in LAUSD6 — I can see that would have been arguably a bankrupting choice.
Having the benefit of hindsight may change your calculation from here, but not from there.
What’s the advantage of insinuating doubt the way you and Karen Wolfe have been doing now, during the election? Why not express your reservations mid-term when the stakes for loss are not so high and for truth are at a premium?
According to Lisa Alva, whose campaign I worked on, the figures were much closer than stated here. She could have either won or at least been in a runoff with the mendacious and unfit charter supporter, Monica Garcia, if Carl Peterson, not a local in Dist. 2, had dropped out, her votes combined with his would definitely have challenged Garcia. Politics truly stinks. And as to Alex Caputo-Pearl and UTLA, their decision to LET Garcia win and not give a cent to Alva, also swayed this MOST important LAUSD election. The upper middle class students in WLA will do well no matter what, the inner city kids of East LA, mainly Latino/Chicano and living in poverty….not so much.
For years I have admired Geronimo with his fantastic verbal skills and his equally excellent critical thinking. He is a golden teacher…and generally I am in complete accord with him. Here, today, he points out so many truths, both about Nick Melvoin, the current darling of Eil Broad who is used to buying his puppets at LAUSD, and former Mayor Dick Riordan, Eli’s buddy billionaire whom many remember with distaste.
I have endorsed Steve Zimmer, who, as I have stated here over the years, is not my fave as an LAUSD BoE member for his faults that Geronimo and other teachers have examined and reported on for years. None of us expected he would roll over and play dead to Deasy’s poisonous agendas when we initially fought hard to get him elected.
However, the turning point to the comparison between Zimmer and Melvoin is hidden below in Jack’s commentary wherein he quotes a HuffPost article by Marcy Winograd, also an LAUSD teacher. Marcy mentions that another former Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is supporting Melvoin.
This endorsement should be the KISS of DEATH for any candidate in California, and particularly in Los Angeles.
Villaraigosa was the most duplicitous Mayor I can remember in my long lifetime as an Angelino going back to Sam Yorty. He nurtures(d) his billionaire contacts like Bloomberg whom he emulated as with his treachery during Occupied LA (and whom he got to donate $! M to beat Monica Ratliff, which did NOT happen), and former Mayor Riordan from whom he learned self promotion and aggrandizement.
But his greatest love affair is with Eli Broad who has financed too many of Viallraigosa’s escapades. and in return, Eli got to be Tony’s long time puppet master. It was an embarrassment to educators in LA when the little V and his Siamese twin Deasy, would speak all over LA, even at UCLA, and insist they would turn this city RAPIDLY into a charter ‘wasteland’, my word, not theirs. Lo and behold, this conglomerate now has about $4 Million invested in Melvoin who is a 31 year old ‘short term’ teacher, ‘short term’ lawyer. Why? What does Melvoin know about running public schools that is more studied than long term teacher/BoE member Zimmer?
Ask yourself why donate a fortune to him for a gig that only pays him $43K a year? Inquiring minds want to know if it is because they can count on him to do their bidding…Eli’s puppet strings stretch throughout this District, this City, this Nation. This is not acceptable.
I prefer to endorse a mediocre incumbent BoE member who knows just how I and other educators feel about him, than the ‘Long Nosed Arm of Badlands Broad’ and his greed mongers, the Waltons, the Wassermans, Murdoch, Anshutz, Peteraon, etc.
Villaraigosa has spoken up on this school board election ONLY because he is running for California Governor and wants Eli and his hoods to finance his campaign.
So since it is late and I am on a roll, in addition to endorsing Zimmer, I am also working for and endorsing John Chiang for Governor of California. John is highly intelligent and a proven legislator who is neither a serial adulterer nor a recipient of favored status as a student of color, who publically and self admittedly stated he only got into UCLA due to his heritage, as is Villaraigosa, who also failed the California Bar Exam multiple times and finally gave up…another self admitted fact. Melvoin should turn down his endorsement.
Zimmer for BoE….Chiang for Governor.
Marcy, I’m with you on this one….but still am against your stance two weeks ago at Rachel’s. And to the rest of the country, as Geronimo implies, our city of 9 M people seem to all know each other…especially the Progressive/progressives.
This is a complicated subject….and I do not mind my post being rejected or removed for the irrelevancy…but there might be a general pattern of stuff which leads to endorsements….I have a friend named David Jackson, who served on the powerless slps board for eight years, and was not endorsed by the post dispatch in st. louis….we joked about it on his facebook….http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-post-dispatch-endorses-jones-reese-and-rohde-collins-for/article_236db9b2-883b-5354-b299-6ba64fa30edc.html?mode=comments joe– I read the editorial in the pd today. If the right people are chosen for the elected board, consideration will be given to allowing them to replace the appointed board, ending a decade of disenfranchisement. If the wrong people are elected, then there will be delay, and changes in rules lasting until the right people are chosen. Peter Downs is among those who caused this to be the case. Antonio French noted that Mayor Slay went expletive crazy when Peter was elected.He was opposed to establishing more charter schools. The PD loves the charters, as long as they do not have to report about them.
David Jackson –How do you determine who the right people are?
Joe — You have to know how to behave yourself when important people tell you to.
he responded with a huge laughing figure….I offered him a full explanation.(the post dispatch does not allow people to see what I post after editorials and news stories)
This might be an example of why Beth does not allow me to reply.
If the people of St. Louis want to end the decade of disenfranchisement regarding what is done to provide education for their children, they need to look at the history of why the vote was taken away from them. In the election of 2006, they voted for someone that Mayor Slay and Danforth did not like—-Peter Downs. Not only had he taken action to stop the district from requiring teachers to go to scientology meetings, he payed close attention to damage being done to public schools by increasing charter schools. It took a year and a half, but with the help of republican
superstar Peter Herschends, (the Branson guy, head of the state department of education), the white people voted to take accreditation away from slps, making it possible to replace the much more highly qualified and knowledgeable elected board with the three people answerable to no one.
Dr. Adams seems like he has been ok as superintendent,but he had the advantage of seeing the school population reduced by ten thousand,,,(he claims there are still 24,500 students, not 23,500) and as for the other ten or eleven thousand (it is not feasible to bother with exact numbers when it is just children, not hockey fans being counted).
Adams got his first lesson about charter schools when the Can academy (Bourisaw, his predecessor) warned those arrogant pies on the state board not to allow them to set up on 4300 goodfellow, but they ignored her. Texas Can academy couldn’t….it was so bad, that your paper has removed David Hunn’s sad account from their archives.
Adams finessed the jerks from Imagine…..their successors even have the present state board disgusted with how out of control their don’t give a (bleep) about anything except making money attitude. KIPP is being used to promote passing the charter hb640 bill….nice that the lady has some one on one help for her autistic son, but how many other special needs children do they serve?….Kipp is one of the better charters. Maybe the best is Gateway, with a huge percentage of white kids who just happen to be in the student population….still with some Turkish administrators, which does not prove that they are part of the Gulen chain, despite the FBI adventures which found nothing amiss in st. louis, unless the pd forgot to report it. Still……this is what the Post Dipatch does and doesn’t and is and isn’t.
The person I get most angry towards…..even more than Trump’s national head of education Devos….(omit the name)
Typical of the centrist democrats who do not really stand for anything other than…..but but but…..we are not as bad as republicans….the charter stuff is big and powerful…..and they do not let people get in their way. That is why you can no longer read David Hunn’s 2008 article, (I have it) or Peter Downs negative review of the charter propaganda film, waiting for superman, published in the Beacon, removed by our public radio jerks.
And Steve needs money badly, so please donate to his campaign website.
Here is the link to where you can do so:
https://donate.democracyengine.com/ZimmerLASchoolBoard/contribute
The school privatization industry — who’s backing Steve’s opponent Nick Melvoin with millions of dollars of support — knows that a victory or defeat for them will reverberate throughout the country, so regardless of where you live, please contribute to the Steve Zimmer campaign.. again, at …
https://donate.democracyengine.com/ZimmerLASchoolBoard/contribute
Here’s Steve’s campaign website:
http://stevezimmerforschoolboard.com/
Here’s a great HuffPost article that lays things out clearly:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stop-the-hostile-take-over-re-elect-steve-zimmer-tues_us_58d878bee4b0f633072b3937
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
“STOP the Hostile Take-Over.
Re-Elect Steve Zimmer Tues., May 16th,
to LAUSD School Board”
by
Marcy Winograd,
Contributor Huffington Post Political Contributor
03/26/2017 10:34 pm ET
On Tues, May 16th, Los Angeles voters –the caffeinated ones awake enough to know there is a monumental election underway— can resist a billionaire-backed hostile charter take over of the Los Angeles Unified School District by casting ballots to re-elect a champion of the arts, LAUSD Board President Steve Zimmer representing District 4, a swath of land that stretches from Westchester’s jet roar to Venice’s Silicon Beach to East Hollywood’s rentals to the sun-splashed Valley enclaves of Woodland Hills and Tarzana.
Zimmer’s District 4 seat is one of two open seats on the seven-member board; the other open seat is District 6 in the East San Fernando Valley where another teacher-union endorsed candidate, Imelda Padilla, a former organizer with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), and an environmental justice advocate with Pacoima Beautiful – faces charter school teacher Kelly Gonez, a competitor backed by charter school privatizers.
The question is this:
Do we want public schools that are transparent, engage the entire community, and adhere to the long-established state education code –
… or …
… do we want privately-run schools paid for with public money operating in the Wild West of Charterville?
With voter turn-out expected to plunge to an anemic low of 10 percent or less, a paltry number of voters will decide whether LA Unified, a district with 650,000 students enrolled in the second largest district in the nation behind New York City, continues to operate on all cylinders, serving over 200 magnet programs and pilot schools – or collapses under the weight of multiplying charters – now exceeding 220 independent charters, according to LAUSD—that create a two-tiered education system.
In what could be the most expensive school board race in US history, the billionaire boys club is spending over 4-million dollars to oust Zimmer in hopes of establishing a pro-charter majority that would turn half of the district’s 900 schools into charters, 90% of which would be non-union – like the 28 LA charter schools run by Alliance, a company that violated its employees’ rights to organize, according to an administrative law judge.
United Teachers of Los Angeles, my union representing 35,000 teachers, is spending over a million dollars in Independent Expenditures to back Zimmer, a Marshall High School classroom teacher and counselor for 17 years – and a two-term incumbent advocating lower class size:
Steve Zimmer (LAUSD) on Why Class Size Matters
Since first elected in 2009, Zimmer has successfully fought devastating budget cuts to save arts education, early childhood education, and adult education; launched Student Recovery Day to bring drop-outs back to class; boosted the graduation rate from 54% to 75%; developed innovative language immersion programs; promoted science, technology and engineering magnets, and balanced the budget to earn Wall Street’s top bond rating.
Joining UTLA in endorsing Zimmer is a list of elected leaders like LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, and California Senate President Kevin de Leon, but also education warriors fighting in the equity trenches: New York University professor Diane Ravitch and author Jonathan Kozol.
In the March 7th primary, an election with the one of the lowest voter turn outs in the city’s history, a mere 11 percent, Zimmer was the top vote getter with 28,186 votes or 47.7% percent but fell short of the 50% plus one needed to avoid a run-off against Nick Melvoin, the runner-up with 18,532 or 31.22%.
Three other candidates with a combined vote total of 12,637 didn’t make the cut. Add up the votes on the pro-charter side and you can expect a tight race in which 500 votes could decide the election.
That’s why every vote counts and why I’m volunteering on the Zimmer campaign to organize phone banks like this one: Eli Broad, former LA Mayor Dick Riordan, and the Charter Schools Association have put their money – at least 4-million — behind Melvoin, a lawyer endorsed by gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, LA’s former mayor who tried unsuccessfully to take over LA’s schools, and by a charter school front group called Parent Teacher Alliance or PTA, which conveniently sounds a lot like the other PTA – the real one.
On his web site Melvoin says he was laid off at the end of his first year of teaching at Markham Middle School due to budget cuts. He sued the District over its seniority policy “Last in, First Out”, a case that was ultimately settled, and now wants the keys to LA Unified and its 7.59 billion dollar budget.
In Melvoin’s words “a hostile take over might be precisely what the district needs.”
What exactly is a hostile take over?
Steve Bannon, Trump’s top advisor, calls it administrative deconstruction.
Put a guy in charge of the Energy Department who wants to gut the department. Put a guy in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency who wants to defund it.
Deconstruction?
No.
Destruction.
In this case a hostile take over would establish a pro-charter majority with a directive, courtesy of the Eli Broad Foundation – and immediately opposed by Zimmer: to turn half of the district’s remaining 900 schools into independent charters, privately run publicly-funded schools EXEMPT from a myriad of state laws and collective bargaining clauses that require the following:
— a set of textbooks for each core academic class;
— state-approved textbook adoptions; principals and assistant principals with administrative credentials; teachers certified to teach English learners;
— credentialed teachers for electives;
— caps on otherwise exorbitant administrative salaries; teacher tenure and teacher dismissal protocols;
— popularly elected governing boards (some charters self-select board members) and school site councils that include teachers; public procurement regulations for third-party vendors (to avoid favoritism);
— adherence to most state education code provisions on student discipline, making it easier for cherry-picking charter schools with dismissal clauses written into their charters to send challenging students back to their home non-charter school.
Should a pro-charter majority take control of the board, Los Angeles Unified could be stuck with mounting costs, according to the District’s own Budget, Facilities, and Audit Committee, which in a 2016 report noted that non-charter District schools serve a disproportionately higher number of severely disabled students, spending $9,888 per student versus $1,291 at a non-affiliated charter school, a trend that would increase if the number of charters continues to climb.
As more and more dollars leave for charters – with their uneven track record yet grass is-greener appeal – the exodus will bleed the larger district of enrollment and average daily attendance dollars, leaving the skeletal district shouldering the burden of fixed costs (electricity, building maintenance) and legacy costs (pensions/retirement/health care/debt service).
In fact, a research study sponsored by UTLA found that charter schools have cost the district almost a half a billion dollars in enrollment money and underpayment for rent, oversight services, and property taxes.
Charters, once conceived of as model laboratory schools, are driving a wedge through our school district.
One edge of that wedge is called co-location.
Under California law, districts must agree to co-locate charter schools on available public school land, thus resulting in teachers at non-charter schools forced to become rovers – moving from one classroom to the next, forever carting books and stacks of papers, while their colleagues on the PE field see their class size doubling because the PE teacher can no longer use the football field or the baseball diamond six periods a day, not when the co-located charter also needs the same athletic facilities.
Melvoin’s privatization agenda includes a campaign pledge to audit all LAUSD campuses for more space for charters to take over existing public school land.
Resentment seethes – while Governor Jerry Brown consistently vetoes legislation to level the playing field by requiring charter schools to adhere to the same laws as non-charters.
Of course, state policy could change with a more public education friendly governor – Lt. Governor Gavin Newsome or State Treasurer John Chiang— but not without a strong push from below and a signal from the largest metropolitan school district in the state.
Think of how happy Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will be if Los Angeles votes to further privatize our schools.
You don’t have to march on the nation’s capital or even adopt a nearby swing district to challenge Trump’s agenda to increase funding to charter schools – a way station, a resting point, on the way to the final destination – vouchers – taxpayer funded coupons that – depending on state law—could be cashed in at Bible schools or for-profit corporations that bundle tuitions and sell them as derivatives on Wall Street.
On Tuesday, May 16th, Angelenos can cast ballots that will make a difference in the national conversation on privatization and de-regulation.
As goes Los Angeles, so goes the rest of the nation. The eye of the hurricane is right here, in sunny LA, in the war over who will control our schools – billionaires bloated with hubris or a real educator who believes in public education.
It’s up to us.
Here is the updated link to Steve Zimmer’s re-election campaign (runoff election on May 16th): https://act.myngp.com/Forms/-1329314031262496256
Thank you to Diane and to the Network for Public Education’s support of Steve’s campaign.