The teachers of Los Angeles have authorized a strike. As you will see in this article by LA parent Carl Petersen, negotiations remain stalled.
The district claims it can’t afford to settle with its teachers. This having raised Board Member salaries by 174% and paying its new superintendent a base salary of $350,000 (supporters of former investment banker Beutner originally said he would take no salary).
One of the richest cities in the nation claims it can’t pay its teachers or provide the services children need. Yet LAUSD managed to find an extra $1 billion for JOHN Deasy’s iPad Fiasco.
Cue the world’s smallest violin.
And this:
“As previously stated, Superintendent Beutner has no professional experience or training in the field of education. UTLA leadership is comprised of people who are education professionals. Yet Beutner has stated that deciding “what tests students take” is not something that the LAUSD “would, should or could bargain with labor over.” “Under a UTLA proposal, teachers would be required to give only the standardized tests required under state or federal law”.
“While the union proposal is a step in the right direction, it does not go far enough. Under state law, parents have a right to opt their children out of all standardized testing. Unfortunately, LAUSD teachers are not allowed to inform parents of this right. By instituting an opt-in system, all parents would be informed of their rights before their children were forced to take these tests.”
Why does the investment banker think he knows more about testing than teachers?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Investment bankers should be on a list of professions to never trust, even for any advice on anything.
Beutner and his charter lackeys have NO intention to settle this dispute. They are pinning all their hopes on groups like Speak Up and Parent Revolution to do the dirty work of spreading a negative image of teachers with the hope that permanent damage will be done to the union.
Given the negative response from the community to the hiring of Beutner, there is a lot of reason to hope that this tactic will backfire.
Beutner and the Broad lackeys on the Board are attempting to deceive the public. All their public statements are misinformation. The lies they tell are targeted at teachers and parents who know better (finally, thanks to DeVos). It won’t work. Whether through state mediation or job action, some modicum of funding and autonomy will be restored to the classroom from Eli Broad and the rest of the billionaire cabal’s tax shelters and investment portfolios. A well crafted article by Peterson. I learned something reading it. I did not know Eli Broad’s company was paid hundreds of millions to renovate the downtown district office building. That’s terrible. Add it to the dung heap.
AFT filed a lawsuit against Beutner this morning for violating his constitutional and legal mandate to share public records. This includes his schedule, critical financial documents, and consulting contracts. Beutner and the Broad’s board are doubling down on their “misinformation” to the public.
“Why does the investment banker think he knows more about testing than teachers?”
As a former investment banker, Beutner has probably studied his new venture sufficiently to know that onerous public school testing pushes ‘consumers’ toward loosely-regulated private alternatives. His professional networking is no doubt heavily tilted pro privatized ‘solutions,’ given his long connections with Amway and Eli Broad. The only question remaining in my mind: what investments [/ connections] does he have to the charter school industry?
I gather the administrators in my area on the Westside are meeting with parents, trying to convince them to volunteer during upcoming strike days to weaken the effect.
He sounds like an idiot. Crawl back to the business world. Let teachers teach.