Parents and teachers shut down a meeting of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board, complaining about businessman Austin Beutner’s leadership, large class sizes, and the conditions likely to produce a teachers’ strike in January.
“These days, two major possibilities color just about everything in Los Angeles Unified — the growing prospect of a teachers strike and Supt. Austin Beutner’s still largely confidential plan for a massive district reorganization….
“The protesters echoed the contention of United Teachers Los Angeles that the district — whose general fund budget this year is about $7.5 billion — is hoarding a massive reserve that could be used to pay teachers more and improve conditions for students. They point to last year’s ending balance of nearly $2 billion…
“A senior at King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science, who identified herself only as Cheyanne because she said she felt at risk for speaking out, talked of the need for smaller class sizes and better staffing. She said she’d had 52 students in her 10th-grade chemistry lab.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Looks like we’re going to go on strike one day after returning from winter break…
The District has agreed to fund the 2% retroactive “raise” (really a Cost Of Living Adjustment), the 2% current “raise” (a current COLA) and a future 2% raise (which would also be a COLA), but is balking on most of the other bullet points (reduction of class size, more nurses/librarians, etc.). One may say “Wow, 2% COLAs…that’s a lot!” but we took a massive pay cut ten years ago and never really had things restored. My current salary is nearly the same as it was in 2007…
I did hear a rumor that Beutner is willing to allow a strike to go on for a month (supposedly came from some downtown muckety-muck), but that probably amounts to nothing. Personally, I’d prefer to strike for a week and then negotiate for: 1) 2%/2%/1%, 2) all the bullet points, 3) Beutner’s resignation.
Backtracking a bit on the money while holding firm on the other two will play well in the Board election that comes up two months later.
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America needs more people like those in L.A. who are strenuously making the point that it is not going to be business as usual. The injustice of the overlords’ chosen bosses is no longer tolerable. L.A.’s citizens have taken a necessary step toward oligarchy’s destruction, threatening its operation.
With more people like those in L.A., protesting today against the governing Board of Visitors (George Mason University in Virginia), the message from sea to sea would be, DEMOCRACY NOW. If GMU Board members appointed by Democrat Gov. Northam refuse to stop Koch control of the public university, it’s proof that Virginia is a colony of Kansan billionaires, despite the political party in state office.
There is an email address for the Board of Visitors at George Mason’s website. After reading about the egregious control that the Koch’s exert at GMU (UnKochMyCampus.org), all who care about democracy will be provoked to contact the Board.
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I love those protesters! And thanks to Howard Blume for reporting facts.
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We’ve never seen this before at an LAUSD meeting. Yes, there have been demonstrations outside, but nothing like this during the meetings, even while former Superintendent Deasy was throwing money away with the iPads, etc..
But now it’s a perfect storm against the district. The impending teachers strike is demonstrating the incredibly horrible conditions that teachers are subjected to with enormous class sizes, and reduced nurses, counselors and librarians.
Worse yet is the clear demonstration that LAUSD is sitting on an over 2 billion dollar surplus. Their explanation??? It’s already “allocated”. But, ever year it grows and is NOT SPENT. How stupid do they think we are? The same thing is happening in Oakland and who knows how many other districts are following suit. If I was Beutner, I would definitely want to prevent this money from being spent the way the teachers are demanding. After all, that would improve education for all students in the district, making charters less and less attractive and leaving less and less space for charters to co-locate on district campuses.
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EXCELLENT summation/exposure of the entire Big Money conundrum: “After all, that would improve education for all students in the district, making charters less and less attractive and leaving less and less space for charters to co-locate on district campuses….”
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Beutner’s plan is to break the District into small, semi-autonomous districts that have control over both charter and public schools within about a 2-3 mile radius. Charter parents dominate at the local/neighborhood level, of course, so they would take over by default.
Next, he would then distribute the $170M to the small districts, whereby the charter schools would be the beneficiaries (their local boards would be granted the power to disburse it as they see fit.)
It all makes sense in Chartlandia…
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The underlying goal is to give unregulated, unsupervised, unaccountable charters the same legal status as real public schools. That’s the long game.
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