Blogger Red Queen in LA lays out the facts. Los Angeles Unified School District is not in a fiscal crisis. It can afford to meet UTLA desmans.
There was plenty of spare change when John Deasy wanted to spend $1 Billion for iPads.
She writes:
“This essay was first published April 3, 2017. It concerns persistent LAUSD budgeting chicanery, and the narrative extended to surround it.
“Nothing has changed; not the past numbers or their variance from future projections, not the unfolding reality which reveals how conservative planning shortchanges immediate needs. Suffused with fear and doubt, stakeholders are distracted from the means to realize the democratic entitlement of a truly public education. It is the responsibility of educators and their managers, to spend funds designed to educate children on educating children.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh look, The artisanal, individually crafted “portfolio model” has landed in Los Angeles, at the same time it landed everywhere else in the country.
They even have “portfolio model” consultants in place. THAT’S how grass roots and local it is.
“If Los Angeles teachers go on strike this week or next, it won’t just be about dollars and cents — it will be part of a broader fight over the role of charter schools and an obscure but influential school reform idea.
“This approach, drawn from Wall Street, is called the ‘portfolio’ model, and it has been criticized for having a negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion,” teachers union president Alex Caputo-Pearl wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed Monday.”
The echo chamber are running off another cliff- they’re jamming the portfolio model into every large district in the country, with no debate and no dissent permitted- the promoters of the model are also the marketers and consultants to the model.
Thank goodness for the labor union, is all I can say. Without them there wouldn’t be any debate or analysis at all in ed reform. Their opposition is absolutely crucial, because dissent doesn’t exist in “the movement”. All the non-believers have been removed or silenced, accused of not supporting “the kids”.
Oppose. Force the echo chamber to defend their agenda.
If one reads the promotional materials for the “portfolio model” and one actually support existing public schools, one part of the marketing just jumps right out of you- there is no mention of existing public schools. So, they’ll be a recitation of the success of charters- always success, never failures, and then a stat- “40% are now charters”. Victory!
The 60% in traditional public schools? Gone. Not even mentioned.
In ten years, after disinvesting in the 60% in public schools, ed reformers will announce that charters “won” markets share.
The portfolio model is a mechanism to wind down existing public schools and transition to a privatized system. Except the engineers neglect to share that with the public, 60% of whom attend the public schools that are slated for extinction.
They’re madly in love with charters. I don’t know why they don’t just sell them and drop this nonsense about “agnostic”. It’s deceptive. If they actually believed that the public was on board for this they wouldn’t do this elaborate marketing and engineering of opinion, by changing the labels for the same thing they’ve been selling for 20 years.
Beutner said in an interview with KCRW that charter schools are not draining funds from the district because they get the same amount of money that public schools do. What is the union’s counter argument to this point?
I can’t speak for the union but my understanding that LAUSD still has to maintain all the facilities of all the schools and charters have none of those costs.
Assuming that you’re being ingenuous and not disingenuous [but I suspect the latter]:
The District has a particular pool of students that it serves. When charters pull less-difficult-to-serve students out of that pool it concentrates the more-difficult-to-serve students in the remaining pool.
Yet, charters receive an averaged amount of money per student, giving them a net surplus (because it takes less money to service less-difficult-to-serve children.) The remaining students cost more to serve, proportionately.
Charter advocates are essentially saying “let’s dump problematic kids in a hole”…and you probably know that.
Here’s how they set up the skewed “market” in Indianapolis. If the school privatized, the school got a bump in the grading scale, because the school is then “new” so is graded on “growth”.
This accomplished two aims- the public school has an incentive to privatize and the privatized schools look better than the public schools for a period of years, because they benefit from “grade inflation” as compared to schools who didn’t privatize.
Rewards for privatizing, and a lower score as a disincentive for remaining public.
By the time the “new” schools have apples to apples scores with the public schools- whatever those scores are- 40 or 50 or 60 or 70% of the schools will be privatized and entrenched and the portfolio system will be impossible to dislodge.
It’s an “experiment” that can’t be undone. There’s no mechanism to return the schools to the public system and there no mechanism to increase the supply of public schools- only charter schools are slated for growth.
The school system has stated, that if the costs demanded in this situation are passed, then the school system will go bankrupt. I tend to believe the school system.
The entire state of California is economically, politically, and culturally bankrupt.
I am ashamed of the state of California.
…because [circle the appropriate answer]: (1) your reading comprehension is low; (2) you didn’t read the linked article; (3) you have only been reading analyses performed by Beutner’s stooges and have not bothered to actually look into the matter.
Any one of those choices would fit the pattern you’ve established, Charles.
Having no personal knowledge of how Beautner’s brain works, but I’m assuming he’s an intelligent guy. That being said, that is an idiotic but predictable statement to make. Beautner must be fully aware that California does not have two pots of money available for schools: one for district schools and one for charter schools. The state only has one, and the more charters are opened, the more those funds are diluted and become unavailable to cover fixed costs incurred by public schools. Real public schools have to spend more because they take on the more expensive students and they pay more for experienced teachers and supports, which they should. Everyone knows that, including Beautner. That’s just economics 101. Problem is, Beautner doesn’t think kids need to be taught by actual human teachers. Just stick them in front of a screen, they’ll do just fine…and it’s cheaper!
Beutner, yeah, that guy…
Charles, you’re so right. Must be why no one wants to live here or do business here but we have the 5th largest economy in the world…got it…I’ll take “economically, politically, and morally bankrupt” any day…
Check out this story:
https://chiefexecutive.net/business-exodus-california-troubling-sanctuary-policies/
If you are so enamored of California, I wish you well. The collapse of the business environment, is underway.
California has billions of dollars in reserve, a budget surplus, and a thriving economy.
Excerpt from that story:
Q Concern about California’s costs is widespread. Statewide, 58 percent of Millennials and 65 percent of parents echoed the sentiment that “I am considering moving away from California because of the high cost of living,” according to a recent poll by the PR firm Edelman. END Q
California has enormous reserves. Read the post tomorrow.
I listened to a report on KPFA.org this morning re this issue. Teachers must be paid a living wage and must speak out against large class size. It denys the students a productive learning experience and places unnecessary demands on the teachers!