Archives for category: Los Angeles
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Los Angeles: Will the LAUSD Board Keep Its Promise?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
11

 

Tomorrow we find out if the majority of the LAUSD board answers to the public or to Eli Broad and his fellow billionaires. As part of the strike settlement, the board agreed to vote on a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools. They will vote but will the majority vote for or against it? Tomorrow we learn which votes were purchased by Eli and friends.

The following press release came from Los Angeles Alliance for a Nrw Economy, which fights for a fair economy, for working people and for the environment.

 

MEDIA ADVISORY for TUESDAY, January 29 at 12 PM

 

Contact: Haley Potiker – 714-457-2852 – hpotiker@laane.org

 

Parents Bear Witness to School Board Vote on Charter Moratorium

LAUSD parents who were leaders in teachers strike support show up to make sure district keeps its promise on charter industry moratorium

 

WHO: Parent leaders in teachers’ strike support effort

 

WHEN: TUESDAY, January 29, 2018 at 12 PM

 

WHERE: LAUSD Headquarters, 333 S. Beaudry

WHAT: Parent activists will be available for comment at LAUSD board meeting

 

LOS ANGELES — The tentative agreement between UTLA and LAUSD includes a commitment by the Board of Education to vote on a resolution calling on the state of California to impose a moratorium on charter growth in LAUSD. Parents who have been organizing together with UTLA to combat privatization will attend the meeting to hold the board accountable to their promise.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Please Help Jackie Goldberg Win Election to LAUSD Board

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2019 //
6

This post is an unabashed appeal for your contribution to a vital political race in Los Angeles. The billionaires (Broad, Walton, Hastings, etc.) have poured millions into buying control of the LAUSD board. That board hired a clueless hedge fund manager, Austin Beutner, who is bringing in every Reform retread to help him figure out how to do maximum disruption to the district.

I am asking you here and now to send Jackie Goldberg whatever you can afford.

The race for the empty seat on the LAUSD board is important for Los Angeles, but it is also important for California and for the nation. If Jackie wins this seat, her voice and her experience and knowledge will command a Quisling board.

Jackie Goldberg is a dynamo. She taught for many years, then won a seat on the Los Angeles school board. She then ran for the State Assembly and eventually became chair of the Education Committee. She retired from public service, but she was called back to active duty by her many admirers because of the crisis in Los Angeles.

The LAUSD board has seven seats. The billionaires bought four of them, the last time with the most expensive school board race in American history, when they spent upwards of $15 million to oust Steve Zimmer, the board president, and replace him with a TFA person. For a brief while, the Reformer Billionaires held five seats, but one of their board members was indicted and convicted of money laundering. Now that empty seat, representing District 5, will be decided in a special election on March 5. Jackie Goldberg used to represent District 5, and she is well known as a progressive firebrand in her district.

I attended a fundraiser for Jackie in her district, where she was surrounded by teachers and community members who love her. I spoke briefly and said that Jackie and I were sisters “with different mothers.” Which is to say, we had an hour-long conversation when I was in L.A. in December, and I found we saw eye-to-eye on the issues.

There are 10 candidates in the race. If Jackie wins 51% of the vote, there will be no runoff. The billionaires are waiting to see if there is a runoff, and if one is needed, and they will throw their millions against Jackie.

Jackie frightens them. She knows the legislature. She knows the district. She is knowledgable and articulate. She could stop their nefarious effort to destroy public education in Los Angeles. Even though she would be part of a three-vote minority (Scott Schmerelson and George McKenna, both experienced educators), their experience and expertise would shame the billionaire’s threadbare and vacuous four votes.

Jackie needs and deserves our help. Send $5, $10, $25, $100, whatever you can.

Categories California, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Resistance

Eric Blanc: Five Big Lessons from the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2019 //
14

Eric Blanc has covered the wave of teachers’ strikes that started in March 2018. He has been on the ground at everystrike, talking to the rank and file to get their perspectives as working teachers.

In this article, he describes the big lessons of the strike on Los Angeles.

He begins:

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this victory in the country’s second-largest school district. Against considerable odds, Los Angeles teachers have dealt a major blow against the forces of privatization in the city and nationwide. By taking on Democratic politicians in a deep-blue state, LA’s strike will certainly deepen the polarization within the Democratic Party over education reform and austerity. And by demonstrating the power of striking, LA educators have inspired educators nationwide to follow suit.

With new walkouts now looming in Denver, Oakland, Virginia, and beyond, it makes sense to reflect on the reasons why LA’s school workers came out on top—and what their struggle can teach people across the United States. Here are the five main takeaways.

Strikes Work: For decades, workers and the labor movement have been on the losing side of a one-sided class war. A major reason for this is that unions have largely abandoned the weapon of work stoppages, their most powerful point of leverage against employers. Rallies, marches, and civil disobedience are good, but they’re not enough.

Like the red state rebellions of 2018, the depth of the victory in Los Angeles underscores why the future of organized labor depends on reviving the strike. LA also shows that the most powerful strikes, particularly in the public sector, fight not only for the demands of union members, but on behalf of the broader community as well—an approach the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) calls “bargaining for the common good.”

The Status Quo Is Discredited: LA’s educator revolt is a particularly sharp expression of a nationwide rejection of decades of neoliberalism. Unlike many labor actions, this was not primarily a fight around wages—rather it was a political struggle against the billionaires and their proxies in government.

Like the electoral insurgencies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, the upsurge of Los Angeles rank-and-file teachers, and the overwhelming support they received from the parents of their students, shows that working people are looking for an alternative to business as usual. Work actions like LA’s will be an essential part of any movement capable of defeating Trump and the far right.

That’s only lesson number one and two.

Keep reading to learn the other lessons.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance, Teacher Education, Teachers, Unions

Los Angeles: Another Charter Executive Will Be Charged in Embezzlement of Millions

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2019 //
5

The charter schools of California continue to be riddled with corruption, and to date, the state has ignored the multiplying scandals. California has more Charters than any other state (about 1300) and virtually no regulation.

Another leader at the Celerity Charter Network will Be Charged with Embezzlement and other charges.

“The former CEO of Los Angeles charter school network Celerity Educational Group is expected to be arraigned next month on federal charges of conspiracy to misappropriate and embezzle public funds.

“Grace Canada, 45, of Torrance is the second ex-Celerity official to be charged with corruption by Los Angeles federal prosecutors. Celerity founder Vielka McFarlane pleaded guilty earlier this month to a conspiracy charge that she misspent $2.5 million in public education funds intended for students.

“Canada — currently principal of Kelly Elementary in Compton — was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in downtown Los Angeles on nearly the same charges as McFarlane and is expected to be arraigned on Feb. 11, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Los Angeles: UTLA Scores Major Funding Victories in Strike Agreement

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2019 //
43

The United Teachers of Los Angeles went out on strike on January 14. The strike will end if the membership approves a new two-year contract. The union won almost everything it sought. The teachers will get a wage increase; the district will limit class sizes and eliminate a waiver that allowed class size limits to be voided for economic reasons; there will be full-time nurses in every school, a librarian, more counselors. And more.

Here is the union’s press release with the tentative agreement included.

Here is the New York Times summary:

Los Angeles public school teachers reached a tentative deal with school officials on Tuesday to end a weeklong strike that had upended learning for more than half a million students in the nation’s second largest public school system.

The teachers won a 6 percent pay raise and caps on class sizes, which had become one of the most contentious issues between the union and district officials. The deal also includes hiring full-time nurses for every school, as well as enough librarians for every middle and high school in the district by the fall of 2020.

The city and county will also expand programs into public schools, providing more support services for the neediest students.

The settlement came after tens of thousands of teachers marched in downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside schools for six school days, and after a round of marathon negotiating sessions over the holiday weekend.

In addition to winning resources that were badly needed, the union won on other fronts, first, by injecting charter schools into their demands; and second, by putting Democratic politicians on the spot.

The victory for the teachers’ union goes far beyond the new two-year contract. In recent years, teachers in Los Angeles and all over the country have often found themselves on the defensive, as politicians and educational leaders have demanded that more be done to weed out ineffective teachers.

The Los Angeles strike was the eighth major teacher walkout over the past year, as a movement that calls itself Red For Ed spread like wildfire from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Arizona, Chicago and beyond. But the strike in Los Angeles was a union-led one against Democratic leaders who are usually on their side. It also was one of the first to highlight one of the most controversial questions in education: whether charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, hurt traditional schools.

The charter issue was explained like this: The board will be asked to endorse a resolution calling for a cap on charter schools, which this billionaire-bought board is unlikely to do. But the union put out there the fact that charter schools harm public schools, and politicians had to choose. As “widely popular” as charter schools are, only 10% of the kids in the state attend them, and only 20% in Los Angeles.

In a summary released by the union, the agreement also includes a pledge that the elected school board for the district will vote on a resolution asking the state to “establish a charter school cap” and create a governor’s committee on charter schools.

That would be a major shift in California, where charter schools have been widely embraced by political leaders and have proved popular among parents.

This agreement is a major victory for UTLA and promises better working conditions in the schools and better services for students.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Union

Los Angeles: Board, UTLA Reach Agreement, Teachers Will Vote on Accord

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2019 //
15

The leadership of the Los Angeles Unified School District reached an agreement with the teachers’ union, UTLA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/01/22/los-angeles-teachers-reach-agreement-with-district-leaders-end-strike/?utm_term=.c3ff5c71aaea

“Beutner said the agreement provides for a 6 percent pay increase for school employees and a “meaningful class size reduction.” Further information about the pact, he said, would be released later Tuesday.

“
Beutner said that he is still has “tremendous” concerns about the school system’s financial health but that those concerns must be balanced with students’ needs.


“Today and tomorrow, when school opens, begins a new chapter in every classroom,” he said, noting that “40 years of underinvestment in public education” can’t be solved in one week.


“Caputo-Pearl said teachers will review and vote on the contract Tuesday. The agreement, he said, will bring crucial services to students and impose caps on class size.”

Not clear yet whether there was any action to limit charter school expansion.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: How the Resistance Undermined the Propaganda About Teachers

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2019 //
12

Sara Roos, aparent in Los Angeles whose children are no longer in school, muses about the major impact of the Teacher Revolt. It seems there is overwhelming public support for striking teachers (as there was last spring in Red states).

Remember the bad old days when Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, and Raj Chetty (not to mention their billionaire funders) were demonizing teachers? I recall a PBS interview with Melinda Gates in which she confidently asserted that “we” (she and Bill) knowhow to make better teachers.

Where are they all today?

How many of the Reformers arespeaking out for more funding and smaller classes?

Let me know if you find them.

Roos, the Red Queen in LA, writes:

To and from today’s tremendous rally in front of LA’s City Hall, you could feel overwhelming support from random people, everywhere. On the expo a stranger tosses out: “Good luck with your strike”. From bus drivers in uniform and lunch couriers in beat-up Hondas, waiting at every intersection from downtown to our neighborhoods blares the staccato horn of support. Professional cameramen trained to remain unfazed and neutral nevertheless emanate waves of sympathy. Business and car windows display signs of solidarity. Workers at City Hall open their windows to hear. Supersaturated among our populace is a pent-up frustration with where we’re at politically, and how to get ourselves heard.
This is Resistance writ huge. This is our women’s march, the march of our teachers. Our teachers are leading the way and giving We the People a voice here in LaLaLand.

These teachers are actually kinda the same old apple-faced Good People they always ever were. There hasn’t been some gigantic social evolution. It’s just the propaganda that’s changed; the underlying reality, not surprisingly, is robust, centered on social service for the betterment of us all. Our teachers haven’t changed, only the corporate, capitalist-centered narrative surrounding all of it has.

By the way, it turns out the long-sought after solution to LA’s traffic gridlock may be simply: stop sending kids far afield to some school of “Choice” and choose to value and invest in your own neighborhood. Anyone else notice how empty the streets have been all week long? When parents aren’t racing their kids hither and yon in a frenzy of Choosing Excellence, everyone’s lives get a little more deeply vested in their surrounds. It is everyone’s right to have the same excellent education as the next families’. But education isn’t a value added commodity to buy off the shelf whether the salesman peddles snake oil, false promises, educational spyware or a social panacea. Like democracy itself it’s a collective activity valued by the value which we each add.

Categories Los Angeles, Parents, Propaganda, Resistance, Teachers

Leonie Haimson: The Lesson in Los Angeles Strike: Class Size Matters

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2019 //
70

Leonie Haimson has been fighting the battle to reduce class size for many years. She believes that the breaking point for teachers in Los Angeles was the outrageous numbers of children in many classes, in some cases approaching 50 students in a class. Haimson has the research to back up her contention. When students need extra attention, they will not get it if the class has large numbers.

She notes the popular refrain among reformers like Arne Duncan that one “great teacher” is more important than small classes, but there is no evidence that this is true, and it is very likely that the “great teacher” will no longer be great if there are 45 students in his or her class.

It is pathetic that not a single former or current Secretary of Education has supported the teachers in L.A. The public does, however. Polls in the city show overwhelming pubic support for their strike. For some reason, workaday folks understand what Secretaries of Education do not. The teachers are striking for their students’ learning conditions.

Categories Class size, Los Angeles

NPE: What Does the UTLA Strike Have to Do With Charter Schools? Everything.

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2019 //
20

Read the Network for Public Education round-up of articles about the UTLA Strike andits national significance.

The cat is out of the bag. The billionaires bought the LAUSD school board. The school board is intent on disrupting the district while starving schools of what they need: reduced class sizes (some classes have nearly 50 students); a full-time nurse; counselors; and other essential staff and programs. Instead of supporting the teachers, the school board majority is fighting them, backing the hedge fund financier who is superintendent of schools.

Categories Los Angeles

Los Angeles: LAUSD Cries Wolf. Board Has More Than Enough Reserves to Cover Teachers’ Needs

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2019 //
18

Bill Raden of California-based Capital & Main reports that the L.A.school district hasample reserves to meet teachers’s needs.

LAUSD is not infinancial distress, as superintendent Austin Beutner claims. It does not need to cram 40-47 students in a classroom.it can afford full-nurses, librarians, and counselors.

“Capital & Main’s own analysis of the LAUSD budget finds that funding exists that would more than cover UTLA’s core demands without touching the district’s surplus. Our research also raises questions over how much of LAUSD’s budget projections are more of a creative art than a hard-nosed science.

“There is a history of the district crying wolf over negative balances two years out that then never seem to arrive,” agreed former Board District 5 member David Tokofsky. “If the budget were a basketball game, LAUSD would see a 20 point, final quarter lead by the Clippers as too close to call…

“The unresolved issues include contract demands for lowered class sizes, additional nurses, librarians, counselors and social workers. The union also insists that the district commit a significant chunk of a contested, nearly $2 billion budget surplus to increases to bilingual and adult education, and to making major investments in community schooling. The union has also been advocating for curriculum reforms that include a teacher say in achievement testing (UTLA wants less testing) and ethnic studies at every school.

“Class-size reduction is a basic sticking point in the negotiations.
If there has been a single deal-breaker on the table, it is the district’s lack of movement on “Section 1.5” — a contractual holdover from the Great Recession unique to LAUSD and anathema to UTLA because it allows the district to unilaterally raise class sizes. The union wants it gone; the district wants it replace with “Section 1.8,” which would raise some class sizes beyond the current memorandum of understanding that Section 1.5 has nullified.

“Class size is the fundamental issue that we’ve got to deal with,” argued UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl at the January 11 news conference. “Their [insistence] of continuing to . . . be an outlier in the state of California is unacceptable.”

“LAUSD’s last known offer (both sides have agreed to a media blackout during the current round of bargaining) hadn’t budged from its position that the union’s demand for a 6.5 percent pay raise be contingent on cannibalizing the retirement security of future teachers to fund it. What was new on Friday, January 11, was the district’s modest offer to add 200 new hires — or 1,200 in all — for class-size reduction, nurses, librarians and counselors. But for the nation’s second-largest school district, this represented a $130 million drop in a 900-campus bucket — and the lowered levels would expire after one year.

“The offer was extraordinary both for its timing and its explanation of how LAUSD would fund the classroom reductions. The $25 million increase to the $105 million it had previously offered, a district press statement said, would include a recent $10 million pledge by Los Angeles County. It also kicked in $15 million from what LAUSD had estimated would be the $40 million in savings from $3 billion in pay-downs of rate increases and pension liability for CalSTRS, California’s giant teachers’ pension fund, that Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled January 10 in his first state budget.

“UTLA immediately challenged the district’s $40 million windfall estimate, claiming that its own call to the state Department of Finance turned up an additional $100 million in ongoing revenue. By Wednesday, LAUSD had clarified that the $40 million figure merely represented the district’s share from Newsom’s recalculation of this year’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) cost of living adjustment increase, which was revised upward from the November’s projected 2.57 percent to 3.46 percent. (The actual gain, which represents an additional $120 per student for L.A. Unified’s non-charter enrollment, should bring the district closer to $49.2 million).

“The school district didn’t allow Governor Newsom’s recent good financial news to dispel its fiscal gloom.

“The district estimated its takeaway from Newsom’s $700 million contribution rate buy-downs at $60 million over the next three years. But there will also be ongoing cash savings from lowered liability that should be dramatic. (Some have estimated that the buy-downs could be worth as much as $200 million to the district.)

“Newsom’s budget had other good news for LAUSD. It included an extra $576 million to school districts in special education funding, which would be worth roughly $75 million to LAUSD. The biggest windfall, earmarked for early education, should net Los Angeles roughly $180 million as its share of $1.8 billion for expanded kindergarten and preschool and childcare infrastructure (using a longstanding ballpark calculation that LAUSD claims roughly 10 percent of many statewide education appropriations).”

Read it all.

Bottom line: LAUSD can fund all the teachers need and demand.

The district leadership is trying to starve the district of needed resources.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Los Angeles
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