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Breaking News! Los Angeles: Ref Rodriguez Pleads Guilty of Conspiracy, Resigns Seat on Board, Avoids Jail Time

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2018 //
4

Charter school founder Ref Rodriguez pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in Los Angeles and agreed to resign from his seat on the local school board, which he clung to until a new charter-friendly superintendent was selected. He will be on probation for three years and do community service. The plea deal allows him to avoid jail time, which could have been several years.

The board must decide how to fill his seat. At present, it is deadlocked 3-3. It could remain deadlocked, or one of the weak dissidents could join the former majority.

Superintendent Beutner, billionaire and former hedge fund manager, will now have to figure out how to work with a board that does not have a working majority until this issue is resolved.

Expect the billionaires–Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, William Bloomfield, Michael Bloomberg, etc–to come in to salvage their prize.

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

Los Angeles: Board Member Appears to Have a Plea Deal in Criminal Charges

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2018 //
4

The LAUSD has a 4-3 Majority of charter supporters. One of them, Ref Rodriguez, is about to take a plea deal that may lead to his resignation. Then businessman-turned-Superintendent will have a 4-4 split. Things get interesting.

Rodriguez held on to his seat long enough to put a Reformer in charge. But the day of reckoning draws near.

“The stage appears to be set for a deal that would resolve political money-laundering allegations against Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez, based on a filing posted Friday afternoon by the city’s Ethics Commission.

“The deal is likely to include his resignation from office, although parties involved in the negotiations would not confirm that.

“In the filing, Rodriguez, 47, admits that he “engaged in money laundering to further his 2015 campaign for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.”

“The commission staff is recommending a $100,000 penalty that would be paid by Rodriguez and his co-defendant, Elizabeth Melendrez.

“That fine would resolve Rodriguez’s case before the Ethics Commission, but that is just one half of his troubles related to political money laundering. The other — and the more serious — is a criminal case based on the same actions.

“In that proceeding, Rodriguez is charged with three felonies and 25 misdemeanors. If convicted on all counts, he could face several years in prison.

“Because Rodriguez has now apparently admitted guilt to the city’s Ethics Commission, it would be seemingly impossible for him to claim that he is not guilty of the same offenses in the criminal case. For that reason, all signs suggest that the criminal case also has been resolved with a separate plea deal.

“Details of the expected deal in the criminal case have not been made public.

“Legally, Rodriguez could probably remain in office if prosecutors agreed to lower the felony charges to one or more misdemeanors. But observers and those close to the case said it’s difficult to imagine a deal that would allow Rodriguez to keep his board seat, even if he is able to avoid time in jail.

“The ethics filing describes in some detail what happened, according to investigators.

“Late in 2014, Rodriguez, who was then a senior executive at a charter school organization, was putting together his first run for office.

“That December, he instructed Melendrez, his cousin, to enlist contributors and later reimburse them with Rodriguez’s money. Melendrez worked under Rodriguez as an administrator in the same charter-school organization.

“Rodriguez held an event at a family member’s residence later that month to announce his candidacy. During the event, he asked family and friends for support.

“Afterward, Melendrez promised contributors that Rodriguez would reimburse them. From Dec. 23 through Dec. 31, Rodriguez’s family and friends, including employees under his supervision, made 25 campaign contributions ranging from $775 to $1,100. The contributors included low-wage custodians for the charter schools and totaled $24,350.

“Soon after, on Jan. 15, Rodriguez attended a mandatory Ethics Commission training for candidates. It included a detailed discussion of city law regarding contributions, including prohibitions on money laundering.

“Rodriguez declined to come forward. Had he done so, the fallout could have derailed his campaign.
Instead, when Rodriguez filed his first campaign statement, he reported raising $51,001. Nearly half of that was the laundered contributions. In the same reporting period, incumbent school board member Bennett Kayser reported raising $13,739, and another challenger, Andrew Thomas, reported raising $10,732.

“Therefore, Rodriguez’s first public disclosure statement identified him as having received more contributions in that reporting period than any other candidate in the LAUSD District 5 race,” the Ethics Commission noted.

“Rodriguez could have contributed the money openly and legally to his own campaign, but it is against the law to disguise the true source of campaign donations.

“The violations “were deliberate, and Rodriguez knowingly received and made use of laundered funds during the election,” the filing states. The actions reflected “an intent to conceal, deceive and mislead.”

“It is possible that the ethics case and the criminal case could be resolved simultaneously Monday. The Ethics Commission, which has jurisdiction over local campaigns, has called a special meeting at City Hall for 10 a.m. The Rodriguez matter is the only item on the agenda.

“Meanwhile, for the criminal case, a hearing also is scheduled for Monday morning in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, which is across from City Hall.

“If the plea bargain happens as expected, Rodriquez would not necessarily be free from legal jeopardy. Sources tell The Times that the U.S. attorney’s office has looked into unrelated conflict-of-interest allegations against Rodriguez.

“Those allegations arose when his former employer, Partnerships to Uplift Communities, or PUC Schools, reported that Rodriguez had an improper conflict of interest when he authorized more than $285,000 in payments.

“The payments were made from PUC to a separate nonprofit under Rodriguez’s control and to a private business in which Rodriguez may have owned an interest.”

For a chronology of Ref Rodriguez and his troubles with the law, see here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Beutner Fails His First Job, Negotiations with UTLA Break Down

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2018 //
9

This just in. The inexperienced new chancellor of LAUSD Austin Beutner failed his first assignment. We r3cognize that he was chosen to favor the mostly non-union charter schools, but he should recognize his duty to all the children and teachers in the district.


UTLA STATEMENT ON DECLARATION OF IMPASSE

Our employer refuses to partner with us for a sustainable vision for the future. Why? Because our school district is currently dominated by pro-privatization ideologues who would rather starve our public schools than fight for their survival. Therefore, the UTLA bargaining team believes the bargaining process with our employer has been exhausted, and the two parties are at an impasse.

For more than one year, we have attempted to engage our employer in a thoughtful and progressive bargaining process that paves the way toward a better future for our students and the Los Angeles Unified School District, but it’s become increasingly clear that the charter lobby-backed school board majority, along with its handpicked superintendent, Austin Beutner, has a different goal.

That goal is to blame educators for a starved school system, providing a rationale for even deeper cuts, softening the ground to replace our school district with privatization schemes that have failed in other cities. And we cannot, in good conscience, allow it to happen without fighting back.

Recent LAUSD hires, school board actions and reports are building a case for a repudiation of public education in LA, including the report from Beutner’s task force called ‘Hard Choices,’ which pits students against their teachers, and manipulates data to justify a type of private equity “wind down” of LAUSD. Read UTLA’s full response to the ERS here.

Therefore, today, UTLA sent a letter to district officials, declaring contract negotiations are at a deadlock. Read the impasse letter here.

This school board majority and superintendent have no proactive plan to reinvest in our schools or ensure the survival of LAUSD as a civic institution in our city. Rather than advocate for increased state funding, or use the $1.7 billion in unrestricted reserves, they threaten layoffs, say educators get paid too much, recommend increases to overloaded class sizes and increases to special education teacher to student ratios.

Meanwhile, UTLA has a proactive vision that includes proposals to reduce class sizes, provide more health & human services staff, significantly reduce testing, increase parent and educator power over school site spending, require investment in community schools, ensure access to ethnic studies for all students, provide reasonable oversight at co-located schools and improve early education and adult education programs.

In light of the above actions that signal the willful demise of our own district, as evidenced in Beutner’s ‘Hard Choices’ report, we demand LAUSD bring in a state-appointed mediator to assist both parties in achieving a bargaining agreement that is acceptable to both parties.
__________________________________________
UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, represents more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals in district and charter schools.

________________________________

Categories Accountability, Los Angeles, Unions

LAUSD Chief Picks TFA-Broadie from Nation’s Lowest Performing State as Chief of Staff

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2018 //
21

Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner, new to the education world, has defined himself by his first big hire. He selected Rebecca Kockler, the Louisiana Department of Education’s assistant superintendent for academic content to be his chief of staff. Like her boss, John White, Kockler is both TFA and Broadie. (For the initiated, that means they both got a little bit of teaching experience as recruits for Teach for America and are “graduates” of Eli Broad’s unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, whose “graduates” are taught top-down management, the value of closing schools and replacing them with private management, and other reformer tricks of the trade. John Thompson recently wrote a series of posts here about the dismal record of Broadies.)

Mercedes Schneider, researcher and high school teacher in Louisiana, reviews Kockler’s TFA career in TFA here, which was mysteriously absent from the LAUSD press release. Also unmentioned in the press release was her Broadie history. Mercedes knows more about the Louisiana Department of Education and its new chief of staff than LAUSD. To be fair to the person who wrote the press release, Mercedes notes that Kockler deleted her Linked In bio that describes her TFA history. But Mercedes has it.

Both the LAUSD press release and the Broad Center agree that Louisiana is one of the “fastest improving” states in the nation.

But is that true? Nope. Its NAEP scores declined significantly from 2015 to 2017.

What is especially irksome about the LAUSD press release linked above is that it refers to Louisiana’s academic standards as “a national model.” Who would look to a state that scrapes the very bottom of NAEP rankings as “a national model”? Maybe it is a model of how to fail while boasting of success. Maybe it is a model of Trumpian rhetoric that turns lemons into lemonade.

Consider this report in the New Orleans Advocate on 2017 NAEP.:

“In the latest snapshot of education achievement, scores for Louisiana public school fourth-graders plunged to or near the bottom of the nation in reading and math.

“In addition, eighth-graders finished 50th among the states and the District of Columbia in math and 48th in reading…

In 2015, fourth-graders finished 43rd in the U. S. in reading and 45th in math….

“But both scores dropped five points – to 212 and 229 out of 500 respectively – during tests administered to 2,700 students last year.

“That means fourth-grade math scores finished 51st while fourth-grade reading scores are 49th.

“The group that oversees the exams, the National Center for Education Statistics, said both drops are statistically significant.”

Why not tell the truth? Beutner hired the academic director of one of the lowest performing states in the nation, where NAEP scores fell in the latest assessment. He was impressed by her credentials in TFA, and she came highly recommended by his friend Eli Broad.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Teach for America

LAUSD Will Not Renew Contract of Inspector General, Who Was Too Tough on Charters

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2018 //
5

Elections have consequences. In the last Los Angeles school board election, charteristas took control of the school board by one vote. Their fourth vote, however, is tenuous b3cause Ref Rodriguez is awaiting trial on felony charges of campaign finance violations.

The board voted not to renew the contract of the district’s inspector general. He led several investigations into charter school corruption.

The board said they were terminating him due to a “hostile work environment” in his office, although none of the complaints were about him.

The inspector general investigated the Billion-dollar iPad scandal.

The financial scandals at the Celerity charter chain.

Fraud at the PUC charter chain started by Ref Rodriguez.

But this can’t be the reason he is being ousted, right?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Fraud, Los Angeles

Los Angeles Teachers Rally to Save Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2018 //
10

This is a very effective short video of a UTLA rally for resources and respect. Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of UTLA, warns that we must save public education from the proliferation of privately managed charters—or lose it within the next five years.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Joe Mathews: YOU TOO Can Be Austin Beutner, No Experience Necessary

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2018 //
9

Joe Mathews, a California writer, has penned a hilarious column about the meteoric success of investment banker Austin Beutner, in being selected for jobs for which he had no experience or qualifications. Most recently, of course, he was chosen by the Los Angeles school board to be the city schools’ superintendent. His lack of any relevant experience was no barrier.

He writes:

No Californian inspires me more than Austin Beutner.

Haven’t heard of this Los Angeles investment banker? Your loss. Because following his example could change your life.

Beutner’s recent career exposes the lies we Californians tell ourselves about our limits. Sure, we want our children to believe they can grow up to be anything they want. But we believe that rising to the top in a field requires years of preparation, not to mention knowledge, and experience.

Austin Beutner shows us we’re wrong.

In this decade alone, Beutner has gone straight to the top in no fewer than four fields in the City of Angels—without having to pay his dues in any of them.

It started back in late 2009, when Beutner convinced Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to appoint him to be first deputy mayor of the city of L.A. Without any prior experience in local government, he helped manage 13 city agencies. During that stint, he was named interim general manager of L.A.’s most fearsome government agency—the Department of Water and Power—without experience in utilities.

After leaving city government, Beutner, without experience in journalism, took over as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

But all those were a mere appetizer for his latest job. Last week, Beutner became superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. With 600,000 students, it’s the largest school district in California and the second largest in the nation.

And if you think that earning such a position would require Beutner to have experience in school districts, you’re not thinking the right way.

What’s most impressive about Beutner is that he has had all these jobs in less than a decade. His stays in all of them were brief, about a year or so. Indeed, he also has managed to squeeze the building of a nonprofit called Vision to Learn, which provides free eye exams and glasses to children, into his sprint through L.A.’s major institutions.

Now, I admit that cynics might look at Beutner’s conquest of Los Angeles—the fastest takeover of a global city since the Visigoths sacked Rome—and suggest that there is something wrong in Southern California.

The sky is the limit. Dream big. Beutner shows that anyone can do anything. Experience and qualifications don’t matter.

Categories Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Was the Board’s Secret Vote for Banker Austin Beutner Legal?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2018 //
16

The LAUSD board selected banker Austin Beutner in secretive proceedings.

A complaint has been filed saying that the procedure violated state law.

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles

Watch Jackie Goldberg Take LAUSD Board to the Woodshed!

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
25

Take 3 minutes and watch this great video of Jackie Goldberg, former president of the LAUSD Board, former member of the State Assembly, give the current board a tongue lashing for not choosing an educator as superintendent. For being “bought and paid for” by the devil.

And to Ref Rodriguez for not having the decency to resign or recuse himself when he is under felony indictment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Goldberg

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Will Unqualified Superintendent Get In-Service Training?

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2018 //
15

 

The Los Angeles school board selected an unqualified person to lead its schools. The decision was made in secret, with no public input.

Carl Petersen points out that state law requires that Superintendents must have experience as teachers and administrators. There is provision for a waiver. Is the superintendent is unqualified, like Austin Beutner, he may be required to take an in-service training program.

35028.
No person shall be eligible to hold a position as city superintendent, district superintendent, deputy superintendent, associate superintendent, or assistant superintendent of schools unless he is the holder of both a valid school administration certificate and a valid teacher’s certificate, but any person employed as a deputy, associate, or assistant superintendent in a purely clerical capacity shall not be required to hold any certificate.
(Enacted by Stats. 1976, Ch. 1010.)

35029.
A local governing board may waive any credential requirement for the chief administrative officer of the school district under its jurisdiction. Any individual serving as the chief administrative officer of a school district who does not hold a credential may be required by the local governing board to pursue a program of in-service training conducted pursuant to guidelines approved by the commission.
No individual serving as the chief administrative officer of a school district shall be subject to the provisions of the merit system specified in Article 6 (commencing with Section 45240) of Chapter 5 of Part 25 of this division or any other similar merit system.
(Enacted by Stats. 1976, Ch. 1010.)

Will the board require him to learn about school administration or will they just let him bring his experience from the banking world as a source of “new ideas.” (Hint: buy low, sell high). Or from his service on the board of AMI, which owns the notorious National Enquirer (“catch and kill”) or from Jack Welch’s playbook for cut-throat businessmen (“fire the bottom 10% every year”).

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles
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