If Failed Teachers are Fired, Why are Failed LAUSD Incumbents Re-Elected

LA SCHOOLS-In the upcoming Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) board elections, I have a novel suggestion for anybody who is sick and tired of the consistent failure of LAUSD incumbent board members to address endemic corruption in both financial (iPad, MiSiS, inflated construction contract scandals) and pe dagogic practices (fixed assessments, social promotion, and epidemic levels of truancy) that continue to fail the vast majority of the 90% Latino and Black student body of LAUSD and their parents. 

To echo this failed board's own rhetoric in establishing a standard for going after and getting rid of "bad teachers," (who just happen to be at the top of the salary scale- isn't that really why they are "bad"), why don't you go to the polls on March 3rd and get rid of some really bad LAUSD board members. 

Vote for anybody else except the incumbent. At the very least, you will ensure a runoff between the incumbent, who has an enormous advantage from the gitgo, and at least one of those challenging these go-along-to-get-along incumbents, who after multiple terms in office or as part of the LAUSD entrenched bureaucracy, have nothing objectively verifiable to show any improvement, while usually standing in the way of anybody trying to make things better in the school district that time seems to have forgotten. 

If one just looks at the lukewarm endorsements of the incumbents by the Los Angeles Times, you will realize that you couldn't possibly do any worse by voting for a challenger, so that at the very least somebody before the runoff might actually come up with a clearly stated platform and program for its implementation that is something more than worn out platitudes like, "No child left behind" or "life-long learns" or "everybody is going to college," in a country where the total capacity of all colleges and universities is 30% of all high school graduates. 

Realistically, what is everybody else supposed to do in an LAUSD that continues to close down industrial arts and other viable educational alternatives that have been consistently blocked by these entrenched board members and the vested vendor interests they continue to serve in conflict with what should be their fiduciary duty to LAUSD. 

In endorsing the incumbents, the best the LA Times can say about District 5 Board Member Bennett Kayser is that he is "easily the weakest of the three contenders." When it comes to District 7: Richard Vladovic. the Times says, "As president of the school board, Vladovic has not been the leader we had hoped he would be." Or District 3 Tamar Galatzan, where the Times says, "This endorsement comes with misgivings". All these folks have only served as a rubber stamp for policies of an entrenched bureaucracy at LAUSD that sees change as anathema to their perks and privileges. 

The biggest factor that has kept these folks in power is a voter apathy that saw 18% show up in the last LAUSD board election to fill the late Margaritte La Motte's seat. And as if that wasn't bad enough, only 8% showed up to give 30 year veteran McKenna victory over his opponent Johnson in a race that had no platform stated and no specifics as to how change was going to be achieved. 

In all likelihood McKenna won because of his notoriety from a film made by Denzel Washington about Washington Prep, which today is no better off than when McKenna went there in the first place.

In examining just two of the candidates running against Tamar Galatzan in District 3 who continues to avoid public forums, where she might be asked her specific actions and how she went from supporting ex-LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy to the point of increasing his contract by two years to subsequently going along with his resignation 8 months later. She seems to want to avoid being ask, "What changed Tamar?" 

One of her worthy opponents in District 3 is Scott Schmerelson, a likable retired principal who oversaw improvements at the low-performing Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School. The Times faults this seasoned Spanish teacher on not as yet being able to come up with policy. But I ask you, has he had a chance in a district where what the LAUSD Board deals with remains a secret that people who deal with it even have to sign non-disclosure agreements, when no individual's privacy is at stake. 

And let's face it, Ms. Galatzan hasn't come up with much policy, unless you consider her unquestionably going along with Deasy's iPad fiasco with bond money or attacking Stuart McGruder on the bond oversight committee as policy, when he dared to question what was going on and why Pearson and Apple had a two-year headstart in the process? Galatzan's comment about McGruder, "He had no business questioning" Wasn't that his only business? 

Schmerelson believes that "funding needs to go directly to the classroom." He also thinks that "classrooms of 42-45 students are antithetical to the education process. Where I found him naive was in his belief that he could learn from other board members, whose only example is rubber stamping what is put in front of them, instead of the independent oversight function that any viable board should serve. 

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Another candidate for District 3 is Carl Petersen, who clearly understands that Galatazan "doesn't pay attention to her constituency, " but rather has no problem getting lost in her iPad during public comments at the board meetings- clearly, her mind is already made up and she's just going through the motions. 

Petersen got into this because of a personal interest in special needs students who the district continues to either ignore or underserve. In Petersen's systematic approach to this issue, he has shown a rational approach that can easily be translated into other areas where the district and more specifically the LAUSD Board have consistently missed the boat. 

Whether it's viable alternatives to college careers or "classes structured for STEM, but not interest, Petersen clearly understands that the district's top/down model has no place for individual needs in a system where there is never an "independent justification" for what the board does and why. 

In the recent Indian elections, 67% of the electorate showed up at the polls and gave the Congress Party that has been ruling India since 1948 its biggest defeat. All demographics … age, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic standard … voted against what has become the corruption of India politics. 

If the Indians can finally clean house, cleaning up LAUSD shouldn't be that hard. All you have to do is overcome your apathy and vote on March 3rd. In so doing we might just light a fire under some candidates that will finally vie for a place on the LAUSD Board that puts the constituency's needs before their own ambitions.

 

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 13

Pub: Feb 13, 2015