EDUCATION POLITICS - Remember the fierce euphoria upon passing Proposition 30? It promised to break the educational economic drought and channel money back into our parched, impecunious schools.
Straight away teacher furlough days were recalled and the close of school pushed back into June, constricting the short summer break even further.
But eventually the only residue of Prop 30 funding discernible to the political laymen among us — aka “parents” — has been exhausted complaints about its absence, how surely some program or other ought to have been restored by now via prop 30 funding. Where is that money anyway?
There is really only one central parameter that drives the hardship our schools struggle to bear: UNCONSCIONABLY GINORMOUS CLASS SIZE.
All manner of evils flow from this, including most of the complaints leveled against our public schools.
Students cannot receive adequate attention from overextended teachers, to the detriment of their learning; learning disorders remain undetected; boredom and its attendant behavioral issues help drive children from completing school; the impossible is required of teachers with predictable decline in their morale and effectiveness; high concentrations of pupils render classrooms statistically “empty”, into which charter schools flood to fill the ‘void’: Our Children’s Education Suffers.
Not for one split millisecond should any credence be afforded the outrageous revision that these dispiriting class sizes be rebranded as tolerable. Class size matters!
And that’s why we all need to flock to the special school board meeting at 9am on Tuesday, June 4. All of Los Angeles needs to hear from the users of our schools – students, parents, teachers, guardians, lovers of true education: Kids need smaller classes in order to learn better.
And let me just say: if one more poo-bah declaims that there is anything whatsoever tolerable about a class size of “30 or above”, that claimant will need to prove standing. Unless and until their own kin is relegated to a classroom of such ratios, all such claims must be considered null and void.
If one dime were anted for all the times when someone tried to justify outlandish class sizes at my child’s school while insisting that special circumstances necessitate delightfully unpopulated rooms at their own child’s, there would be enough money to fund one fewer child per public district classroom (estimated at approximately 6 million per child per grade).
Note very carefully: (essentially) none of the people championing Education Reform with class sizes so large as to belie its very claim, is willing to relegate their self-same own child, or their child’s child, or their sibling’s or friend’s, to classrooms oppressed by such intolerable conditions. They just aren’t, and why should they be? They don’t work.
These “reformers” give the lie to their claims of acceptability for giant classes by voting with their very own feet. They betray any claim of Reform whatsoever by electing private schools in droves or championing charter schools enabled by bureaucratic slights-of-hand to maintain attractively low class sizes at the expense of their district brethren.
LAUSD Students, Parents and Angelenos for Real Classroom Support (SPARCS): Unite! Turn out on Tuesday, June 4 at 8:30am to let the school board hear: REDUCE CLASS SIZE NOW!!!!
There is a resolution to be discussed at this special meeting to budget Proposition 30 monies. WE NEED THAT MONEY DEVOTED TO LOWERING CLASS SIZE. Please raise your voice in support of this resolution.
(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.wordpress.com )
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 45
Pub: June 4, 2013
