EDUCATION POLITICS-Finally the LA Times is conceding at long last that John Deasy is Not Really Very Good For Children after all. This past weekend there was an editorial by their primary Education apologist for the superintendent observing how utterly bizarre it is for an employee to sue his employer to change a policy that he is in charge of.
A second story reports the unadulterated truth about the functionality of Deasy’s MiSiS, the beleaguered administrative computer program that should be the backbone of this institution.
Not only is it set to terminally paralyze LAUSD but it is in line to derail that fundamental of Reformer’s yarns, the College And Career Ready imperative. Moreover it is those who are least able to afford perturbation in their college applications who are most likely to be affected by the problems.
A disgraceful double, triple, quadruple and upward whammy for our poorest of the poor, the educationally under-prepared we are all most wishing to help the most. So much for gerrymandering education policy as a stand-in for student’s civil rights.
It took long enough for all these lofty theoreticians (be sure to read the comments section) to cotton on. There is a venerated pundit and political class mysteriously invested with a pseudo-authority for pontificating about educational experiences they have no personal stake in or even access to whatsoever.
It is demonstrably so that they shield their own kin from besmirching by presumably what is perceived as large, brassy, ominous, urban public schools. As a generality this class would never dream of sending their own kids to LAUSD district public schools. And yet they feel free to discount the actual experience of those truly vested in the system, either through employment or constituency as student or guardian.
So now that some writing is finally appearing on the wall, this begs the question of how many sufficient and complete reasons are prerequisite to our elected school board agreeing at last to dismiss their underling?
Here, in no particular order, are a few:
1. Insubordination.
• Banding together with a select few renegade districts to request a “CORE” waiver of the federal government from its No Child Left Behind Act, rendering these districts liable for agreements the state had no desire to undertake.
2. Contumacy.
• Refusal to implement the board’s mandate to include arts as a core subject and instead fabricating an Orwellian substitute by “integrating” arts into the classroom (which – newsflash – hasn’t even happened itself).
3. Willful incompetence.
• Insisting on implementing MiSiS in defiance of the overwhelming recommendations of administrators and teachers tasked with piloting the system.
4. Fiduciary irresponsibility.
• Testifying in lawsuits (Vergara, JeffersonHS) against his own employer, about policies under his own control, resulting in damages furnished by tax dollars otherwise intended for the public’s education, to private individuals backed by wealthy electronics plutocrats.
5. Corruption.
• Rigging the bidding for Common Core curriculum to be written by Pearson and bundled on Apple ipads, a relationship forged behind closed doors fully a year before public bids were solicited, by a former employee of Pearson and by Deasy, a stockholder in Apple. Other, more significant complicities were involved.
6. Mendacity.
• Claiming a questionable PhD, supervised by Univ of Louisville’s former dean Robert Felner, a felon with little compunction about stealing money from The Children, and who shares personal financial ties to Deasy.
7. Breach of Trust.
• The system’s core personnel, its teachers, voted overwhelmingly to express No Confidence in their boss, superintendent Deasy.
• The bait-and-switch substitution of bond money earmarked for capital improvements used instead for chimeric electronics and curriculum purchases, thus souring the public to future education bond issues: who could trust that their money would be used in the future as intended?
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8. Poor management.
• Instilling a climate of fear in the school workplace following instigation of “teacher jail” for unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable accusations, associative punishment, capricious firings, etc.
Sabotage.
• Encouraging privatization of public schools through internal pilot restructuring and charterization that undermine district school viability.
9. Budgetary defiance.
• Enormous investment in technology projects that were inadequately supported with professional development: teachers did not know how to utilize the technology, belying any avowal regarding function over form.
• Audaciously underfunding arts despite the board members’ insistence (and the Ed Code’s mandate) otherwise.
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Seemingly there is some enormous impediment to blaming the superintendent for so much malfeasance. But accountability may be more than a matter of simply exacting intestinal fortitude from our elected board members. The actual employer of Deasy and at least twenty of his top deputies remains obscure. Do private foundations continue to lard the salaries of an enormous layer of key LAUSD officials? Is this why John Deasy’s administration advances Borg-like with the vigor of the energizer bunny and apparent immunity to scandal after scandal?
When can we the public please know who among our public LAUSD officials is being paid what, and by whom? As a mere parent, it is mystifying to observe one shocking misdeed after another remain uncensured, often indeed unacknowledged. Perhaps co-opting the power of the buck in the public’s proverbial purse, has rendered that other proverbial buck unstoppable?
(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.com)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 83
Pub: Oct 14, 2014
