LA SCHOOLS AND OTHER MUSINGS-What if they gave an election and only 8% of the voters came?
We just had this election in LA – our home town – and now the question is: What Does It All Mean?
Did Charter School Promoters triumph, as they claim?
Did the Teachers Union triumph, as they claim?
No and no.
What we did learn was the power of running unopposed: George McKenna got 100% of the vote in District #1. Woo-woo! – these pages supported and endorsed Dr. George. The LA Times endorsed George. The charter folk endorsed George. Everybody loves a winner and George has won 3 elections in 9 months … give that man another 18 months in office!
We learned another thing. The question was asked: “Do we have too many piddly little elections in L.A.?” And 77% of the most hard core, “we-vote-in-every-election-no-matter-how-piddly” voters [The few/The obsessed/The 8%] turned out and voted YES!
That, ladies+gentlemen/boys+girls decided that. Decisively!
The rest of it?
Pretty ambiguous. In my council district they haven’t even narrowed it down to the top two finishers. The Community College District? Who knows?
In LAUSD the Charter Proponents almost won. The Teachers Union almost won. It was close-but-no-cigar in Districts 3, 5 and 7. Incumbents were bruised and challengers were bloodied. The cut-men are working feverishly in the corners. The whole thing will be decided later, in the next round. On May 19th.
Stay tuned.
It’s back to walking precincts.Back to making calls.
Back to mailing mailers.
Back to tiptoeing around the rules and pretending your right hand doesn’t know what your left hand is doing.
Back to being shocked – ¡shocked! – at what your unaffiliated supporters are up to.
Back to raising money.
But of course it isn’t about the money; it’s about the kids.
And remembering that when it isn’t about the money ….that’s when it’s MOST about the money!
So the special interests and the especially interested will mobilize and fill mailboxes with mailers and there will be lies and half-truths and truth squads and half-truth squads. Bogus statistics will be employed to prove falsehood. The boogeymen of Dr. Deasy+iPads+MiSiS will be used by both sides to abuse the other.
Hopefully a lot of parents and community members will turn out on May 19th for what will be the last odd-year general election in LA history. And they/we will decide the issue based on what’s best for our 650,000 special interests – because the school board member sitting in that chair in districts 1, 3, 5 and 7 next August when new kindergarteners enroll – will still be in that chair when that class prepares to matriculate to middle school.
This coming term is the moment to do some long-term-planning and set a course. As the editorial in today’s LA Times says: 5½ Years To Get It Right. This Board of Ed, these four plus the serving three, will pick the next superintendent. They will set five annual budgets –hopefully not five stop-the-bleeding reactive Band-Aids – but a five year cycle of proactive educational+fiscal reform. Not Disruptive Reform but Authentic Reform. (School Reform, like change, is a constant – we have been practicing it since at least 1830 and Horace Mann …and this leaves Plato, Joseph Lancaster and J.J. Rousseau wondering: “Were we just chopped liver?’)
Because what’s best for kids and teachers and parents and voters and taxpayers is ultimately a single thing.{module [1177]}
FALLING UP: The rumors have been swirling since the return of Mr. Cortines: How will he reorganize the District?
It was pretty well accepted that one of the first things to go would be the ISIC ESC (Intensive Support and Innovation Center Education Service Center).Alert the Dept. of Redundancy Dept.: How central can one be while decentralizing centrality?
In many urban school districts in thrall with ©orporate $chool ®eform, placing underperforming/low-scoring (unpopularly called ‘failing’) schools into their own mini-district is called ‘Superintendent’s Districts’ in EdReform jargon. Dr. Deasy created ISIC in this/his-own image –but decided not to affix his title to it.
(This may be unkindly likened to wiping the fingerprints off the candlestick/revolver/knife/rope/poison.)
It is pretty well conceded by the unknown knowledgeable who gather around water coolers in break rooms and the Beaudry Cafe that Supt. Cortines is not a fan of the “superintendent’s district” concept+practice …and that ISIC would be soon to go.
Other strikes against the ISIC program:• ISIC schools (¿why is one is tempted to write iSiC?) are spread across the 720 square miles of LAUSD; everyplace is too far from everywhere else. The chain of supply+command is overextended. Logistics are untenable. Distance disconnects.
• The expected rapid turnaround of programs wasn’t.
• The MiSiS Crisis hammered ISIC especially hard. Jefferson High School, an ISIC school, became the MiSiS poster child and Crisis ground zero. – and the intensive innovation and support never materialized. The Courts and California Dept. of Education got involved. The quick fix cost $1.1 million. Dr. Deasy left town, never to return.
Last week it was announced that the ISIC superintendent, Tommy Chang, had been named superintendent of Boston Schools and 4LAKids wishes Dr. Chang and Boston well. Both are going to need it. See MORE ADVICE FOR BOSTON’S NEW SUPERINTENDENT [following].
I have always found Tommy Chang to be personable and forthcoming and much more accessible than others in Deasy’s inner circle – but I also remember what Casey Stengel said about nice guys. Chang didn’t last long enough at ISIC to really prove himself and the ISIC program was Deasy’s baby.
The Boston Globe heaps praise on Chan.
Sorry Tommy, 4LAKids isn’t about to go that far! Plus I’ve received angry email from the Jefferson community who choose to disagree with my praise for (and your handling of) the Nava College Prep Academy last week At least one person views it as Us v. Them, with NCPA as an unwelcome co-locator on the Jefferson campus.
I suspect that you’re looking forward to working in Massachusetts, #11 in per pupil funding at $13,361 per student. But I note the Boston media gives you credit (and sets expectations) for achieving success with less money!
Based on the way that Dr. Deasy catastrophically mishandled the MiSiS Crisis at Jefferson once it was his problem I hold him ultimately responsible there. His “non mea culpa” letter to the court was a confession of gross incompetence, total disconnect, utter cluelessness and worse.
John Deasy, the master of “Falling (or Failing) Up”, whose best practice has always been in dropping-the-bread and having it always land ‘butter-side-up’, originally came from Boston. Maybe LAUSD, in sending Chang to Boston returns the favor. Or maybe it’s all just a revolution of the Great Mandala.
To go all biblical, in Leviticus two goats are selected for sacrifice to the Lord. One is deemed to be pure and sacrificed. The priests assign all the sins of the community to the other – the scapegoat – and set it free wander to in the wilderness. It’s a lovely metaphor; feel free to cast the roles however you wish.
“We're not guilty, he was crazy
And it's been going on for ten thousand years.”
THIS WEEKEND was not just the 50th anniversary of that Bloody Sunday in Selma; it is also the 50th anniversary of the landing of the first US ground forces in Viet Nam. And the 50th anniversary of the death of silent screen star Harold Lloyd.
IN OTHER SPECULATION ABOUT THE CHANGES TO COME: Apparently ESC North (The San Fernando Valley) will be split into two ESCs. For all the logistical reasons this makes sense – but one would hope that it’s not divided in such a way that one of the new ESCs is overwhelmingly in Board District #3 (currently Galatzan) and the other in the other in Board District 6 (Ratliff). School Board members are accountable for policy, budgets and superintendents, not turf.
“CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICTS once viewed lifetime healthcare coverage for employees as a cheap alternative to pay raises. That decision is coming back to haunt school leaders…” -
“SOME THINGS HAVE CHANGED since that awful day two years ago when a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 first-graders and six employees.
“But some things have not changed, including the problem of gun violence in schools, members of an advisory commission established after the shootings said Friday as they wrapped up two years of work and presented their final report to Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.”
GODSPEED: JOHN MOCKLER (1941-2015) – It has been said again+again that there are only one or two people in Sacramento who truly understand Public Education Finance. If there was one it was Mockler. As the Sac Bee says, "He left deep footprints".
LAUSD HAD ITS FIRST MEASLES CASE ON FRIDAY. The student attends Cal Burke High School, an alternative school on the campus of Panorama City High School. The initial data shows that the school has a very high vaccination rate – within the numbers that create community or “herd immunity” – so at the school this case should be an isolated instance, not an outbreak. Hopefully the infected student has not exposed siblings or other children to the disease outside the school setting.
Again, Measles is extremely contagious but usually not dangerous except in infants+toddlers too young to be immunized (under one year old) – or anyone with naturally or medically compromised immunity. Pertussis (whooping cough) – which is prevented by the same vaccine – is nearing epidemic proportions in LA County because not enough people have been vaccinated.
Let’s get those shots everyone!
¡Onward/Adelante!
(Scott Folsom is a parent and parent leader in LAUSD. He is the former President of Los Angeles 10th District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. Scott is a member of the California State PTA Board on Managers. He blogs at the excellent 4 LA Kids … where this perspective was originally posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 21
Pub: Mar 10, 2015
