CommentsALPERN AT LARGE--In theory, education is meant to teach children, among other things, the power of critical thinking. In theory, throwing more money at a problem isn't necessarily going to make things better. In practice, however, our hearts are the right motivators while our brains are the right executors of how we operate.
Does the LAUSD have a good history of spending our money well?
Does the LAUSD have a good history of prioritizing its students and their parents over their own special interests?
Does the LAUSD and the UTLA have a history of favoring pensions and bureaucratic overhead, and then paper it all over with more taxes and say they'll spend better than they did before?
Does the LAUSD have a history of, say, misspending on iPads instead of school facility investments and upkeep?
Does the LAUSD foster a history of encouraging parents to vote with their feet to charter and/or magnet schools, because parents don't trust the principals and bureaucratic leadership to do right by their children?
Enter Measure EE. It is opposed by the Daily News as well as by business groups throughout the county.
Does business (including Latino business groups) really oppose superior education?
Measure EE was hastily thrown behind closed doors by Mayor Garcetti as a parcel tax to help bring the recent teacher's strike to an end.
Four final questions:
1) Do you trust Mayor Garcetti to do ANYTHING right, whether it's homelessness, budgetary decisions, proper planning, fixing our roads, or making the City more affordable?
2) Is there not a host of solutions to improving classroom budgetary improvements, by diverting useless LAUSD non-teacher/bureaucratic money-wastes back to teachers and their students (where it always belonged)?
3) Do you think this extra money will make one whit of difference in the improvement of our children's education?
4) Does throwing more money at an institution with a horrendous track record of misspending money encourage, or discourage, better spending of that money?
Vote YES on better education and Vote YES to hold the right people's feet to the fire by first ensuring that the money will go where it needs to go...SO VOTE NO ON MEASURE EE!!!
(CityWatch Columnist, Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father to two cherished children and a wonderful wife. He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Outreach Committee, and currently is Co-Chair of both its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure and Planning Committees. He was co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chaired the nonprofit Transit Coalition and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
-cw
