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Mayor Villaraigosa and plan author and Board VP Aguilar hold a press conference following the meeting (Reader submitted iPhone photo)
The LAUSD's Downtown meeting room was packed with people, many of whom were there to express dissent about the plan and how the District handled engaging the public in the pre-vote discussion process. The meeting ran "more than four hours of debate" and included "often- heated public comment," ahead of the vote, which saw only Marguerite LaMotte voting against the plan, according to the Daily News. Often, as Board President Monica Garcia and Aguilar spoke, the crowd issued cries of "recall," and implying they should be jailed, according to one Twittering attendee.
Mayor Villaraigosa addressed the crowd gathered outside before the meeting, continuing to voice support for the plan and lauding it as a beacon of reform. Following the vote he also joined Board members in addressing the press and those who remained, noting that the plan will rely on parent involvement, and that he remains a great supporter of unions.
It's the unions, however, who believe allowing private groups to run portions of something publicly funded, is unconstitutional, and the LAUSD will likely see lawsuits spring forth immediately in response to the plan. Regardless, Superintendent Ramon Cortines believes this is not a way to "not [hold] your mini- district superintendents accountable," as UTLA President AJ Duffy suggests, but rather a "creative solution."
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glad to see this approved.
This is good.. we should try something different.
Bet this works as well as it does for prison. <cough>
Cortines has given up on managing 200 low performing schools and 50 new ones - he doesn't know how to create innovation and dictate accountability. For that reason, he has cast his lots to the wind and to any tom, dick, or harry to manage an instructional program. Let the grand experiment begin, and who will pay for untested instructional methods? Who else - a generation of children.
There are thousands of books written and doctorates awarded for great school reform ideas. The problem with all of the ones that don't introduce choice (especially non-union schools of choice) is that there are no actual consequences for failure. Nobody ever gets fired and everyone knows that. The only question that matters, is simply who gets fired when the schools don't work. And if the answer is not... everyone in the building shares that risk, the reform won't work. Administrator power is seen by teachers as illegitimate if they don't share risk (unions love making teachers hate power-grubbing administrators!). And teachers won't really feel any pressure to step up their game, if they don't share risk. That's why giving parents the ability to choose a school for their children, and the ability for new schools to be created that may be better, and draw children (and money) away from failing school, matters. It's the only thing that matters in school reform.
The other important question is how long those who want to change the system, will stay in a position to change the system. Changing the system simply will not happen without a huge fight with the teacher unions, and they will outlast, outspend, and out protest any school board. They are shamelessly aggressive and have hundreds of full and well-paid staff-members whose only job is to protect teacher jobs. The power asymmetry with part-time school board members is apalling. It's just not a fair fight. They always beat the school board.
Ask anyone who has been through this process as a volunteer (or paid) school board member. School board members who try real reform (choice, incentive pay, etc.) have their personal lives destroyed by the unionists. That's why the union loves volunteer school boards and non-professional lay-leaders: they can be broken. And they all are always broken.
That is why at the end of the day, school board members who really want system change, need to abolish school boards. They need to replace themselves by a set of rules that simply create free and fair competition between school providers (private, non-profit, for-profit, whatever). Every school a charter school.
Be brave, board members. And be smart.
We've lost 4 generation of poorly educated minority children listening to the evil teacher union sirens saying why choice is a bad idea. They need tough and smart leadership.
The opening "zinger" by "KM" above is reflective of how unionists deal with challenges to the system - they appeal to the "hero" complex that makes most school administrators continue playing roulette at the union-controlled casino. Hehe... he goads... don't let a few setbacks get you down. You CAN beat the house! KM says... "Cortines has given up on managing 200 low performing schools and 50 new ones - he doesn't know how to create innovation and dictate accountability." Haha... how manipulative and misleading.
What if you "shamed" business owners in the private sector for being wimpy about "turning-around" their operations... under these conditions. They wouldn't be allowed to shuffle staff between departments, fire anyone certainly or quickly, hire based on skill, pay based on ability, change the allocation of capital (ie. spend less on staff and more on equipment or books or facilities or anything), align salaries with the market, extend work hours, shorten the mandatory 3.5 month summer holiday, advertise... need I go on?
Public school administrators and board members are foolish to profess that they actually have any ability whatsoever to materially control what happens between the walls of a school. It's a charade!!! Public schools are not accountable to the public!!! If they were, administrators could do all of those things on the "forbidden" list above! And if they still failed, the whole school would be shut down! That's the American way and it works!
Giving up is the honest and only thing that public school leaders must do today. The unions hate the system - "oh, teachers are so poorly treated" - but they hate anything better, much worse. They suck the life-force from the school system day after day, equalizing away good teachers willingness to excel and the ability to innovate... but whatever you do they say... "don't kill the school system!" This is plain and simple parasitism.
Transparency has left the Beaudry Building!
LAUSD President Monica Garcia and Vice President Yolie Flores Aguilar at the behest of ever the opportunist Mayor Villaraigosa and his boss Eli Broad have shown complete willingness to implement neoliberal Pinoche politics here in Los Angeles. Their no holds barred school privatization plan warms the hearts of extreme reactionary right wing corporatization advocates like Newt Gingrich, The Hoover Institution, The Hudson Institute, and the Cato Institute.
Ms. Garcia and Flores Aguilar's ruthless three step methodology for destroying public education:
Step 1: Vote to lay off hundreds and hundreds of hard working teachers. The direct results of their cynical vote is massive class size increases with some public schools suffering 40-60 students per class. This is by design, making public schools more prone to failure in order to bring in another wave of privatization.
Step 2: During the summer, when there is no resistance, pass the most sweeping privatization plan imaginable. Their Corporate Charter Choice resolution hands public schools and public property over to Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). CMOs are known for unelected boards whose hallmark is being utterly opaque, undemocratic, top down, private, and unaccountable -- despite taking the public's money and plenty of it. CMOs are entirely beholden to nefarious benefactors like the Waltons, Broads, Gates, and other right wing ideologues. Their hangers-on include unsavory characters like Marshall Tuck, Antony Ressler, Steve Barr, and Marco Petruzzi.
Step 3: ALL BUT ELIMINATE PUBLIC COMMENT, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, AND DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION in the district with their "Changes to Rules of the Board of Education." This is essentially Mayoral control (read corporate control) in everything but name. LAUSD Board Member Marguerite P. LaMotte's principled statement statement regarding Ms. Garcia and Flores Aguilar's reprehensible sneakiness is brilliant: "We are giving away our schools and now we want to get rid of transparency... so we can do whatever we want in the dark of night."
Oh and Anthony, you're a reactionary tool. That's comming from a non-teacher and a person not in a union. Your corporate servile, anti-union drivel above is pathetic. Do you even know any teachers?