Occupy L.A. evicted from City Hall. LAUSD & UTLA reach agreement to grant wider autonomy to all schools on teacher placement and budgets. Should Santa Monica Airport be saved or shuttered?
LAPD raid ends Occupy LA encampment
Shortly after midnight, it began. Hundreds of police officers – some in riot gear, others in hazmat suits – secured a perimeter, swarmed onto City Hall grounds and began making arrests.
For days, police and protesters knew the raid was imminent. Both seemed to prepare for a non-violent confrontation.
Police arrested nearly 300 protesters for refusing to decamp from their two-month old, so-called occupation.
LAPD Commander Andrew Smith said, "We didn't use tear gas on anybody today. We didn't use pepper spray on anybody."
It was an operation quite distinct from police raids on Occupy Oakland and Occupy Wall Street – where fires erupted and rubber bullets shot, all resulting in serious injuries.
The worst to contend with at City Hall this morning is a massive mess on the grounds. The stench of urine and piles of tents, bedding, clothing and more cover the lawns.
Still, Occupy L.A. supporters insist the location is a traditional public forum for First Amendment activity, and they want it back. Incoming court hearings challenging the "eviction," attorneys for protesters will cite resolutions by L.A. City Council in support of the encampment.
"It's the mayor we are very upset with for trying to usurp the powers that are not his and trying to override the very reasonable position of the city council, " said James Lafferty, National Lawyers Guild president.
WEIGH IN:
What's your reaction to how the raid unfolded? Are you surprised at the relative peace of it all? How did Los Angeles avoid the violence experienced in other cities? What's next for the movement?
Guests:
Shirley Jahad, KPCC Reporter. She is at the Corn Fields where the Occupy L.A. people are meeting
Carol Sobel, Executive Vice President, National Lawyers Guild
Sky Adams, activist with OccupyLA; actor, performer
Julia Wallace, Member of the Committee to end Police Brutality, Occupy Los Angeles
B.G, Activist Occupy Los Angeles
LAUSD & UTLA reach agreement granting wider autonomy to all schools on teacher placement and budgets
The Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers Los Angeles announced a tentative agreement Tuesday that aims to improve schools by giving them more freedom to make changes without district approval. Individual teachers, school personnel and parents will now be able to make decisions based on what they think is best for their specific communities.
Schools will now have more control over their own budgets, teacher placement, schedules, student tests and the curriculum. Still, local schools must be sure to abide by state and federal education laws. Furthermore, the deal reached between LAUSD and UTLA now prohibits charter schools and third parties from bidding to run low-performing schools in the area, which was a possibility under the Public School Choice reform mandated by the LAUSD board this August. UTLA President Warren Fletcher expects the union to approve the proposed reforms before LAUSD’s board meeting on Dec. 13.
One issue not addressed in this agreement is that of the long-standing conflict between the union and LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy concerning the role of student testing in teacher evaluations. The tentative agreement still needs to be approved by the teachers union and school board. While some are calling the agreement a victory for students, there are many controversial issues it does not address.
WEIGH IN:
How will this help struggling teachers or principals improve? Will teacher seniority, pay and tenure be addressed? How about teacher evaluations or professional development? And what do parents think? Have they had a seat at the negotiating table?
Guest:
John Deasy, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)
Yolie Flores, CEO of Communities for Teaching Excellence and former member of the board of education at the Los Angeles Unified School District
Should Santa Monica Airport be saved or shuttered?
The future of Santa Monica Airport is up in the air. The 30-year land and building agreement with the FFA is set to expire in 2015. Now, Santa Monica City Council must decide what to do with the 227-acre space.
Santa Monica city officials say this will release them from their obligation to operate the facility as an airport. But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) doesn’t agree. They claim the city must operate the airport indefinitely per a 1948 "instrument of transfer."
Adding to the decades-long brouhaha, thousands of nearby residents who are sick of the noise, pollution and plane crashes want the airport closed. But the FAA seems steadfast in their demand to keep the airport open. Santa Monica City Mayor Richard Bloom said that the FFA has ignored local-level concerns.
"This is the thing that looms over all of our issues, and that is the FAA has enormous control and influence over the airport. While it is within the jurisdictional boundaries of Santa Monica, and we certainly believe that we own the airport, the FAA has a countervailing opinion," Bloom said Wednesday. "All of this litigation takes place in federal courts, and what we have learned ... is that the federal courts defer very strongly to the federal agency."
Phase two of the city council's decision-making plan is looking to the community. The city of Santa Monica has hired consultants to study the airport space and will begin asking for the public's input on possible future uses early next year.
Laura Silagi, Co-chair of the Venice Neighborhood Council's Santa Monica Airport Ad-Hoc Committee, said these community discussions are already starting with a large setback.
"I personally would [close the airport], and so would a large segment of people who live around the airport. The problem that we have with Santa Monica however, in terms of their process of vetting the community, is that they're not putting that on the table."
Both Mayor Bloom and Silagi agree that flight schools and their flight patterns should be diminished, some transferred elsewhere or otherwise changed.
Joe Justice, owner of a flight school at the Santa Monica Airport, said flight traffic there has already lessened by about a third to a half of what it was 20 years ago. "We're running businesses; we deal with trying to stay alive in the economy," he said.
The battle could end up in court with pilots and Westside jet-setters on one side against opponents annoyed with blaring jets and potentially hazardous levels of fuel exhaust. The city’s history of trying to close the airport stretches back to the 1960s when they imposed a ban on jets, which was then repealed by the courts. In the 1980s, the city council voted to close the airport when legally possible but finally settled to keep the airport open while imposing strict noise regulations.
"Times change and community needs change, and I think, as good stewards of the environment, good stewards of the community, [we] are always looking at ways to improve, whatever the issue might be," Mayor Bloom said. "The process of what we're engaged in is intended to identify those issues, and think about what the steps might be, short of closure."
WEIGH IN:
So what should be done with this aviation hub? Is there some way to balance all the competing interests? Do its benefits outweigh the costs? Should SMO be shuttered or saved?
Guests:
Richard Bloom, Mayor, City of Santa Monica
Laura Silagi, Co-chair of the Venice Neighborhood Council’s Santa Monica Airport Ad-Hoc Committee
Joe Justice, owner of Justice Aviation, a flight school at the Santa Monica Airport