LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer has been on the job for 2 years, and was hired for a contract price of $300,000.00 per year for 4 years. There are lots of people who want him out now. What is all that about?
The Board of Education is more than anything else another political operation. They are now trying to get Mr. Brewer out for a very good reason. There has been no change seen to benefit the students, or the District. There’s nothing of an improvement in exchange for paying him to do the job. And that is a pretty hefty sum he’s getting. There is a $45,000.00 annual expense account to cover his needs, including meals, and a $3,000 a month housing allowance to go with the $300 grand a year salary. Brewer’s expense account alone is about equal to what an entry-level teacher’s annual income is.
That outcome should have been expected from the start and for the stubborn supporters of Brewer, after a year of no change, no real plan and no hope.
The LAUSD did two things that it does best, (1.) Nothing, and, (2.) Spend money for non-productive activity, also called “wasting money.”
Now, Mr. Brewer has focused on two items himself, (1.) his accomplishments as the Superintendent, which appear to be largely imaginary, and (2.) his willingness to step down from his position as the Board wants- as long as he gets his money.
You may think he’s being greedy and selfish, but his reaction is just normal behavior for politicians and he shares that quality with so many more appointed and elected officials in city, county and state government, and let’s not leave out the federal level. You have to consider that the LAUSD went out and selected Mr. Brewer for the job and worked out the deal to hire him. Why they chose him, a retired U.S. Navy admiral with no demonstrable experience in the education system to come in at a time of intense distress in the District is one question. Well, having no educational experience should have been a clue of what to expect. There was not even a real plan on what was supposed to happen, but David Brewer still says he accomplished a lot.
Ramon C. Cortines was appointed as Asst. Superintendent last Spring to help fix the LAUSD’s condition. If progress what actually happening, they would not have needed Cortines, who has to be paid well for his time, too. Mr. Cortines has much more experience so he is the one that is doing what Brewer should have been doing all along. At the tune of $300,000.00 a year, you have a lot of money going down the drain at the same time that LAUSD continues to ask for more money to operate the District. It is a District of declining enrolment and substantial construction in the face of that fact, a very contradictory situation.
Mr. Brewer was the focus of a Sunday, December 7, 2008 L.A. TIMES column by Steve Lopez (see posting of Saturday's items on this blog) that demonstrates problems with the hiring of Mr. Brewer and shows how the LAUSD Board has racked up another expensive misstep in management, all at the taxpayers expense. Nothing comes from the wallets of the politicians; nothing is taken out of the pay of any of them for any mistakes they make, no matter how big or how obvious they were. Maybe that is why this pattern of the Board should not be expected to change in the near or even distant future.
In the L.A. TIMES story today, December 9, 2008, “L.A. schools chief says he'll take buyout,” http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd9-2008dec09,0,3527514,full.story Brewer defended his performance.
“Brewer said last week he didn't understand the board's unhappiness with his
performance. He also defended his record, noting that test scores rose this year
and that voters last month passed the district's largest-ever school bond."
‘I would take those two years and match them up against anyone else in
the country,’ he had said.”
Very simply, the response should be that speaking it doesn't make it true, and any test score improvement is a change that happens unevenly throughout the District, on a school by school basis. Brewer, like any politician takes credit for anything positive that they can find whether they caused it or not. And like a true politician, Brewer will deny responsibility for the bad things that happen on his watch.
The fact that the voters approved the bond measure last month for $7 billion has really little to do with the performance of David Brewer. Did anyone pay attention to what he said when they cast their vote? Did most people even know who he is? How can he claim that dubious credit. It had more to do with the District’s campaign salesmanship that was applied right before the elections. The Board launched the deeper journey into indebtedness for taxpayers that will last them for generations to come.
Why $7 billion anyway? Because they CAN “ask” for any amount and they DID, doubling the original plan to ask for a $3.5 billion bond to cover non-specific expenses, really just money to have to spare. Bonds are not free- maybe some thought so, but they are actually expensive. The taxpayers have to pay for the loan of the money and can cost taxpayers roughly double the face value over the life of the bonds.
In fact, the LAUSD will probably also waste a good deal of this amount per their track record. Remember the new Belmont high school, over $400 million for a high school that is the most expensive one in the country, and possibly, in the world, built over an oil field and earthquake fault? Don’t forget the “Arts” high school on Grand and Cesar Chavez (formerly Sunset Blvd.) old headquarters that was delayed in completion by a year and way higher in costs than the plan, all for the benefit of a design “image” for the city in the future, not for the students or our crisis-level performance..
Some actual performance “results” in the present time would have been nice, but they don’t see that over on Beaudry, the District’s headquarters. So you have another year of students passing through the system and the school was not ready to serve any of them. It is so typical. Every year of delay on any program or other change will mean another year of 12th graders moving on without being a part of whatever good it was supposed to create. Students do not stop to wait for the improvement; and then some just dropout.
But the Belmont project was the work of an earlier Board that escaped without any blame or personal responsibility for any mismanagement (which is normal for political bodies- and also explains why they don’t really worry about making mistakes). Most people are not familiar with the glitches, expensive glitches in money and time, that happened with the “Arts” high school- another Steve Lopez column earlier in 2008 reflects on that and is available through the L.A. TIMES online.
What happened during 2007 and 2008, with the payroll system catastrophe that cost over $100 million? Read Nov. 22, 2008, Daily Breeze, “LAUSD’s Payroll Mess” and judge for yourself. http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_11091571
Mr. Brewer will be able to walk away with a lot of money no matter what, and that’s a pretty good deal since most firings for not doing what the boss wants doesn’t usually leave you with money for NOT working. So it looks like it will cost LAUSD $500,000.00 for Mr. Brewer to pack up and leave his job. Mr. Cortines looks like the one left to really do the work needed for school improvement, and Mr. Brewer’s expense accounts and housing allowance did not do anything useful for taxpayers.
One more thing, in his bid to appear to be the good guy, Brewer has cleverly shifted the talk to racial terms, and while he says he does not want things to be divisive in racial terms, HE is the one bringing that sort of characterization to the table. If he were not black but instead, every color of the rainbow, he still did not do the job that was needed to be done. I think that he relies on the tensions in LAUSD regarding racial concerns INSIDE the schools to come out ahead. Some beleaguered schools have now come to be run as charter schools, using specificly tailored approaches for the needs of the campus to solve problems. Uniforms routinely are part of the charter school differences and I think THAT change should be used in all LAUSD as a start to get some headway in straightening out things for school operations.
No, Brewer, because he is African-American, considers racial issues to be used as a shield from accountability for his game plan. It’s all a shell game and LAUSD is a player, the losing one again, to let it happen. Did they put a contract together for his employment that guaranteed him money for NOT working out? Did they add any terms to release him less expensively if they could not find progress while the District was under his responsibility? Well, if they did plan it, somebody goofed badly, again.
Some on the Board want to keep Brewer for the last 2 years of his contract- why? He’s not working out and he doesn’t appear to know how to change. The Board is to blame, too, for not getting a work plan for him to follow in order to measure up his progress against what they wanted to see, step by step, in regular intervals of time. Like I said, LAUSD has a track record, a very expensive track record.
This is another indication of a District too large to work effectively or economically. We don’t have students being educated, and we don’t have fiscal responsibility for the money that is spent to ensure it is spent wisely and not wasted. See Saturday’s story here on the LAUSD credit card waste.
If you wonder why things don’t get better, you can check out the people at the top, and not just the schools that your children and neighbor’s children attend. Board President Monica Garcia is openly aligned with Mayor Villaraigosa, who also added low-performing school to his duties, while still not attending to real city business.
Monica Garcia’s association with the Mayor is expected since she would not have won her seat without the Villaraigosa-approval.
Villaraigosa does not have a background of educational expertise, he just has a lot of money coming in from special interests to finance campaigns that function to hide lots of the revealing truth and color the lies to make them appear to be the truth. It all ends up helping everyone but the city, the schools and the students.
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