Strings were pulled, and Ramon Cortines was stopped by his own Board of Education," By Beth Barrett, Thursday, Mar 11 2010. L.A. WEEKLY
http://www.laweekly.com/2010-03-11/news/insiders-versus-charters-at-lausd/2
This is a good article to show the politics that are involved to replace the real concern for the children's educational opportunities in the recent LAUSD process to select operators for 30 schools, 12 new and 18 lowest performers. This happens to include Lincoln High among them. The big issue here is that Superintendent Ramon Cortines made recommendations following the voting done at each of the school locations from several factions including the parents. This was the Public School Choice voting, a purely advisory operation, but one that was to be seriously considered by Supt. Cortines.
Well, there were some preliminary reports released after the voting and the Superintendent made recommendations for which schools should be operated by which group. The groups making the proposals were groups led by the principal, as in Lincoln's case, teacher-led proponents, also done at Lincoln, and other groups including the Mayor's Partnership and some charter schools. Lincoln had only the two competing interests that I commented on in an earlier posting after the elections. I thought that since both groups were from esentially the same roots, the LAUSD, I think that there is a strong influence there that will really not be much of any real change.
Other schools, like the Esteban Torres Learning Center, had lots more applicants so there was quite a lot of potential for change. What resulted in the outcome that was finally decided by the LAUSD Board, led by Board President, Monica Garcia, to ignore the recommendations of Cortines and to exclude charter school applicants in almost every case.
There had been concerns before that the charters had cherry picked students and so they could expect better results when compared to the LAUSD. In this situation, requirements for accepting under policies of inclusion were to be followed. That would mean that students would not be screened out as often done before, so more of a cross section would then compose the student body and the educational needs of underserved students would be addressed. That was not to be seen in the case, as mentioned in the L.A. Times editiorial referenced below. I don't regularly agree with the editorials in the Times, but I think that this was one very correctly stated.
"Editorial-
A lesson for charter school operators - After lobbying for a plan to let outside groups run some L.A. Unified schools, the charter operators were almost shut out. Now what do they do? "
March 02, 2010
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/02/opinion/la-ed-charter3-2010mar03
One main point of the L.A. WEEKLY story was that Board member, Yolie Flores, the one who proposed the idea of voting for the operators, was in the lead here as a reformer to try to make a major change happen with the district. I really did not like the way Yolie Flores handled the Eagle Rock High dispute with the football coach, the principal and others in the faculty and administration a few years back. Nothing was settled there until Supt. Cortines personally became involved and settled the matter, although less than satisfactorily, in my view. That issue with the "consultant" employment with Gloria Romero was not a good sign, either, as far as I was concerned.
Well, now Flores seems to be doing her job and thinking about the education of the students. The others still appear to be bound by overriding concerns for political affiliations. Remember that Monica Garcia was working under current city council member Jose Huizar when he was president of the Board. Both he and Garcia had a lot owed to Mayor Villaraigosa as he really got them elected to their respective posts. In the last election, the Board majority is now weighted in favor of Villaraigosa, and the deference to the Mayor's Partnerships applications shows.
You can read the story to see how you have special interests- and that includes unions- exert influence to sway the outcomes of events. It is not quite illegal, but you see that somethings get seriously affected by the entry of such forces. When you see the name of Maria Elena Durazo mentioned, you know that there is some intense interest by the union here. She is probably the single most influential leader in labor since the death of her husband Miguel Contreras several years ago. He preceeded her in the union leadership, and you can see that influence in the area was enough that he had a learning center named after him.
Well, this story does a good job of showing reasons why things happen the way that they do, and that's not what the general public is widely aware of. There is a comment section after the story that is filled with comments longer than the story where the author, a 2007 magnet school retiree just can't criticize enough. Briefly, I don't think his criticism is well-placed as much of the target really isn't part of the focus of the story. I won't get into that much more than to say that most of what's stated can be distinguished and refuted although there is some validity to many of the observations made, but they don't really go to this story but to education on a broader level, and specific application to the LAUSD. (You can read that, too, and there's a lot, and form your own opinions. )
It was good to see that Flores appeared to be on the right track as far as what a Board member should be doing. I hope that she continues in that path and that this experience deters her from doing what is right. Garcia, on the other hand, is too entangled in politics, as she should be since she has no demonstrated performance of any real benefit to students, so far, and she needs political friends to keep getting her elected.
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