If you have an interest in what the LAUSD is doing and will admit to, come on over to spend a little time not to far away in Eagle Rock and hear Board Member Yolie Flores (District 5) speak on current issues for LAUSD. It may be the same old stuff or there may be some new slant on things, but you can hear it first hand and even ask questions right there. (Photo, right: The Center for the Arts, in Eagle Rock on Colorado Blvd.)It will be happening at the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council meeting (7pm to 9pm) tonight at the Center for Arts (the former L.A. branch library for Eagle Rock). One block west of Eagle Rock Blvd. and Colorado Blvd, on Colorado on the north side of the street (across the street from Starbucks).
Yolie Flores is the guest speaker tonight and should be speaking around 7:30 pm. Parking on the street or off-street at the B of A lot down the block in a relatively safe area, as far as safe locations go in L.A. One of Flores' latest activity was as a proponent of the "Public School Choice" process that put up the choices for the public to have some say in the choice of operators of their local school. This concluded about a month ago for the low performing schools and many new school sites.
Flores in that process, voiced her support for following the recommendations made by Ramon Cortines, Superintendent, and his team assigned to evaluate the advisory voting and the subjects submitting their proposals. Board President Moniea Garcia spoke on why the teacher/school factions should prevail in some of the selections, while the charter and other non-LAUSD based proposals were left out in the cold, despite being the Cortines selection. That was the idea of having Cortines do the evaluations that took in the voting as a factor. Why bother doing that job if they won't follow it? That's LAUSD and it's not any suprise to me.
The real surprise was the fact that there was some dissension on the Board and that it was Flores speaking in opposition to the choice of others, mostly Mayor Villaraigosa-linked people who do his bidding there. And that was the reason for such backing by Tony and associates. If the school district could place the well-being of the students ahead of their own personal and political benefit, we might see some improvement happening. But then they are politicians, no matter what the say to protest that label.
Well, the meetings of the ERNC have been hosted many notable speakers in the last 6 or 7 months. This list includes Pat McOskar, President of the union for the L.A. Firefighters, State Senator Carol Liu, Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, CM for CD-14 Jose Huizar, and City Controller Wendy Greuel.
Many people don't know there's even any Neighborhood Council system city wide, with 90 certified NCs and there's lots of confusion on which NC anyone belongs to. Well, Voting for the 10 NCs in Region G is on Thursday, April 29th and lots of outreach still is needed to get out the word as the City Council considers more funding cuts that include the NC system.
NCs are City Charter created creatures and no matter how much the City Council wants to have them butt out of city business, the Charter keeps them here. The "funding" is a different story and that's where Council can do the system in by going to a "bare bones" type funding to comply with the terms of the Charter.
That's a decision that will be part of the upcoming budget presentation within a couple of weeks by the Mayor. For now, we still have 90 NCs and elections are underway, grouped by the nine Regions.
Posts
