Well, the LAUSD finally has come around to affect the disabled students as part of the ones to carry the burden for the administration's history of waste, fraud and abuse.
"L.A. Unified to shutter 200 classes, campus for disabled students-
The schoolchildren will be transferred to other classes, sometimes meaning longer commutes to other schools. It's part of the beleaguered district's attempts to deal with a $640-million deficit." By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times,
June 3, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-disabled-20100602,0,7041114,full.story
The millions that they at LAUSD have wasted from malfeasance at the management level was apparent in the hugely expensive payroll software. That payroll software did not work properly and caused problems that costs the district in terms of money and frustration as well as the real impact in shortchanging people in their paychecks and leaving them unable to address their financial obligations, all due to the foul ups of that software.
Step back in time and see in Mayor Sam's posting in September 2007 what was happening- nothing good and it was nothing unusual for that to be the case.
http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/2007/09/lausd-payroll-problems-redux.html
Here is another sample on that particular project from Tim Rutten, usually with a very liberal sort of leaning, but not forgiving on this topic. "The clowns at LAUSD - Who was in charge of the school district's failed payroll system? No one -- and that should be enough to send Supt. Brewer packing. " By Tim Rutten - February 13, 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten13feb13,0,1383536.column
The LAUSD over years was lax in most areas where belt-tightening was not even the question, just simple accountability for expenditures made and justifications that made sense, rarely present in LAUSD dealings as long as the paper work was pushed properly.
The education effort by LAUSD was at least attentive to the children in special education programs and those especially needy at the special education centers. There has been a lot of problems with service to the special ed students in the comprehensive (regular) campuses and many obligations of the legally significant IEPs were not met with compliance for a variety of reasons, yet corrective action was only made in sporadic fashion. We had a law that said that all students were supposed to have their textbooks issued and when the spot checks by the district were actually made, still about 13 teachers/classes were not on the ball to show it- even though there was a concentrated effort that week to have ALL needs meet as far as books were concerned. There should easily have been a ZERO non-compliance number but there wasn't. Maybe that was a follow-up for the principal's crew to do before the spot-check, but that water over the dam now.
So you see that simple things don't even go right as they should, so tougher things slip through on a more regular basis.
Now the disabled students see closures that should not be happening, especially when there often is a tightly knit group of teachers, at least more so than at the regular campuses, and the populations served more regularly have parental involvement, often out of necessity in many cases where disabled students are involved.
I don't think that the answer to improved quality overall in education is solved by throwing money at it, but the special ed side of things needs to be maintained for both the producing results and for compliance with the federal and other mandates that don't seem to be given proper attention.
I don't know if this is a done deal, but the way that the district spent money on other things they should not have is what I think about when considering if you have any responsible management at the top there. This edition of the school board bears the current blame, but there is also a legacy of past members, including my own Council member Jose Huizar CD-14, who was the past president and thought that was a "plus" for his campaign for re-elections. I would have thought he should have downplayed that role for all the results that did not materialize under his "leadership."
Huizar's former aide, Monica Garcia, is carrying on her own politically controlled leadership now, heavily if not totally influenced by our loser mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who was so wrapped up in who-knows-what thoughts that he forgot to include the Korean War in the list of wars at the Memorial Day observance at the National Cemetary in West L.A. - and reacting poorly to a comment by adding "Do you want to do this?" or "Do you want to come up here," not a calm and collected reaction to any comment at all. You can find him courtside tonight at the Laker game. Ticket value each: about $4,000. but he's not reporting such things, so I will. So you can see there's influence spread that's around by freebies and Antonio says it's "official business" so it's o.k. Nice try.
Read the story and you may not really see the significance of this kind of facility but it does make a difference in the life opportunities for the future of disabled students especially where there is a signifcant limitation as here with blind and vision-impaired students. Learning is what it is about and diminishing the facilities available for such functional exercises is another problem on top of the reduced numbers of teachers that the budget cuts are causing.
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