More on the LAUSD rejection of Charter Schools applications.

"The charter school test case that didn't happen - If they hadn't been mostly shut out of bids to run a slew of new L.A. Unified campuses, the groups might have demonstrated how they handle students with challenging needs." By Howard Blume,
February 26, 2010 - L.A. Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charter26-2010feb26,0,1231323.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

The story is pretty rich in content to tell you that there is a good helping of politics that goes on in decisions by the LAUSD Board when it comes to everything. The Public School Choice voting for preferences of takeover proposals a few weeks ago, leading to School Superintendent Ramon Cortines to recommend among them just which ones will walk away with the right to set up shop and do some serious schooling on campus.

I was surprised with what the Board Member, Yolie Flores Aguilar, said since it made so much sense and I had not noticed that kind of thing as one of her qualities. I guess I was still miffed about her good fortune to double-dip and work for Gloria Romero and pull in thousands as a consultant without any observable work produced while on the Board.

And in this instance, charters agreed to operate by more inclusive rules in exchange for access to state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar campuses.

"This would have been an opportunity to have [charters] rise to the challenge as we in the district do every day in serving these populations at an equal level," said board member Yolie Flores, who brought the school-control proposal to the board in August.

Union president AJ Duffy was speaking the party line and I have come to take what he says with the proverbial grain of salt. He is never one to be constrained in his comments by actual facts.
His job is to work for teachers and of course, perpetuate the power of his union. The collateral benefit to actual children who are the students to be served is always secondary as a priority.

Read the story and see what I mean. Maybe there SHOULD have been a charter allowed to try it's hand since LAUSD has had years with the results being shown among these low performing schools. The addressing of needs of special education and English Language Learners if attempted by charters who are not without some success was not allowed. It's political, remember?

The title of labor czar could have been applied to Maria Elena Durazo, as the labor head with considerable influence that is thrown the way of the LAUSD, who in its typical and characteristic style, is hopelessly unable to resist any of it. I think the role held by the Board President Monica Garcia fits nicely into a too-cozy relationship where Garcia's very comfortable. Too often I think we have something of hero-worshipping substituting for objective and productive actions taken on behalf of students and the publie in general.

Although Supt. Ramon C. Cortines favored mostly internal proposals, he had also recommended giving schools to Green Dot Public Schools, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools and ICEF Public Schools, which all came away empty-handed. All are charter management groups with a track record in the city.

Flores, the author of the reform strategy, had argued that Cortines' recommendations should be followed without exception.

The personal issues override the fiduciary duties owed by the public officials. And what the heck does that term mean? I doubt that Garcia is even aware of the concept, as appears to be the case with so many local politicians.
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"fiduciary duty
Definition
Employees' or directors' legal and moral duty to exercise the powers of their office for the benefit of the employer or the firm. Directors owe the duty of utmost good faith and must not put themselves in a position where their personal interests and their fiduciary duties may conflict. Also called fiduciary obligation."

So there is the quick "in a nutshell" definition. A little more elaboration below will give you a better basis from which to evaluate how it is so constantly breached by our politicians.
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"Breach of Fiduciary Duty Law & Legal Definition
A fiduciary duty is an obligation to act in the best interest of another party. For instance, a corporation's board member has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, a trustee has a fiduciary duty to the trust's beneficiaries, and an attorney has a fiduciary duty to a client.

A fiduciary obligation exists whenever the relationship with the client involves a special trust, confidence, and reliance on ithe fiduciary to exercise his discretion or expertise in acting for the client. The fiduciary must knowingly accept that trust and confidence to exercise his expertise and discretion to act on the client's behalf.

When one person does agree to act for another in a fiduciary relationship, the law forbids the fiduciary from acting in any manner adverse or contrary to the interests of the client, or from acting for his own benefit in relation to the subject matter. The client is entitled to the best efforts of the fiduciary on his behalf and the fiduciary must exercise all of the skill, care and diligence at his disposal when acting on behalf of the client. A person acting in a fiduciary capacity is held to a high standard of honesty and full disclosure in regard to the client and must not obtain a personal benefit at the expense of the client. "
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And that doesn't seem to be what we are getting from electing these people into office.

On with the charter situation and their exclusion- You can see the turf issues in the story. The teachers feel an entitlement and it is viewed that way by the union, too.

Charters should not be allowed to run new schools, paid for by taxpayers, that were intended for all children, said A. J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Well, Mr. Duffy missed the idea that the charters WERE going to address serving those children, but you see how defensive they get. What else do you or can you expect him to say? "Let them try out and we will find out if they know what they are doing."? No, that's not a good approach since they children might actually do well- and that's not good from the union's way of looking at things.

Turf enters the area where the Board did not follow the Cortines recommendations, and he was the one with a large role in conducting the evaluations of the voting and the program proposals. Like I said, it's politics and not any way following duties within their fiduciary obligation. How can anyone expect this Board to improve things when it keeps following a political path that's about adults and not the education path that affect children?

More on LAUSD- strike is barred, teacher performance based termination changes in law requested

A couple of stories on the LAUSD teacher issues are continuing in the news.

And L.A. Times story. "School board members acknowledge swifter firings are needed; Four L.A. Unified board members say state laws need to be changed to get rid of underperforming teachers. Support for such efforts has increased in the wake of a Times investigation." By Jason Song May 13, 2009.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/05/la-schools-supt-reacts-to-teacher-dismissal-controversy-and-flu.html

There's the expected reaction coming from the recent series in the L.A. Times about the many teachers that can't be fired and that still get paid while housed at Beaudry headquarters. The LAUSD Board wants to have the state change laws but the Times items showed that the problems often came from mishandling of complaints and the processing by personnel that should be responsible for attending to hiring and continuing supervision. A lot of the problem is of LAUSD's own processes that you just don't see in the private sector, or if you do see it, the condition changes very soon upon discovery, and the people responsible have their own jobs to worry about.

There needs to be action to remedy situations like the one presented in the Times story, sounding similar in history to the various cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, including the Los Angeles Archdiocese under the "leadership" of Roger Mahoney. You may recall that there was the constant moving of priests and others accused or suspected of sexual abuse, instead of addressing the situation appropriately to end the conduct. Sometimes the people new location had some idea of the earlier problems and many times, nothing of the sort was mentioned, and the conduct was repeated upon other victims, usually children. The Archdiocese undeniably received favored treatment by law enforcement during investigations, and no one came in to clean out files and other records like what happens in other cases where it's not a church involved.

So let's not forget that. You had the D.A.'s office as another entity entangled with politics, not wanting to stir up a hornet's nest of controversy- but who suffers from that? It's justice that was shortchanged. It didn't help the victims. That entire scenario was not a good model to follow, but the impact on victims is no less serious when it's in the schools and not the church. In both cases, positions of respect and confidence allowed vulnerabilities of victims to be exploited.

The idea of easing restrictions on how a teacher can be terminated is one of the things that the Board voted for by a majority. President Monica Garcia is one of the persons usually in the union's corner, in the tradition of her benefactor, Mayor Villaraigosa.

Board President Monica Garcia, among others, cautioned that the solution would
be complicated and needed careful study.

Garcia seems to favor "studies" that are costly and that still leave you without any changes when much time has passed and much money has been spent. It seems that she is, in her own way, "running interference" for the union.

Look at her colleague, Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, recently in the news when getting a big chunk of tax dollars as salary for consulting for state Sen. Gloria Romero, "Yolie Flores Aguilar, a longtime friend and political ally of some powerful California Democrats, last year supplemented her income as vice president of the Los Angeles school board with more than $32,000 as a consultant assigned to a state Senate committee that, during her tenure, did not meet or release any reports, " from the story, "California jobs go to those with connections; Lawmakers can hire anyone they choose. Sometimes that means friends and family." By Patrick McGreevy, March 27, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nepotism27-2009mar27,0,1567133.story

Flores Aguilar is in step with Garcia's view of this situation,

"We need a comprehensive strategy, we need to present a well-thought-out
legislation, and we [need] someone who will carry legislation. We have to do all
of our homework," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar.

It all makes you wonder how anything will change when you have such an influence of politics overshadowing the need to act responsibly which is not always to stall things with a "study" but instead to move on making changes. Maybe one of the most significant changes you could ever see would be something done INTERNALLY to make the Headquarters and Sub-District offices do a better job to keep everything up to date. Some training in legal issues would help and some teacher and administrator training to avoid allowing the conditions that create lawsuits. And another improvement might be a novel one: using some common sense, often a scarce commodity in bureaucracies, as I have noticed over the years with many governmental agencies. When somebody asks for explanations for things, there should be prompt and good ones. There should not be cases where people have to construct lies or, maybe notice at that point, that what they have is not a completely responsible situation and they should not have let it get to that condition.

A lot can be done NOW to make the District act responsively instead of being a runaway train that will either crash or take miles and miles to slow down for control to be regained.

The other story is continuing from yesterday's L.A. Times story on the court order stopping a strike- updated for May 13, 2009- "Judge prohibits L.A. teachers strike; He grants a restraining order against the walkout planned for Friday, saying it defies the United Teachers union contract." By Howard Blume May 13, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-strike13-2009may13,0,1958124.story

This strike is still something that many wanted to participate in but the law is what controls. If any complaints are to be made by UTLA members, complain to your negotiators who made up the contract. They could look into seniority as the controlling factor for layoff notices while they are at it.

You see in the story that there still was an impact from the threat of the strike, where cancellations of events and changes in schedules had to be made in anticipation of the strike happening, including a Lincoln High trip to Glendale Community College. While maybe not all people are going to college, the things like this trip being lost for that day is another waste of time in the planning and need for rescheduling. Exposure of even Community College facilities to many students is often enlightening. Many have not been exposed to what many of us now take for granted as know by all. Students don't necessarily "know all" about anything, and assuming so itself is a reason for a less-than-the-best learning environment to be presented. Such things like a strike that upset the school day have to be subordinate to what gets an educational experience accomplished for students at every opportunity.

Lots in this area- imparting personal knowledge and skill- can be helped along by persons with such personal knowledge showing many or even just a few students, those things that they otherwise would have to learn about from reading books, or from "field trips," and maybe not learning at all. There are so many people who are themselves potential resources for information that would be able to give students a richer learning experience, more easily getting students "engaged" in the process to perform better academically and at least be sure of what they do know from such mentors efforts.

The mentor approach is something that even I as a former teacher and alum of the school don't hear about as "happening." If I were a parent of an LHS student I might have that information, but even there, I am not sure that parents, in general, know much about what happens in school. I see numerous learning opportunities lost through the short-sightedness of people in administrative roles who remain confined in thought to ritualistic procedures. Some other approaches that seem to be "new" are often explored, including the "small learning academies" ("SLCs") that still don't make complete sense to me- if small is the only way to educate, then why do other districts with comparable populations have academic performance so much better without resorting to SLCs?

I will get into SLC discussions later and I don't think it's the panacea for the poor performance that many believe it to be.