LAUSD plays politics again, Public School Choice recommendation of Cortines ignored.

"Insiders Versus Charters at LAUSD-
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.

Teacher layoff numbers to be cut down- Cortines announces changes.

Well, tomorrow was the day that LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines was going to come back with a decision on whether the planned layoffs could be avoided. It looks like for a lot of teachers, it was. "L.A. school officials drop plan to lay off 1,900 teachers," by Howard Blume April 13, 2009, 2:06 p.m. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/lausd-teachers.html

There still will likely be a lot of teachers having to leave, and these would be the lowest on the seniority list. As a teacher, even a new teacher, I remember it was always good to have a little seniority over the next newer teacher for the occasional benefits that it conferred, like room assignments, to some extent. Keeping your job is probably the biggest and best impact for a teacher with some superior seniority over other teachers.

Now, the changes will come with the way Supt. Cortines will use some stimulus money, unless he is legally prevented from applying it as he intends. The details were still not quite available, but it looks like some shifting around will save a lot of teaching jobs. It sure will avoid a lot of chaos in the elementary school where the jobs saves are planned.

One effect that the announced change will have is to make the union and some other teachers distrust the District's pleas when they say "We don't have any alternative," or, "We don't have any choice here." Well, that's part of what you get in the situation. You just don't know when it's honestly the end of the road or if you are being made as the one to give in on your position.

We shall see more tomorrow, but there's probably a lot more teachers and parent breathing a little easier now.

LAUSD "h.s. No. 9" needs a principal; Cortines will make the "artful" selection.

The LAUSD’s “high school No. 9” that is supposed to be a jewel of the downtown skyline is really turning out to be a problem for the District. It’s a $242 million school, according to the story in today’s L.A. TIMES, “Discord builds over new downtown arts school; Only months before it is to open, it has no principal and there is disagreement about who should run it and who should go there," by Mitchell Landsberg, April 6, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/los_angeles_metro/la-me-arts-high6-2009apr06,0,1125806.story?track=rss
I mentioned this project and the growing delays and cost overruns that diverged from the original plans. [see: Part II- New High School ("H.S. #9") for Downtown Area March 26, 2009, and LAUSD Back to the Future High School, HS #9, "parent tours"? on March 7, 2009] How long was the delay? The involved architectural firm included mention of the “2007” original completion date in its own blurb, "Cool school worth waiting for; Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Los Angeles Flagship High School delayed one year," appearing in World Architecture News.com, Monday 19 Nov 2007. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=1607

So what’s the problem today? The District seems to have a problem in its search for a principal to handle this school with the specialty “arts” function. Furthermore, some of the supporters of the project are now becoming critics. The story points to an idea to turn “high school No. 9” over to charter schools for handling and the billionaire, Eli Broad, is complaining about things. Broad, I remind you, is the one who had a lot of influence in selecting this extravaganza of architecture. He was a pal of Mayor Villaraigosa in the big “Grand Avenue Project” that was planned to run from the Civic Center to Staples Center.

The idea of having a monumental design, with the school to serve as a book end on the north side of the project, was part of this whole notion of self-indulgence. The “Grand Avenue Project” is experiencing it’s own problems now. “L.A.'s upscale downtown delayed; As the economy takes a toll on plans, observers focus their concern on two mega-projects: Grand Avenue and Park Fifth,” By Cara Mia DiMassa, L.A. Times, February 25, 2008 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-downtown25feb25,0,6053516.story


The "GrandAvenue Project" has a separate history of shadiness beginning with what was presented to get it started, being a lure for the developers in the downtown area, along with tax dollars and tax concessions provided as financial aid. It’s seriously behind in getting going and a few maneuvers to shift taxpayers' money over to help pay for it still continue, but not rightfully. In short, it’s wasting tax dollars of many people for the unnecessary and fanciful ideas of a few.

Why is it that the “private” developments seem to be such a sink-hole for tax dollars? Besides that, you have a lot of politicians totally excited and supportive of these things at the beginning and they really don’t have any liability for ANYTHING when the storm clouds of financial disaster rain down upon it all. Many of these men and women have long departed the scene and moved on to other offices in the meanwhile, too.

If there were really some actual responsibility for spending decisions- any responsibility- you would see a different picture. You would have an entirely different way of handling money and we would not have all the waste and constant rewarding by contracts to the politicians’ “friends.”

In the military, when casualties come from mistakes of fellow military allies, the mistakes are called a result of “friendly fire”- not so “friendly” for the deceased and wounded. In politics they should have some name for that effect, the figurative “killing and wounding” of the taxpayers by serious and continual mishandling by politicians and the contractors who are awarded construction project contracts.

But that’s another story and right now the LAUSD has a very expensive school that Supt. Cortines has to get ready for September classes. I expect that he could get a principal there by just assigning one to the job, but there’s got to be more to it or the job would be done by now. It seems that it would be a prize assignment but then you don't know what strings are attached that may be the downfall of an appointee. If major performance improvement is expected with some rubrics set up to measure that, then maybe the risk is too great for anyone to put his or her career on the line for a constantly changing degree of support that you can't rely on- not to mention turning around the learning style that the LAUSD has typically been known for.

You can see that the charter schools, hungry for facility space, would love to wind up with a brand new school. Charters are public schools in the sense that students can attend them for free and the LAUSD does have an obligation by law to provide some space, but I don’t think anyone really had this, the second most expensive in the country, behind the Beaudry high school financial morass (“Roybal Learning Center”), as one of the available spaces. They haven’t really even tried yet to make this school work.

Another issue is the fact that they are NOT using the school for only arts-interested students. That’s something that I did not have a clear idea about earlier, but it looks like just living nearby to "high school No. 9" will qualify you for an opportunity to attend even if you don’t care about arts or music as an area for study. THAT’s the big mistake of LAUSD, no stranger to mistakes, and if they do not alter that idea, they are in for more criticism, and rightly so. As I said before, you don’t buy a Ferrari to drive it on the daily snails-pace freeway commutes everyday, and you should not have all the “state of the art” go to waste by not having the school fully used to it’s highest capacity and level happens to be.

Supt. Cortines should be better able to handle the situation than his several recent predecessors. But it should never have gotten to this condition, and it’s all because nobody is or can be held accountable, unless there’s been some crime or near-crime that’s provable. What do you think is at stake for Monica Garcia, the president of the Board if things go wrong? Not much. She's just been re-elected to the Board, but running "unopposed," that means only that no one else could finance a campaign against her, not that she is doing any kind of bang up job in solving problems. The political maching is on her side and that's her role. She's a completely political entity, as were her predecessors, and Garcia only needs to satisfy that condition for continued life politically-speaking- meaning here, that keeping her major benefactor, Mayor Villaraigosa content is of primary concern. Any benefit to students or the public would be incidental, possibly better described as "coincidental" to the job of running things harmoniously with the Mayor's preferences.

On that matter, thinking about what behavior passes in politics, we shouldn’t expect much on that basis since the bar on what's “proper” has moved progressively downward over the years- think “limbo lower, now,” here and you get an idea of how far things have come to bring us where we are now.

Outside Consultants Hit Paydirt with LAUSD- Audit findings strike a nerve with Cortines

A story today from the L.A. Daily News has brought out some information that raises more questions about LAUSD spending trends and amounts, "Big bucks for LAUSD consultants," by George B. Sánchez, Staff Writer, posted: 03/26/2009. Some costly spending by the LAUSD on outside consultants during 2006-2007 was a glaring finding. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11998276

Supertintendent Ramon Cortines was so concerned with the findings presented to him from an audit that he has somebody check it over and, according to the story, to look over "a defense of the building program by construction chief Guy Mehula." The audit was prepared by Inspector General Jerry Thornton.

While the audit was completed late last month, Cortines said it contained
"unsubstantiated" findings and asked Thornton and Mehula to work out their
differences.

"I am on top of this," Cortines said. "I have concerns with the report and its content."
School board members are only now getting copies of the audit, which Cortines said he would explain to them on Tuesday.

The inspector general, the district's internal watchdog, said he would not release the report to the media until late next week.

Check the rest of the story and see what else you might consider as the union has, that might affect the extent of the teacher layoffs. The construction has been going on for years and at the same time, District's schools have seen enrollment continue to decline each year, making you wonder about the entire scheme of things and how this makes sense. It mght be that the spending is being done as quickly as possible just to do it before somebody sees this conflict in logic and reels all these characters in.

District officials defend the practice, saying consultant contracts ebb and
flow with the various stages of construction and have said district wages don't
measure up to industry standards.

They add that special consultants are particularly needed to efficiently
carry out the nearly $20 billion school construction program.

One of the things I found from the teacher training by the District a few years back, was that there were "consultants" who were formerly LAUSD employees and then went private with their skills, being able to earn a better income. That personnel transition was something that was applicable to those providing services related to the pupils, but as for this audit and whether it applies exclusively to the construction of buildings is not known to me.

UTLA President AJ Duffy has not seen the report but is duly concerned and offers no "benefit of the doubt" meanwhile to the District, instead suspecting more poor handling of finances to the detriment of the teachers.

There looks to be more to come from Superintendent Cortines very soon and we will see how the Board members handle it. If there is any action to be done, I hope we don't have to sit through a whole lot of verbage and jargon before the get to the answer and if there something wrong, it would be a refreshing change to see somebody admit it, and not go into "cover up" mode.