We are sending you this E-mail as you have requested to be notified concerning LAUSD Breakup
The Next meeting of the Valley VOTE Executive Board will be Monday 6-19-00, The Executive Session of the meeting will be from 6:45pm to 7:25prn The Regular meeting is open to the public and will begin at 7:30pm
The meeting will be held at Galpin Motors, Click here for map 15555 Roscoe Blvd in the 2nd floor conference room in the Explorer Showroom Building
Now on our LAUSD Website
By Jill Stewart
While everybody was ruminating all week over whether new School Superintendent Roy Romer is or is not a panderer to the unions, and whether O.J. Simpson is or is not the most vile thing on the nightly news in recent memory, and whether the gaseous Bill Gates deserves what he gets, we dwellers of the San Fernando Valley were busy going into a slow boil on another subject entirely.
See, last week, after spending two years to gather 21,000 voter signatures, the Valley-based school district breakup group known as Finally Restoring Excellence in Education (FREE) finally got its chance to be heard before a special and powerful countywide panel known as the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization.
The special panel is made up of 11 school board members who come from school systems all over Los Angeles County. Before last week, it was widely believed that the special panel -- dominated by politically ambitious school board members who actually ran for the positions on the panel -- was giving serious consideration to FREE's plan for breaking away the Valley schools from the Los Angeles Unified School District.
FREE has a very reasonable plan, not unlike the Valley secession movement itself, to ask the voters to decide whether the behemoth 710,000-student district should be broken up, formulating two Valley school districts -- one to the north and one to the south -- separated roughly along Roscoe Boulevard and Saticoy Street.
If the countywide Committee had approved the breakaway effort, that recommendation would have been forwarded to the state Board of Education. Approval by the special countywide panel, noted FREE Cochairwoman Stephanie Carter, "would really be something the state Board of Education could not ignore."
That's because, in the arcane business of breaking up the second-largest school district in America, it is the state Board of Education that decides whether the question of letting the Valley form its own two districts should be placed on the ballot or whether the whole breakup movement should simply be told to go away and shut up.
The state Board of Education would really, really rather not have to put such a touchy question on the ballot without some political backing from somebody other than Valley breakup advocates.
But instead, last week's absurd non-decision by the countywide committee was a classic example of the high art of dithering. With major media and major political leaders paying attention to the unknown Committee for the first time in anybody's memory, the panel voted 5-5 on whether to recommend that the state Board of Education put the Valley school breakup question on our ballots.
They voted 5-5 on a question about a question. Boy, that is really telling it like it is. The state Board of Education was "hoping for a clear decision by those supposed panelists," one state Board of Education honcho tells me, lamenting over the split vote. "God, can't Los Angeles do anything right?"
The news headline last week in the Los Angeles Times, whose editorial board opposes any breakup, was "Panel Rejects Bid to Break Up LAUSD." The headline in the Daily News, whose editorial board supports secession and the schools breakup, was "Panel deadlocks on FREE's plan."
The Daily News was the more accurate. But the truth is, the media was deeply confused because the special panel completely failed to do its job of making a recommendation to the state Board of Education.
FREE will not get another chance to argue its case to the countywide committee, and that's what has the Valleyites steaming. After years of breaking their butts to kick-start the breakup of L.A. Mummified, FREE's appearance before the countywide panel boiled down to a one-shot, one-chance deal.
Valleyites are rightfully peeved that the panelist who would have been the tiebreaker did not show up to cast her vote or to hear the five hours of testimony that preceded the vote. That panelist, Brenda Gottfried, wasn't calling reporters back this week, even though some of us were trying hard to understand why she did not attend what was probably the only newsworthy vote of her political career.
Gottfried cited "personal problems," but that didn't stop the speculators from assigning all sorts of exotic and underhanded explanations for her absence. It is possible that Gottfried had a perfectly good excuse for failing to attend and cast her vote. Or it could be that Gottfried, who sits on the school board of the small and in some ways elitist Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, is one of those Westsiders who thinks the 1.3 million people living in the Valley are just damn lucky to be attached to L.A. (Like my friend Amy Alkon, who has in the past looked me right in the eye and said things such as: "He's a loser, like everybody who lives out in the Valley.")
Gottfried is clearly a political climber, having attempted and failed to win election to a Valley seat in the state Legislature. Now, as she sneaks about the city trying to avoid questions, the media will simply fill in the blanks with answers of their own. Would Gottfried have sided with her moronic colleagues on the panel who do not want the public to vote on the idea of breaking off the Valley into its own school districts, largely because the leaders of United Teachers of Los Angeles don't want to have to bargain with more than one school board?
The biggest buffoons on the panel last week, including union-controlled panelists John Nunez and Rachel Chavez, harped that Los Angeles Mummified couldn't afford to lose the Valley, because then the district's count of white students would drop from 11 percent to 6 percent. (Dear God, wouldn't that unbearable loss just ruin our fabulous schools and stunning test scores?) And would Gottfried have also bought the nonsensical arguments of suburban panel members such as South Bay community planner Frank Bostrom, who bemoaned the prospective loss of "desegregation" funding from the federal government -- in a virtually all-minority school district where there's been nobody left to desegregate with for years and years?
Or, miracle of miracles, would Gottfried have joined the thinking and breathing five panelists who voted to give FREE its first major victory? Gottfried cheated the public out of knowing her position and cheated the 1.3 million residents of the Valley out of her tiebreaker vote.
"It's not surprising to see a public official fail to show for a vote that is key for the Valley," commented Valley VOTE leader Jeff Brain, who is fighting to put the question of Valleywide secession from the city of Los Angeles on the ballot. Says Brain: "There's a real belief that important things only happen on the other side of the hill."
Paula Boland, the former state assemblywoman who has been a leader of FREE from the beginning, says: "For Gottfried, who wanted to represent the Valley in elected office, not to attend the hearing and be a voice for the Valley is just ludicrous to me."
Nevertheless, Boland believes the state Board of Education will reject the county panel's contention that the proposed Valley districts would not be financially viable because of the county's claim that desegregation money and other funding would be lost. "The county vote was clearly a political one motivated by their relationship with the unions, which oppose the breakup," says Boland. "The state board is a group of independent thinkers who will vote based upon merit."
Despite the antics of Gottfried, Bostrom, and others, the breakup movement will not be squelched by a pissant panel of bureaucrats whose members live in pissant communities and yet dare to insist that we in the sprawling and urbanized Valley learn to live with our unpalatable status quo.
As everybody in this big city known as the Valley has already figured out, the status quo has got to go.
©2000 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved
It didn't take long. After only three days on the job, new Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Roy Romer was greeted with bad news. He'd better get used to it. The LAUSD produces lots of bad news.
And as Romer no doubt learned upon seeing the state Department of Education's latest report on dropout rates, it doesn't produce very many high-school graduates.
The dropout rate for LAUSD students has jumped from 18.6 percent in 1997-98 to 21.8 percent in 1998-89. That's nearly twice the statewide average of 11.1 percent, a number that fell slightly even as L.A.'s got worse.
LAUSD officials warn that those figures aren't precise because state education officials -- who never want the public to know just how bad the state's schools have deteriorated -- have done nothing to track whether students have moved and enrolled elsewhere or truly dropped out. The ignorance of the education establishment keeps it in bliss. But inexact as they may be, the dropout rates are damning nonetheless.
Graduation rates -- which are based not on the actions of specific students, but on how much a single class shrinks between freshman and senior year -- provide a more accurate but no less disturbing measure of the LAUSD's performance. The 1998-99 graduation rate for LAUSD schools was 52 percent -- a one-point drop from the previous year.
As usual, LAUSD officials are quick to pass the blame for their failure, citing higher academic standards, overcrowding and too few counselors as the cause for the dropout epidemic.
Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, the group supporting Valley secession from the LAUSD, offers a different analysis. FREE charges that kids are bailing out of LAUSD schools because the educational monstrosity is too big and too bureaucratic to provide them a worthwhile education.
The numbers support FREE's case. Whereas 21.8 percent of LAUSD high school students drop out before graduation, the rates are much lower at several of the smaller suburban districts around the San Fernando Valley:
Burbank -- 3.5 percent
Glendale -- 5.2 percent
Ventura -- 7.4 percent
Conejo Valley -- 7.6 percent
Simi Valley -- 8.2 percent
All these fall significantly below the statewide 11.1 percent average. And Santa Clarita, despite massive overcrowding, enjoys an impressively low dropout rate of 1.6 percent.
Still, Romer opposes dissolving the LAUSD. "I'm not for breaking it up -- I'm for making it work," he says. If the district doesn't start generating some good news under his leadership -- and more diplomas -- he might not have a choice but to join the movement to break up the district into manageable pieces.
Grab the Ritalin, the LAUSD has suffered a severe attack of attention deficit disorder.
Like a hyperactive and distracted child, outgoing interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines impulsively blurted out that the district should seek a multimillion-dollar bond measure to build schools to ease overcrowding. Hello-oo?
The district that immediately betrayed voters on the $2.4 billion Proposition BB (Bottomless Boondoggle) bond passed just three years ago desperately needs to betray the public again?
Give the public a break -- and some credit. Voters aren't going to approve another cent for the district until it solves some problems.
And money isn't the problem. The district has $1.2 billion available in construction money and that amount could swell when state and other funds are counted. Leadership has been and remains the problem.
The district is paralyzed from the neck up. It's been a year since the reform board took control, and the nation's second-largest school district -- facing a shortage of at least 150 schools -- has yet to secure one good site, turn one shovel of dirt or complete even a construction plan that makes sense and has board approval and community support.
Like a child that can't finish his work, the district has floated a million ideas on easing overcrowding but can't decide on one. Belmont, South Gate, Jefferson Middle School -- all are toxic nightmares this board inherited because former district officials bungled and corrupted every project they handled.
Six months ago, LAUSD Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller floated a school conversion plan for turning middle schools into high schools and concentrate on building elementary schools that require less land. It proved unworkable and no serious plans have been floated since.
The board voted to abandon the Belmont Learning Center catastrophe in January and has floated numerous alternatives without deciding anything.
In the meantime, the district can't even figure out where it needs to build schools, what size they should be, whether it needs high schools more desperately than middle schools, or how to share buildings. It flits from expensive site to expensive site, from the Robinsons-May headquarters in North Hollywood to the old Ambassador Hotel site and can't convert a single property for use. The district still hasn't accounted for the vast nonschool landholdings it has and whether they could be used for schools.
It alienates potential business partners, rankles the neighborhoods it needs for support, fails on its promise to bring the public in on discussions and mishandles every potential opportunity. And that's just for starters.
Since passage of the Betrayal Bond, the district has thrown away nearly 20 percent on management of school repair contracts. That's $74 million wasted on mismanagement since so many projects were botched; $74 million that didn't go to paint schools, repair playgrounds, install air conditioners, fix potholes or repair bathrooms.
In three years, $386 million has been spent on school repairs from the bond issue, according to an internal audit released in December. Where's the rest of the bond money? The latest plan is to put overcrowded schools in the East Valley at the bottom of the list for new construction, a proposal made with the full knowledge that money will run out before the needs of this community are addressed.
We could go on with a litany of broken promises, lies, mismanagement, malfeasance -- most of which was due to the previous board and ousted administrators.
But the bottom line is this: voters could pass 1,000 more bond measures, and the district still couldn't figure out how to use it to build schools. Cortines is right about one thing. It's a desperate situation. But not because the district with a $7.3 billion budget is out of money. The problems are too deep, time is too short, credibility too low and parents want their kids to get a good education now.
It's hard to imagine how holding a dying man's head under water is going to save him, but United Teachers Los Angeles is taking that tact in contract talks with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Maybe the UTLA has been watching too many episodes of the fictional mob hit, "The Sopranos." At least on TV, mob boss Tony Soprano knows who his enemies are.
In real life, the teachers union acts like it has an enemies list a mile long -- kids, parents, new board members, the new administration, taxpayers. It hates everyone, and everyone's going to pay more.
We can just imagine an episode of negotiating talks at UTLA headquarters. If it weren't for those stupid little poor kids who refuse to learn, teachers would be sitting pretty. But those stupid little brats and their illiterate parents who never finished school themselves are making teachers look bad.
And how about those stupid principals who never provide leadership? If it weren't for them, teachers could run the schools with absolute authority and write peer reviews for all their friends and everyone would make exactly the same wage, and life would be wonderful.
And how about those stupid new board members who think they're going to solve all the district's problems by making those stupid administrators come back to class? We'll show them. We'll walk before we let the board call the shots.
And who does that Ramon Cortines think he is, talking big and offering to pay teachers at low-performing schools who steadily improve their test scores up to $5,000 extra? His days are numbered. The UTLA's tough-guy act played well a decade ago when it controlled the board, had the superintendent in its back pocket and could count on the public to be dumbed-down enough not to care.
But L.A. isn't the same town it was in 1989, the last time the union threatened to strike. The LAUSD is near the end of its life as the nation's second-largest -- and worst-managed -- school district. A reform board is trying to solve a lot of problems all at once. Schools are horribly overcrowded and the district must build up to 200 new schools, and it has yet to successfully complete one. A reorganization plan is on the table, as is a serious move to break up the district.
And with all of that, the union now is acting like a mob boss, throwing down a ridiculous demand for a 21 percent cumulative pay raise without putting anything on the table in return, like constructively putting forward its own plan of improving student performance. Instead, the union wants to kill off principals and put teachers in charge of everything, including doing performance reviews of other teachers.
The union is acting like its members are assembly-line workers turning out widgets instead of professionals working with children who accept responsibility and appreciate higher pay for stellar work. Well, OK. If 43,000 teachers think they can get a better deal with district breakup, then perhaps that is the best way to go.
On the job line, the good teachers will be scooped up for a higher salary and the bad teachers will be looking for different careers. But maybe we're misreading the UTLA. Maybe the union secretly supports breakup and believes this is the best, fastest solution to achieving it.
If that's the case, we salute UTLA President Day Higuchi. He's making Tony Soprano look like a wimp.
Here in Los Angeles, we are paying teachers to educate our children, and a lot of them are not doing this, so now we are talking about giving bonuses to the good teachers. What kind of people do we have running our school system?
Let's get down to what needs to be done. We should get rid of the teachers who don't teach and keep the ones who do. All teachers should be rated on how well their students do on final exams at the end of the year. That shows how well the students were taught.
If I were negotiating a contract with the teachers union, I would never sign until I was given the right to fire incompetent teachers. This would be a good start to fixing the system. -- Stan Niedwicki, Woodland Hills
