Change The LAUSD

Let’s schedule LAUSD school board meetings on more evening and weekend times, provide overflow space with a remote feed to attendees, and resolve to adopt other innovative ideas to bring parent involvement and community participation into the digital age.

Sign and share the petition to show your support!

“Out on the road today
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said
‘Don't look back, you can never look back’"

- Don Henley

When Don Henley released the song “The Boys of Summer” in 1984, I had just begun my senior year in high school and life was exciting. With a long-term girlfriend, I was exploring what it was like to be in a relationship. My unrestricted driver’s license was brand new and I could now make plans without having to rely on my mother for transportation. My band, in which I was the drummer, was taking the first steps towards turning noise into music and my school notebooks were peppered with lyrics for songs that were waiting to be written. While I planned to move on to college, I dreamed of becoming a rock star.

"The teachers of Los Angeles have authorized a strike. As you will see in this article by LA parent Carl Petersen, negotiations remain stalled.

The district claims it can’t afford to settle with its teachers. This having raised Board Member salaries by 174% and paying its new superintendent a base salary of $350,000 (supporters of former investment banker Beutner originally said he would take no salary).

One of the richest cities in the nation claims it can’t pay its teachers or provide the services children need. Yet LAUSD managed to find an extra $1 billion for John Deasy’s iPad Fiasco.

Cue the world’s smallest violin.

And this:

Read the article HERE

"Where am I going to leave her today? I have to call in sick."

- Parent of Student enrolled in a closed charter school

Imagine if the LAUSD decided that one of their schools was draining resources from the District and decided to shut it down just days into the start of the school year. Of course, this would never happen. Part of the mission of public schools is to serve all students, even if some students cost more to educate than others.

In a recent op-ed, Gloria Molina attempted to absolve the L.A. School Board of responsibility for their refusal to fund the education our students deserve. In response, I sent the following letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times. It was not published.

As the LAUSD tries to pit parents against teachers, it should be noted that the union’s proposed contract would reduce class sizes, ensure that there is a full-time nurse in every school and put full-time librarians back to our secondary schools.

The District says it would like to put “kids first” but cannot find the funds. There is no money left after spending $400 million to build (and rebuild) the Belmont Learning Complex atop a toxic site, $1 billion on the failed iPad project, $111.5 million for the botched MiSiS system and $139 million settling the Miramonte sex abuse cases.

Parents will ultimately decide who wins this fight as empty classrooms would force the District to look elsewhere in the bloated bureaucracy for the cuts needed to give students the education that they deserve. My two LAUSD students and I will be joining their teachers on the picket lines.

Donald Trump is a master of branding. He took a “small loan of a million dollars”, bought some gold spray paint and turned the Trump name into something synonymous with how poor people think rich people live. Sure, you could not afford to live in the Trump Tower where the penthouse has “over over-the-top surroundings that might make Liberace blush” and the “upper-level residential floors are not equipped with fire sprinklers”, but what about some Trump Steaks? They were best when “cooked well-done and smothered in ketchup.” If these “dreadful pieces of meat for a high price” did not kill you and you still had room left on your credit card, you could have looked for a class at Trump University on how to inherit millions from your father and turn it into six bankruptcies.

"There is currently an effort to call for a strike that pits adults versus adults when students and their families will bear the brunt of a strike action."

- LAUSD School Board

Having gladly accepted the title of “a gadfly at the school board meetings”, I have a natural tendency to be suspicious of the LAUSD’s marketing materials. This is particularly true when the document is titled with the very 1984 sounding “Just the Facts.” However, recognizing that the union’s first priority is to represent the best interests of the teachers, I realize that their contract demands are not going to automatically line up with the needs of families. With this in mind, I dove into the gap that divides the two sides. I have broken the issues down by what the District states the United Teacher Los Angeles (UTLA) claims are:

"A material revision of the provisions of a charter petition may be made only with the approval of the authority that granted the charter."

- FCMAT

Having already billed itself as the largest charter school in the country, Granada Hills Charter High School (GHCHS) has submitted a charter renewal that would change the school to one that serves Transitional Kindergarten to 12th and add 1,425 students. Unfortunately, the Governing Board that approved this charter petition does not include the type of members outlined in its current charter. In my prepared testimony for the LAUSD School Board, I pointed out that this should invalidate the charter renewal petition:

"Appointing a non-Latino candidate like Goldberg to the seat, even temporarily, ‘is definitely not in the spirit of the law. It would seem contrary to what LAUSD’s own commission did’ when it drew the district."

- Political Consultant Mike Trujillo

Speak Up is a pro-charter group that was formed in the Palisades on the west side to support Nick Melvoin’s candidacy for the LAUSD Board but was disguised as a way that “parents could join together and push for education that puts kids first.” However, the conduct of Speak Up members prior to and during Tuesday’s Board meeting was meant to cause division in a way that should never be tolerated in front of our children. In a missive released on August 20, they opposed the resolution by “Valley Republican Scott Schmerelson” (Schmerelson is not registered as a Republican) who sought to appoint former Board member Jackie Goldberg to the vacant Board District 5 seat until a special election could be held. Given Goldberg’s extensive record which would enable her to be an effective Board Member on day one, they lied to say that “she opposes school choice” when, in fact, she co-founded an organization that simply calls for “transparency, equity, and accountability” in these publicly funded schools. They then quoted a member of LAUSD’s redistricting commission to make the case that Board District 5 was a “majority-Latino seat” and that Goldberg was, therefore, unqualified because of her ethnicity.