For Once, The Local Media Uncovers The LAUSD Wizard

It is clear to all present that which you have pointed out. I would sarcastically compare you to Sherlock Holmes, were I the type, but suffice it to say, sir, that you are a dullard.

-Matt E.

In reporting on Racy Film Sets, KNBC found that the LAUSD is a “school system lacking oversight,” that obtaining information from the District requires “fighting for access to public records” and exceptions will be made to a policy prohibiting the disruption of “any school instructional program...in exchange for additional donations.” For readers of the Parental Engagement blog, these stories are not new. My campaign for LAUSD School Board was based on bringing accountability to the District. The Office of the General Counsel has blocked or stonewalled my attempts to gather information about the forced departure of David Binkle and Disruptive Parent Letters. Blogs about the California Charter Schools Association and Eli Broad have shown how they have been able to spread their resources, either through campaign spending or in restricted donations to the District, to take control of the LAUSD. KNBC: welcome to the party. Where have you been?

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Attempting to Obtain Information Through a Looking-Glass

Everything you know is wrong

Black is white, up is down and short is long

-Weird Al Yankovic

When I was a student, 44 was definitely larger than ten; I am sure of it. I did not fail math until I reached Calculus Three in college and in all the classes before that, 44 was the larger number. However, according to the LAUSD, this is not longer the case.

The LAUSD’s Office of the General Counsel (OGC) freely admits that they “had ten days from receipt of [my] email to determine whether [my] request, in whole or in part, asked for disclosable public records.” According to my calculations, their e-mail on September 21, notifying me that “the records you have requested are exempt from disclosure” was provided 44 days after my initial request. Still, they maintain that “there was no delay in responding to [my] request.” Common Core has sure made math confusing! Perhaps I need to show my work in order for the law to be followed.

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I want to buy a school from LAUSD

You say that is as stupid as widening the San Diego Freeway when they should have built a train transit system on it instead.

It seems that everything in LAUSD is for sale. 

School board candidates receive millions of dollars in campaign funds from out of state billionaires who have no vested interest in the school district.

Class sizes are being raised, so empty classrooms on many campuses are being given to for profit charter schools.

The reformers want LAUSD students (except for special needs ones) to move to those schools in which they and their peers have investments.

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“Golden” Granada Hills Charter High School: Scofflaws When It Comes to California Ed Code?

Per GHCHS Board Policy, all students must participate fully in California CAASPP and Granada Testing in their 9th, 10th and 11th grade year to be eligible to participate in optional activities such as senior activities, school extracurricular activities and school athletics (GHCHS Parent-Student Handbook).

-Granada Hills Charter High School


If you had your car stolen and then saw it being driven on the streets, your first call would probably be to the local police department. It would not be unreasonable for you to expect that these trained professionals would take care of the situation by confronting the driver and taking appropriate action. But what would you think if they instead told you that it was your responsibility to find out why the person was driving your car? This is essentially what the LAUSD’s Charter Schools Division (CSD) does in handling complaints.

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Eli Broad's LAUSD?

While working for two years as an accountant, Eli Broad saw his homebuilding clients making much more that he was, and he and Edythe’s cousin’s husband decided they, too, could build houses.”

-Broad Foundation

There are some who like to quietly give to charities, being careful not to draw too much attention to themselves. Eli Broad is not this type of person. In a dispute with MOCA, an organization where he had been named “Founding Chairman,” he told the trustees that he wanted his “name on the building...in big letters, which were to go on the front of the building.” He had to settle having the lobby named after him, at least until he built his very own museum. However, when he gives money, he does not just want public recognition; he wants control. Broad and his wife, Edythe, are self-described venture philanthropists who focus “their charitable giving in a new style of investing that was more akin to their business acumen.

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Is there a difference between the war on terror and the war on teachers?

Why are we in Afghanistan anyway? 

To get our soldiers killed or injured or to have the soldiers return with PTSD, no jobs awaiting them, and limited federal government support.

Why did we invade and destroy Iraq?

To make billions for the defense industry which supports legislators with campaign contributions, and to make billions for the corporations rebuilding and the private defense firms guarding Iraq. And oil power.

Why is there a war on teachers?

To have every student in public schools enter for profit charter schools and to break the power of the teachers’ unions.

Money, lots of money:

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Who Harvested the Conservative Brain?

Watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’”

-Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina seems intent on proving the adage that “a lie told often enough becomes the truth.” During the September 16, Republican debate, she gave a detailed description of a scene from the “highly edited”  videos from the Center for Medical Progress, an organization that sounds like it could be lifted straight out of an Orwellian 1984. Problematically, “the exact scene, exactly as Ms. Fiorina describes it, is not on the videos.” Politifact rated the statement as “Mostly False,” saying that while “Fiorina makes it sound as if the footage shows what Planned Parenthood is alleged to have done...stock footage was added to the video to dramatize its content.” The anti-abortion group that produced the video admits that one of those images was “of a stillborn baby that was made to look like an aborted fetus.” At best, the actual quote cited is poorly paraphrased as the transcript states “this is a really good fetus. It looks like we can procure a lot from it. We’re going to procure a brain.”

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Testing for Religion

No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

-The United States Constitution

The members of the Republican party may want the voters to believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation (or if they are feeling generous, a “Judeo-Christian nation”), but this view was not unanimously shared by the Founding Fathers. For example, the Constitution specifically prohibits a religious test for “any office or public trust.” Religious freedom was further expanded with the passage of the First Amendment, which prohibited Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion” and building what Thomas Jefferson called “a wall of separation between Church and State.” In 1797 the Senate ratified and President John Adams signed a treaty between the United States and Tripoli that stated “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded in the Christian Religion.”

 

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Character Assassination in the First Degree

 

“Pursuant to Gov. Code §6254(f), the records you have requested are exempt from disclosure.”

-LAUSD, Office of the General Counsel (OGC)

The LAUSD Inspector General’s (IG) office seemed confident in their audit of the Food Services division when they stated in their draft report “that the program is currently at a minimum being mismanaged and at worst being consistently abused.” The fact that this was a “confidential personnel matter” did not stop the District from releasing this report to the press, which then said that the Food Services Director David Binkle had been suspended with pay. Actually, like those in “Teacher Jail” Binkle was actually “re-assigned,” literally under house arrest. During work hours he was forbidden by the District to leave his house as he waited for inspectors. He reports that those inspectors never showed up to hear his side of the story. It was unclear why these investigators had not concluded their investigation before writing a report and publically dragging an honored employee’s name through the mud. In February, the IG said they expedited the audit “to be completed by early summer.” With this deadline long past, the District said on Thursday that it is still “ongoing.”

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Bilbo Billionaire invades public education at LAUSD

My name is Bilbo Billionaire and my family through three generations has continued to double our fortunes every year. No one in my family, no one in my peer group, and no one on my Board of Directors, and no one in any of their families has ever attended public schools. We have been at the top private schools all the way.

I am investing in charter schools and online schools because both are real moneymakers. I have spent millions on local school board and statewide elections on candidates who advocate charter school education. I am strongly opposed to advocates of public school education.

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