Would you want to be Superintendent?
Miller, Cortines, Romer, Thompson, Brewer, Anton, and Handler. Not a basketball team, but the names of the LAUSD Superintendents over the last 30 or so years.
Why so many? They tried a former governor with limited educational knowledge. They tried an admiral with almost no educational knowledge and his buyout was expensive.
Is the District truly governable? It is large and unruly stretching from Chatsworth to San Pedro, from East Los Angeles to Pacific Palisades. It takes in students from cities and county areas: Gardena, San Fernando, Carson, West Hollywood, Marina del Rey and more. At some schools parents are involved and truly act as stakeholders, yet at other schools parents are just trying to survive in this world.
Read moreWe need an Eddie Haskell clone to be LAUSD Superintendent
Eddie—Good afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, you sure are looking lovely Mrs. Cleaver.
June—Thank you Eddie.
Eddie—Are the boys home?
Ward—Yes, Eddie go on up.
Eddie—Beaver, you little twerp why are hanging around?
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Today
Eddie to the Board at a public meeting—how are you today and I hope that we have a very productive meeting.
Eddie to the Board behind closed doors—You guys are too busy raising campaign funds from charter school operators.
Read moreThey’re coming to take me away—I am a veteran teacher
Throughout the United States, veteran teachers are being targeted. Facebook has story after story about veteran teachers, many times an award winning teacher, being targeted by their school administrations.
These school administrators have received the word from on high—the downtown administrators—to get the veteran teachers to leave.
In LAUSD they are put into teacher jails. In other districts the veteran teachers receive poor reviews, the most difficult students, and all kinds of pressure from the administration--all designed to get them to quit before they receive either full or partial lifetime benefits upon retirement.
Read moreThe next LAUSD Superintendent should have:
- The public personality of a Cal Worthington;
- The pleasantness of Sheriff John singing “Laugh and Be Happy” and “The Birthday Polka” everyday;
- The media savvy of Magic Johnson who is not afraid to publicly criticize, even the Lakers;
- The truth of Bernie Sanders;
- The wanderlust of Steve Lopez in order to visit the schools and publicize the issues;
- The classroom experiences of 1,000 veteran teachers;
- The ability to say the buck stops here and to the Board that they are wrong;
- And most of all, a commitment to put the students and the schools first!
What happens when there are no veteran teachers left in LAUSD schools?
The senior teachers are being driven out, put into teachers’ jails, retiring early or changing careers because of their dissatisfaction with what public education has become; pretty soon there will only be new, inexperienced (perhaps TFA) teachers on many school sites.
Teachers will tell you that veteran teachers helped them in their early years of teaching and that they in turn helped others along the way.
As an inexperienced teacher you went to the veterans and asked:
“What do I do in this situation?”
“Did this ever happen to you?”
“A parent is……”
“One of the students is….”
And they always knew what to do!
Read moreCortines is leaving--A caring Superintendent should...
Superintendent Cortines has announced that he will leave his position in six months. When it was convenient for him, he would remind people that he had been a teacher. Years ago when he was also the Superintendent, he made a robo call to teachers and retired teachers when the district altered the health benefits and wrote the changes in a manner that confused everyone. His recorded call conveyed nastiness and a disdain for the teachers.
The new Superintendent of LAUSD should:
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