All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall” – Roger Waters The Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) School Experience Survey is an opportunity for parents and guardians to grade the District’s performance. Included in this questionnaire are important statements such as “Reports of bullying are taken seriously at this school” and “This […]
LAUSD Increases Salary Offer, Teachers Hold Out for Students
Salary: 6% on-schedule raise, including 3% retroactive for 2017-18, plus 3% raise for 2018-19” – LAUSD The LAUSD has already signed contracts with their other major unions that “included raises totaling about 6%.” It was, therefore, unclear why the District’s initial offer to the teachers was to only raise their salaries by 2%. This seemed […]
Unanswered Questions in the Race for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction
We are largely unable to accept new offers to complete questionnaires” – Marshall Tuck Campaign The California Charter School Association and their allies have provided Marshall Tuck with enough cash to flood the airwaves with misleading ads, but with less than a week to go before the election, a whopping 16% of the electorate are […]
Prop 13 and California’s Education Failures
A budget should reflect the values and priorities of our nation and its people.” – Mary Landrieu In California State Superintendent of Education candidate Marshall Tuck’s TV advertisement, he points out that California is 44th in achieving education results. What he leaves unsaid is that this performance parallels our state’s lack of funding for our […]
Six Ways to Boost Parent Attendance at LAUSD School Board Meetings — Support This Resolution!
Thanks to the Brown Act, by law, public meetings of school boards in the state of California are made accessible to the public for attendance and comment. But almost two-thirds of parents in two parent households work outside the home, as do about the same numbers of single-parent families. Meetings held during daytime working hours […]
Will Students Drown in a Charter School’s Ocean of Debt?
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. […]
How Can a Charter School Renew or Expand Without a Legitimate Governing Board?
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 […]
The Charter School Industry Puts Bigotry Front and Center
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 […]
Is This What Democracy Looks Like in the LAUSD?
This is a very surreptitious way of doing business whereby you’re trying to hide…something perhaps you don’t want us to know.“ – Roberto Fonseca, LAUSD Parent LAUSD Board members elected with the support of the charter industry held a majority for a little over a year before Ref Rodriguez was forced to resign after committing […]
A Charter School Regulator Plays the Blame Game
It is the responsibility of the school to follow the law and its authorizer to ensure this is done to the extent possible.“ – Debra Duardo, Superintendent Los Angeles County Office of Education Last November, the LAUSD rejected the North Valley Military Institute’s (NVMI) charter renewal. As allowed by California law, the school appealed the […]