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A Bailout for LAUSD?

Happy New Year!

Over the three week holiday vacation, I moved and was without internet access for a couple of weeks. The first e-mail that came through once I was back online was from our new superintendent. I try to avoid being political in my blog but turmoil is happening throughout my district. I think I have a duty to report the facts.

1. About two years ago, the district hired a new superintendent, a retired Navy admiral with no education experience, to lead Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the largest school districts in the country.

2. About a month ago, the district fired the Navy admiral due to his lack of educational experience and inability to get things done.

3. While declaring that he “would always be [there] for their children of Los Angeles,” the fired Admiral demanded to personally be paid $500,000 plus expenses in order to leave his post at the district which is now facing bankruptcy.

4. Due to the state’s budget crisis, which is worse now than the one that faced California before the Terminator replaced an impeached Gray Davis five years ago, money is being taken from school budgets.

5. Our new superintendent is calling for mid-year cuts including letting about 2,300 probationary teachers go immediately with the required two weeks notice. (These teachers would also need to pay back money they’ve already been pre-paid for the coming school months). These cuts would save only a fraction of the $250 million dollar shortfall.

6. Literacy coaches, like myself, would be placed in classrooms immediately.

7. Our teachers’ union is calling for no cuts at all and is threatening job actions to fight the cuts.

8. Neither the district nor the union wants to trim the school year by a week which would save the entire amount of the $250 million that the district needs to cut.

I believe that no one wants to make cuts, particularly cuts to personnel, but it’s clear that cuts need to be made somewhere unless the state’s budget improves. Unfortunately, cuts to personnel and/or class size increases when done mid-year would be extremely disruptive, one might say chaotic, in terms of the shuffling of students and teachers.  I doubt whether this is a task that our district can handle purely as a matter of logistics.  None of our union contracts are even adequate to address the wide-spread shuffling and domino effect that might occur.

Even though my fiancé and I are both teachers in the same district and would be hit doubly hard by cuts to the school year.  I personally would rather see our year slightly shortened than see teachers lose their jobs.

Naturally, I suppose it’s too much to ask that someone bailout our failing school district.

For more info:  L.A. Times

8 thoughts on “A Bailout for LAUSD?”

  1. *GRG*GRAG*GARG* To prevent myself from becoming particularly violently angry toward A) LAUSD B) Arnold C) Dr. David from the district who came to waste an hour of our P.D. time yesterday going over “our” assessment statistics (turned out to be another school’s statistics) in order to justify his bloated paycheck and his “required” position….I think some anger leaked out nonetheless…Look, at this point, I’d appreciate the 5 days of “vacation” as a chunk at the end of the school year, extend my summer a bit, and I’ll be happy with that…

  2. Very nice recap of Lausd’s horrible situation, Funny (not really) how little teachers are valued not only in Lausd, but in California in general. Parents don’t seem to realize how much we are holding up the fibre of society…once many of our new, vibrant colleagues are released from duty, we will all have more students, and be totally unable to do the excellent work that smaller ratios was starting to show in test scores. Teachers cannot afford to strike, and most are too invested in their students to have much energy to fight back politically. Let’s hope for a miracle so no TEACHER GETS LEFT BEHIND,

    Matthew – best wishes in your marriage, and in the District!!

  3. Kia ora Mathew

    I sympathise with a 2009 disaster, both to the teachers and the students, in your district. It’s always difficult to point the finger when it comes to budget cuts. I wonder if all the options have been looked at, though.

    Some companies I’ve heard about, who are in financial difficulty, have given employees an option of so many weeks unpaid leave, thereby preserving their ‘positions’ and providing an income, while at the same time dealing with a budgetary problem. Doing this in schools in a district may provide some sense of continuity and permit other avenues to be looked at in time.

    Frankly, the people who are to suffer the most will be the students. And it is likely to precipitate a situation difficult to resolve in the far future when budget difficulties may have eased. Teachers who lose their jobs, and can’t find other teaching jobs in a district, rarely come back to teach in that district for they often find other occupations.

    I hope your district authorities see some sense, and look at the long term effects of mass layoffs.

    Catchya later
    from Middle-earth

  4. I hope that your district can find a resolution to the situation, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. My district let go of teachers, it turned out to be about 350, and there is still a deficit and now a need to hire about 200 teachers. In my humble opinion, there needs to be a severe overhaul of the financing and accountability systems, but I unfortunately have no suggestions.

  5. I agree that cutting short the school year is preferable to letting go the newest and most energized teachers who are also the teachers of tomorrow. The population of our students has not been cut because of the budget so we need to retain the same number of teachers. They won’t come back when the crisis is over. They will have found new careers in other states. Keep the talent of our new teachers. Talent has no price and cannot be replaced easily.

  6. Everything I have heard says the school year will not be shortened. Other cuts will be made first. Fresno Unified has a huge surplus of money (that’s what happens when you don’t update facilities) and will be able to weather two years without teacher cuts. Of course, I believe that means not replacing all of the retiring teachers which will be a large number this year.

  7. I am also sad at the dismantling of our schools. We have the future in our hands and our state, and others, will see the results in 5-10 years. it will not be pretty. With that, I am reviewing the instructional program and wish to locate a large book i sued to have when I taught in LA unified – the X100. it was years ahead of its time! So were the SES assessments we gave. I’d like to go back to that just a bit. It helped when I had 34 students. Anyone have one they wish to part with?

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