Today’s LA Times led a piece on the battle over Birmingham High School with the heading, “The outcome of a battle over reform at the Van Nuys campus might shape the future of L.A. Unified.” The mayor’s reform branch (I-Division), a magnet within the school, and a charter supported by some of the teachers are all battling it out over students ($$$) and space. I’m not going to go into the politics of it all, except to say to the teachers who are “frustrated by L.A. Unified’s daunting bureaucracy and inefficiencies” that I REALLY hear you.
BUT I do want to point out one huge problem. Yes the downtown bureaucracy sucks. But if you’re going to find cost-cutting by taking living wages away from your classified peers (the custodians, the cafeteria workers, etc.) you’re falling into the same pattern that Wall St. used under the Bush administrations: let the fat cats get fatter while they bleed the people who actually work for a living. And we all know where that got us.
Here’s what the charter advocates did:
The pro-charter group has hired a nonprofit management company, ExEd, to calculate its budget. Executive Director Anita Landecker said that Birmingham would get less than Granada but that it could operate more efficiently than the district. Using private vendors for food and janitorial services, she said, would save the school more than $500,000 annually.
How does using private vendors save so much money? Well, private vendors don’t pay living wages. They don’t pay health care. They don’t allow sick leave. They nickel and dime their workers, and then pass on the costs they don’t cover to the taxpayer.
If you haven’t seen it yet, Annie Leonard’s 20 minute Story of Stuff is a great intro to how this whole process works. Below is a teaser, and here’s a link to the entire movie.
Check it out–pass it on!
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