This last week two incidents highlighted the district and its administrators’ disregard of freedom of speech.
First, 15 8th graders at Liechty Middle School were denied their diplomas when they turned their backs on their graduation keynote speaker, LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia. They were protesting increased class size and teacher layoffs. As they demonstrate in [...]
Posts under ‘Middle School’
LAUSD’s Inner Nazi
Funny Things About Federal Funds
In today’s LA Times Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and Steve Zimmer, board member-elect of the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, called on teachers to take a pay cut to save the district $45 million.
In response I offer the following federal stimulus and bailout headlines:
Stimulus [...]
Teachers & Money
There’s a lot of talk out there to link individual teacher pay to test scores. While I’d be thrilled to get a pay raise (and in an earlier post, I shouted, ‘Bring it on!’), here’s why I don’t think this is a good idea.
First all the usual reasons: teachers will teach to the test and [...]
Mar Vista Moms
Here’s another grassroots campaign that came to my attention. A group of moms in Mar Vista have banded together to create video to promote the changes taking place at Webster Middle School. Mar Vista Moms @ Webster Middle School
What a great way to let people visit a school!
Share on Facebook
Cracked, Broken, and Mute: How LAUSD Wastes Money
Yesterday’s LA Times reported the following from our globe-trotting, glad-handing, tv-anchor-bopping mayor (this isn’t TMZ but, btw, who was that cute lady beside him gazing adoringly at him on yesterday’s news reports?):
At Liechty, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa led a forum Monday with teachers and parents, stressing the need for “shared sacrifice” and “creative solutions” to save [...]
Pink Slips Continued
OK, so maybe it’s not the clearest data on Planet Earth, but it’s what arrived in my mailbox today. Basically, it says the union is asking for a 95:5 teacher: administrator ratio.
That would mean 30,057 teachers and 1024.18 administrators in the union’s ideal world.
The latest district proposal is 30,057 teachers: 1582 administrators (rounding so we [...]
Buy-Bye Brewer III
Less than a week and it’s done. Man overboard! But not the way the LA Times hoped for. Here are the parting words of the Admiral:
Therefore, I have decided to do what I think is in the best interest of the children, to put all of our students first. Although my two years of service [...]
Buy-bye Brewer II
In today’s LA Times, Steve Lopez, who’s awesome at pitbulling (aka tattling out) public officials to make them accountable, wrote a great column describing eating with Brewer at–where else?!–the Pacific Dining Car.
$16.95 crab cake appetizers and $28.95 salads later, he requested the Superintendent’s expense accounts. Here’s what happened:
When the documents arrived, much of the information [...]
Buy-bye Brewer?
All week LA’s newsmedia have been buzzing excitedly about the possibility that flailing David Brewer might be forced out or bought out or somehow thrown overboard the leaky ship that is LAUSD. The LA Times (which, not so by the way, has rolled its education blog, The Homeroom, into a new blog that covers not [...]
The Obama Girls Go To Washington
In the first place I can’t believe I’m writing about this. When hundreds of kids are dying of gunshot wounds in urban school districts like Los Angeles each year, when migrant workers’ children are unable to get educations, not to mention the 90+ million children around the world who who don’t even get to go [...]
