Another brilliant idea from the LAUSD bureaucrats downtown. Three years ago they spent hundreds of millions of dollars installing classroom ac units with thermostats programmable only downtown (remember all those bond measures you’re still paying for?). This summer we’ve returned to our classrooms to find that they’ve reprogrammed the thermostats so that the ac units [...]
Posts under ‘Technology’
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 [...]
Cuts Hurt Kids!
Yesterday Cuts Hurt Kids emailed asking for support. Here’s what they said about themselves:
The concept behind CutsHurtKids.org is a simple one: help bring unity among the grassroots resisters to budget cuts.
1. See what’s happening at other schools, and
2. if people know of an action to be added, they can submit links of online info/videos/pictures & [...]
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 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 [...]
Thanksgiving Tales
The #1 most emailed article at the LA Times today concerns a controversy over kindergarteners from one Claremont elementary school dressing up as Native Americans and trekking over to visit kids at another Claremont elementary who would dress as Pilgrims. Apparently, a mom/Seneca/professor of Native American literature, along with some friends and colleagues who also [...]
Oh I Wish I Were in Washington D.C.!
What a difference a day makes!
Today’s New York Times online included a story on Michelle Rhee, the controversial year-long superintendent for the troubled D.C. school system. She’s one of the many Ivy Leaguers who used a few years of teaching in urban schools via Teach For America to springboard into the forefront of educational policy [...]
