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Los
Angeles School Bureaucrats Take Advantage of Hard Times
May
11, 2010
By Jon Coupal
In a state hard hit by recession, the Los Angeles area
is even worse off than most. Its abysmal unemployment rate is over 13%. No one around here says they have enough money, except the divorcing owners
of the Dodgers, Frank and Jamie McCourt, and each says that about the other, not about themselves.
So perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the Los Angeles Unified School District is once again approaching voters with strains of sad violin music in the background
and tin cup in hand. This might elicit pity if the District
had not already hit up taxpayers for five bond measures over thirteen years to pay for a mammoth $20 billion building program that has proceeded even
though school enrollment has been declining for nearly a decade. Many Los Angeles homeowners are paying hundreds upon hundreds of dollars each year for new classrooms for which, in the end,
there may be no students.
Now, the LAUSD bureaucracy says their situation is so dire that if they
do not receive a taxpayer-funded cash bailout in the form of another increase in property taxes, they may be
forced to lay off teachers. It is obvious why they threaten teachers. If they threatened to lay off part of the
massive LAUSD bureaucracy, voters would not only vote "no" on the Measure E tax increase, they would vote "Hell no!"
The president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, A.J. Duffy, got it right when he told the Daily
News last year, "This district has lived high on its hog for
10 to 12 years, while continuing to raise administrative and supervisory personnel even while student
populations were going down," Duffy said. "Now it's coming back to harm them."
For some, a teachers
union president -- in the state that has the second highest paid educators in the nation -- may lack credibility on fiscal
issues. But it cannot be denied that in a dispute over resources, the teachers hold the moral high
ground. It is they on whom we depend to instruct our children.
So in a school district that
has a budget larger than many states, where does the money go? While pleading poverty, the District would have the public
believe that it spends about $10,000 per child, but before anyone is tempted to approve another tax for
Los Angeles Schools, or any
other school district for that matter, they would do well to examine the newly released study by the Cato Institute
(www.cato.org). The report titled, “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public School,” shows the actual
amount spent by the LAUSD is over $25,000 per pupil!
Why the huge difference between what we hear
and what the District actually spends? It’s because, like many school districts, the LAUSD excludes whole categories
of expenditures that are necessary for schools to function, such as capital costs, debt service, and employee benefits.
It’s clear; taxpayers are already extremely generous, especially
considering how much most are struggling. Voters would be wise to tell the District bureaucrats to shape up and do a
better job of managing the billions of dollars they are already provided, at great sacrifice, by taxpayers.
Jon Coupal
is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association – California's largest grass-roots taxpayer organization
dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers' rights.
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| LAUSD has usurp state a federal law....NO JUSTICE |
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| DON'T JUST DO NOTHING.......HELP YOUR TEACHERS |
LAUSD & UTLA DARK SECRET OF TEACHER'S JAIL
In 2011, this could happen to your mother, your father, your sister, your aunt, your uncle or any other family member
without due process. According to the rules of LAUSD when you are accused of an incident while in the capacity of a permanent
Teacher, they have the right to place the Teacher in reassignment while they investigate the claim of whatever offense. For
some of the most obscure reasons, Teachers are taken out of their classroom and placed in a predisposed room at the District's
Office to simply sit for hours, days or even years while their classroom is taken over by an interim Teacher or
a Substitute, who by all likelihood is younger or of the same ethnicity of the students, which could bring to light the
colonization of LAUSD schools by continued deceit.
According to the Teachers in "Teacher's Jail" they are guilty until proven innocent. Some Teachers are returned
back to the classroom after the District could not find any evidence to prove the accusation or on the other
hand LAUSD could not successfully fabricate so called evidence to try and make the Teacher quit or retire.
UTLA'S DEFENSE FOR THESE TEACHERS
UTLA has none. This was not a priority of A. J. Duffy. This was revealed me as a first year Teacher that Duffy played for
both sides. Duffy had higher ambitions than helping Teachers who have paid thousand of dollars into their union.
UTLA would spend thousand of dollars to help elect a political candidate who does nothing for them, rather than have the best
legal team on premise to file injunctions against LAUSD violating the Teacher's civil rights. They could have the Department
of Justice to step in and stop LAUSD from being a law enforcment agency when they have no cause to remove a Teacher in
the first place. If they did, then the Teacher would have been arrested. California Teacher's Union is no better, really they
are worse than UTLA and it's efforts on behalf of the Teacher.
There are too many students who falsely accuse Teachers of
improprieties, even
students with the worse of behavioral records. Yet on the word of one student, seasoned Teacher's livelihood and career are
jeopardized.
May 2, 2011 KCBS - Channel 2 did an investigation
on this enormous problem, which UTLA has refused to defend, unlike the United Federated Teacher's Union who worked with the
Mayor of New York and Joel Klein - Schools Chancellor to eliminate temporary reassignment centers or teacher's jails, which
is a beginning. However, this does not put into place a protocol to protect the Teacher's civil rights. In numerous cases,
Law Enforcement cleared the teacher of any wrong doings, but LAUSD continue with tainting the teacher's reputation.
These actions should have been blocked long time ago by UTLA lawyers. Let's see what the new UTLA President,
Warren Fletcher will do to protect the civil rights of their Teacher Members. http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/05/02/accused-lausd-teachers-paid-to-sit-idly/
A.J. Duffy starts his own Charter School, which is in contradiction of what he was fighting for all his years as UTLA
President. Duffy flips sides now that he's no longer UTLA President. See LA Times article on Substance News Website
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2558
THE JOB MARKET IN CALIFORNIA (WHO'S
WORKING ON THEM?)
There are plenty of contruction jobs in around the Los Angeles Area. Resources inform me that few are residents of California
and even fewer are African American. Who should we look to for this short fall? The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, Los
Angeles Unified School District and the State Legislators in Sacremento.
MTA is scheduled to build a Light Rail down Crenshaw Blvd. It's noted that there will be 7,000 jobs. My interest is who
will be hired for those jobs? How many jobs are guaranteed for the residents of the 47th AD? Is being an American Citizen
a requirement? How will MTA invest in the 47th District Urban Design Concepts? This is an area where the community has an
input of what happens, before MTA overrun the area. I attended a meeting at the Ascension Luthern Church
on West Blvd for the purpose of hearing MTA's ideas and why they can't build an underground subway, but rather
a ground level rail. Of course, the excuse is always that the ground is too loose. Of course the attendees were not given
an environmental impact report. Of course the attendees were not told that there was an independent study conducted. However,
in more exclusive areas MTA finds the way to strengthen the ground to build underground subways.
This meeting as well as the next MTA meeting is to permit the residents of the Crenshaw Blvd. Area to give their
input on landscape and urban design for the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor. The next meeting is June 30, 2010
at 6 pm to 8 pm at the Lula Washington Dance Theater.
Questions regarding this Light Metro Rail are to be asked of District 2, Board
of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas at (213) 974-2222 or email: markridley-thomas@bos.lacounty.gov , who sits on the Board of Directors for MTA.
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