LASPD – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Split Decision on Board Elections Reverses School Board Alignment – EdX News from Election 2020

Seventeen hours from the close of polls in LA County (LAC) leaves a mixed set of results – from polar opposite wins, to hopeful-anticipation.

While 100% of LAC’s precincts have reported partial results, VBM (Vote By Mail) ballots continue to be delivered to ballot counting facilities statewide, including LAC’s Norwalk, where the count is on-going. Updates to LAC counts will not come before the close of day and starting next week, only twice per week.

When registration for delivery of VBM ballots closed last month, 5,709,853 were registered to vote in LAC. Registrations at Vote Centers since that time, including right up through the close of election day, remain unreported.

Outflanking CTA From The Left: How Anti-Racist Demands Are Captured By Privateers

The death of George Floyd in custody of the Minneapolis City Police has roiled our nation. There can be no tolerance of murder, which is all the more abominable at the hands of authority. As citizens everywhere rise – and continue to rise – to protest injustice, and we collectively contemplate systemic and institutional racism, prejudice and bias, our school community reflects these politics and the raising of consciousness in microcosm.

On the last day of its fiscal year, the nation’s largest school district with a democratically elected school board (LAUSD BOE) voted to decimate its school police department (LASPD).

This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD

If we thought the 2018-2019 school year was a weird one, we had no idea what this past school year would have in store. It started out normal, and then the virus hit, and two months later people were in the streets asking for the school police to be disbanded.

But the school year is finally over, with classes not scheduled to start again until August 18. In the meantime, Summer school will start next week, The Grab & Go program will continue through the summer, and parents are being asked to take this survey with their opinions on when and how schools should re-open.

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers estimates it will cost $116 billion to open schools safely across the county before a return can be thought about.

UTLA Calls For School Board To Defund The Police (LASPD)

Yesterday, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) Board of Directors voted on a motion demanding that the school board de-fund the Los Angeles Schools Police Department (LASPD), the largest school police department in the country. While the full details of the motion and its reach are not public information as of this writing, UTLA has a long history of supporting major reforms in school policing and the Black Lives Matter movement in Los Angeles.

The vote can be understood as support for the Black Lives Matter protests. Concern for the experience of our BIPOC students everywhere – in our schools and on our streets – has taken over the discourse across the country following the murder of George Floyd and the eruption of police brutality in response to protests.

The UTLA is hardly alone in calling for radical changes, or even a complete abolition, of the LASPD. Groups such as the Community Corporation of South Los Angeles, the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, Students Deserve, and the Labor Community Strategy Center (known for projects such as Taking Action Social Justice Clubs in L.A. High Schools and the Bus Riders Union) have been working for change in how middle and high schools mediate behavioral issues with students for years. And that change would include either de-funding or completely abolishing the school police.