Los Angeles Education Examiner

And Yet, There Are Collateral Benefits

It’s not what you’d wish on your worst enemy, but all the same, there are bright spots amidst the coronavirus (CV) landscape.

On a brief (auto) trip to the bakery this weekend I passed through numerous residential neighborhoods, every one of which sported people outside, recreating. On bikes, with basketballs in hand, walking dogs, planting trees, shouting socially-distanced pleasantries – it was absolutely plain as could be that people everywhere were plonked back to the future in slower, simpler pleasures like gallomph-jogging side-by-side, challenging each other in bicycling-pairs to summit a hill, corralling the kids to participate in household chores and pet-care.

Who knew that contentious traffic calming measures of late would suddenly be rendered moot, casualties of the CV pandemic that has parked us all in our neighborhoods, not somewhere else. Maybe all we’ve really been needing was relief from the tyranny of scheduled events and organized activities.

Why It Might Matter To Close Your School

It’s understandable to look at the fatality and even incidence rate of Covid-19 here in Los Angeles and think:

“Huh? Why the panic; far, far more people die of the flu annually, and we’re all healthy here. A little cold’s no big deal, most people will survive, particularly kids, and besides, I have no way to care for (or feed) the kids during the daytime.”

There are a lot of issues in there to unpack, but most importantly, the considerations surrounding school closure are not about individual risk or anyone’s personal chance of survival. At issue is a sensible, effective public health response to a local health emergency and a global pandemic.

The concern is that those who do suffer adverse effects from the novel coronavirus will need access to hospitals, hospital beds, ventilators and a sizable medical staff. With huge estimates of the ultimately infected population, if transmission happens too rapidly, the health infrastructure could be overrun and vital care unavailable when a lot of people need it.

Now That the Election Is Over, Here’s How EdEx Is Going to Move Forward

As Sara and I were working to create LAEdEx, we originally planned to launch after the March primary elections. Concerned that the website not be seen as just an election vehicle for progressive candidates, we were nevertheless compelled to report on the unfolding extreme efforts to influence, and stakes surrounding the four contested seats for the LAUSD Board of Education.

We decided to rush the rollout, without even a fully formed social media strategy and just a bare-bones design on our website. But our reporting on the enormous spending and onerous campaign literature was timely and presented in a way sufficiently different from mainstream media as to move understanding and coverage forward. While the media did a pretty good job covering who was spending money on what candidates, we are proud to have been a substantive part of that conversation.

Moving forward we’d love to have a fundraising strategy in place for the long-term that would allow us to pay for an editor or other written contributions. But for now, our plan remains simply to provide quality articles and opinion pieces to help inform and empower supporters of public education.

Coronavirus Front And Center

It’s hard to concentrate on mundane daily life when a novel virus is spreading inexorably through interconnected human communities across the globe. Best to muster authoritative information close:

- The CDC on handwashing, why and how.
- Superintendent Beutner’s version of same.
- On “preparations”, why slowing disease matters.
- CV daily reports from California’s Public health department.
- Latest news from LAUSD.
- Agenda for Tuesday afternoon’s Special LAUSD Board Meeting “Declaring Emergency Conditions Exist at Los Angeles Unified School District Schools and Offices and Authorization to Take Any and All Necessary Actions to Prepare and Respond Effectively to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).”
- California Department of Public Health guidance for schools and other guidance bulletins.
- California Department of Public Health news releases.
- Approval of CA State request to allow meal service during school closures.

Updated 3/10/20 at 1:30pm to reflect ADA impact:

• Symptomatic children are being asked to stay, and are being sent, home.

• “Los Angeles Unified has asked the state to reconsider the existing ADA policies given the COVID-19 situation”.

Headlines: Elections, Charter Co-Locations and Coronavirus

And just like that, the focus switches from School Board elections and Prop. 13 [2020] (RIP!), to the Coronavirus and the District’s response. The District has been emailing and calling LAUSD parents daily and posting even more regular updates on Twitter.

While LAUSD’s response has been proactive and competent, LAUSD admits that the potential pandemic is “uncharted territory” and has plans for a potential shutdown.

Also uncharted is Superintendent Beutner’s foray into videography which is a little unfortunate for the paucity of soap, important for hygiene in breaking down cell walls. Some parents have been contacting teachers to ask whether soap or other supplies would be welcome donations to their classroom.

And perhaps not everyone in LAUSD is handling the situation flawlessly. A Chinese-American student is accusing his North Hollywood School of discrimination and retaliation after he objected to being sent to the nurse’s office for coughing.

But just because we’re all talking Coronavirus, doesn’t mean there aren’t other things happening.

As I type this, a protest is going on at Trinity Avenue School where frustrated public school parents are speaking out against the co-location with Gabriella Charter School.

In national news, the DeVos family is still scary! Last week while Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was fielding criticism about her new education budget, we heard news that another of her family is planting paid spies in progressive groups. Creepy.

And if the news has just bummed you out too much. Here’s a video of Scott Schmerelson reading Little Red Riding Hood to some students in PALS.

Protect The Tax-Payer’s Revolution

Here in L.A., we’ve just finished weighing in on two ballot questions regarding schools funding. Really engaged activists and politicians will argue the initiatives we voted on are unrelated, both the two just addressed and another coming up. But many of us see a set of connected dots in a three-part series: Measure EE [June 2019], Proposition 13 [2020], Schools And Communities First (SCF).

The three initiatives do share a common objective in funding schools, but their significance shifts according to the context in which each is evaluated.

One year ago during a cold and rainy January, UTLA’s teachers (and allied communities) went on strike for contract concessions above and beyond the typical matter of a paycheck. At issue were systemic questions of management and budget, District resources and their equitable distribution, and the very nature of public service in our modern democracy.

Election Analysis: Mixed Results and There’s a Lot of Work Ahead

As the election results rolled in last night, much of the media focused on the drama in the Democratic Presidential Primary. But a lot happened in local races as well. The battle over whether or not the Los Angeles Unified School Board is controlled by supporters of public education and the UTLA or “school choice” and unfettered charter school expansion remains up in the air.

But first, let’s discuss Proposition 13 and what its failure means for the Schools and Communities First Ballot Initiative this fall. While the two ballot initiatives are very different, the failure of Proposition 13 doesn’t bode well for supporters of robust funding for public education.

Prop 13 (2020) was a bond measure that wouldn’t actually raise taxes, but was still opposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association. We understand the Prop. 13 was complicated and that plenty of people reading this likely voted against it. But some of the opposition was based around mis-information that Prop 13 (the 1978 ballot measure that capped property taxes) was under attack.

Time To Vote

SuperCaliforniaisticexpialiTuesday is here; it’s finally here. Please don’t embarrass your country or family and fail to turn out. It seems hard to imagine turnout hasn’t been heavy already given the widespread availability of Vote Centers open now for weeks. It seems that everyone has received a postage-paid absentee ballot whether you asked for one or not. Click here to locate your new Vote Center regardless of past performance – don’t let it predict today’s. Come 8 p.m. tonight and it’s all over.

Just how embarrassing has been our recent turnout for LAUSD board elections? Pretty appalling. Approximately one in ten registered voters has deigned to vote since 2013 when really big-time money first suffused the LAUSD board races. That is, almost all our fellow citizens have let a tiny proportion elect the few who control a budget the size of the City of LA’s, and the weekday environment of our next generation citizens.

This really is no way to run a democracy. An informed and engaged electorate is the fuel which powers the republic; without it we have, well, what we have. Please be sure to contribute your 0.02 to the proceedings today. There’s still time….

Voter turnout for LAUSD Board of Education elections, 2014-2019

Headlines: Prop 13 Gets Complicated, Out-of-Control Spending in LAUSD Races Makes National News, UTLA Picks a New President…

The big news continues to be the record breaking spending going on in this year’s school district races. Everyone from the local press, to the national press, to the education-focused press, to UTLA to Bernie Sanders was talking about the amount of money being spent by pro-charter school candidates to upend the current pro-public school majority on the LAUSD School Board. In just the past weeks (and echoing abominable messaging of previous campaigns), the attack mailers against candidates Jackie Goldberg and Scott Schmerelson have been called anti-semitic, untrue and Trump-Like.

Gavin Newson (center left) poses with Jackie Goldberg, Scott Schmerelson and Patricia Castellanos, three of the four UTLA endorsed candidates for LAUSD School Board. The missing fourth is George McKenna from Board District 1.

At least one ad has been disavowed by its creators, the California Charter School Alliance, targeting Scott Schmerelson.

Sara Roos wrote more on spending over the weekend here at EdEx if you missed it. And hey! The article got a shout-out from UTLA.

Bloomfield Devotes $3.7m Education Dollars Toward Elections, Not Schools

It’s been a week since last peek at the LAUSD board election spending. The rate of spending has slowed down a bit since over $1m was anted up by Bill Bloomfield and the California Charter School Association (CCSA, a charter school lobbying and service organization) between Thursday and Friday of one week ago. But the absolute spending in LAUSD school board elections since just last Friday has increased by nearly two and a half million dollars.

Across all four board races the total reported to the City of LA Ethics Commission is $8.2m. With almost half as much spent on negative campaigning as positive campaigning. In LAUSD7 one candidate (Gutierrez) registers no independent expenditures actually supporting the candidate, with all expenditures on her behalf spent in opposition.

The only candidate explicitly endorsed by the charter lobby is running in LAUSD3, recipient of an onslaught of resources both positive and deceptively negative. Expenditures favoring charter school public relations specialist Koziatek over incumbent former principal Schmerelson, run at 4 to 1. And in LAUSD5 where the expenditure imbalance is half again as great – 6:1 – the extravagantly-favored challenger didn’t even present herself at the only scheduled debate in that district. The incumbent, veteran teacher Goldberg, was the only one to show up to the charter-industry-sponsored event.

oppsup-comparison-update-022820-IEC

Figure 1 above is an updated visual representation of the relative distribution of independent expenditures across all four board district races. Boxes are proportional in size to the total; negative spending is below the line. These data broken out by donor are reported as of February 28, 2020. The total relative distribution can be readily compared with February 21, 2020 and February 20, 2020.