Tags
Bond Oversight Committee, CCTP, Common Core Techology Project, ipads, LAUSD arts, ratliff, Vladovic, Zimmer
Share it
I am an LAUSD parent, and I am scared.
They say you have to name your problem, and this is it. I feel that I am part of an overwhelmingly vast educational institution, that has been usurped by corporate political forces. And I feel there is no one out there protecting my interests, the educational interests of my children.
This weekend comes the news slipped in below last week’s headlines that the new LAUSD’s Board of Education (BOE) president, Dr Vladovic, has opted to disband the Common Core Technology Project Committee. Known endearingly as CCTP – an acronym even a mother would have trouble loving – the ponderous name belied a simple purpose: watch the implications of the new Common Core and its primary, corporate-driven dictat that Technology be brought front and center to K12 education.
Chaired by corporate-interests nemesis Mónica Ratliff, this committee has been highlighting issue upon issue regarding the rollout of a (minimum) $1B technology-equipment purchase. There has been a steady stream of embarrassing details featuring incompetence, ignorance and corruption among the hand-picked 6-figure administrative team muscled in by our superintendent, himself hand-picked by corporate interests. The moniker of this committee, its epitaph perhaps, should be “Let me get back to you on that”.
Back to you, that is, on the expenditure of one billion dollars’ worth of public bond monies allocated by the public, for the public, for the sole and explicit purpose of ensuring that our schools retain adequate funds for infrastructure and construction.
I understand that a debatably convoluted and/or tortured argument could be made that this ipad initiative is all part and parcel of infrastructure upgrade. I’m all for an infrastructure upgrade and would frankly like to see the “accessibility gap” obliterated, perhaps by blanketing the city with wifi. But I am no expert on things technological, I do not know the solution. I believe simply that access to technology is indeed a civil rights issue best addressed on a level more basic than that of K12 education; it is a matter of basic communal living so baseline-infrastructural that it deserves to be considered part of the business of the City of Los Angeles itself.
In the meantime, the oversight of funds appropriated for the explicit purpose of maintaining our schools is being undermined. The Bond Oversight Committee made an explicit recommendation regarding appropriations for technology that the LAUSD BOE actually rejected. A committee of citizens convened with the mandate to make sure that the purpose for which our hard-earned tax dollars were set-aside would be honored, was made redundant by our elected BOE officials who chose to blithely ignore its recommendations.
The abrogation of this Bond Oversight Committee, headed by a careful investigator with impressive civil rights litigation credentials, is a very scary development. If someone like this can be rolled over in the wake of this ipad rollout, then who or what is left to protect us from momentum of all this corporate manhandling of public monies?
Between the disbanding of the CCTP, the ignoring of the citizens oversight committee, and the angling for wresting away Ms LaMotte’s skeptical, watchdog legacy, I feel very nervous about the prospects for my child in LAUSD. While arts funding is willfully expunged at the expense of some of the world’s largest businesses (Apple, Pearson) and plutocrats (Broad, Gates), it is hard to see the plain interests of regular-old K12 students being looked after at all in this new year.
4 Comments
January 20, 2014 at 5:03 pm
If you can’t trust LAUSD to do their job right, who can you trust?
Lots of Academic Studies have proven that Arts Education improve understanding of the Core Subjects and there are even State and Federal laws that say students must have so much time devoted to Arts instruction.
School Libraries are also required by state and federal laws and look what happened to them. (http://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2014/01/16/15608/review-finds-hundreds-of-la-school-libraries-witho/)
Who enforces those laws and why don’t they do something? Large numbers of libraries in a community have been proven to overcome poverty. Our school district should be graduating every student. What is the LAUSD graduation rate?
The truth is that Arts and Libraries are not tested!
Sometimes I think the Testing Companies run the schools and parents & students are just customers. (Did you know the new Common Core Standards had extremely minimal input from Teachers?)
Parents who care must sit down with their children and read with them, draw, paint and sing with them –if they live in Los Angeles.
January 20, 2014 at 5:30 pm
It’s so disspiriting, isn’t it? Yes, it is plain as the day is long that these “state standards” were constructed as a fly-by-night effort with no input from children, parents or critically, their teachers. It is basically all just bizarre.
The trouble is, next to no one even notices. Teachers are being marginalized and actively discredited, disbelieved. Parents are divided and segregated into little pools of small schools with smaller resources; they know not what they miss, they know not how much they are being shafted.
While the children of course – oh how sad it all is for them — no, not sad. What is being taken from them is just criminal.
I cannot understand why we citizens continue to allow this to go on.
January 20, 2014 at 10:31 pm
While I agree with all you say, I must tell you the district has been corrupt for decades, and these go back before Eli Broad began eyeballing the Ambassador Hotel and other real estate that belongs to LAUSD (thus the people though I suspect LAUSD forgets who pays for that opulence the bloated educRAT$ enjoy and, for that matter, so do the people, who are getting screwed every which way but the way people like to be). That corruption is how Broad slid his slimy ass in. I know in my heart this man is evil. He knows it and revels in it. The other plutocrats are mostly just delusional and entitled fools who think they are doing good and making millions in the process. Of course, in their arrogance they can rationalize just about anything.
What they cannot do is empathize with other humans who are just working class slobs thus less than human to them. Oh Ironic, I know.
I am not against the iPads but I am against the infra-structure up grades because a few years ago the BOE banned Wifi and with good reason. It is a carcinogenic threat to youngsters. It is banned in many school systems all over the world and given the evidence, it will soon face global extinction. There is no need for wifi in schools actually as there are ways around it and pads work just fine as readers, journals, art and music forums (you can make art on them as I do, learn to play a guitar, take photos and edit them, or record your free style rap without being connected. You do not need to be online. It is really an easy distraction in class).
There is a need to have access for the sake of downloads and if they get around to a homework site it will also be necessary to go online. The CCSS tests are supposed to be online too, but not likely to fly given how unreliable the Best connection can be. I bet CCSS is down for the count anyway, but iPads are still ok. It is the price that chaps my hide. A new air ipad with 128gb is $799 at Staples (not a bargain hunter’s first choice). So there is a big problem and tech-business blogs are calling Deasy a big fat liar.
You’re right on about the city wide Internet; both this mayor and the former have made mention of but have never committed to it probably because the cable operations in LA would go apeshit. But the city wide Internet seems less carcinogenic and would allow access at home. That makes this purchase much more viable for students. Certainly it is crazy to hand iPads to 5-8 year olds. I would not give them out until middle school and then Rules would be very strict. If a child kept his iPad from 6-8 grade, he would be free to keep it . In HS he is ready for the upgrade, which he can keep if he has it by the end of 12 grade. It Would mean losing the iPad cost to give a student the right to take another home. General population ipads would have to be used in the IMC AFTER or Before school . The kids would be very careful not to lose them then.
But they will. It is really unethical to make parents shoulder the expense of lost iPads when a huge part of the cost is about training teachers, CCSS programs (codes not tangible stuff) and so on. No more than $200 can be charged and I price it at that because it is unlikely the thing will fetch any more than that when hot. The age of course would mean the value went down. So a kid loses an iPad he has had 2 years, his folks pay $100. If that!
Not that LAUSD bothered to low jack them even though that app is free. Hmmmmm why do you think that is?
I think it is heinous that this has become teachers and parents being techno-phobes who hate the iPad. It is more like we hate Deasy and most of the BOE, but it is also unseemly that such a fine tool, one that could truly save massive sums of money and improve education greatly, has been stained by the greed and dishonesty of so called educators and philanthropists who consider our children their assets. This blog, by the way, is truly one of the best places to chew this information.
January 24, 2014 at 2:40 pm
Thanks to redqueenia and the commentators who bring up these vital issues. I too was shocked that Vlad made his executive decision to shut down Monica as she puts forth truth in financing of the taxpayers money.
This week I was with an Asst. Principal who covers that role at three different schools. He said he has functioned as ‘school nurse’ as well since nurses are no longer considered necessary by LAUSD…and he doles out meds and gives ‘eppy’ shots as do many office staff. This is not only dangerous to children, but the liability issues are mind boggling.
So, dear queen, keep this up and let’s shake the gates until they collapse..we who Deasy and the BoE see as only the noise-making rabble.
And big thanks to Rene for her info on WiFi. There are many scientific reports to substantiate her claims.