The Difference Between Johnson and McKenna
24 Thursday Jul 2014
Written by redqueeninla in Education
Tags
Alex Johnson, bill gates, charter schools, corporate reform, corporatize, Education Reform, Eli Broad, gates foundation, LaMotte, LAUSD election, LAUSD1, Mark Ridley-Thomas, McKenna, Villaraigosa
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Did you know there’s an election in three weeks?
If you do not live in LAUSD’s first district, you might be excused from awareness of it, though not if you drive anywhere within that district. You’d have to be blind (inadvisable if driving) to have overlooked the gigantic – and unethical, according to the COLA elections commission – political propaganda polluting public property in proclaiming the primacy of their favorite son, hand-ordained staff-member of Mark Ridley-Thomas, Alex Johnson.
Ginormous and ubiquitous, these signs represent the might of the political machinery backing Mr Johnson, rather than, say, the size of his public support or job qualifications.
At the age of 33, Mr Johnson has accrued basically zero track record in issues educational, either politically or pedagogically or theoretically or practically. He does, however, nicely reflect his bosses’ readiness to assert opinions educational a propos of no experience or background in the matter at all, as this account of County Supervisor Ridley-Thomas, his aide Alex Johnson and chief-of staff, attests. All three politicos cheerfully admit to having never read the thoughtfully crafted 29-page opinion regarding a Culver City charter school – before rejecting outright the school board’s denial of this petition. Without permitting the deliberations of local elected political leaders or education experts to derail their well-buttressed pre-conceived convictions, nary a whiff of public education advocacy was permitted sway. These three officials asserted their right to an unreflective, uninformed support for the rejected petition because of “a philosophical difference [with the Culver City Unified School District board president] about charter schools”.
Just so, this episode accurately encapsulates the arcane board race in LAUSD1 too. It’s about charter schools.
This is a race that has been recapitulated with its underlying distinction over and over and over again all across this nation of ours. In our local school board elections, the body politic has weighed in cumulatively not once, not twice but in the three successive school board elections against the candidates allied with the political – that is not pedagogical but political — ideology of privatizing public education.
The first of these recent elections was won by Bennett Kayser over Luis Sanchez, candidate of privatizing champion, former-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of the moribund Coalition For School Reform. The second of these wins pitted LAUSD board incumbent Steve Zimmer against millions of dollars corralled from across this nation, foremost among them from Mike Bloomberg, school privatizing, billionaire mayor of New York City. And most recent in the LAUSD series was Mónica Ratliff vanquishing challenger Antonio Sanchez, backed by a breathtaking constellation of corporate reformers.
Now we meet yet the latest iteration of this Borg-like incursion of corporatizers intent on subsuming our children’s schooling. Alex Johnson, having shallow education bona fides but deep political patronage roots, must be understood in that context so charmingly articulated by his padrone, as The Candidate From Charter Land. Alex Johnson may not be an educator or parent or theoretician, but his political placement enables those who seek public monies to underwrite essentially private schooling enterprises. That is, Alex Johnson derives utility by enabling charter schools and those who would champion them.
And who is it that champions charter schools in Los Angeles? Apart from the LAUSD board which has approved school charters numbering in the hundreds, rendering the westside of Los Angeles ground zero for the charter school movement? We have more charter schools here in our little ‘hood than in any other spot on the planet.
Superintendent Deasy can be thought of as Enabler Extraordinaire of the charter school movement, graduate of Eli Broad’s “academy”, installed by Antonio Villaraigosa and possibly salaried by his one-time employer the Gates Foundation, sustained by the last leg of the educational reform triumvirate, the Walton Family Foundation.
Note well and carefully: these charter schools are every bit as much a political phenomenon of the 1% as an educational one. In obeisance to neoliberalism, they are tearing apart the very edifice — literally and figuratively — of our democratic public education system.
And that is what, and really only what, this election is about. What flavor of school champion do you favor? Are you inveigled by the corporatizing reformer lining private pockets with money and expertise from the public coffer? Or do you support and extend the oft-reiterated preference of our electorate for the professional educator, one in the mold of Kayser, Zimmer, Ratliff and Marguerite LaMotte herself, represented this time around by former school superintendent George McKenna?
Who holds the intellectual needs of our young citizenry at heart? Teacher or Politician? Who protects their education as a basic human civil right rather than a monetized commodity? Who expresses the voice that we have elected time after time in recent years, the educator’s voice of concern for pedagogy?
George McKenna.
Vote for George McKenna on the first day back at school:
Tuesday, August 12, 2014.
8 Comments
Daphne said:
July 28, 2014 at 1:39 pm
Your analysis puzzles me in parts. I’m a charter parent who supports Mckenna, so I do not think it’s as black and white, charter, anti charter as you see. I don’t understand the wholesale condemnation of charters. As Mckenna himself has said if neighborhood schools were working we wouldn’t have charters. There is also a great difference among charters themselves. There are mom and pop types and ones who are company run. Parents are discerning consumers of education. That train left the station a long time ago. In the 70’s I was in one of the first magnet schools in LAUSD. LAUSD can be far too rigid and not open enough to how schools need to conform to the community that they are in. It’s a lot of schools. It’s not one size fits all.
Clearly Mckenna has brought change to schools while still being “inside”, that’s a reason to champion him. His experience, integrity. When you say the race is charter vs anti charter you set up a paradigm that has now winner. Because there will be charters, and they will not be the majority of schools. There are going to be traditional school and magnets, and perhaps some other incarnation we don’ t know yet. We need someone who can build bridges and play nice and fairly with everyone. That’s why I support Mckenna.
BlackDuke in South LA said:
July 26, 2014 at 5:04 pm
The difference is simple:
George McKenna has a record to stand on, he has faced challenges and he has made difficult decisions. The other guy is at best an opportunist willing to sell out to those who want to crush the educational institution that is the foundation of democracy. Mark Ridley Thomas is not a king he is a pawn of the 1% who would like to create an oligarchy.
See the Los Angeles Time endorsement of GEORGE MCKENNA. See the LA Times column by Sandy Banks exposing the corrupt, disingenuous, slanderous, desperate attack on George McKenna
http://www.latimes.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=mckenna&target=all
redqueeninla said:
July 24, 2014 at 9:23 pm
Thank you to the SEIU workers who are explaining their situation here. This is all very interesting. I hope you are able to persuade more of your fellow workers how your interests are being shunted aside through the union’s support of Prince Johnson (that is, he who is propped up by King Ridley-Thomas).
KATHRYN Torres said:
July 24, 2014 at 8:00 pm
I am a member of Seiu Local 99 in which me and thousands of my co-workers were sold out in our recent bargaining contract by our union and their bought politician puppets. The difference between both candidates is as follows Alex Johnson sold out for an endorsement from our union and supported / advocated for the $15 workers in Lausd not thinking or caring about 11,000 Lausd workers and their families who got left behind. George Mckeena refused to support such a sham in the $15 minimum wage increase because he believes in equality and that no worker or their family should be left behind. I respect George Mckeena because by doing the right thing for the people it cost him Seiu Local 99 endorsement.. I encourage voters vote for George Mckeena !!
Jill Powel said:
July 24, 2014 at 6:55 pm
As a LAUSD Special Education Assistant, I pay into SEIU local 99. I am not a voluntary member and the following explifies why. SEIU 99 is and always has been a political union. At the July 19 Executive board meeting, this local voted to give Alex Johnson $50,000 for his campaign to be elected to a position that he is woefully under qualified for. All this was witnessed by an audience of 70+ LAUSD employees who did not get lifted out of poverty but rather got squeezed more into the middle class poor.
Ellen Lubic said:
July 24, 2014 at 11:53 am
Another great and informative article, Queenie. Thanks. Hope Diane Ravitch picks up on this and publicizes McKenna too.
The difference between these two candidates could not be more pronounced. McKenna, who is a lifetime educator with a proven track record, should be a shoo in. However the big money Rheeform group is pouring cash in Johnson’s campaign.
Johnson is not only a non educator, but appears to be a non entity and is only in the race due to the political pressure of his boss, Ridley Thomas, who seeks to establish his own political dynasty. This candidate is clueless as to the public school issues, but he has the backing of the Charter School Association and the billionaires who seek to take over America’s public schools for investment opportunities. He has openly pledged to charterize LAUSD should he be elected.
Vote for McKenna for District 1 LAUSD BoE.