It’s Not The Institutions, It’s The Way We Let Them Be Managed
24 Monday Nov 2014
Tags
administration, bureaucracy, democracy, GOTV, LAUSD superintendent, miramontes, public commons, public institutions, school administration, sidewalks, vote
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Why do some people seem to hate public institutions so? I just don’t get it. They apparently want public services, but won’t pay for them or don’t want to, and in a twist of killing the messenger, seem to express all this in a vicious hatred for middle management bureaucrats.
The type section for this suite of disjointed prejudices lies in Education of course. Obviously we want the world’s best-educated next generation to own all the world’s resources and keep us in our golden years roaming the world via luxurious cruise ships. We fuss and whinge about international standardized tests and our loss of intellectual (as a surrogate for economic) supremacy to – to whom? To some other country, maybe a Superpower, maybe not – just anyone else. It’s all just too much, we can’t be not-number one. Never mind that various other metrices don’t even rank us so poorly at that, still we are spooked to the point of panic and precipitous curricular upheaval in reaction to the untenable notion of being not-number one.
But will we pay for a number-one Educational system? Will we adopt the behaviours of higher-ranking countries that treat teachers as honorable, highly remunerated professionals? No way, uh-huh, nope, yougottabekiddingme. All that panic seems to find outlet instead in simply excoriating public servants as a class (though not perhaps individually, everyone still loves their own school, their own teachers) but without recourse to mitigate their lot or our condition either. Thus the class of civil servants tasked with, say, teaching assumes a double-whammy of ignominy and poverty. Thrashed for doing a “poor job” for pay inadequate to commanding respect. Du-wha?
I had the task of assisting a pair of delightful octogenarians recently who were rightfully putout about having been forced to walk a half-mile to a public concert along cracked and broken sidewalks, despite holding a handicapped parking hanger to accommodate one who was hobbling along in a back brace. The lot where they might have parked was closed for lack of personnel to open it. They asked: “who can we talk to about this“? And the answer is: the rest of your fellow citizens who don’t pay enough to maintain our cities’ infrastructure, including sidewalks and city schools and personnel to have opened its parking lot thereby obviating your suffering.
In LAUSD, we don’t pay for enough teachers or staff, and those currently on payroll don’t receive enough of it. period.
This is a seemingly untenable truth, resulting in fury about the state of schools and those who comprise its state (teachers, school-site administrators), without reference to what composes the problem: insufficient funds throttled upstream. Thus the ultimate reasons for insufficiency may not simply be insufficient monies paying into the public fund, because dollars get grabbed at every stop in a massive hierarchy designed to feed on itself. The problem lies with those managing the institution from the top down, not the inherent nature of the institution, and certainly not with its ramifications at the “street-level”.
Where collateral ramifications amplify to enormous effect for: the well-being of our own children, obviously; for that precious external metric of superiority; for the stability of a working middle class that would teach those children; for the future of our society that is composed of these children; for our own position in that society as we become “redundant” with age; for the potential of society to maintain itself as a balanced, economic entity – when we husband our private resources and starve a public purse (whether directly or effectively, through poor management) there is grand, long-term consequences to the essence of our way of life. It is future generations who pay for mid-level stinginess and a failure to attach appropriate responsibility to management by and from the top.
Meanwhile the misplaced fury and prejudice toward public institutions and its stalwart personnel carries collateral damage. Killing the messenger without thought toward who sent the courier. Manifested in blatant dismissive presumptions of failure exemplified by this.
So much presumed disdain for “public schools” without reference to those who comprise it. So much disdain for a neighborhood institution that families flee into private schools or nominally “public” charter “choices”, effectively funneling public monies into private hands for little reciprocal benefit. Rather than address problems specifically, with upper-management or corruption surrounding budgets or contracts, a broad brush is used to paint disdain and dismissal of the broad notion of public service.
This goes for congress, for city council, for school politicians – we erupt in disdain and anger without recognizing we are shooting our own selves in the foot. By improperly husbanding public services like sidewalks and schools and the public budget for all of these, we wind up one day eighty years old and infirm, and unable to negotiate our way through public space. Rather than nurture a functional mid-level of public servants we are left with a decrepit commons, crumbling amidst corruption and nothing but an opaque and narrow, parallel, self-selecting and self-serving, private sector.
The proper response to the outrage of children violated at Miramonte, as well as the subsequent millions strained from the budget to remunerate victims at the expense of future generations, is to decry entrenched upper-level mis-management and corruption that fails to identify monstrosities. With a school administration that actually affects feedback of teachers, that supports them and watches them and aides them while simultaneously, honestly, ceasing to excuse away problems (conducts a true analysis), with such leadership this all would all be different. If teachers were treated as respected professionals, evaluated authentically and paid concomitantly, it is hard to envision how this appalling behavior could have been sustained.
We need to recognize not only where the buck should stop, but demand accountability once it gets there. The problem with our public institutions is not with its civil servants or the system inherently. It is with its degenerate manifestation that would overfund elements to effectively shield a parasitic class hiding within its upper reaches. Not the teachers, not the students, not even the general budget but the administration that overlooked rogue teachers at Miramontes must be punished. Not the janitors, not the underpaid weekend staff, but the budget-eliminating, fiscally irresponsible community-shirking prop 13 must be recognized. We the public with the power of our vote must force better, true accountability from public institutions, not simply derivative finger-pointing and collective punishment. Now is the time to think about voting for better politicians at the top. Now is the time to start thinking about them.
One Comment
December 1, 2014 at 8:18 pm
If people had a clue about the heavy excess and waste that undermines the success of LAUSD schools, they’d react with violence. Maybe that is why Obama sees fit to hand off war ARTillary to districts, which squander so much on lawyers, overpaid, unnecessary suits, consultants, and other non essential personnel it is insulting that the BOE has yet to suggest cuts there instead at the schools, which presently have no full time nurses, few custodians, class size that are downright lawless, closed libraries, few PSW left who are actually trained properly, and the food served to our children is an affront to the standards we teach about diet and nutrition.
As students attend classes in overcrowded classrooms and confront grim, neglected campuses where vermin, asbestos, mold, tainted water pipes and unsafe structures are all too common, LAUSD is throwing money around for 3 massive apartment complexes to house TFAinterns, building new schools in areas where they are not needed, and ever improving Beaudry’s accommodations. I hear they recently added a dry cleaner and sushi bar to the basement area. The expensive staff Deasy never denied himself, an always-recruiting and highly paid school police force and 6 figure assistants with assistants remain unchecked. Even Tamar Galatzan who frequently laments that parents in her local district are forced to donate toilet tissues remains unwilling to purge some of this dead weight.
The BOE consistently votes in favor of RIFs, cuts to schools (so far they have no ARTS, a lack of custodians, few nurses, a back log of maintenance, outrageous class size, a lack of TAs, no college centers, no vocational classes, adult schools butchery, few field trips, no improvement on neglected schools, crappy free lunch, a dearth of supplies and fewer crossing guards, ed techs, and other needed staff). The BOE members are all for school reconstitutions, big $$$ technology, yet more suits and projects that cost millions even billions of dollars that tax payers want spent on schools — not this nonsense.
I think there is plenty of money being thrown at the problem and this creates an even bigger problem as the parasites multiply and become an entrenched burden. Teachers are more focused on class size than their raises, despite UTLA’s battle cries to the contrary. They know the union is even less interested in the well being of students than the district, but they are stuck between the two in a nightmare of abuses, financial uncertainty and their own commitment to their schools. They buy supplies. As a teacher I purchased facial tissue, hand sanitizer, bottled water, incentives, prizes, camera, paper, art supplies, reference books, videos, dictionaries, soft ware, tampons (our principal banned them because she believed they could rob a girl of her ummm virtue), snacks, notebooks, cleaning supplies, posters, markers, chalk and more). I didn’t mind so much because I valued the academic freedom it afforded me as well as the respect the kids had for me being so in tune with their needs.
What bothers me is the lack of any acknowledgement for teachers who are laughably accused of being greedy, shiftless, complacent, unreasonable and overpaid. That is not what my experience reflected. There are bad teachers, and they tend to be the crony insulation for the worst principals and policies. Teachers make less than dental hygienists and longshoremen who do not take home a lot of work or worry as much about professional development. Campus cops are making about the same as new teachers without a 4 year degree. They got a 9% raise without any negotiation.
The BOE is firing teachers without affording them due process by ignoring the charges and voting in favor of dismissals without any discussion about the veracity of allegations (which they won’t even look at!). It has deferred to Deasy until it became obvious the BOE was more likely to hang for his antics than he will. I have to say Cortines has held up well thus far but he also plays the wise old geezer to the hilt, expressing outrage and the right reactions to corruption he himself has not been able to resist. He called LAUSD a cash cow, and this says it all. Not only have plutocrats and their political puppets set upon schools with greedy intent, there has been a long, long run of unchecked corruption and incompetence allowed to ferment from within. The state has not provided oversight much less accountability which allows white chalk crime to flourish. Schools have done well in spite of all the things that work against them when you think about it.
But no one thinks about it and with “creative disruption” usurping every effort they make, Teachers and students are exasperated by the system. Something has to give and it is not teachers, taxpayers or their communities. It is the public servants , who need to serve the public, beginning with the BOE. Galatzan has got to go. Kayser probably should go too, though he is not so easy to despise. I cannot, however, think of much he has done to deserve another term in the BOE. I am sure Vladovic may be more useful without Deasy yanking his chain but why must we endure more of his blubbering? Adios to him, Garcia and that weasel Zimmer too. We need more Ratliff and Ratliff needs to be even more so herself to keep me invested. The jury is out on McKenna yet and one should look over his challengers. I know Carl Petersen is the best bet for Galatzan’s slot, and I like the cut of one of Kayser’s opponents jib. He is NOT a reformer or a union backed challenger.
BTW Cortines is NOT interim as people say, he is a regular sup, and a damn HEALTHY SEPTUAGENARIAN and still part of the corrupt stew. Thus we must not relinquish our vigils at this point. He may mean well and appears competent but in a moment he can be usurped, step down or screw up. We want a say in the next superintendent. We want to know where he trained, taught and keeps his faith. Deasy is out on a graft [Freudian slip?] with Wasserman philanthropy even now, traveling, eating gourmet and staying in 5 star hotels as he travels on the taxpayers’ dime. You see Wasserman gives up some big check to schools and calls his foundation philanthropic, making his gifts a tax write-off that Deasy and others get to blow in ways that serve no students, no schools and no cause other than their assault of the public. Privatization is essentially handing off public assets to people who already control too much of the world’s wealth as it is. If we don’t stop them here and now, I shudder to think of the future we are leaving for our kids to face down without adequate tools or training to prevail in a futile system