LAUSD Budget Blues—Anyone Else Worried?

While walking to school with my kids the other day, a friend of mine said she thought everyone seemed in a funk lately. It has been a hard week. Many of us recently heard the first draft of an exceedingly bleak LAUSD budget. Daylight savings time had already left us all sleep-deprived. On top of that, we have been watching, listening and waiting for more news about Japan. The human tragedy makes us want to reach out and help and at the same time check the rations in our emergency kits. (I know I’m low on propane and bottled water—does anyone know where to find potassium iodide?)

I think these huge natural disasters sometimes put our smaller disasters into perspective. Take the LAUSD budget. just sent out eight pink slips. They plan on cutting the preschool program, phasing out the Highly Gifted magnet, slashing by half the annual arts budget. Class sizes are going up to 29 from 24 for K-3rd grade, the school is dumping the librarian and teachers’ aides, not to mention the Beyond The Bell program. Parents, do I have your attention yet? We need to start making some phone calls to our legislators.

I am told that a quick look at the LAUSD school board will reveal that they just got raises. (I hope that’s a reckless rumor I’m recklessly spreading.) LAUSD has eight board members, all of whom are paid a minimum of $25,000, but often in excess of $100,000 when you include committee assignments and their healthy expense accounts.

It’s worth noting that 75 percent of school board members across the country work on a voluntary basis. Not so in L.A., where the board often serves as a political springboard. Each L.A. School Board member also has as many as four to six assistants. Why do board members get so many assistants and teachers none? (It must have something to do with the level of competence—the less competent a person the more help he or she needs to get the job done.)

LAUSD has grown, much like the city, into a gargantuan monstrosity whose right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. There are so many levels of bureaucracy that getting anything done takes years. We (the lowly taxpayers) pay bazillions of dollars for LAUSD food services, LAUSD transportation, LAUSD health care costs, and LAUSD school board salaries. Meanwhile, less than 50 percent of our students graduate from high school. Surely the system is broken. 

Now, I have friends who are teachers—and they’re not going to like this, but I just don’t understand the whole union thing. Unions were formed to help protect factory workers from unfair practices imposed upon them by big bad factory owners. Unlike workers, teachers are not cogs in an assembly line. Besides, just who are their big bad bosses anyhow? Me? You? The kids?  Just who needs protecting here? 

I would never ask teachers to pay for all of their health insurance—leave that to us starving artists—but if they paid 15 percent or so (which is still cheap by national standards) the school district would save about $500 million dollars every year. Maybe those eight teachers at Eagle Rock Elementary could keep their jobs after all.

Or look at it this way: I have been paying for my own health insurance for 15 years. It’s not my favorite check to write, but I haven’t fired my business partner over it. Moreover, across the district, it’s not necessarily the bad teachers who loose their jobs—it’s simply the new teachers. What is fair about that?

That paragraph probably just got my kids blacklisted for the rest of their school career. Will they still let me into the PTA? Probably so, but I’ll get some lame assignment, such trash monitor or something.

Here’s the thing. I can’t afford private school for my kids. I don’t want to drive across town to some new charter. I want to be able to walk my kids to school right here in my neighborhood. It seems so simple. Meanwhile, I have a friend here in Eagle Rock who drives her kids to Silver Lake every day for school. I have another friend in Silver Lake who drives her son to school in Glassell Park every day. The school system spends a katrillion dollars busing kids all over the city every day. With raising gas prices, it is only going to get worse.  Isn’t it crazy?

Remember Little House on the Prairie?  Guess what the school had? A teacher! That’s it. Okay, there were also books, chalk, pencils and a building that didn’t leak. Not seven layers of administration. It seems to me the last thing that needs to be cut from the district is the number of teachers and their aides. Why not start cutting at the top of the district and work down the ladder?

Have I made anyone mad yet? If not, feel free to get mad at me anytime, but more importantly, let’s get mad at someone who can help us educate our kids. Call the mayor. Call . E-mail your Congress representative.  Drop in and visit your school board representative (I hear they have lovely offices). Demand to know what they have given up before you give in.