Free Republic

To cite just one terrible example, a New York City teacher is paid more than $100,000 not to teach. Thank her powerful union. Brandi Scheiner believes she is a political prisoner. Held against her will in what is euphemistically dubbed a "rubber room," the 56-year-old woman likens her two-year captivity to being imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Alas, it's unlikely the Red Cross will hear her case. She's a New York City public school teacher who, like about 600 fellow NYC teachers, has been removed from the classroom for alleged incompetence or other charges that include being drunk in the classroom...

Where to Cut? by: Bethany Stotts, August 07, 2009 One University of Washington professor is proposing a politically-incorrect solution to school district’s budget shortfalls this year. Research associate professor Marguerite Roza suggested in a July 30 briefing that districts might want to consider combining salary rollbacks with layoffs in order to retain more teachers and to keep class sizes low. Using data from the American Federation of Teachers, Prof. Roza teachers received, on average, salary schedule increases around 2.87 percent per year between 1997 and 2007 and step changes, on average, of 3.16 percent annually. “These across-the-board changes to the...

School districts across the state are slashing summer school to deal with the state financial cuts. Los Angeles Unified School District officials announced today that all summer school classes are being canceled at elementary and middle schools, and only credit recovery courses will be offered at high schools. The reductions were prompted by the district's budget deficit, which calls for $131 million in new cuts by June 30 and up to $273 million next year after voters overwhelmingly rejected a package of state ballot measures earlier this month. Once the measures failed, state legislators were left grappling with a $21.3...

Repeatedly, the [Los Angeles Unified School] district failed to follow up on sexual misconduct complaints against employees once police or prosecutors dropped criminal actions. ... Prosecutors say molestation cases are extremely difficult to try because they often depend heavily on the accounts of young, frightened and shame-filled victims. But nothing prevents L.A. Unified from looking further into cases that police or prosecutors decline to pursue. Indeed, district policy has long required school officials to perform an independent inquiry. Under state law, the district can fire teachers for conduct it deems immoral or unprofessional, even if the acts fall short of...

As education in Los Angeles is slashed to the bone, even those who are long past their school days are feeling the pain. Senior citizens are fighting budget cuts proposed by the Los Angeles Unified School District that could gut adult- education programs that help keep them connected to the outside world. But the fight could be in vain, according to district officials, who say that programs for seniors - especially those living in residential facilities - sit near the bottom of the district's list of priorities. The district's adult-education system faces a cut of at least a third of...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to lay off as many as 5,400 teachers and support personnel for the upcoming school year as employees protested raucously outside the meeting. The vote came hours after the board voted to save the jobs of 1,996 elementary school teachers using federal stimulus funds. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest school system, faces a $596 million budget shortfall for the 2009-10 school year. The final number of layoffs remains to be determined because the exact amount of state and federal funds coming to the...

Barely two months since Los Angeles Unified School District officials duped the area's generous voters into signing away an additional $7 billion of their money for a vague school-improvement plan, the officials are at it again. That's right. In the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, officials who have secured about $22 billion in construction bonds from property owners in the district in recent years are thinking of passing the hat again. So what's this new measure for? More buildings? Technology? Maintenance? School lunches for poor kids? Nope, the district wants a parcel tax to pay for operating expenses...

With jobs like mortgage broker, investment banker, stock analyst and others that once looked solid - and profitable - suddenly looking not so good in the wake of America's looming financial difficulties, a Daily News Special Report revealed what most of us already know despite heavy doses of conventional wisdom to the contrary: Teachers and other school employees do pretty darn well. Especially if they work for the Los Angeles Unified School District. According to information provided to the Daily News by the LAUSD, the average salary for teachers is $63,000 - not too shabby that. But more than 8,500...

On the edge of downtown Los Angeles, overlooking the 110 Freeway, stands a 29-story office building that boasts many of the trappings of a modern corporate headquarters: a cafeteria with flat-screen TVs, a state-of-the-art media production center, an on-site dry-cleaning service. The tower is the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District - home to more than 3,400 employees. They are the core of a massive bureaucracy that has surged in recent years even as the number of students and teachers has dropped. And 3,200 more administrators and support staff are scattered throughout the city, as top officials acknowledge...

Los Angeles Unified School District officials are considering asking voters to approve a $7 billion bond measure in November, more than twice as big as previously discussed and nearly half of it set aside for unspecified future projects. LAUSD's board is set to vote Thursday on whether to support the bond measure, which allocates more than $3.2 billion for future "repair and safety," "modernization, repair and technology," "green technology" and to "attract, retain and graduate more students," according to a draft summary of the bond funding distribution. Meanwhile, district and charter officials are wrangling over exactly how much charter schools...

Peace activists want equal access to Los Angeles high schools to counter military recruiters they describe as "car salesmen" bent on meeting quotas. The Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools says it's vital for students to have unvarnished information about military service. The coalition promotes nonviolent alternatives to military service. Group coordinator Arele Inouye says recruiters "have a quota and it's their job to get students to sign up. So just like a car salesman, they're going to say everything they can to get students to sign up." The group's access proposal could be considered by the school board next...

Schools Superintendent David L. Brewer's is coming under criticism from prosecutors for sending two high school administrators back to work after they were criminally charged with failing to report a student's sexual abuse claims. David Demerjian, head of the Los Angeles district attorney's Public Integrity Division, told the Los Angeles Times that it's "very unusual" for public officials accused of a crime to be allowed to return to their jobs -- particularly when they deal with children. "We prosecute a lot of public employees, and they are usually placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the trial," he said....

What is it?" Kelly Charles asked as he walked to his job as a custodian in downtown Los Angeles and gazed up at a rather odd construction project. "A roller coaster?" As I wandered the neighborhood, other guesses were: A ski jump. A toboggan run. A water slide. What's got everyone talking is the odd-looking tower that rises 140 feet above the 101 Freeway, directly across from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The futuristic metallic edifice, with a wraparound spiral Dr. Seuss would love, is not part of a theme park. It is the signature adornment on...

Ten months after installing a new computerized payroll process that has been roiled by glitches, Los Angeles Unified officials now say costs for fixing the system and completing its rollout could top $210 million. The system, with an original price tag of $95 million, has underpaid or overpaid thousands of employees, and last week district officials said hiring consultants to fix it has already ballooned the cost to $132.5 million. And some officials are questioning the district's transparency on all the costs associated with the system, noting that at least $6 million will be forfeited by allowing some overpaid teachers...

It is this reporter's opinion that it is time to take a look at the plight of a battle-scarred substitute teacher in the Los Angeles barrios. ... a substitute teacher who graduated from UCLA with high honors, is fluent in Spanish, and is a professional screenwriter. To make ends meet, she began as a substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). After several harrowing experiences, she now says there is no teaching going on at LAUSD, only confinement – the kind one might find in a penal colony, complete with wardens and bullhorns. And she says she’s...

...after 30 years of the institutionalized intellectual vandalism of our city’s most precious and needy children, when will we call it DELIBERATE regularity? If LAUSD was a private company, it would have collapsed a generation ago like the stinking necrotic tumor it is. LAUSD is a criminal enterprise – a $30 billion dollar (allegedly $11B operations, $21B construction) protection racket that extorts tax dollars under the pretext of improvement and higher scores. It makes schools I’ve seen in Calcutta, Rio, and Nairobi look like Cal Tech and MIT. ....LAUSD makes us lament the good old days before Brown v. Board...

Acrimony with racial overtones has plagued the advisory council. The key issue: whether meetings in Spanish should be allowed.For months, parents on a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council have disagreed over whether their meetings should be conducted in Spanish or English. Such arguments became so abusive that district officials canceled meetings for two months and brought in dispute-resolution specialists and mental-health counselors. But Friday morning's gathering of the District Advisory Council proved dysfunctional in any language. By one vote, parents censured their own chairman for alleged bad behavior, leading to a walkout of most Spanish-speakers. The rebuked chairman,...

Perhaps I'm just not that good at it. It's only my fourth year. They say it takes practice.I am standing at the door of my classroom. It is 7:24am in Los Angeles, and my homeroom students are trickling in listlessly. "Good morning. Please get your book out." I say to each group as they wander in. "Good morning, please get your book out. Good morning, please get your book out."I say it about 10 times. It is school policy to use the 20 minutes of homeroom for silent reading, to set the right tone for a day of schoolwork, and...

Four hours after arriving at her Los Angeles hotel from the Philippines, a jet-lagged Lolita Magno was thrown into a nonstop schedule of orientations, training sessions, paperwork and getting documents both for her new life in America and her new job teaching science at a Los Angeles Unified school. Despite pangs of homesickness and the uncertainties of a foreign environment, Magno knows she's begun a three-year journey that will offer her invaluable experience and knowledge she'll take back to her students in the Philippines. She thought it an ideal match: She'd bring her degree in science where it's needed and...

California education officials put forth artificially positive results on the number of students who passed the state's controversial high school exit exam last year, according to a recent UCLA study. The analysis also concluded that about 50,000 fewer students statewide earned diplomas last year compared to previous years, raising the prospect that the exit exam requirement is pressuring students to drop out. The decline in graduation rates was most pronounced in poor, heavily minority areas, the study found. "We've constructed a system that sets in place incentives for disinformation," said John Rogers, the study's author and co-director of UCLA's Institute...

Officials from a Los Angeles charter school are suing KABC-AM (790) and "McIntyre in the Morning" host Doug McIntyre for slander, alleging the school was the target of an on-air, racist campaign that led to a bomb scare. Academia Semillas Del Pueblo and its principal director of operations, Marcos Aguilar, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. They are seeking unspecified general, compensatory and punitive damages. "McIntyre implemented a premeditated scheme to bring down the school at all costs because the school educated predominately ... Latino-indigenous children in a non-Western European format," according to the lawsuit. According to...

Celebrating diversity has become one of the main goals of American schools. Students are being taught to think of themselves primarily as members of different ethnic groups, while being discouraged from developing an American identity. Consider the case of Mount Diablo High School in Concord, California. Mount Diablo's website states that students will "celebrate diversity by being respectful to all walks of life." In keeping with that ethos, last month the school divided students by ethnicity for separate assemblies. School officials explained that the purpose of segregating the students was to talk about test scores, recognize achievements and celebrate different...

Already lagging behind their statewide counterparts, Los Angeles Unified high school students took a precipitous plunge on newly released Academic Performance Index scores, dropping 20 points from the previous year. The LAUSD's elementary and middle school students made steady progress on tests that measure math and English-language skills, but still were well below the statewide averages, according to a California Department of Education report released Tuesday. In a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he is lobbying for more federal money for education, Superintendent David Brewer III said the high-school score reflects the stubborn achievement gap between white and minority...

LOS ANGELES - A judge on Thursday struck down a law granting Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa partial control of the nation's second-largest school district. The law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, violated the state constitution by interfering with the governing authority of the Los Angeles Unified School District board, Superior Court Judge Dzintra I. Janavs ruled. "The statute makes drastic changes in the local governance of the LAUSD giving the mayor a role that is unprecedented in California," she wrote. A coalition of parents, students and administrators sued in October, contending the law takes too much power away from the...

Nachum Shifren is an ordained rabbi in Los Angeles who spent 18 years of his life as a secondary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was also known as the "Surfing Rabbi" because of his abilities as a former professional surfer. He is quite familiar with youth culture and can be a pretty hip fellow -- despite his long beard, yarmulke and phylacteries that hang from his waistband. His level of coolness, however, never prepared him for a public school system where he received a death threat in class by a student and, on another day,...

Los Angeles Unified's massive school-construction project faces an estimated $2 billion shortfall fueled by soaring building costs, Superintendent Roy Romer warned Wednesday. Despite four bond measures and state support totaling nearly $19.2 billion over the past decade, Romer told the bond oversight committee that more steps need to be taken to shore up the program and fill the looming gap. While Romer said he didn't believe another bond would be needed, committee chairwoman Connie Rice said that if costs continue to escalate at this pace all options will be on the table - including a possible fifth bond measure. Romer,...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's fast-tracked legislation to gain control of Los Angeles area public schools faces a key Senate vote today, just days before the legislative session runs out. But even as lawmakers race against the clock, nearly all observers say approval has been virtually assured by an intensive lobbying campaign and the nearly unprecedented support of a powerhouse coalition of political leaders. While few in the Capitol halls say they are publicly willing to discuss - or even acknowledge knowing about - any specific political favors being traded to keep the mayor's legislation moving, most agree the wrangling has been...

Should American taxpayers be forced to pay for a self-segregating school that teaches children to hate the United States? That is apparently what is happening in Los Angeles. Academia Semillos del Pueblo (ASDP), a charter school partially funded by the Los Angeles Unified School District, claims it only wants to help disadvantaged Latinos to earn a quality education. The school's true agenda, however, is far more radical and far more dangerous. Judicial Watch recently launched an investigation of the ASDP by filing a California Public Records Act request. Here is a small sampling of what we've uncovered so far: The...

Hoping to appeal to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's immigrant roots, educators and legislators Thursday called on the Austrian-born leader to support the use of special textbooks geared toward students born outside the United States. "You're also an immigrant. You still know exactly what I'm talking about, governor," Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Whittier, said during a news conference promoting her bill aimed at bridging the gap between native and non-native students. Senate Bill 1769 would require the state Board of Education to develop an approach to teaching reading and writing that incorporates English instruction for non-native speakers. Advocates envision textbooks and teaching materials...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had raised nearly $1.1 million by the end of June to fund his campaign to wrest control of the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to finance reports filed Friday. The largest contribution by far came from A. Jerrold Perenchio, chairman of Los Angeles-based Univision Communications, who gave $500,000. Altogether, Villaraigosa's campaign to promote restructuring of the nation's second-largest school district received $1,075,000 from 10 donors by the end of last month. Three donors gave $100,000 apiece: shopping center operator Westfield Group; Chicago-based AP Properties Ltd.; and David I. Fisher, chief investment officer of Capital Group Investment...

LOS ANGELES In his bid for more power over public schools, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is set to appoint a veteran educator to a post designed to ease tensions between City Hall and public school officials opposed to the plan, the Los Angeles Times reported. Ramon C. Cortines, who served six months as interim superintendent of the L.A. Unified school district in 2000, is scheduled to be named deputy mayor for education, youth and families Tuesday. Cortines did not say whether he supports state legislation that would grant Villaraigosa say in district management a proposal that has drawn fire from the...

Guys this is a propaganda piece from the California Charter Schools Association in support of Marcus Aguilar and his school. It was released on June 7, 2006 and it flew under the radar. Since I like taking news that have been thrown in the garbage, I thought I would share it with you. What is interesting is the press release are filled with lies and it tries to promote Mr. Aguilar and the make up of the school itself. This "press release also tries to blame us(even though it does not name us) for the dissiminating bad information and inflammantory...

As the controversy surrounding LAUSD's Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School continues, many people still support this La Raza-funded Aztlan madrassa. In our LAUSD Parent Group, Annie explained the attack on Academia Semillas was "rooted in racism tied to the immigration debate." (Sigh) If you spend time in the Middle East, you'll learn that every bad thing on the planet is tied to Israel and Jews. From stubbed toes and drought to broken light bulbs and cancer, Jews are the epithet that explains...

The principal of a Los Angeles charter elementary school said Wednesday that neither he nor his staff ordered the assault of a KABC-AM radio reporter last week. Sandy Wells, the reporter working for KABC's morning show, "McIntyre in the Morning," was allegedly assaulted outside the school last week by a man demanding his audio tape. Station officials said Wells was also followed as he drove away. Rumors of Aguilar's involvement stemmed from an on-air caller to KABC's morning show, claiming he witnessed Aguilar order the attack, according to producer John Phillips. Police are investigating the incident. "I know for a...

I would like to start off with this startling fact. In 1994, the estimated costs of educating the children of exceeded 28.6 billion taxpayer dollars alone. Just multiplying that figure over a period of 20 years(adjusting for inflation). With schools cutting back on after school programs such as after school prograns, not purchasing up to date textbooks. Some states have even cut back the hiring of new teacgers and childcare prgrams. Other school districts(including the Los Angeles School District) have shortened the shool week from five days to four or shortened school hours, All of this can be diretly attributed...

Listen hereReporter Assaulted After Interview And Loses TapeWND Article The reporter is also scheduled to appear on O'Reilly tonight.

CBS) LOS ANGELES A local radio reporter was assaulted Thursday while leaving a Los Angeles charter school that his station has said imparts separatist ethics, a station official said. The reporter, Sandy Wells, was not hurt, according to station spokesman Steve Sheldon. Wells was leaving the campus of Academia Semillas Del Pueblo, 4736 Huntington Drive, after interviewing the principal when a car came around the corner, jumped the curb and the driver tried to run him down, Sheldon said. Wells managed to dodge the car, but the driver, a man who appeared to be in his mid-20s, got out and...

On Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka "If Brown was just about letting Black people into a White school, well we don’t care about that anymore. We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil...

LOS ANGELES – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday embraced Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school takeover plan, giving the mayor a highly visible ally in his drive to gain control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Mayor Villaraigosa has shown bold leadership,” the Republican governor told reporters in Sacramento. “This is exactly the kind of thing that ought to be done. “I am 100 percent behind him on this and if there's a bill that comes down here, I will sign that,” Schwarzenegger said. “We want to help him in that move, because we all know that it is inexcusable that...

GRANADA HILLS - State Sen. George Runner and Assemblyman Keith Richman announced legislation Monday that would break up the 727,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District into at least 15 smaller districts. The two lawmakers promised greater accountability would come from community-based school systems, calling the nation's second-largest district a "bureaucratic behemoth" that was failing students. Under identical bills proposed in the state Assembly and Senate, any California school district with more than half a million students - L.A. Unified is the only one large enough to qualify - must split into districts no larger than 50,000 students by 2010. A...

There is new evidence that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has misled voters as to the actual need for its gargantuan and highly expensive building program. The district's latest estimates show that enrollment in the nation's second largest school district is declining much more rapidly than previously revealed. The precipitous decline could result in some of the schools now being built with bond money sitting as empty and useless as Saddam Hussein's former palaces. The reaction of most citizens of Los Angeles to the mere mention of LAUSD is intense disgust. After all, this district has built a...

<p>Police herded students off an access road leading to the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro on Tuesday as demonstrations continued against possible immigration reforms. Student marches were also staged Tuesday morning in Bellflower and Compton.</p> <p>Despite rain and a lockdown in the Los Angeles Unified School District, a group of about 200 students massed near 223rd Street in the Harbor Gateway area in San Pedro and started walking south on Avalon Boulevard shortly after 8 a.m. A separate group of students in San Pedro tried to get onto the Vincent Thomas Bridge, but police stopped them and turned them around, detaining a few.</p>

tune in to Fox News to see the future of America shutting down freeways and streets.

AP) LOS ANGELES The marches against proposed immigration legislation are spreading in Los Angeles. Some 1,500 L.A. students who have walked out of class are gathered outside Los Angeles City Hall. L.A. school district officials said some 1,000 students from Los Angeles High School on the 4600 block of Olympic Avenue have walked out and are reportedly heading toward Hollywood High School on the 1500 block of North Highland Avenue. Hundreds of students have already left Huntington Park High School, some scaling fences that school officials locked to avoid a walkout. L.A. school district spokeswoman Monica Carazo said students have...

(Get ready for more Gay, Lesbian and Transgender High Schools in Los Angeles!) With Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Roy Romer nearing retirement, the game has begun to find his replacement, and the name bandied about town the loudest and most consistently: Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg. The former school board and City Council member remains coy on the topic, but sources say she has been campaigning hard for months - even before Romer announced his intended early departure - to head up the second-largest school district in the nation. "It's not something I really want to do. However, depending on who they're...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The head of the Los Angeles Unified School District has told the school board that he wants to leave before his contract expires. In a closed meeting several weeks ago, Superintendent Roy Romer told the Board of Education "that he would like them to find his replacement by September or October, but that he would certainly stay until an appropriate replacement is found," district spokesman Stephanie Brady said. He became head of the 727,000-student district in 2000. The district did not indicate why Romer, 77, wanted to leave before his contract expires in June 2007. However,...

Eighteen students were arrested today in the second consecutive day of fighting at South Area High School No. 1 in Los Angeles after two groups of students faced off and yelled challenges at each other, authorities said. The student body at the school, informally known as Santee High School, is more than 90 percent Latino while most of the rest are black. School officials deny that race is an issue at the school south of downtown, which opened this year to deal with the overcrowding at Jefferson High School. Sixteen students were arrested Wednesday and 10 were hospitalized after school...

SACRAMENTO - California will face a shortage of up to 100,000 teachers in the next decade as retirements crest even while schools cope with tougher federal requirements for student learning, according to a report released Wednesday. At the same time, enrollment has been dropping in teaching-preparation programs in the state - from 76,000 in 2002 to 67,500 in 2004, according to the report from the nonprofit Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, based in Santa Cruz. Center director Margaret Gaston said the 2005-06 school year could be one of the last in a long time when the supply...

Gearing up for a prolonged fight with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa over control of public schools, Los Angeles Unified officials say they'll launch a public relations offensive to cast the often maligned district in a more favorable light. So far, Superintendent Roy Romer and other top district officials have not reacted to Villaraigosa's stepped-up pledges to wrest control of the nation's second-largest district from the seven-member school board, which except for a brief period has been dominated by candidates backed by and closely linked to unions. But behind the scenes, board members have urged Romer to spin the district's achievements more...

When hundreds of Los Angeles high school students told administrators they planned to walk out of school to attend last week's protest by the liberal "World Can't Wait" group calling for President Bush's impeachment — the L.A. school district decided not to discipline them. Instead, the district provided school buses and a staff escort to transport some 800 students from 10 schools to the rally and back. School officials said students would attend the protest with or without their permission, and the district's chief operating officer told KNBC, "Our issue...was safety, and I think we fulfilled our mission." — FOX...