Pass The Popcorn: LA’s Education Establishment Explodes
Written by redqueeninla
The education news exploding through the tubes via KPCC and the LATimessince last Thursday is absolutely staggering. There is a soap’s-load worth oftitters and twitters, readings and writings about fiscal improprieties, amoral, immoral and unethical behavior, all on the public’s dime. Our money, and our sacred trust in the chief education officer, superintendent Deasy, to educate our children well and properly, sluices straight through that public official’s office. And the environment there is none too clean.
It is, as a friend says, time to Pass The Popcorn (that popper is reportedly perched on the front burner these days). Only there are so many flues from which feces is flinging they need numbering:
1: John Deasy and his senior staff were all playing footsie with Apple and Pearson before ever a contract for common core technology was put out to bid. It’s possible that Apple-Pearson (“App-son”) never did “win” some free market competition to provide LAUSD with its best opportunity for technology. By all appearances that bidding process was rigged in advance to favor a pre-ordained “App-son outcome”.
There is some rather titillating email evidence of this immoral if not illegal behavior. While the LAUSD’s Inspector General signed off on the cleanliness of the ipad deal and the city’s attorney general declined any prosecution, this was prior to the appearance of the smoking emails.
Sources of amoral behaviour might be: If Deasy held shares of Apple during these pre-bid conversations; mightn’t this be fraudulent, particularly if he increased his share-holding during this period? His much bally-hooed divestiture after the contract award would only be so much deal-clinching for him personally. And what of the precipitous departure of deputy superintendent of instruction, Jaime Aquino, former Pearson-employee and latter-day New Teacher Center second-in-command? These conversations may have violated the revolving door “waiting period” of contact with former employees.
2: Another source of disarray involves a new information system that was rolled out district wide without any backup plan. As MiSiS faltered, as these things are wont to do, in its wake has been left thousands of students disenfranchised in some cases without schools or classes, teachers and Pass The Popcorn: LA’s Education Establishment Explodes – redqueeninla: