Broad charter plan comes heavy attack at LAUSD board meeting
Jackie Goldberg declares war outside the school board meeting.
The Broad Foundation plan to expand charter schools in LA Unified made an ominous debut before the LA Unified board yesterday as one opponent after another ripped into it as unwanted, unnecessary and destructive to the district and public education in general.
The widespread attack came in several forms after the board postponed voting on a resolutionfrom Scott Schmerelson that would put the board on record as opposing the plan. The delay enabled the board to adjourn earlier so the members could reconvene their private discussions on finding a new superintendent.
“We have been here since 8 in the morning and will be meeting until about 11 tonight, not that I’m asking you to have sympathy,” said school board president Steve Zimmer, explaining to the audience why some resolutions were being delayed.
While no one from the Broad foundation or its offspring now developing the plan — Great Public Schools Now — was invited to speak, the effort was a target all day, illustrated in stark terms by former school board president Jackie Goldberg as she addressed a coalition of community organizations at an anti-charter rally outside district headquarters. “This is war! We need to do battle right now,” she said. “We don’t have the money, but we have the numbers, we have the people!”
Those remarks echoed much of what transpired inside the building, where one of the first orders of business was nine union leaders representing employees of the district, standing together and telling the board, “we affirm out commitment to the resolution,” as Juan Flecha, president the administrators union, put it. The group included Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, which has emerged as the staunchest opposition group to the GPSN plan.
Later, the board granted Schmerelson 10 minutes for a parade of supporters to speak, starting with several students from Roosevelt High School, who referred to the “Broad-Walmart plan,” a sure sign that their remarks were scripted by UTLA, the only group that consistently describes the effort in those terms.
The last of the speakers was Goldberg, who served eight years on the board through 1991, the last two as president. In a screeching lecture that went well beyond the Broad charter plan comes heavy attack at LAUSD board meeting - LA School Report:
