The LAUSD’s 2019 Report Card - Carl J. Petersen - Medium

The LAUSD’s 2019 Report Card - Carl J. Petersen - Medium

The LAUSD’s 2019 Report Card

“The strike that nobody wanted is now behind us”
- Austin Beutner

When I predicted that the charter industry’s recapturing of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board would bring a level of chaos not seen in the district since the days of the iPad debacle, the MiSiS Crisis and other John Deasy disasters, I had no idea how quickly this would occur. Within months of taking control, Board Member Ref Rodriguez, a former charter school operator, was under criminal indictment. Before he could be forced from office, he and his cohorts operated behind closed doors to hire Austin Beutner as the new Superintendent. The country’s second-largest school district would be led by a man whose resume was filled with failures and lacked any professional experience in the field of education.

As 2019 began, the effects of this chaos were in full swing. Rodriguez was gone, but his cohorts had blocked the appointment of Jackie Goldberg as a temporary replacement, leaving one-seventh of the district unrepresented. The charter industry had also blocked a proposal to put a parcel tax on the general election ballot, depriving the district’s students of needed funding. Their allies in the Los Angeles County Office of Education then threatened a takeover of the district based on manufactured warnings of impending economic doom. Beutner had botched negotiations with the CONTINUE READING: The LAUSD’s 2019 Report Card - Carl J. Petersen - Medium