Return to Aldama
Another
January and there I was, once again queued up on the sidewalk in front of Aldama Elementary, vying for a kindergarten spot for my grandson. A year ago I arrived 19 hours prior to
registration, this year it was 22 hours but I split the time with my son Michael. As difficult as it may be to describe the set
of circumstances that could bring anyone to do such a thing once, let alone
twice, I’m going to take a crack at it nonetheless.
Over
several decades the combined efforts of the LAUSD and the UTLA have driven the
parents of hundreds of thousands of kids to desperation. Parents have turned their backs on a free but
inferior public school in their own neighborhood to find an alternative that
offers some hope for their children’s education. The rush to secure a spot at a private,
charter or out-of-area school, has parents participating in lotteries, camping
out prior to registration, and if successful, possibly adding up to 10 hours a week to an
already brutal commute.
LAUSD
is headquartered downtown in a 29-story building for which the district paid
$154 million in 2001. The building provides
over 900,000 square feet of offices for 3,400 administrative staffers, many of
whom earn 6-figure salaries. Among those
working at the headquarters is a brain trust who in 2007 paid $135 million for a
custom payroll system that took half a decade to install and costs the district
$1,421 per year to cut paychecks for each employee as opposed to the $36 per
year had they simply gone with an outside service. A 2010 grand jury report on this affair
determined that the system had overpaid 35,000 employees by a whopping $60
million and attempts to reclaim the money had fallen short by $9 million. Of course this bit of nonsense hardly
compares with the district’s $1 billion iPad debacle that the United States
Attorney’s Office is still investigating.
The
UTLA, or teachers union, has dedicated itself for decades to maintaining its
status as a powerful influence in state and local politics. The union’s secondary activity has been to refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the systemic
failure of LAUSD schools while blocking changes of any kind. A.J. Duffy was elected UTLA president in 2005
having campaigned with a message that as a former heroin addict and semi-illiterate
he was uniquely well suited for the job (I am not making this up).
Duffy
held office for six years prior to being ousted by term limits. He used a Jimmy
Hoffa persona to stymie every progressive idea having to do with offering
charter schools or modifying teacher tenure, testing, evaluation and dismissal.
In 2011, the very same A.J. Duffy now free of the UTLA, helped launch a charter
school called Apple
Academy
Even
a former illiterate such as Duffy could read the handwriting on the wall. Knowing that unlike a public school his charter school had to perform to survive, he insisted
on non-union teachers and every single policy he had fought against tooth and
nail when he ran the union. The best
part was that he was let go a year later when the Apple Academy
Last
year the Broad Foundation whose mission is to transform K-12 urban public
education joined with other groups critical of the status quo and proposed to
use $490 million of private donations to open 260 charter schools over the next
eight years. The plan is a remedy for an LAUSD that is unable to “improve academic performance, resolve its financial
deficit and provide stable leadership.”
The current Los Angeles School Board President, Steve Zimmer, referred
to the plan as a “hostile takeover”. I
am sure Mr. Zimmer realizes that it’s not personal, the LAUSD had more than 50 years to work
things out before he came along. If
bettering education means the LAUSD fades into oblivion, so be it. Besides, what goes around comes around.
The
lack of a decent local public school has tens of thousands of parents scrambling
to find an alternative, even if it only covers K-6. Parents devote between 12 and 24 months compiling
data on spread sheets before their kids are due for kindergarten. Now that two incomes are required by a family
of four to avoid starvation, information about the quality of the school is
only part of what goes into the decision of where to send their kids. The location of the school relative to the
parents’ workplace can be a deal breaker.
Pre-school and after school care location(s), hours of coverage and cost
are also of paramount importance. One must
consider how convenient would it be for the grandparents or other relatives to
help out when needed. Hillary is correct
when she says It Takes a Village, but
then again one income was plenty before the Clintons
My son
Michael and his wife Maria are nearing the end of a grueling 2-year odyssey of
spread sheets, applications and associated fees, school tours, readiness
determinations, enrollment eligibility policies, curriculum, school ranking and
test scores, financial arrangements, interviews with school parents,
administrators, pre and after school staff, ad infinitum. One small part of this odyssey found the
three of us taking turns standing in line at Aldama Elementary School
For
Aldama, my grandson is considered “out of area”, so we are in fact, if you can
believe this, in line not to be enrolled but rather for a spot on a waiting
list should any of the enrolled in-area kids drop out. As luck would have it, during Maria‘s turn in
line she struck up a conversation with Sonia who teaches at another dual immersion
school. When Sonia heard about the
out-of-area status and figured out where my grandson lives, she said there’s a
superb dual immersion program at the bottom of Maria’s street. Damned if it's even a three-quarter nine iron off their
front balcony. The only way Michael and
Maria could be closer to it would be if they lived in the car wash on the
corner. Michael had been given a tour of
the place a year or two ago but then follow up attempts sort of fell through
the cracks. It seems as though things
might just work out. After all, what
goes around comes around.