MOMS UNITE by Victoria Rierdan Hurley

LAUSD Cancels Summer School

Today LAUSD (and possibly other districts) announced that summer school sessions are cancelled for this year because of the budget crisis.  Last week the Governor demanded another huge hack to the education budget and the Superintendent, along with the School Board, are quickly running out of places to cut.  Summer school, though crucial, apparently seems like a “nice to have” at this point – especially when you consider the massive deficit we’re up against just to fund the next school year.  I’m not excusing LAUSD, or trying to minimize the impact of this, but things have reached a pretty dire point and until our State government puts education on the top of the priority list, instead of at the bottom, things are not going to get measurably better for our kids.

 

For many families across the district, cancelling summer school is a catastrophe.  They rely on summer school to help their struggling children prepare for the next school year.  Others rely on it to keep their kids out of trouble during the long summer months.  Hell, my mother sent my sister and me to summer school just to get us out of the house. Parents who work fulltime and can’t afford camp or other summer childcare programs are in a real bind now. I believe that the free education gravy train is grinding to a halt thanks to a history of bad, self-serving decisions at the district level and in our Legislature.

 

MOMS UNITE has always been about fighting to make sure that budget cuts don’t impact the classroom and we’ll continue that fight, but you have to know that the battle is getting tougher. The reality is that there is NO MONEY.  And our “education” Governor keeps taking more away from education.  For some reason he seems to think that the school system is the State’s ATM.

 

If you’re angry about the state of public education, and we all should be, contact your State representative. Contact the Governor’s office.  Write, call, and email your concerns.  Insist that education be made a priority in this State. It’s an embarrassment California has been allowed to come to this.  Nothing is going to change if we don’t force it. And now is the time.

 

If you’re not angry, you should be.  If you think that because your kids go to private school, or they’re grown and out of school, or you don’t have kids, and this doesn’t affect you – think again.  If you own property, this affects you. If you want to live in a State that attracts cutting edge industry and development, this affects you.  And if you don’t want to live in a city filled with angry, functionally illiterate people who would love good jobs, but can’t get them, then this affects you.  If we can’t educate our children, we’re not only doing them a horrible, inexcusable disservice, we’re doing ourselves a disservice.

 

Victoria

The Ballot Initiatives

As predicted, the ballot measures failed.  Well, all but the one which would prevent pay raises for legislators and statewide officeholders in deficit years.  I don’t think that anyone expected any other outcome on that one.

Today LAUSD issued a bulletin to the principals and the press regarding the situation and how the failure of 1A and 1B to pass will affect the schools.  The basic answer is that it’s bad.  The gigantic school deficit will grow from the current $131 M for the 2008-09 year to $1.3 B by 2010-11.  Yes, that’s Billion.  More cuts will have to be made. People will lose their jobs. It will hurt. To be clear, this is State wide.

We’re probably going to see more angry demonstrations coming from the teacher’s union, and more propaganda from them, more protests and rallies and petitions from parents and more grassroots groups like MOMS UNITE coming together to work for change. 

Superintendent Cortines and the School Board are putting plans in place to offset as much as possible, but, of course, there will still be a huge gap.  So we, as parents, have a choice.  We can panic and flee the public school system or even the State, or we can panic and work together to figure out how to save public education and make it work.  Clearly, we need to get the panicking out of our system because there is definitely reason to panic.  But, we also have an unprecedented amount of power to get involved. We are not helpless.

A lot of us are doubly impacted because we’ve been hit by the bad economy too and maybe private school isn’t an option anymore.  So we can use our voices in Sacramento and we can use our skills to convey to the legislators that we demand that education be made a priority in this State. 

I’ll have more information in the coming days that I will share with you.

Victoria

Some News About the Teacher's Union

So Teacher’s Union leader AJ Duffy finally got his wish. He’s been trying to get himself arrested for months now.  Back in March, he and some of his supporters, who for some reason were not in their classrooms, cooked up a big plan to disrupt the School Board meeting to get arrested on camera.  Their ham-fisted publicity stunt backfired and all they ended up doing was getting into a shouting match with parents, looking like jerks, and driving the Board members into a closed session.  I was at that meeting and was very disappointed to hear Mr. Duffy’s point of view.  Not once did he mention the welfare of the children. Not once did he indicate the damage that massive layoffs and increased class size would do to the quality of education.  Then he complained that the parents are against them.  Obviously, if you are a parent of a child in a public school, or any school for that matter, you are not going to be against the teachers.  To even suggest as much is ludicrous.  I did, however, find myself very much against Mr. Duffy. 

As you probably know, the Court ruled that the teachers could not strike last Friday without being in breach of contract. The Union encouraged them to engage in civil disobedience anyway.  Almost double the number of substitute teachers than usual were called on and teachers in many schools did picket.  Mr. Duffy, along with many teachers, were arrested outside of district headquarters.  But here’s what you may not know. Earlier this week, Mr. Duffy met with Superintendent Cortines and discussed a compromise.  Finally.  Certain ideas, like salary caps and unpaid furlough days, were discussed and agreed to.  Yet, the teachers were still encouraged by their Union in their publicity seeking civil disobedience activities.  People were arrested!!!  For what?  The Union is already cutting a deal that will save jobs!

My son’s teacher is wonderful.  She is smart, kind, compassionate, patient and passionate about teaching.  I’m in awe of the way she handles her class. And the kids adore her. The teacher he had last year in pre-k (a program that we have since lost due to budget cuts), is incredible. He was born to teach and I cannot say enough good things about him.  He was my first introduction to public school and I was sold. They, and all of the other wonderful teachers who devote their lives to educating our children should be treated better than this.  They should not be worried about being laid off. They should not be used as pawns by their own Union. And, certainly, they should not be arrested for no reason.

Victoria

MOMS UNITE Wins Over Superintendent Ramon Cortines

Yesterday it finally happened. I really felt like it was one of those things that was going to be on the books forever.  We were registered by a guard, signed in, assigned Visitor Passes and directed to the 24^th floor of the infamous LAUSD headquarters on Beaudry in downtown Los Angeles. It’s referred to simply as Beaudry by those in the know.  Ginger and I had been there before, but only in the board room to participate in the endless weekly board meetings that decide the fate of our children’s education.  And we’d been to the cafeteria. 

 

I feel strongly that in order to be truly successful in creating reform, we need to really understand the entire landscape and how one seemingly small change can be rejected because of the cascading effects it may have throughout the district. With that kind of knowledge, changes can be proposed that will actually be accepted, and work. Simply protesting isn’t enough.  No one is happy with the current state of affairs. We’re at the point where the district must be willing to provide some transparency so that parents and teachers and other stakeholders can understand where the weak spots are and work together to strengthen them.  Teachers and their Union must put education first.  And parents have a responsibility too. And that responsibility is to educate themselves on the issues so that they protest the right things – for the right reasons.

 

Superintendent Cortines himself came to retrieve us from the lobby, which I thought was impressive. He’s a very spirited, very high energy person. You get that right away from him.  I’ve said it before, and I stand by it.  I really like the guy.  There’s something about him that is so inspiring and so invigorating.  He lead us to his sparsely decorated office with a staggeringly beautiful view of downtown and offered us seats on sofas surrounding a low table. 

 

Though he had called the meeting, it became clear rather quickly that he expected us to start.  Fortunately, we were prepared. More than prepared. We spoke of MOMS UNITE’s origins, our successes, our members and our goals.  We explained that it is not our intention to become an adversarial  force and spend our time and energy railing against him, the school board or the district.  Our goals were more in line with being the conduit between his office and the parents – and vice versa.  We told him that we, who understood the specific effects of sweeping changes in the classroom experience, would like a say in what those changes should be and perhaps even how they should be implemented. And we explained the level of misinformation that runs rampant on campuses.  The Superintendent was surprisingly receptive and understands the value of communicating with parents and teachers directly. 

 

We then got down to the nitty-gritty – class size and the 5% of LAUSD schools that do not have Title 1 (based on economic disadvantage) or PHBAO (predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian or Other) status.  These schools will see the worst of the class size increase. These 5% of schools are looking at a class ratio of 36:1 in the 4^th and 5^th grades.  We’ve done our research and were able to present a compelling case to Dr. Cortines. And he agrees with us! While I would love to call  this a victory, we’re not there yet.  But he has agreed to revisit the programs that are based solely on race to see what can be done to create equity across the entire district. I do believe that he is sincere. If this happens, it will have the outcome of reducing class size across the board. I am willing, however, to call it as close to a victory as we’ve gotten so far!

 

We have been invited back to continue the discussion.  More as things unfold!

 

Victoria

Teacher Strike Update

This just in from people in the know…. the Court ruled that the teachers cannot walk out tomorrow as they had threatened.  However, we’re hearing rumblings that the Union is not giving up so easily. I don’t know exactly what may happen and on which campuses, but the word is that there may be disruptions of various types.  Teachers are being encouraged to call in sick, be late, and/or engage in other types of behavior that will skate the line  of the Court Order.

 

Most importantly, your children WILL NOT be in any danger.    At worst, it will be an unconventional day, with not much learning or testing being done. Administrators will have to scramble to keep their campuses in order. It does show, however, that the Union is not above some dirty tricks.  And I’ll just say it, Union leader AJ Duffy is a man who puts the needs of the students at the bottom of the list.

 

Again, check with your school administrator in the morning to determine what, if anything, parents can do to help.

 

Victoria

Prepping for our meeting with Supt Ramon Cortines

Today Ginger and I meet with Superintendent Ramon Cortines of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It’s exciting.  And, kind of unprecedented. Most “parent groups” that work with the district are really special interest groups. They’re about special needs children, English-learners, economically disadvantaged kids, etc.  All of the interests are important, but the district has learned to hear the term parent group as code for special interest group.  It’s also code for group of angry people who will yell at you and look out for ONLY their own interests.  I’m sure there’s a lot of history that makes this so, but this is what it has evolved to today. I’ve sat in “parent” meetings and can honestly say that I’ve been the only actual unpaid, unaffiliated parent in the room.  Public education is a very complex beast.

 

It is rare, if not unheard of, for the Superintendent to reach out to a grassroots group like MOMS UNITE for a private meeting. Things in the district have reached such a dire state that he is willing to look outside of the same old channels for new ideas.  Fortunately, we are definitely not lacking in ideas.  The challenge is to bring an idea that will work within the very stringent confines of the system. I hope to slowly expand that system, but for now, we must be happy to do what we can within the system to make some changes.

 

We’ve researched, spoken with other parents, teachers, principals and other interested parties to determine what’s truly most important. Naturally, we’ve gotten a ton of different responses, but everyone is in agreement on one thing – class size.  At our school, we’re look at stuffing 36 kids in the 4^th and 5^th grades into a single classroom. Research has repeatedly shown that 17 is the optimal size for learning.  I understand that 17 kids in a class can’t happen in the LAUSD, especially now, but come on! 36?  That’s pretty untenable, even for the most resilient and experienced teacher.

 

I like Dr. Cortines. I’ve spoken with him many times and I’ve heard him speak even more times.  I truly think that he’s doing the best that he can do with a very bad set of circumstances.  UTLA (the teacher’s union) villanizes him and so do a lot of school principals, but if there is one thing I’ve learned in all of this, it’s that everyone has an agenda. 

 

Stay tuned to find out what we present and how it’s received!

 

Victoria

Trying to offer clarity in the confusion

In the months that Ginger Bower and I have been focusing nearly full-time on MOMS UNITE, we've noticed the unbelievable amount of misinformation that has been circulating about LAUSD, UTLA, the budget, the stimulus money, strikes, etc.  Just last week a friend emailed me a flyer from some parents at a school in LA about a protest based on information that was two months old! None of it was relevant.  Parent groups are popping up, rallies are being held, and while I absolutely applaud this and encourage it, it's important that we understand what we're really up against.  This will make everyone's efforts more effective.

As one of the founders of MOMS UNITE, I started this blog to let parents, teachers and concerned LA taxpayers know, to the best of my ability, what's actually going on.  So much has happened with MOMS UNITE and we've had some amazing successes.  I regret that I'm late to start the blog, but better now than never.  Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.

Yesterday, LAUSD filed an injunction with the Court to prevent a teacher walk-out planned for Friday, May 15th.  The Court ordered that the teachers would be in breach of contract and subject to termination if they strike. The union is unhappy with this, and from what I understand, is still encouraging teachers to strike.  I sincerely hope that they don't.  I'd advise parents to check with your school principal to find out exactly what the situation at your school will be that day.

Ginger Bower and I are meeting with Superintendent Ramone Cortines to discuss a variety of issues that affect the classroom experience at Los Angeles elementary schools.  Class size reduction is a key issue and equalizing reduced class size across the district will be a priority for us.

I'll report back with an update on our meeting.

Victoria