UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL-As an LAUSD parent of just four-years’ standing, there is a vast, murky gulf of incomprehension regarding this school system, yawning not only to the fore, but way, way into the dim, if recent, past of my own pre-LAUSD-involvement.
When Los Angeles voters passed Proposition BB in 1997, I was just giving birth to my eldest, now readying to apply for college. I do not recall the furor of distrust codified in internet archives that recount how the voters resolved a conflict regarding desperately needed public monies for school maintenance and construction, amid a climate where fraud and abuse of public monies became recently evident.
This tension was resolved and the bond proposition passed when – and only after — LAUSD pledged to convene an oversight committee tasked with reviewing and auditing disbursement of public monies. This committee was established by LAUSD, but was not to be controlled by it.
It is hardly amusing, therefore, to witness a board member seated long after that hard-fought, painful compromise, level complaints against a Bond Oversight Committee (BOC) member that even if true, are largely irrelevant to her purview in approving the board’s membership.
Boardmember Galatzan’s unsubstantiated diatribe is an attack on the structure of tax payers’ faith in the system. We voted in that money because we safeguarded it to a volunteer committee of watchful citizens whom we trust, to scrutinize the utilizing of public monies by an institution that has lost our trust.
This Tuesday (6/17/14) at 2pm the Board of Education is set once again to reappoint the American Institute of Architect’s appointee to the committee, Stuart Magruder. There can be no greater expression of democratic support than turning out for a volunteer citizen who in return for speaking truth to power is centered in the crosshairs of defamation.
Please consider physically showing up Tuesday at 333 South Beaudry. To be admitted to the board room to witness tomorrow’s high jinks, it might be necessary to arrive early. And if such fortitude is not possible, please consider signing the petition in support of him here:
One boardmember’s confusion about her assignment to establish independent oversight of our tax dollars must not interfere with the public’s trust in public institutions!
(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 49
Pub: June 17, 2014
