THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Since Trump was elected back in November, and even during campaign season, protests and resist actions have become pretty commonplace. In fact, some have said that marches are the new “brunch.” 

Around 9 a.m. Saturday, a group of about 200 activists who refer to themselves as “Indivisible San Pedro” gathered in a public park within Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. Trump National Golf Club is a public course owned by The Trump Organization. In a well-executed, creative protest, a flash mob formed the word “RESIST!” on the coastal property to call for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the election, as well as Trump’s administration and for the release of his tax returns. 

In what took about fifteen minutes, the group, dressed in white, created 30-foot tall letters while singing “God Bless America.” Organizers had investigated during the planning and found out they would not need a permit. The space is overseen by the California Coastal Commission, which deals with public access to the ocean and protects the park from encroachment. 

Indivisible San Pedro was organized post-Inauguration to voice concerns about the administration by contacting legislators, attending town halls, and participating in protest marches.

Trump National Golf Club officials and sheriff’s deputies observed from a clubhouse balcony but did not intervene.

Saturday’s flash mob attracted national media coverage and was a peaceful, creative display of resistance. With hope, the continued displays of resistance will result in policy changes and investigations. If there is an upside to the Trump Administration, it’s the increased awareness and participation on the grassroots level that has occurred, whether it be by communicating with legislators via text, phone or emails, marching, or organizing creative displays like this flash mob.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-The LAPD punted last week when it received a complaint about burglars caught on video breaking into a Sherman Oaks condominium’s mailboxes, refusing to even take a report, explaining that mail theft is a federal crime and should be handled by the U.S. Postal Service. But in doing so, the LAPD ignored the burglary committed to get to the mailboxes and likely identity theft or financial crimes done with the haul that is supposed to be handled at the local level. That enabled three more break-ins, for a total of four, by the same crew at the same location in less than a week. 

The burglaries took place on May 3, 5, 6 and 8 at the upscale condo located across from the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Memorial Park.

Detective Meghan Aguilar of the LAPD’s Media Relations division said that while only one such complaint was made to the station, she understood that their lack of response to it dissuaded the victims from reporting the subsequent break-ins by the same crew. 

The May 3 burglary took place at 2:33am, with a Dodger-cap wearing ringleader and a taller male accomplice.

On May 5 at 3:46 a.m. the ringleader returned alone with his face exposed but not captured on camera. 

Then on May 6 at 5:13 a.m. he returned with a waifish female accomplice. (See photo top of page.) 

And on May 8^h at 9:48 p.m., he returned by himself again, without a bag for the loot, but this time with his face exposed as he first read the building directory, after which he opened only two of the four mailbox panels and took only targeted contents. 

“This is neither our policy, nor the way the LAPD is supposed to fight crime,” Aguilar said of their poor response, assuring that a detective would be in touch with the condo “in a day or two.” But nearly a week since that promise was made, the LAPD has failed to contact the property management company or condo board of directors. 

“If the LAPD ever does show up to take a report,” an unnamed condo resident said, “we also have bare-faced photos of other prowlers checking for open car doors in our garage.”

There is an unconfirmed report that U.S. postal inspectors may have nabbed the crew’s ringleader but they did not return a request for an interview in time for this article. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office could not be reached for comment.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport.  Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDUCATION POLITICS-Really. It’s true. You may have heard differently, but if so, what you’ve heard is not correct. Here’s what LAUSD did do: they raised the course distribution requirement for graduation, and decided to retain the same grade requirements. In the end, the net effect was that graduation requirements increased. 

The confusion arises because the current system is less punishing than a change that would have affected both course and grade requirements. But this whole narrative has been alternatively spun because “lower” graduation requirements were never implemented. 

Simple, right? 

A fuller explanation requires gazing back a dozen years or more, and thinking about ideas like the meaning of Education. It’s a simple concept wrapped in surprising complexity. 

A dozen years ago, folks were merrily chugging along in high school, where a mix of vocational and academic courses were offered to interest kids of varying backgrounds and aspirations. 

Meanwhile qualitative letter grades were awarded, as per usual, but not according to any standard. The history of grading is as disparate as anything across time, place or countries. You may have grown up with some system or other and think that what you know is what must be…but it’s not so. There have always been myriad ways to assign grades, between classes and even within a school. 

And it turns out that what’s considered a passing grade often increases with age. So older, specialized graduate students are expected to demonstrate higher grades to be considered “passing”, because their specialty is presumed of particular interest, and therefore better grades are expected than for a generalized mish-mash of everything. This practice rolls back continuously through the types of schools; passing in college is harder than in high school, grade school frequently doesn’t even consider “passing” a sensible concept. 

But this imposes a problem at the transition between high school and college in California, which has a strong state college system with well-defined requirements. Admissions to CSU and UC colleges requires a “C” grade in a set of prerequisite courses. Meanwhile, to graduate from high school “D” has long been considered passing and adequate to earn a high school diploma. However, there is a disconnect between graduation and admissions. 

There is another prerequisite to higher education in California: a set of fifteen courses known collectively as “A-G.” These are typically “academic” classes and not “vocational” -- e.g. Math and English, not auto-mechanics. And accordingly they are sometimes considered more “rigorous” in the sense that there is a core body of knowledge to be mastered in order to demonstrate “proficiency.” 

Now demonstrating these quantitative measures of proficiency is a hallmark of our modern computer society. Because we can measure it among millions of people relatively easily nowadays, there are powerful forces urging us to believe that we must. 

Therefore several factors coincided resulting in a different landscape for the courses offered at LAUSD. 

While kids were focusing on a vocational-track of courses, they progressed through LAUSD’s graduation requirements successfully, even sometimes receiving a diploma before understanding that their course load failed to satisfy the “A-G” requirements to be considered for admissions to a California state college. 

This disconnect between graduation requirements and subsequent ability to proceed to the next educational level upset many. It came to light that some schools, typically composed of poorer children, did not even offer their students those courses necessary to become eligible for higher education. This was understood – rightfully – to be terribly inequitable. 

To make the A-G courses available to all students at all high schools was expensive in terms of money and also kids’ schedules. It required rearranging curricular priorities and graduation requirements; course schedules became filled with academic classes that squeezed out the vocational. Consequently many vocational classes were closed in favor of providing sufficient “A-G” classes to enroll the entire student body. 

So now that these more academic courses were available to one and all, the district faced a new problem: encouraging former vocational students to sign on to the new, more rigorous course of instruction. A stick approach was adopted whereby all students were required to take “A-G” courses in order to graduate from LAUSD. Thus the curriculum became more rigorous for one and all. 

Meanwhile, the grading discontinuity remained; while a “D” was adequate for passing high school and receiving a diploma, this still resulted in a certain subset of students who, even though they took and passed “A-G” classes, were still not eligible for college with its higher level of “passing.” 

To bridge this gap and align graduation requirements from LAUSD with CSU/UC eligibility requirements, on May 23, 2012 the board passed a resolution to take effect only with the class of 2017, raising LAUSD graduation requirements in “A-G” classes from a “D” grade to a “C.” If you graduated from LAUSD, you would then be eligible for admissions to a CSU or UC school. 

However this imposed a double-whammy of increased rigor on our high schoolers, harder courses coupled with the higher designation of “passing.” Suddenly a whole subpopulation of students was ineligible for graduation and disenfranchised; they met the challenge of enrolling in the more rigorous “A-G” courses, but having received what once was considered a passing grade, they were now denied a diploma. They had risen to the challenge and followed the rules but did not receive reciprocal academic recognition. 

And so the prospective rule-change was understood to be inequitable; it clearly impacted disadvantaged students disproportionately. 

Accordingly in a subsequent board resolution on June 9, 2015, “To Recommit to A-G for all”, the grade requirement for graduation was dropped, restoring the old grade requirement for graduation in all classes. 

Thus graduation requirements were never lowered, but they were restored to their traditional level. And the reason for doing so was a joint initiative by board members Garcia, Zimmer and McKenna, acknowledging the injustice of disenfranchising students who had met graduation requirements. 

Already, LAUSD students had been returning and staying in school at ever-growing rates, even under the more rigorous “A-G“ program requirements. The percentage of graduates eligible for CSU/UC admissions was increasing strongly. To rebrand a whole subset of diligent students as “failures” was inappropriate and improper as it denied them their diplomas, earned under expected conditions. 

So why is it necessary to draw out this explanation in such gory detail? 

Because the CCSA’s candidate for board district four has exploited this slightly complicated and obscure history by misleading parents into fearing some great social injustice is being maliciously foisted on our students. His supporters have absorbed a narrative of outrage surrounding a spurious injustice that never was, buttressed by fake statistics that are not real. 

Writing in the DeVos Foundation-supported LA School Report, a parent suggests that “…school board members voted to lower the student requirements for A-G college prep coursework from a C grade to a D. As a result, more than half of LAUSD’s 2016 graduates were not eligible for CSU or UC universities. Our own elected officials failed our children….” 

None of these confused tangle of claims is true. There was no vote to lower student graduation requirements. More than half our graduates are not ineligible to continue in the California college state system (see chart above) the school board’s vote did not affect anyone’s eligibility, but the imminent and unfair ineligibility of dozens was stopped. Our elected officials did not “fail” our children: far from it. They acted to increase equitability and prevent cruel and unfair disenfranchisement from K-12 schooling. 

Melvoin’s message assuages educational jingoism by offering outrage for a grand social injustice that simply didn’t happen. This is not a tale of quality downgraded or standards diminished. There is no story of fiddled with statistics. There is no yarn here of a vulnerable population done wrong. 

In reality, LAUSD met the mandate of providing more rigorous schooling for one and all, and it has met the challenge of engaging its greater access equitably – and even with a dramatically increasing rate of graduates. 

It can be argued that this has come at a cost to important vocational and even science training, as well as widespread, fully activated arts programming. The budget for public schools is insufficient, but if only Melvoin’s corporate supporters would redirect their seemingly infinite resources into district schools rather than swamping a private campaign coffer, the equations governing our kids could change overnight.

(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) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON CALIFORNIA-The board of the Metropolitan Water District, the mammoth agency that brings water from the Colorado River to lots of Southern California, has announced a $10 million dollar capital campaign as a solution to what had been described as awful living conditions being suffered by their workers -- highlighted by a March 8 petition to MWD Chair Randy Record from three dozen workers asking him to step in about a sewage leak at the Gene camp, one of the desert housing centers. All MWD camps now are slated for major infrastructure improvements in the plan the MWD board just approved. 

“We were notified in late February 2017 about leaking waste water pipes under five desert houses, and the problem was addressed immediately,” Jim Green, the manager of MWD’s Water System Operations Group (WSO) told CityWatch.

Green added, “The recent sewage leak validated the approach we were taking upgrading desert housing as part of a comprehensive capital campaign that was unanimously approved by the MWD board last week. We consider desert housing at the same level of importance as the pumps and pipes that transport the water.” 

Who knew the MWD was a landlord housing workers in several remote desert camps, built many decades ago and badly in need of the upgrade that is now in the works? The board directors did, and so did the management. Now, they are doing something about it. 

And, why are those workers so important in keeping MWD running smoothly? It sounds archaic and reminiscent of “company towns” where workers were forced to endure whatever conditions the employer placed them in, but there’s a reason these workers are located in harsh-conditioned, isolated desert camps. 

According to MWD Director Stephen Faessel, to help understand why the housing infrastructure devolved into what some would call “slum-like” conditions, you must take a trip back in time to eighty-six years ago when William Mulholland was assigned to create an aqueduct to carry water from the Colorado River to the Southern California region.

In 1913, Mulholland had already tapped the Owens Valley for water, but the population explosion in Southern California demanded yet more water. The Colorado River Compact gives California a large share of that river’s water and that is what Mulholland went after. 

Construction of the 242 mile Colorado River Aqueduct began in 1931 and took eight years and 10,000 men to complete. It has been described by historians as the biggest Depression era public works project in Southern California. It’s a massive engineering feat that is recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as one of the "Seven Engineering Wonders of American Engineering.” 

The aqueduct pumps more than one billion gallons of water each day through pipes 10 feet in diameter that bring the Colorado River water to Southern California, from Lake Havasu/Parker Dam, the main holding reservoir for the Colorado River Aqueduct, to six counties in Southern California, providing water to more than 19 million people throughout the region (the Los Angeles DWP got 70% of its water from the MWD last year.) It accomplishes this by moving the water through a system of 90 miles of tunnels, nearly 55 miles of cut-and-cover conduit, almost 30 miles of siphons, and five pumping stations. The Gene pumping station, located near Parker Dam, one of the five that lift water up over the mountains, is where the sewage problem was. 

The danger of pumping such massive quantities of water is that there may be a harmful “back flow” if the pressure suddenly drops and water is flushed backwards through the system, wreaking havoc on, and potentially destroying, the pumping machinery. The most effective safety valve for this contingency is to have MWD workers live no more than 15 minutes away from the five sets of pumps that service pipes that stretch across the desert from the river to the sea, so they can immediately intervene. Hence, when the pumps and pipes were built, MWD built worker housing to be sure their workers were within the 15 minute call-zone. It’s those tenants, who pay rent to the MWD to live in company housing, that have been living in bad conditions. 

Speaking about the $10 million dollar capital campaign that will pay for a major overhaul to upgrade the desert housing conditions at the five pumping plants, MWD’s Green said, “It’s just phase one of our major capital improvement plan.” It could, like MWD Director Brett Barbre said, “make it a paradise so people strive to live there….and say Metropolitan takes care of its people.” Some board members were shocked when they saw pictures of the living conditions and said they did not know about the sewage problem. One MWD board member, Sylvia Ballin, told CityWatch, “I’m really upset about this and distraught.” 

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--All the debate about how to address California’s massive housing shortage is obscuring the big picture: a state takeover of local housing policy has begun.

That’s the real import of the more than 100 bills that have been introduced in the legislature to change housing policy in various ways. None of the current proposals is up to the task of getting the state to build sufficient housing. But the varied legislative activity—proposals to cover production incentives for builders, rental assistance, streamlining regulations, new regional planning initiatives, increased enforcement of state housing laws, and even taxation of second homes—clearly signals the state’s intention to take a leading role in how California houses itself.

The prospect of a Sacramento intervention is usually worrisome. But this one should be welcomed. The threat of the state seizing power may be one of the few levers that could prompt the biggest obstacles to new housing—local governments—to get out of the way.

One can hardly blame state government for aggressive meddling in housing. California has a nasty history of destabilizing calamities: from the run-up in housing prices in the 1970s that produced the Prop 13 backlash; to the debt-fueled mid-2000s increases that led to the housing crash and the Great Recession.

Today, California’s crisis is rising prices resulting from a profound failure to create enough units to meet the population’s needs. While the state needs an estimated 180,000 new units a year, it has been getting less than half of that. By one estimate, the resulting shortage is a $140 billion annual drag on the state economy. Companies and individuals leaving the state most often cite housing costs as their top reason. Home ownership is at the lowest rate in California since the 1940s.

The crisis also represents a public health issue. Millions of Californians pay so much for housing that they have less to spend on health care, food, education, and transportation. Housing costs force Californians into long commutes that damage our health, infrastructure, and environment. And housing prices are one big reason why California suffers from the greatest homelessness and the highest poverty rate of any state.

Adding to the difficulty is the bewildering mix of federal, state, and local policies that affect housing. Federal and state programs support people who seek housing and those who wish to provide moderately priced housing. But such programs are tiny compared to the need for subsidies in expensive California; the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that most low-income households receive no assistance with housing, and that nearly twice as many households are on waiting lists for housing vouchers as there are available vouchers.

Local governments add to the shortage by passing and enforcing limits on housing development, density, and sometimes rents themselves. This local hostility to new housing is fueled by NIMBYism, environmentalism, and a state fiscal system that encourages local governments to pursue retail development (which produces sales tax for local coffers) instead of housing.

The state’s goal should be straightforward: more housing. That should mean more assistance to those seeking housing, more incentives to produce more housing, and fewer regulations that limit housing.

The state has a great deal to do, but its goal should be straightforward: more housing. That should mean more assistance to those seeking housing, more incentives to produce more housing, and fewer regulations that limit housing. But the politics are wickedly complicated, even by California standards.

The debate is already dividing key interests that must come together to pass ambitious laws. Labor is split on housing, as building trades unions oppose reforms to lower housing costs, a change that would benefit working-class members of service sector unions. There also are divides among environmentalists (between those who embrace denser development and hardliners who oppose any growth at all), advocates for the poor (between those who want to revive poorer communities with new housing and those who fear new housing will merely displace poor people), and even among Republicans (between those who want to protect older people and their housing values and those who want more housing for the young families in their inland communities).

“I’m not super optimistic about the state being a positive force in housing yet,” says Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center. “The number and range of proposals suggests that there isn’t consensus yet among state leaders and housing advocates about what levers to pull.”

Some of the more than 100 housing bills could make things worse, by adding to the costs of housing, or creating disincentives for local governments to approve housing. It’s also difficult to make even small gains in encouraging more housing for poor and working-class people.

State Senator Toni Atkins of San Diego, for example, has built a formidable coalition behind a bill to provide a dedicated funding stream to support below-market housing. Politically, such funding would be a major breakthrough. But the legislation would produce just $250 million a year, a fraction of the tens of billions in affordable housing needs statewide.

And subsidized housing reflects only a fraction of the California housing market. The Legislative Analyst’s Office has called for a focus on encouraging additional private housing construction in high-demand coastal areas. Shortages there, the legislative analyst said, have rippled across the state, sending people further inland in search of cheaper housing, and driving up housing costs for everyone in the process.

The crisis is urgent and has been years in the making, and the state’s legislative efforts to gain power over the problem could take many years, with hiccups and mistakes. Is there any way to go faster? Perhaps, but it would require the politically difficult step of empowering developers.

One model, with roots in Massachusetts, gives private developers, nonprofit organizations, and local authorities great powers to challenge land-use regulations that prevent housing development. The developers get an especially free hand in localities that fail to meet state requirements on housing. The Massachusetts model thus puts local governments on the defensive. They can no longer say no to housing projects; they either must make plans for housing, or watch as developers do as they please.

Such pressure from the state may sound extreme. But so are the consequences of our housing shortage.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010)

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS--(Steve Zimmer, who is running for re-election for the Los Angeles Unified School District school board, wrote this unusual article, “The Case Against Myself.” The election is Tuesday. Decide for yourself whether he persuaded you.)

I want to present four legitimate arguments against me. These are good and fair reasons to vote against me on May 16th.

I know this is unusual, but because my opponent has lied so much about my record, I thought I would just go ahead and do this myself. I hope you will share this with your friends and family and explain to them that everything they are reading about me is a lie whether it is on the television, on the radio, or wrapped around their Sunday newspaper. Give them the real reasons to vote against me. Here they are:

1. I believe independent charter schools need to be regulated to ensure that they serve every student that comes to their school house door. I believe independent, privately operated charter schools must be accountable for all public funds they receive. I believe charter schools should operate in the district that authorizes them. If you believe independent charter schools should be completely de-regulated, you should vote against me.
2. I have moved resources to meet the needs of district students living in the highest concentrations of poverty, including thousands in my own district. In real and understandable ways, this has been difficult for certain schools in my district. But I believe it is the only moral way to do this job when 83% of students in the LAUSD live below the poverty line. Some voters may be concerned about these decisions and choose to support my opponent who has only focused his campaign in the more affluent areas of the district.
3. I have been endorsed by the teachers and school employees of our district. I work with our teachers and I work with their union. I vote against their recommendations when I think they are wrong. But it is a priority for me to build trust with the people who deliver education to our students, to be allies in our struggle for equity, to make significant improvement in LAUSD schools. If you don’t believe I should engage our teachers and their unions then I understand why you would vote against me.
4. I oppose the ranking of teachers, students, and schools. I oppose high stakes standardized testing. I believe that the things that are the most beautiful and wondrous about children can never be measured by a standardized test. If you believe we should be constantly testing and ranking students, teachers and schools then I understand why you wouldn’t support me.ur workday the right

Bottom of Form

This is what I have done. I understand some people can’t vote for someone who has done this.

But Nick Melvoin hasn’t used any of these reasons. Instead he has lied and he has distorted. I can’t stop someone from lying, but I can certainly tell you that this is not how you should win an election. Here are some of the lies he tells about me:

Nick’s Lie #1: The iPads were my program

The Actual Truth #1: The iPad program was started by Melvoin supporter John Deasy. I voted to end the program once it became clear that Deasy had lied to the school board and lied to the public.

Nick’s Lie #2: I created a $1.4 billion deficit.

The Actual Truth #2: The Board has balanced our budget every year. With the Governor’s latest announcement , we will have our budget balanced for 10 years straight.

Nick’s Lie #3:: I lowered graduation standards

The Actual Truth #3: We raised the rigor for all students by ensuring that all students be enrolled in college preparatory courses. While we increased rigor, we have raised graduation rates to record levels, from 56% to over 75%

Nick’s Lie #4: I laid off teachers

The Actual Truth #4: I anchored the difficult negotiations that allowed us to save our schools and save thousands of jobs

Nick’s Lie #5: I cut arts education

The Actual Truth #5: I stopped the cuts to arts education and have added over 18 million dollars to the arts budget each year.

I respect the democratic process and I value debate about the important issues facing our public schools. But that’s not what’s happened in this election. I am not perfect and I try to be a better board member every day. If Nick and the California Charter Schools Association waged an honest campaign, I would not be writing this argument against myself. It terrifies me that such an important election could be determined solely on lies and distortions. It should scare us all.

There is much more than even the control of our public schools that is on the line this Tuesday.

Our democratic values and the value of truth itself seem to have worked their way into this moment. I am proud to stand for honesty and service. I hope we can set a better example for our kids.

(Steve Zimmer represents District 4 — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — on the LAUSD school board. Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw