Why I Should Be the Next Superintendent of LA’s Schools

What was until recently an underpaid part-time LAUSD Board has been and remains completely dependent on a self-serving bureaucracy to make all its decisions. What I offer is a possible alternative for selecting the next Superintendent, someone who could finally take a first step toward formulating a pragmatic, independent governing body. And that person is me. 

Why me? Well, the answer is simple: 

1. My 10-year war with the morally compromised people who have been running the District shows that I cannot be intimidated or bought into silence by an LAUSD that keeps socially promoting its students into assured failure, because of its refusal to put student needs above vendors’ needs. 

2. Unlike my predecessors in the Superintendent position, I have significant non-teaching experience in law, real estate, and business that I acquired in the motion picture industry as a producer and in construction before I became a teacher 30 years ago. Let's face it, LAUSD among other things, is the largest business in LA. 

3. Whether it is building the Belmont Learning Center on a toxic waste dump, the RFK Learning Center built at a cost that was three times market value, the IPad scandal, or the many other unnecessarily compromised projects, it is important to mention that none of this blatant corruption was hidden. It’s just that either nobody was looking with the skill set needed to understand just what was going on, or no one was willing to confront corruption the way I have done, with a willingness to lose my job if necessary. 

4. Unlike existing administrators, I have not come up through the ranks in the LAUSD administration, a process that requires conforming to failed policies as a precondition for advancement. 

5. I would perform the Superintendent's job for the same top of the salary scale rate that teachers get or about $80,000 a year -- not the $440,000 that was paid to John Deasy or the $330,000 paid to Michelle King. Given the number of excess hours beyond the normal school day that would be required, I might let the LAUSD Board talk me into an additional $10,000, but that would be it, since I don't equate my success in this life with how much money I amass. Rather, I measure it by the ultimate success of my students. And of course, I don't need a car and a driver or other unnecessary perks that only take away from the money available for educating students. 

6. Given that I have not been alone in incurring the wrath of present LAUSD administration for standing up to its blatant corruption, I have come to know a great many well qualified people with significant experience in public education and other relevant disciplines who also don't have a price and who would be willing to work in conjunction with the LAUSD Board and me as a Superintendent who would finally turn things around. 

Now, when it comes to some of the specific programs I would implement to change the culture and the true educational success rate of LAUSD (and not just talk about it in vacuous Edspeak rhetoric) the following is by no means a comprehensive list. However, it should give you an idea as to how my approach would be different: 

1. Whether they be books or other educational material, LAUSD should be the owner of the copyright and pay -- share the copyright with its own teaching staff -- to keep these materials up to date in real time using existing computer technology. This would eliminate the costly and unnecessary expense of periodically replacing all books, since they can now be updated in real time and at little or no cost. The huge savings in this area could be passed on to support changes like lower class sizes so that students’ subjective needs could be more fairly addressed in a timely manner. 

2. With a total capacity of only 30% of high school graduates, U.S. colleges and universities cannot address the needs of all students when it comes to career training. It was not so long ago that LAUSD had a vibrant Industrial Arts and vocational education program. And it is worth mentioning that the skills I learned in Wood Shop, Drafting, and Metal Shop helped pay for my college education. One might also ask just how much LAUSD maintenance could be accomplished by students at an incredible savings to the school budget – money that could be passed on to help cover academic costs. In addition to my teaching credential in Social Studies, I also have one in Industrial Arts. So why have I been unable to get a job teaching something like welding to students, when a certified welder’s starting salary is $40,000 a year? 

3. 50% of LAUSD teachers quit within five years because of the untenable behavior issues they are required to deal with without support from administration. This represents a great expense for the school system. To the extent that negative student behavior is a function of students having been socially promoted grade after grade into classes where they are unable to function, and which humiliate them, how much of this behavior would disappear if we placed them in classes based on actual ability and interest rather than age? 

Considering the $78,000 a year it costs to support a young person in the juvenile justice system, it would seem cheaper to educate that individual to become a productive tax paying member of society...that is, unless you are a corporation running a prison and using it as a factory where you pay your workforce $1 a day. 

Got some ideas of your own? Feel free to share them in the comments section below.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.