The LAUSD Board has turned to a longtime Los Angeles civic leader and finance expert to lead the district through difficult financial times. The former first deputy mayor and Los Angeles Times Publisher and CEO was named LAUSD’s next superintendent Tuesday after a 5-2 vote.

“It is my distinct honor and privilege to take on the responsibility to lead the L.A. Unified School District; a complex, diverse organization, full of students bursting with potential,” said Beutner, who signed a three-year contract and starts the job in two weeks. “These young women and men are the future of our community, and every policy we adopt and every decision we make must be with the sole focus of doing everything we can to provide them with the best education possible.”

Board Member Richard Vladovic (BD7) joined Board members Monica Garcia (BD2), Nick Melvoin (BD4), Ref Rodriguez (BD5) and Kelly Gonez (BD6) in voting yes for Beutner. Board members Scott Schmerelson (BD3) and George McKenna (BD1) voted no, in large part because they wanted an educator in the top LAUSD job – specifically an insider they knew, Interim Superintendent Vivian Ekchian.

But the vote for Beutner was a vote for systemic change.

“I think that years of trying to solve seemingly intractable problems at what I don’t think any Board member would agree is an accelerated enough pace requires some new out-of-the-box thinking,” Melvoin said after the meeting. “The Board spent a lot of time identifying our challenges, and there are many: financial instability and insolvency, structural deficits, [retiree healthcare] liabilities, persistent achievement gaps, declining enrollment…I’m confident that Mr. Beutner, along with this Board, can bring some innovative thinking to this. We have to disenthrall ourselves from the idea that the status quo is good enough for kids.”

Beutner has a strong business background. He began his career as a financial analyst and co-founded an investment banking group. He worked for the U.S. State Department in Russia, and as the first deputy mayor for then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2011. He also pushed to reform the Department of Water and Power.

Former Superintendent Michelle King tapped Beutner to chair an Advisory Task Force to examine some of LAUSD’s most intractable problems, such as chronic student absenteeism. He has served on the boards of several schools and was chair of the Board of Trustees of California Institute of the Arts. He was also a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.

“We asked the Board for a superintendent who would be willing to make bold changes to reform the district, and we believe Austin Beutner has the vision and experience to get the job done,” said Speak UP Executive Director Katie Braude. “We’re lucky that someone of his caliber is willing to step in at such a critical juncture for LAUSD.”

On a day when LAUSD Board Members met behind closed doors to interview the final candidates for a new superintendent to lead the district, LAUSD released a new report showing that the unfunded liability for retiree health benefits has now grown by nearly $2 billion to $15.2 billion.

The Board members did not publicly discuss the new actuarial valuation report showing a massive spike (from $13.6 billion to $15.2 billion) in what it owes for Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB), which are the promises made to retirees and future retirees to cover their healthcare.

But the report, submitted during the Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday, paints a picture of a worsening financial situation that threatens the solvency of LAUSD. Because LAUSD has failed to put aside enough money to pay for retiree health benefits and simply cannot afford to pay as it goes, the district faces the threat of bankruptcy. The unfunded liability also threatens the quality of education students receive as a larger percentage of the budget flows outside the classroom every year – leaving less for student programs.

“As our unfunded liabilities grow larger, the District is forced to make hard choices about whether we can put counselors in schools, keep art and music programs, or do better than a class size of 35 kids per teacher,” Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) told Speak UP. “If we do not take drastic steps to address a looming financial crisis, it is our kids and teachers who will suffer from inevitable budget cuts.”

LAUSD’s worsening financial picture will be one of the main challenges for a new superintendent, who is likely going to have to consider drastic steps such as school consolidation, class size increases and employee layoffs.

A knowledgeable source tells Speak UP that three superintendent finalists remain in the running: Acting Superintendent Vivian Ekchian, former investment banker and former Los Angeles Times publisher Austin Beutner and former Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso. The Indianapolis superintendent Lewis Ferebee is no longer considering the job. A decision is expected as early as Friday and more likely within the next two weeks.

Parents will have a new rating system to evaluate how their schools are performing, and LAUSD’s highest-need schools will receive an infusion of cash next year as a result of two resolutions the LAUSD Board passed on Tuesday.

The school rating resolution, co-sponsored by Board Members Kelly Gonez (BD6) and Nick Melvoin (BD4), will create a working group that includes parents, teachers, community organizations and other stakeholders, to develop a holistic system to evaluate all Los Angeles public schools with a single summative rating.

"We are thrilled to see the Board take action to give parents better information about school performance,” said Katie Braude, executive director of Speak UP. “It's an important first step toward ensuring that all Los Angeles children receive an excellent education. This resolution will provide a platform for parents to better understand how well their schools are performing and for the district to identify the schools most in need of support. It's important to assess whether a school is able to lift achievement of students most in need."

The Board voted 6-1 for the resolution, with Board Member George McKenna (BD1) casting the sole no vote. McKenna had originally co-sponsored the resolution, but then he abruptly reversed position, saying he opposed any “ranking” of schools and had not realized what the resolution entailed until he read comments from his colleagues describing it.

The Board amended the resolution to clarify that schools will not be ranked in numeric order or even graded, and Gonez said she envisioned rating categories such as “exceeding,” “meeting,” and “emerging.” But despite attempts to address McKenna’s concerns, he clung to his opposition.

Several Speak UP parents testified in favor of the resolution, including BD1 parent Anna Parks, whose kids attend LACES and Alexander Science Center. Parks and her husband supported McKenna in his last election, but “now we feel let down,” she said.

“Do you ever consider how much damage it does to our trust in LAUSD when you withhold or hide or ban important information from us?” she asked. “You shared that you don’t want kids to know if their schools perform poorly because it might make them feel bad. This is like a doctor refusing to tell a patient she has cancer because it might hurt her feelings.”

In a stunning reversal, Board Member George McKenna (BD1) has dropped his name from the school rating resolution that he had co-sponsored with Board members Kelly Gonez (BD6) and Nick Melvoin (BD4), saying that he now opposes the plan to rank schools that he had introduced last week.

“I didn’t change my mind. I was misinformed, but nobody’s fault, that this was simply an opportunity for us to bring information to the community about the progress of a school, not to rank the schools,” McKenna told Speak UP when reached by phone Wednesday evening. “The ranking part, I think is inappropriate. It gives a false sense of tiered success or lack thereof. And what does a school do with that information? What do the parents do with that information?”

The resolution that he put his name on last week clearly states its purpose is to create “a single, summative rating for each school.” McKenna said he did not realize what the resolution entailed until he read comments from Gonez and Melvoin describing it.

“When I see it in their notices to their parents and the stuff they are writing on their own blogs, they are using the word ‘rankings’ so their intent is to rank,” McKenna said. “I don’t think they consciously tried to mislead me,” but “that was not my understanding. I said to them. ‘I will not be a part of it as long as we’re ranking.’ I would oppose that. If they’re willing to take the ranking off, I will offer a friendly amendment, I’d be willing to support it.”

Melvoin had no comment on McKenna’s reversal, and Gonez could not be reached for comment by deadline.

Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) and Board President Monica Garcia (BD2) want LAUSD to reexamine the annual process for assigning charter schools space under the Prop 39 law requiring public school facilities to be shared fairly among all public school kids.

LAUSD currently requires charters to reapply for space every year, but Melvoin and Garcia asked the district on Tuesday to consider longer-term leases to bring more stability. "Let’s figure out how to reduce the amount people who have to go year to year,” Garcia said at the monthly charter-focused Board meeting.

“I think the annual prop 39 process is flawed,” Melvoin said. “I think District spends too much time and resources on it.”

While fewer than 10 percent of schools have co-locations, “it takes more time and causes more conflict than anything else,” Melvoin added. “It’s a burden on both our charter and district staff here at Beaudry, but also principals and teachers and school-site staff…Charter schools don’t know what campuses they’re going to be on. At district schools there’s apprehension about ‘are we going to lose our computer lab? What’s going to happen?’ It makes planning and trust really difficult to build.”

Melvoin told Speak UP that he’s working on organizing a pilot retreat this summer for co-located school leaders to help bring more “sanity and collaboration” to a process that provokes “anxiety” on all sides. He also hopes that more transparency about district space and longer-term leases will dial back tensions and help schools peacefully co-exist so everyone can focus more on the kids.

Part of LAUSD’s process for determining whether petitions from charter schools get approved and renewed and how they are overseen by the district was supposed to include input from charter leaders on a group called the Charter Schools Collaborative.

That hasn’t really happened.

When the Board passed these guidelines on authorizing and oversight policies and procedures for charters in 2010, it directed the LAUSD superintendent to form the Collaborative to work with the district to regularly update what is described as a “living document, subject to periodic review and consideration.”

The Collaborative, however, has not met to revise these policies in five years, even though the state law on charter schools is now out of date -- citing API scores that no longer exist -- and the number of LAUSD charter schools has grown during that time from 185 to 224.

Board Members Ref Rodriguez (BD5) and Richard Vladovic (BD7) hope to change that with a resolution they are introducing Tuesday to revive the Charter Schools Collaborative to work with the district to recommend updates to the authorizing policy.

“I believe that it’s time for us to come together and look at the policy overall and see: Does it still fit our context?” Rodriguez told Speak UP. “As long as I’ve been on the Board, there have been issues that have come up when we are approving and renewing charters that we haven’t really had concrete answers for.”

LAUSD Board Members Kelly Gonez (BD6), George McKenna (BD1) and Nick Melvoin (BD4) and are introducing a resolution Tuesday calling on the district to create a system to measure school performance. It would provide a single annual school rating to help parents make better school choices and give the  district information to support struggling schools.

By creating of single summary school rating, LAUSD is stepping in to provide an easy-to-use tool that the state has so far failed to create with its California School Dashboard. “The dashboard is really complex, even for people like me who are very familiar with and comfortable with data,” Gonez said. “Both for the purposes of our schools wanting to continuously improve but also for parents and the public, there needs to be greater clarity. District action is essential.”

The primary emphasis of the performance framework – which will be used to evaluate both district-run and independent charter schools – will be academic student achievement and growth. However, the rating system is intended to be holistic and will include other factors such as school climate and social-emotional issues.

“While we haven’t said specifically what will go into the rating, my hunch is that parents will say that in addition to student achievement, we want parent surveys in there,” Melvoin said. “Whether that’s 5 percent or 20 percent, those are the conversations we’re going to have with the community.” 

The resolution, which will be voted on at the April 10 Board meeting, calls for the formation of a stakeholder working group to help create the system – one that includes parents and community organizations, as well as teachers, administrators, district officials, labor unions and charter school groups. “I definitely think it’s important for parents to be part of that working group to provide their unique perspective on what the criteria should look like,” Gonez said.

While the LAUSD Board called on Congress and the state to pass stricter gun laws and on health insurers to provide quicker access to care for employees, parents showed up in force Tuesday and called on the Board to focus on its primary responsibility: to improve LA schools and help students succeed.

Gun violence dominated the agenda at Tuesday’s meeting, held the day before nationwide student walkouts inspired by the activism of the Parkland school shooting survivors. Seventeen chairs were taped off and left empty to represent each of the victims killed in last month’s shooting.

The Board passed a resolution, sponsored by Board Vice President Nick Melvoin, Board President Monica Garcia, Board Member Kelly Gonez to create a Safe Schools Task Force that will include parents, students, teachers, administrators and law enforcement, to review LAUSD’s safety and security plans. It also called on the state and federal government to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and pass universal background checks, as well as increase funding for mental health services.

“I’m inspired by the student wave of activism sparked by the survivors of Parkland,” Melvoin said. “In the weeks and months after the Newtown shooting, when our Congress didn’t take action on behalf of our kids, I really thought that America had lost our soul on this issue. Kids across this country in the last month are asking that we get it back…No one should fear for their safety or their child’s safety when they’re at school.”

But while state and federal guns laws are not within the control of the Board of Education, the quality of the education our kids receive is well within its purview. And dozens of parents from Speak UP and Parent Revolution flooded the meeting to demand a plan to improve under-performing schools and to help vulnerable students, including LGBT kids, English language learners, kids with special needs, low-income students and those experiencing mistreatment by a teacher.

 The LAUSD Board was in the unusual position Tuesday of evaluating a new charter petition for a school that’s already serving more 1000 kids in grades TK-12, many of whom are gay and lesbian students that had been bullied at district schools.

Despite impassioned pleas from students, teachers and administrators, as well as a Hail Mary attempt to authorize the school for just one year, the LAUSD Board ultimately sided with the LAUSD staff recommendation to deny the petition for iLEAD San Fernando Valley.

School administrators vowed to appeal the decision to the Los Angeles County Office of Education in hopes that students at the school will not have to find a new home. “We are not the normal new petition,” said Farnaz Kaufman, director of iLEAD Encino. “We are already operating with strong fiscal performance and governance. To shut our schools down today over no actual wrongdoing would be heart-wrenching.”

The proposed iLEAD school would have combined three iLEAD schools already operating in Encino, Van Nuys and Pacoima that blend onsite and online independent learning. The schools, currently authorized by Acton-Agua Dulce Unified, were forced to submit a new charter petition because of a state court ruling specifying that schools must be located in the same district that authorizes them.

The LAUSD Charter Schools Division recommended denial because of concerns over the school’s governance structure and potential conflicts of interest. Administrators at the schools, however, said they were willing to change their governance structure and asked Board members to place more weight on their track record than “potential” concerns.

“We don’t have potential families here. We have real children, and their real education is at risk today,” said Dave Trejo, director of iLEAD Pacoima. “There is no conflict of interest that is real…We have already operated for three years with clean financial audits. Do not punish this community for a potential issue when our real track record is clean.”

Renato Lira, head of the San Fernando Valley LGBT Community Center, pleaded with Board members to save the school, which he told Speak UP serves 120 LGBT kids at one location and 140 at another – many of whom had been “bullied and attacked” at other LAUSD schools.

What do we do with teachers that no one wants but who are guaranteed a job by state law and union contracts? The LAUSD Board debated the issue of these “must-place” teachers Tuesday while discussing strategies to improve chronically underperforming schools.

“Resources alone won’t change the under-performance. We have to confront, what are those underlying policies that have led to the under-achievement?” said Board Member Kelly Gonez (BD6). “That has to be a key part of the conversation. If it means no must-place teachers at the 10 or 25 schools we choose, that’s something we have to commit to and negotiate, obviously.”

Board Member Richard Vladovic (BD7) said there are about 300 must-place teachers in the system, although some have simply lost positions because of declining enrollment at a school. Other tenured teachers, however, have had problems and are unable to find any school that wants them on their staff.

“We’re going to have to be very careful when we use the term must-place teachers and where they must be placed,” said Board Member Scott Schmerlson (BD3). “Because if you’re going to start adding all of these exceptions for schools, who in the world is going to wind up with the must-place teachers?”

“You don’t want to put them in the continuation schools,” he added. (Continuation schools are an alternative to typical high schools and generally serve at-risk youth.) “There’s only three teachers there to begin with. When you have one dud, and there’s only two left, there’s a great impact. So you may say, we’ll put them in all the high-performing schools because they’re doing so well anyway. But that’s not fair to them, either.”

“My response would be, get rid of all of them all,” said Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4).

“Execution is not part of the deal,” Schmerelson shot back.

LAUSD parents expressed deep disappointment with the three-year $3.3 billion healthcare labor deal approved by the Board in a 4-2 vote Tuesday, which moves the district one step closer to insolvency and will likely lead to large class-size increases, program cuts and teacher layoffs in coming years.

“Like a lot of parents, I’m upset because I don’t think this Board is putting interests of children first,” said Malika Mirkasymova, former president and treasurer of the Parent Teacher Organization at Brentwood Science magnet elementary, whose kids now attend Paul Revere middle school. “This healthcare deal is simply irresponsible. We elected this Board to make the difficult decisions, and I know it’s not easy, but it is your job.”

Mirkasymova was one of more than a dozen parents who attended the meeting and pleaded with the Board to put kids first and save the district from bankruptcy, which LAUSD’s own financial experts and an Independent Financial Review Panel have warned is coming unless costs are curtailed.

The deal approved Tuesday keeps contributions at their current level for three more years, despite declining student enrollment and without any requirement to reduce costs by moving to a single health insurer or asking for monthly contributions from retiree spouses. 

“This deal is something we just cannot afford,” said Paul Robak, a parent from Board District 7 whose kids attend Grand Arts High School and Dodson Middle School magnet and who also serves as a surrogate parent advocating for foster children. “Labor peace is good, but if we’re going to be driven into bankruptcy and go over that fiscal cliff, we’re not going to have a district...People will talk about us in the past tense, as if LA used to be the second-biggest district in the country.”

By promising lifetime health benefits to teachers and their spouses with no monthly premiums, the district has amassed a $13.6 retiree benefits liability and has only put away $350 million to pay for it. The unfunded liability number is expected to grow when a new report is issued in coming days, and the district’s Independent Analysis Unit has warned the Board that LAUSD cannot afford to “pay as you go” to fulfill these promises and still have enough money left to educate kids.

Only two Board members, Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) and Ref Rodriguez (BD5), had the political courage to vote against the deal, saying that both kids and teachers would be harmed.

Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) on Tuesday decried the fact that district schools don’t come before the Board to have their performance evaluated and to be held accountable for the results of student achievement in the same way that independent charter schools do.

The Board voted at Tuesday’s charter meeting to allow two schools to revert from affiliated charter status back to traditional neighborhood schools: Chandler Learning Academy and Emelita Academy Charter. Affiliated charters are district schools that operate with traditional union contracts but have more autonomy over curriculum, class sizes and budgeting.

One of the schools, Emelita, however, would not meet the minimum criteria for renewal if it were an independent charter, Melvoin said. Affiliated charters appear before the Board for renewal every five years like independent charters, but district-operated affiliated charters schools don’t face the same risk of being shut down. And once they revert to traditional schools, they no longer face Board-level oversight and evaluation.

“This Board spends a lot of time talking about our expectations of students in charter schools and what we expect from their operators,” Melvoin said. “When these schools revert and go back to non-charter status, I’m just curious…what accountability measures are going to be there? How are we going to ensure that schools that make the decision to revert are held accountable and then get the supports they need so students can succeed?”

Interim Superintendent Vivian Ekchian pointed out that LAUSD should “have the same expectations for charter schools and non charter schools,” and “I welcome the opportunity to hold all schools accountable…The luxury of saying we approve or we don’t approve does not change what’s happening at the school site. The checking off of whether they are renewed or not, as a district school or charter school does not change the achievement level at the school site.”

We beg to differ. Few things focus efforts on raising student achievement like systems of accountability and the prospect of having your school shut down or your job on the line. Closing a school should absolutely be a last resort, and LAUSD should do all it can to prevent kids from having to find another school. With charters, though, the Board has shown little mercy and scant hesitation to close underperforming schools. Meanwhile, district schools that don't serve kids well languish for years and years. 

“The (independent) charter accountability mechanism is that we know at the end of five years, there is a decision,” Melvoin said. “This Board in the last six months has shut down schools that haven’t met out minimum standards for performance and excellence. What is missing from our ‘accountability’ conversations in our local districts district is… if you’re not meeting those high expectations, then what?”

“Disruption” was the word of the day at Tuesday’s special LAUSD Board meeting whose purpose was to set a collective mission and vision as the Board starts searching for a new superintendent to lead the district through turbulent times.

Board member Richard Vladovic (BD7) brought the topic to the table, saying his vision was to “disrupt the system, to decentralize the delivery of all services that affect children and families…Shake it so hard that you can make a difference and help those kids.”

Vladovic focused on two areas in need of radical change: the district’s financial crisis and fixing the persistently low-performing schools. “Nobody wants to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about the lowest-performing schools in a meaningful way, and we don’t want to deal with the crisis that’s looming,” he said. “We’re going bankrupt, and people don’t want to talk about that…It’s simple math. We can’t pay the maker in four years. I’m freaking out because I’ll be gone, and I don’t want this institution to go belly up.”

Vladovic told Speak UP that he’s interested in potentially hiring two superintendents: one whose sole job will be to handle finances. He praised Miguel Santana, the city’s former chief administrative officer, who helped bring the city back from the financial brink. He also said he wants to dramatically reshape the district, bringing more local autonomy and accountability and a stronger role for parents.

“We ought to turn the district turn the district upside down, divide it into really semi-autonomous districts, where they have to reflect the public,” he said. “They can’t hide. They make decisions on curriculum. They make decisions on staffing.”

Board Member George McKenna (BD1) said his top priority is to fix persistently underperforming schools, but he said political special interest groups representing employees are standing in the way.

“If we’re going to make a commitment to changing these schools, that’s a political quagmire,” McKenna said. “Because there’s great resistance from political sources who say ‘it’s not our fault. We need more money.’ Well to do what with? We have pumped money forever into underachieving schools. We’ve pumped in federal money, we’ve pumped in state money…And they’re still underachieving.”

The teachers union has refused to accept any accountability measures for its members, and the resistance is “systemic and endemic,” McKenna said. “We get pushback from employee groups…The disruption that we have to create is within the system of resistance. Adults have to be willing to sacrifice something to get there. And if they don’t sacrifice and keep insisting on me first: my personal, pecuniary, professional, political need must be met -- and they threaten: If you don’t give us this, this is what we’re going to do to you and your district. And the support we thought we had from you is going to go away.”

The LAUSD Board voted 6-1 for a resolution sponsored by Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) to increase district transparency by creating an Open Data Portal that puts far more information about LAUSD schools online for parents and community members to access.

Transparency was a key campaign platform for Melvoin and is also one of Speak UP’s top platform priorities. LAUSD will now hire an open data officer and provide parents with more information to choose school programs that are serving kids well and also to spotlight which programs and schools are under-performing so they can be held accountable.

“It’s important that we don’t just release data that makes us look good,” Melvoin said.

Board Member Richard Vladovic (BD7), who co-sponsored the resolution, said that he hoped it would be a “change agent” that “shines a light on our perennially under-performing schools…The underperforming ones will not be able to hide like cipher in the snow and be quiet.”

Board Member Kelly Gonez (BD6), who has spoken about her support for data-driven decision-making, voted against the resolution, citing concerns about the cost estimate of $1.2 million. Melvoin, however, pointed out how data analysis is projected to save the food services division more than $20 million and by opening up data to the public, more ways to save LAUSD money may be found.

During public comment, several Speak UP parent leaders implored the Board to give parents more formal power to help set policy at LAUSD. They asked for a seat at the table and a chance to represent their kids interests during LAUSD contract negotiations, which determine which teachers are qualified to be in the classroom with our kids.  

Parent Michael Segel shared stories from his youth of marching on the picket line alongside newly organized United Teachers Los Angeles teachers, who were asking to raise their salaries of $13,650 a year.

“However, it’s time that our children are also now represented,” Segel said. “Not as an addendum by a group that rightfully must protect their own interests first, but by parents, whose sole job it is to watch over our children’s needs…And I speak of the parents and guardians of every single child in LAUSD, including those with special needs, the more than 17,000 students that are temporarily or chronically homeless, as well as those one in four students that are undocumented or have a parent who is – many of whom have never had a voice in even school board elections.”

The LAUSD Board voted unanimously to name Vivian Ekchian Interim LAUSD Superintendent Tuesday, less than a week after Michelle King announced plans to retire. The LAUSD Board, however, is expected to conduct a national search for a permanent new leader in coming weeks.

Ekchian has been serving as Acting Superintendent since Superintendent Michelle King went on medical leave last fall for cancer treatment, but she is receiving a new contract to reflect the increased responsibilities she has been handling. All the Board Members expressed confidence in her ability to lead during the transition.

“I am humbled and honored to serve the students, families, and employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District as interim superintendent,” Ekchian said. “I look forward to accelerating the transformative work that is occurring throughout the District, while maintaining our steadfast focus on 100 percent graduation that will guarantee college, career and life readiness for our shining stars.”

It’s unclear whether and how the new Board will seek stakeholder input into the superintendent search, given that a search was conducted less than two years ago. The current Board, which now has a more reform-minded majority, is expected to meet and discuss the process next Tuesday.

Also at Tuesday's charter-focused Board meeting, the LAUSD Board declined to renew the petition for Pathways Community charter school in San Pedro because of academic performance. The decision came after a discussion on the fairness of evaluating a charter high school’s performance based on only one year of SBAC test data.

Board Member George McKenna (BD1) questioned the fairness of the decision, given that the school has only been open for four years, and only one class of juniors has been tested. He ultimately abstained from the vote, while all the other Board members supported the staff denial recommendation.

“I’m not sure the school has had sufficient time,” McKenna said.

The one year of state test score data showed that Pathways performed worse than nearby residential schools, according to LAUSD Charter School Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez, but “we wish we had more data,” he said.

The issue is relevant to all new nigh school charters because 11th grade students are the only high school students tested, limiting the amount of data LAUSD has to consider. Several Board members expressed concerns that consistent criteria must be developed to fairly evaluate high school charter renewal petitions when the schools are still relatively new.

The Board also renewed petitions for Goethe International Charter and Ocean Charter after a discussion about ways to increase staff and student diversity at West Side schools. An official from Ocean charter, which gives a lottery preference to low-income kids, said the school would pass a racial admission preference to increase diversity if the law were to allow it.

After months of medical leave while battling cancer, LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King announced her retirement on Friday.

“I have had the honor of serving as the superintendent of L.A. Unified for two years, although I have been challenged by medical issues for the last several months,” King said in a statement. “During this time, I have been undergoing treatment for cancer. Now, with the progression of my illness, I have made the incredibly difficult decision to retire by June 30. Until then, I will remain on medical leave.” 

Speak UP Executive Director Katie Braude thanked King for her years of dedication to LAUSD students and for her historic term as the first African-American woman at the helm of the district. "We are grateful for King's years of service on behalf of kids and, along with parents throughout LAUSD, we send our heartfelt wishes for a quick recovery," she said.

King said in her statement that she appreciated “the outpouring of support” and “as I aggressively fight this illness, I ask that you continue to keep me in your thoughts and prayers.”

Acting Superintendent Vivian Ekchian, who has been serving in King’s place, will remain in charge of the district for now, although the LAUSD Board is expected to launch a wider search for King’s replacement in coming months.  

It was good news-bad news on LAUSD’s financial position at last week’s LAUSD Board meeting. The good news: LAUSD is no longer planning to increase class sizes in the next two years to balance the budget. The bad news: LAUSD is essentially robbing from future generations of children and teachers to balance its budget now.

LAUSD has certified to the County that it has a “qualified” financial rating, which means it may not be able to meet its financial obligations in the next two years without cuts. LAUSD Chief Financial Officer Scott Price said LAUSD is spending $650 more per student than it receives in revenues and is quickly eating through its reserves.

Because LAUSD is required by law to balance its budget, the district is apparently solving its short-term budget shortfall by further endangering its long-term fiscal stability. The district has decided to take away money that it had planned to set aside to help pay down its $13.6 billion unfunded health benefits liability -- promises made to retirees and current employees who will retire in the future.

That $13.6 billion unfunded liability threatens to “overwhelm the financial sustainability of the District,” according to a report from the Independent Analysis Unit (IAU), a research arm that reports directly to the LAUSD Board.

Board Member Kelly Gonez (BD6) warned the Board to keep the big financial picture in mind. “We can’t let short-term good news distract us from what we know to be the truth about the district’s overall fiscal health,” she said. “We have a structural deficit. Revenues from the state and the federal government are highly likely to decline over coming years, and our costs are rising…We need to plan and take serious steps now to improve our overall fiscal health and make sure we’re on strong financial footing for generations to come.”

By a 4-3 vote, the LAUSD Board of Education approved a three-year school calendar plan Tuesday that will start school in mid-August and finish the semester before a three-week winter break. School will start Aug. 14 next year, but the start date will move back to the third week of August for the subsequent two years.

Board Member Richard Vladovic (BD7) blasted LAUSD’s plan, saying that parents in his board district overwhelmingly supported a later start date. “I’m gonna vote with my parents,” he said. “People leave the district because we don’t meet their needs. When parents say they would prefer this, they have choices.” 

Nearby school districts have no problem starting after Labor Day and often have better academic performance than LAUSD, Vladovic added. Starting early was “more of a convenience for staff,” he said. “It does not help kids.”

But Board member Kelly Gonez (BD6) said parents in her district preferred an August start date and a three-week break. “There are a variety of opinions among our constituents,” she said. “No matter what decision we make, not everyone will be happy. That’s the reality.”

Several Board members criticized the quality of the $250,000 parent survey on the calendar, whose response rate was only 38 percent and whose design was so flawed, they said, that the data were hard to interpret.

One question, for example, showed that a plurality of parents (36 percent) wanted school to start after Labor Day in September. But in a separate question, 62 percent of parents selected one of a variety of options presented for an August start date, and only 18 percent said they did not want to start in August.

Because all the options were not presented in a single question, many parents expressed a preference for starting school in both August and in September – rendering their true wishes difficult to discern.