The LAUSD Board approved an $8.2 billion budget Tuesday for the 2018-2019 school year that failed to set aside any money to pay for future retiree healthcare liabilities that top $15 billion. But Superintendent Austin Beutner suggested change is coming.

While next year’s budget was largely crafted before he took the job, the 2019-2020 budget “has to look a lot different than this budget,” Beutner said, adding that the structural deficit “threatens the district’s long-term financial viability.”

LAUSD is spending about half a billion more dollars every year than it generates in revenue and is burning through its reserves. Nevertheless, it managed to budget in employee raises, in part, by planning to cut its central district staff by 15 percent.

“This budget is irresponsible and does not put the needs of the kids first,” Speak UP’s Jalisa Johnson, a former teacher, told the Board. “In this budget, more money is actually going to pay for retired teachers’ pension and healthcare than to pay for math and English instruction for LAUSD students. This is unacceptable. The purpose of education is to teach our kids. If that’s not our top priority, we’re doing something wrong.”

The annual per pupil cost of employee health benefits has grown from $1500 in 2009 to $2966 in 2021, the final year of the three-year budget the district created, according to CFO Scott Price. The total liability stands at $26,000 per pupil, more than twice that of San Francisco Unified and far above the $1500 average for other districts in the state.

The district’s own Independent Analysis Unit has warned that it cannot afford to pay as it goes for these liabilities and still have enough money left to educate kids in the near future. The next budget has to do more for students most in need, Beutner said.

It should also focus on decentralization, and “the entire system has to be transparent and accountable at every level,” he said.

The LAUSD Board is expected to vote Tuesday on a plan to balance the LAUSD budget by slashing the central district staff by 15 percent next year and taking back unspent money from some school-site budgets. The good news for students is that class size increases are not on the table. Teachers also have reason to celebrate. The budget factors in raises for them.

On the down side, however, LAUSD isn’t planning to set aside any money to pre-fund its $15.2 billion retiree healthcare liability, which continues to grow worse and is taking up a larger percentage of the $7.5 billion general fund every year – ultimately at the expense of kids. The district’s Independent Analysis Unit has warned that LAUSD cannot afford to pay as it goes for retiree healthcare and still have enough money left in a few years to educate kids.

The ongoing structural deficit at LAUSD also means that without increased funding or structural reforms, problems are continually looming. LAUSD is already spending about $500 million more per year than the revenue it brings in, eating into its reserves, “which is problematic,” said LAUSD CFO Scott Price.

LAUSD’s new Superintendent Austin Beutner, is expected to look at ways to save money through potential school consolidation and other means, some of which may require negotiations with employee unions.

Board Members George McKenna (BD1) and Scott Schmerelson (BD3) are also introducing a resolution that will be voted on Tuesday authorizing the Superintendent to submit language to the County for a parcel tax to appear on the November 2018 ballot. The $150 million a year parcel tax would eliminate the projected 2020 deficit.

The Board also votes Tuesday on two resolutions co-sponsored by Board Members Kelly Gonez (BD6) and Nick Melvoin (BD4) to help more LAUSD students attend college. One resolution calls for LAUSD to administer the SAT or ACT to all high school juniors during the school day, at no cost to students. It also calls for sufficient test prep for students.

The resolution directs the superintendent to seek philanthropic funding to pay for it and to work with the mayor’s office and local businesses to provide paid internships for high school students. The second resolution would have LAUSD explore creating a Children’s College Savings Accounts program for students enrolling in first grade in all public schools within District boundaries.

LAUSD's lowest-performing schools will no longer be forced to accept "must-place" teachers against their will, as part of an ambitious “Close The Gap” resolution the Board passed Tuesday to help ensure that every student in LAUSD is prepared to meet state academic standards and qualify to attend a 4-year university.

The resolution, sponsored by Board President Monica Garcia and championed by Communities for Los Angeles Student Success (CLASS), a coalition Speak UP is a part of that operates under the auspices of United Way, also takes significant steps to help English Language Learners by exempting kids in EL development classes from being stuck with a series of short-term substitutes when teachers take long leaves of absence, which disrupts consistent learning. It also called for Long-Term English learners and those at risk to participate in an individualized reclassification plan, similar to an IEP for kids with special needs, to be sure they meet certain benchmarks. 

Speak UP member and Moms in Action Founder Mary Najera, however, called for the Board to follow through with added accountability. “How are we going to make sure these goals are met, and what happens if they’re not?” asked the mom whose son was identified as gifted but who nevertheless graduated from an LAUSD middle school reading at a third grade level and only caught up after moving to a charter school. “It’s not enough just passing resolutions. We need to make sure our teachers and our schools really implement it. Change isn’t happening fast enough for our community.”

While debating the resolution, LAUSD Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) attempted to end the district policy forcing any school to accept must-place teachers that no one wants to hire.

“What is the purpose of not placing these teachers in the lowest-performing quartile [of schools]? The same logic would apply to all classrooms and all students,” Melvoin said. “I’d like to see us work to not have them in any schools.”

Melvoin’s effort ultimately fell short when Board members raised concerns about costs, but a revised version of the resolution did pass unanimously with watered-down language directing the superintendent to “work to eliminate the pool of teachers displaced one year or more via training, help with replacement or exit from the district.”

Speak UP member Gloria Rodriguez testified before the Board in March about the discrimination her lesbian daughter faced last year at her LAUSD school, where teachers and staff asked invasive questions and told her that she was not allowed to hold hands with her girlfriend at school.

Inspired in part by her story, as well as his own experiences growing up Latino and gay, Board Member Ref Rodriguez (BD5) has co-sponsored a resolution to be voted on Tuesday to significantly increase support for LGBTQ students through sensitivity training, celebrations of LGBTQ History Month, more inclusive and representative textbooks, a web portal with resources and an analysis of all-gender bathrooms at district schools.

“I’m very grateful for Dr. Rodriguez because he stepped up for my kid,” Gloria said. (The two share the same last name but are not related.) “I feel very happy about someone actually doing something for the LGBTQ youth and community in our schools.”

The resolution will affect an estimated 27,000 LAUSD students who self-identity as LGBTQ or gender non-confirming. According to the GLSEN National School Climate Survey, 75.2% of LGBTQ students in schools with an inclusive curriculum said their peers were accepting of them, compared to 39.6% of those without one. The 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed that LGBTQ high school students have significantly higher risk of being bullied (28% versus 11%), suicide attempts (26% versus 6.5%), feeling sad and hopeless (66% versus 27%), and dating violence (17% versus 3.4%).

Aside from Gloria’s advocacy, Dr. Rodriguez said he was also moved to bring this resolution by East Los Angeles student members of the Latino Equality Alliance. “What I found in these young people was bravery that I did not have at their age,” Dr. Rodriguez told Speak UP. “I was not like that when I was in high school.  I did not come out until I was in college. A lot of it had to do with leaving home and fully defining myself in college away from all the expectations of my family and friends. So to see these young people in high school be sure of who they are and advocating for the things that they know are right — it moved me.”

The students argued for better implementation of California’s FAIR Education Act of 2012, which requires that LGBTQ people be included in social science curricula. According to Gloria, when her daughter asked her history teacher why her school was not teaching LGBTQ history, she was told, “it’s going to be offensive for other people.”

Latino Equality Alliance students also argue that many LAUSD schools only have single-stall, all-gender bathrooms in school offices, and for a student to ask for a key can be stigmatizing and can out students against their will. This resolution directs the district to examine whether additional multi-stall, all-gender restrooms can be opened in areas accessible to everyone. 

One of the most important components of the resolution – and the one Gloria focused on the most – involves competency training on LGBTQ issues for teachers, staff, administrators, and parents. “That’s very important to me and that’s something that to this day has not been done in my school,” Gloria said. “This needs to happen, especially in our communities where it is still [considered] weird and odd to see a girl with a girl walking down the street.”

Despite a structural deficit that threatens to bankrupt the district within three years, LAUSD pays its employees more in salary and benefits than workers at comparable school districts and gets less return on investment for what it spends. That was the conclusion of a new report titled “Hard Choices” from LAUSD’s Advisory Task Force, which was co-chaired until recently by LAUSD’s new superintendent, Austin Beutner.

LAUSD’s average teacher pay is 17 percent above the median for comparable districts when adjusted for cost of living. Nevertheless, LAUSD gets less for what it spends -– both in terms of teacher time and in terms of student achievement -– because LAUSD’s instructional days are shorter and because teacher pay increases are often tied to taking courses that may not benefit students, the report said.

“We are trying to be truth tellers in this report,” said Task Force Co-Chair Wendy Greuel, who presented the report to the Board Tuesday at the first meeting with Beutner attending as superintendent. “Hard choices can no longer be avoided. We have known this day would come for a long time…Bottom line is [LAUSD] needs to develop a long-term plan that outlines how fundamental investments in student learning and teaching, professional development and school leadership can be made to ultimately benefit the students and increase student achievement.”

The Task Force hired an outside nonprofit organization, Education Resource Strategies, to analyze how LAUSD allocates “people, time and money” compared to other school districts with similar student demographics, including rates of poverty, English Learners and special education. Oakland, Baltimore, Cleveland and Denver were among the comparison districts.

The report, which comes in the midst of contract talks with employee unions such as United Teachers Los Angeles, outlines some of LAUSD’s biggest financial challenges and poses a series of pointed questions about how to solve them, which stakeholders will be asked to consider. A second, more detailed report from ERS with more specific potential solutions was also presented to the Board.

Many of the problems – and their solutions – can only be achieved through negotiations with LAUSD’s employee unions, which have so far resisted such change. Employee unions have questioned whether the district’s financial position is truly as dire as the district claims. This report from an outside third-party is an attempt to establish a clear set of facts, and it was unequivocal about the financial disaster that’s looming.

“The budget deficit is large and growing. Unless something does change, L.A. Unified will exhaust its savings, and students, employees and the community as a whole will be harmed,” Beutner said after the report was presented. “The debate should no longer be about whether these challenges exist, but how we can work together to solve them. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion on how best to solve these problems, we need all to start with the same set of facts.”

What appeared to be an attempt to delegitimize the LAUSD Board’s selection of Superintendent Austin Beutner may have unwittingly placed Republican Board Member Scott Schmerelson (BD3) in legal peril. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office is reviewing allegations that Schmerelson broke the law when he revealed details of closed-session Board meetings while criticizing Beutner’s selection.

Breaching the confidentiality of closed-session Board meetings can be a violation of the Brown Act, and Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) told Speak UP he believes that Schmerelson did so when recently speaking to the Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

“Our office will review allegations that LAUSD board member Scott Schmerelson violated the Brown Act,” said Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Schmerelson denied allegations that he broke the law but also told Speak UP that he would adjust his behavior in the future.

“I do not believe I violated the Brown Act, that was certainly not my intent when speaking to my constituents last week,” he said in an email statement. “Since the Superintendent had already been officially selected and hired, I believed I was free to offer my opinions and answer questions about the hiring process…Nevertheless, it has been brought to my attention that my discussion and characterization of Mr. Beutner’s hiring process could have a chilling effect on conversations held in Closed Session. I will be more careful in the future.”

The website K-12 New Networks The Wire reported on the recent meeting during which Schmerelson allegedly described details of the Board’s closed-session interview with Beutner during the hiring process.

“In describing Beutner’s conversations with the Board prior to his being hired, Schmerelson states that ‘It was the worst interviews [that] I have ever seen in my entire life. Not one question was answered about education.’ Every time Schmerelson ‘asked a question about education, [Beutner] couldn’t answer because he really didn’t know,’” the site reported.

A video of Schmerelson’s comments that appeared on that site and on changelausd.com website has been removed, but Melvoin confirmed that he viewed the video before its removal. In a press release issued May 1, Schmerelson also revealed how many and which Board members agreed to enter contract negotiations with Beutner during closed session on April 20.

“He’s revealing closed-session stuff. In the video, he talks about Austin’s answers,” Melvoin told Speak UP. “I’m not a Brown Act expert, but my understanding from our general counsel is that the revealing of confidential information is a violation of the law. What happened before we publicly voted: who wanted Austin, who didn’t, what Austin said, is confidential.”

In tearful testimony before the LAUSD Board, more than a dozen Speak UP parents from Pacific Blvd. elementary school and the Alexander Science Center school pleaded with LAUSD to fundamentally alter its relationship with district parents.

“I am begging LAUSD’s new superintendent to please overhaul the way LAUSD engages with parents,” said Jennifer Redekopp, a parent whose kids attended the Science Center school for five years. “Talk to us, work with us, hear what we have to say. Treat us as partners, not enemies. And as you consider changes, please include us at the start. Don’t just inform us later what you’re doing and call it parent engagement. Without big change, more of us will continue to leave.”

Redekoop said an administrator at her school called police on parents when they created a flyer to inform parents that LAUSD had eliminated the sibling admission priority.

“A teacher at the school for whom I volunteered to assist struggling students told me she couldn’t believe how I was characterized – as a troublemaker -- during an emergency staff meeting that followed,” she said. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that this episode is just one story in a pattern of indifference and hostility to parent partnership at LAUSD. Since then, I’ve heard from many other parents, teachers, and staff who feel scared to speak up about this hostile behavior.”

Matilde Bernadino also spoke up about similar disrespect toward parents at the Science Center, an affiliated charter. Specifically, she felt she and her son were harassed after she asked the school to assess her son for a learning disability.

“They kept insisting it was a big, big expense to the district to assess my child,” she said. “They told me if I continued to push for an assessment and there were no problems with him, I would then have to take my child to our resident school.”

Bernadino had been volunteering at the school for four years, but after her son was assessed, she said administrators kicked her out of the school and refused to allow her to volunteer. “I was taken out as if I were a criminal, when I was just cutting paper,” she said. “What hurt the most is she did it in front of my kids…I was crying and my kids were asking me, ‘momma, what did you do wrong? Why were you kicked out?’”

Bernadino also pleaded with the district to listen to and address parents’ concerns rather than getting defensive. “Sometimes we don’t come here to complain because we’re intimidated,” she said. “We’re afraid of being harassed.”

Speak UP’s Sheyla Menzie, another a parent at the Science Center, said she faced retaliation after speaking up at the Board a few months ago. “This needs to change,” she said. “And I hope the new superintendent brings a new attitude toward parents to the job. So far I have stuck with LAUSD…I do not want to move to a charter school, but I need to see change.”

Four days after declaring that labor talks were at an impasse, LAUSD struck a three-year deal with the union representing bus drivers, cafeteria workers and special ed assistants, and as a result, SEIU Local 99 called off its planned May 15 strike.

“There was a path forward so we tried one more shot, and we got there,” said Najeeb Khoury, LAUSD’s Director of Labor Relations.

Bus driver Tanya Walters, vice president of SEIU Local 99, credited “the power of organizing” and said members were, for the most part, celebrating this deal that will increase their wages. “We had to take a stand.”

The deal reached Tuesday night, which still must be ratified by the union and approved by the LAUSD Board, makes it harder for new workers to qualify for free lifetime health benefits, which employees currently receive after working 25 years continuously and when their age and years of service add up to 85.

Tuesday’s deal would raise that eligibility for new employees to 30 years of continuous service and would kick in when age and years of service add up to 87. In exchange, SEIU members got some wage increase concessions, some of which are based on the financial health of LAUSD, which will be decided by an outside arbitrator rather than the district itself.

While Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) indicated the deal did not go far enough, and he may vote against it, this is the first time any of the bargaining units have budged on healthcare, which is a significant source of financial distress for LAUSD.

At the Board meeting Tuesday, LAUSD’s Interim Chief Risk Officer Mampre Pomakian presented a report showing the present value of retiree benefits –  the amount of money LAUSD would need today to pay for current and future retiree healthcare – has reached a staggering $22.6 billion.

The unfunded health benefits liability is growing worse – by 5 percent a year -- taking more and more money away from current employees and kids in the classroom. Unless dramatic change happens, about half of LAUSD’s budget will be going out the door to retirees in less than 15 years.

“We’ve got a major problem,” said Board Member Richard Vladovic (BD7). “We’ve got to deal with it. We can’t hide.”

LAUSD has declared an impasse in labor talks with the union representing bus drivers, cafeteria workers and special ed assistants, which is planning a one-day strike on May 15, just as the LAUSD’s new Superintendent Austin Beutner starts his job.

“After 16 months of bargaining, SEIU Local 99 has provided notice on Friday, May 4, that they are terminating their labor contract with L.A. Unified,” LAUSD said in a statement Sunday. “The District issued a declaration that we are at impasse in our negotiations, which means that the differences between our position and SEIU Local 99’s position are too large to resolve through further negotiations.”

A union spokeswoman disputed the notion of an impasse, but fired back with charges of unfair labor practices. The heated moves and rhetoric on both sides signal an increased likelihood of a longer-term strike in the fall, as LAUSD attempts to address serious fiscal challenges under the leadership of Beutner, a finance expert.

“Enough is enough,” said Tanya Walters, an LAUSD Bus Driver and Vice President of SEIU Local 99. “We’re trying to work with the District to address issues that impact our students. But instead of listening to those of us who work with students on the frontlines every day, they have bullied and harassed workers who speak up. And they’ve made staffing cuts and changes without speaking with those of us who do the work. We don’t want to strike, but we will move forward on May 15 if the District continues to disrespect our voices and disregard our work.”

LAUSD’s new superintendent, Austin Beutner, is the son of an immigrant factory supervisor who fled the Nazis and a mom who was a reading teacher. In high school, he washed dishes at a restaurant, worked at a detergent factory and drove a delivery truck for a florist.

His family moved five times, and each time, his parents chose the neighborhood with the best public schools. Armed with an excellent education, Beutner worked in finance and at 29 became the youngest partner at his private equity firm. He subsequently founded his own investment banking firm, but a life-changing event a decade ago altered his priorities.

“I had a bad accident mountain biking. I broke my neck,” he said. “Oddly enough, the part I remember most was them picking gravel out of my knuckles.”

It took him a year to get back on his feet, and “during that time I decided I wanted to spend the next chapter of my life working to make our community better,” he said. “To make sure others in the community had the same opportunities I did. And the best opportunity I was ever given was a great public education.”

Beutner opened up at his first press conference Wednesday at Belmont High, where he acknowledged that he was an “unconventional choice” to lead the second-largest school district because his professional background is in business and finance rather than education.

“But the district is at a crossroads,” he said. “We face some tough issues. Hard choices are just that, hard. But our school Board is capable of making hard choices. I know, for example, it was not easy to choose me.”

With a serious and sober demeanor, he laid out the case for why the district needs change. “LA Unified is making progress,” he said, “but the status quo is not good enough.”

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.