7 truths about school change

October 2009: It might be possible that some of you—focused so intently on grading papers and planning lessons—haven’t heard about the so-called Public School Choice motion that was passed by the School Board in August. We call it the Public School Giveaway motion, because that’s what it could do—it opens the door for outside operators to bid to run a number of new and PI 3+ schools. But even if you are familiar with the plan, with all the uncertainty in the air there is fuzziness about what’s going on.

Here are some truths about the motion and school change.

1. UTLA remains opposed to the school giveaway motion.
We were able to secure some important improvements to the motion before it passed, but not enough for us to believe this is good for our students. We feel it’s the School Board’s duty to fix public education, not give schools away. The plan is fundamentally flawed because it relies on the notion that outside, top-down ideas can best help our students.

We are also researching whether the plan is even legal—we have concerns that the motion violates the Education Code, the UTLA-LAUSD contract, and rules regulating taxpayer-funded school construction dollars. That said, the potential impact of the motion is so great that we cannot sit on the sidelines while the process plays out, and we are actively supporting school teams as they create proposals to submit to run their own schools.

2. Meaningful school change must come from within.
UTLA has supported local control for decades, and this process could be a genuine opportunity to take control of our students’ learning environment. School teams, with teachers in the lead, can create, submit, and implement customized reform plans that speak to the needs of their students in ways that no outside organization or District bureaucracy can. We dare not lose this opportunity to move down the road to create more local control of schools. This could be the paradigm shift we have been looking for.

3. UTLA embraced new visions of school reform years before this motion passed.
Too often the union is portrayed as an obstacle to reform—usually for political expediency by privatizers and corporate interests—when in reality, UTLA brought a number of great programs to LAUSD over the years, such as the mentor teacher program, shared decision making, and peer assistance and review. In recent years, UTLA has been intricately involved with the Pilot schools model, iDesign schools, and ESBMM (Expanded School-Based Management Model), all of which give schools charterlike freedoms while remaining within LAUSD. As UTLA helps school teams explore these models, we will not be endorsing one over another. Schools need to determine what is best for their students, and that could be one of these models or an entirely different plan.

4. This process will not be easy for school teams, and frankly, the playing field is not level.
 UTLA is offering as much support as we can—through as many different channels as we can—but creating a comprehensive school change plan with stakeholder support is a difficult, time-consuming process. The reality is that school-based teams, many of whom are doing this work for the first time, face higher hurdles in developing proposals than established charter operators and other outside providers, who do this work all the time. UTLA’s job is to fight for increased fairness at every step of the way. We were successful in extending the deadline from November to January to give our school teams more time, and we are demanding other changes to the process to level the playing field. We’ve met with representatives from the first 12 schools on the list to assist with their plans, and we will meet in the coming months with schools that are expected to be on the focus list in coming years.

5. PI 3+ schools not on the “focus” list this year should start work now.
Many schools breathed a sigh of relief that they were not on the list of 12 “focus” schools for this year, but if you are at a PI 3+ school, that doesn’t mean that you should relax. It means you now have the precious benefit of more time to develop a proposal, and while UTLA’s top priority is the 12 focus schools, we are offering resources and support for you too.

6. Any school change plan is threatened by budget cuts.
We can’t let the public lose sight of the desperate underfunding of public education. In the push for change, elected officials and others seem to forget that our schools were cut by more than $11 billion this year, and things don’t look any better for the coming years. Our schools face another round of layoffs and class-size increases unless LAUSD gets additional funds. We will be part of a coalition working to convince the public that a local parcel tax and changing the two-thirds budget approval rule will help save public education.

7. Not all schools need to change.
Many are working just fine as they are. In fact, LAUSD now has 350 schools with scores over 750 on the API. If you are at a school with a score like that, it’s clear the direction you’re headed is working. But if your principal or local District superintendent wants to make change just for change’s sake, give me a call, and I’ll let Superintendent Cortines know about it too. He feels as I do—it’s not necessary to fix what ain’t broke.

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