Also Sprach ZooTLA-stra

This is an actual email sent to a UTLA member by her UTLA "Representative" quite recently on the eve of being dismissed by LAUSD. I have translated the letter from the original "UTLAspeak" to (English).


Dear $$$$$$$, (Dear Mr./Ms. Lifetime Dues-Paying Member of UTLA,)
 
I am very, very sorry to report that your name is on the dismissal list for the upcoming board vote. (I am also sorry I couldn't even be bothered to let you know about this until after you asked me first and I had no choice but to answer you. In fact I am so very, very sorry that I have slipped into a catatonic state of depression. That is why I will do nothing meaningful to help you. I'd really, really like to help you, but I am just too depressed. Can you help me? This is just so difficult for me to deal with. Please get back to me regarding anything you can do for me on my behalf. I really feel bad. Really. Really, really bad.)

Please let your lawyer know immediately. (Because unlike the commitments we made to you both in the UTLA Constitution and all our UTLA "Membership Benefits" brochures we've been handing out for decades, brochures we recently changed thank God (using your dues money), we will be doing absolutely nothing to help you when it comes to lawyers. As soon as LAUSD puts you on unpaid status, though, you should have no problem spending your own money, the money you don't have, to defend yourself and cover all your legal fees, health insurance, food, rent, morgage, child care, etc. Good luck with that, by the way.)

I also wanted to let you know that UTLA is here to help work out a settlement offer with the District if you are interested. (In the absence of providing any meaningful help to you since your nightmare began, I will ask the malevolent LAUSD administrators who put you in this miserable situation by using false allegations and/or accusing you of trivial infractions of school policy if they have a breadcrumb or two they'd like to toss in your direction in order to get you to quit as soon as possible as this will make it more convenient for both LAUSD and UTLA.)
  
Please let me know if you would like us to work with the District on your behalf in working out a settlement. (I'm just letting you know this in case it isn't obvious to you yet that all we do now at UTLA is collaborate and collude with LAUSD. We'd like you out of here as much as they do and hope that you don't sue us. If we can do anything to get you out of here quicker, then great! UTLA used to work for and with teachers on their behalf. Now we work strictly on LAUSD's behalf. We'll say we're working on "your behalf," though, if it makes you feel any better now that your life is ruined and we've done nothing meaningful for you. I did enjoy sitting next to you those times. And I'd be more than happy to kiss your ass goodbye if that helps.)

I am so sorry to have to deliver such terrible news. (As I said, I'm catatonic. Seriously. Do you think you can help me? I can't move.)
 
Sincerely, (Kidding!)
 
%%%%%% (We now take 100% of your dues and offer no protection or meaningful help to you, unless you count lip-service, whatsoever. Your dues has paid my salary, though, so all is not lost.) 

Your UTLA Area Representative (Representative: noun 1. Well, you look it up. I don't have a clue what "representative" means. None of us at UTLA do.)

Thus Speaks LAUSD, Part II

Letter Dated February 28, 2013. Full LAUSD letterhead. John E. Deasy, Ph.D., the microwave popcorn version of doctorates. (Microwave popcorn takes six minutes. John Deasy's Ph.D. took six months.)

Re. Mr. Sergio Garcia vs. LAUSD

Dear Mr. Williams.

“Wait. Didn’t you say Mr. Garcia?”

“Yes I did.”

“Well who is this to, Mr. Garcia or Mr. Williams?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Uhhh, no I don’t. I think it's to Mr. Williams, though. That's what it says.”

"But it's about Mr. Garcia."

"I think so. Yes."

“Really? You think so? OK, go on.”

Thank you for meeting with me at Educational Service Center East on February 27, 2013 at 1:30 p.m. regarding John Doty’s appeal…

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. John Doty? Who the heck is John Doty? I thought this was to Sergio Garcia, I mean Mr. Williams, I mean, well, what the hell do I mean? What the hell do YOU mean?"

“I don’t know.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t know?”

“No I don’t.”

“Not a clue?”

“Nope.”

“Huh. You know I find this really hard to…oh forget it. Just go on.”

During the appeal, Mr. Garcia stated….

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Mr. Garcia? Did you just say Mr. Garcia? Where the hell is John Doty? What have you done with him? You didn’t hurt him or anything I hope. And poor Mr. Williams. I hate to think what's happened to him. What have you done with him? Come on. Just WHO ARE WE TALKING ABOUT here?”

“No idea.”

“No idea? What is this, LAUSD's imitation of Abbott and Costello? Who’s on Sergio, what’s on Williams, and John Doty’s on third? So this letter to Mr. Williams references Mr. Garcia, but concerns the appeal of a Notice of Unsatisfactory Act issued to Mr. Doty while supposedly quoting Mr. Garcia during Mr. Garcia's appeal of HIS Notice of Unsatisfactory Act?

"Yes."

"Are you attributing the words of Mr. Garcia to John Doty, the words of John Doty to Mr. Garcia, or the words of Mr. Garcia to Mr. Garcia at John Doty's appeal meeting? Or are you attributing the words of Mr. Garcia to John Doty, the words of John Doty to Mr. Garcia, or the words of Mr. Garcia to Mr. Garcia during Mr. Garcia's appeal meeting? Which is it?"

"I don't know."

"Not a clue?"

"No."

"Six different possibilities?"

"It would seem so, yes."

How many paragraphs are left?”

 

“One.”

“One? Who is it to? No wait, let me guess. It’s to, uhhhh... Oh hell, just tell me. No, forget it. Never mind who it's to. I don’t even want to know. What is the final paragraph in regards to?”

“It passes judgment.”

“It passes judgment?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know upon whom.”

“Yes I do! Of course I do!”

“You do? How is that possible? You’ve got a letter regarding a Mr. Garcia, to a Mr. Williams, summarizing details with regards to Mr. Dody's meeting while quoting (possibly) Mr. Garcia  while either at Mr. Doty's or Mr. Garcia's appeal meeting and now you are going to pass judgment on one of them?”

“Yes.”

“And you know who you are passing judgment upon.”

“Yes I do. Of course I do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

"You don't know?"

“Not really. No."

“But you pass judgment anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why on Earth would you do that?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter? How can you say it doesn’t matter? These are three professional educators who have dedicated their lives to serving and educating children! How can you say it doesn’t matter?”

“Because we are firing everybody. The name, or in this case names on the paper really don’t make any difference.”

“And you say that in the last paragraph?”

“Oh no, of course not.”

“What do you say?”

“We say we are firing Mr. Garcia.”

“But not Mr. Williams?”

“No.”

“You’re not firing Mr. Williams?”

“Oh no, certainly we are firing Mr. Williams. We’re just not firing him with this official district document.”

"What about Mr. Doty?" 

"Him too."

"Him too what?"

"We are firing him too. The last paragraph is always the same. The names above? Who the letters are addressed to? Details? Who said what? The merits? The facts? None of that matters. What matters is the last paragraph. You're fired."

“Who the hell are you anyway?”

“Me? I’m Dr. Jose Cantu, Ed.D. I’m the Operations Coordinator for ESC East.”

“Excuse me, did I hear you say Dr.?”

“Yes. Ed.D.”

"Ed.D. You mean as in, 'Dr.' James Noble, Ed.D."

"Exactly."

“Ed.D. What does that stand for?”

“How the hell should I know? Hey look, bud. It’s not like I’ve got all day here. I’m an important man. I’ve got things to do. I’ve got teachers to fire.”

“But you don’t know who.”

“Of course I know who!”

“You do?”

“Of course I know! I’m firing all of them! I just don’t know who I am firing or why I am firing them at any particular moment in time. There’s no need to worry, though. It all comes out the same in the end.”

Thus Speaks LAUSD, Part I

Notice of 15-day "Ususpension" Without Pay, Which Forms the Basis of a Teacher's Dismissal from LAUSD. Approved by Dr. James Noble, Director of Operations, ESC South

“A Notice of Ususpension,” Dr. Noble?

"Yes, why? 

"Well, do you really think you should be firing someone because of a Notice of Ususpension?"

“Yes. Why? Wait. What the hell are you talking about? What are you bothering me for, anyway? I’m a busy man. I have many important things to do.”

“Really? Like what?”

“I’ve got this letter to send out. We’re having a teacher’s Administrative Review April 25.”

“You mean his Skelly Hearing?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean, ‘Yes or no?'”

“Well, we call it an Administrative Review, but if you insist we will call it a Skelly. It doesn’t really matter.”

“It doesn’t? Why not? And isn't it supposed to be a Skelly Hearing?

"No."

"Why not?"

“Well for one thing we don’t do Skelly Hearings and for another….”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, You don’t do Skelly Hearings? Why not? No, wait. Forget that. What did you mean by, and for another thing?”

“Well for another thing, when you get to the OAH, LAUSD’s lawyers won’t even let you use the WORD hearing.”

“They won’t?”

“No.”

“Well why the hell not?”

“Well THAT’s a stupid question! Because we don’t do Skelly Hearings.”

“Really? Well then what do you do?”

“We fire people. Asministrative Review. Skelly. Whatever. I’m going to listen to this guy who was long-ago fired yap and yawn April 25 and then tell him he’s fired.”

"You are going to tell a guy who's already been fired that he is going to be fired?"

"Yes."

"How does that work?"

"Oh, we fire everyone the day we remove them from their school. But we have to obey the protocols."

"You mean Due Process?" 

"Of course I don't mean Due Process! We don't do Due Process. We do protocols. We must follow all the protocols, except for..."

"Except for what?"

"Except for the protocols we don't follow."

"And by protocols, you mean going through the motions of Due Process, of conducting charades?"

"Of course not! What kind of dog-and-pony show do you think we're running here? But basically yes."

“And when are you telling him this, his next protocol?"

“What? When am I firing him, when am I going to tell him I'm pretending I just decided I'm going to fire him and am now telling him, or when am I telling him of the meeting?”

“When are you telling him about this next meeting? Wait a minute. What the...? You lost me. What when what…”

“Oh stop bothering me. The bottom line is we’re firing him. What’s the difference?”

“Well it does kind of make a difference, at least to the teacher. Which does this letter do?”

“It tells him when we are going to ignore him. I told you. His Administrative Review. His Skelly Hearing that is not a hearing.”

“And when is that?”

“April 25, 2013.”

“And you are writing this on what date?”

"April 17. I want him to have plenty of notice regarding when we will ignore him.”

“What if he can’t make the non-hearing hearing on April 25?”

“Oh, well, that’s easy. I will condescend to allow him to respond in writing.”

“Even if he can’t make the meeting?”

“Yes”

“What if his UTLA Representative can’t make the meeting?”

“The teacher can respond in writing. But he must respond in writing prior to the meeting.”

“You mean if he or his UTLA Representative can't make the meeting, he has to notify you in writing prior to the meeting? When does he have to notify you by, as you say, prior to the meeting?”

"He doesn't have to notify me prior to the meeting."

"He doesn't?"

“No.”

“Wait a minute. But didn't you just say...? I don't get it. If he or his representative can't make the meeting he notifies you 24 hours prior?”

“No.”

“Well when does he have to notify you by?”

“No. You get the wrong idea. He doesn’t have to notify me if he is not able to attend the meeting. The meeting is the meeting. He just has to respond to the meeting, if he wishes, in writing. I told you. He has to respond in writing.”

“Even if he wasn’t at the meeting.”

“Yes.”

“Well, when does he need to turn in his written response to the April 25, 2013 meeting he cannot attend?”

“Six months ago, October 29, 2012.”

“You mean to tell me you are writing a letter on April 17, 2013 regarding a meeting to be held on April 25, 2013 and if he can’t make the meeting he must submit his response six months prior to the meeting?”

“Yes. Why? Is there a problem?”

Letter written by "Dr." James Noble, Ed.D., ESC South's Director of Operations

Detail: Noble's 4/17/13 letter announcing 4/25/13 Skelly Meeting requiring teacher's written response six months prior to the 2013 meeting, "no later than" 10/29/12

Follow The Money

I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know, and I'll confirm. I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all. Just... follow the money.
 

-Deep Throat, “All the President’s Men” (1976)

If you want to know the direction LAUSD School Board President Monica Garcia and new candidate Kate Anderson want to take the Los Angeles Unified School District after the upcoming election, then follow the money. In this case following the money isn’t difficult because there is just so damn much of it. Start with an astounding quarter of a million dollars by Eli Broad, Superintendent Deasy’s mentor and puppet master, and another quarter million by fellow billionaire, Latino media magnate A. Jerrold Perenchio, formerly of Univision. Together they pushed “their” Coalition for School Reform’s coffers to $1.5 million. Then Mayor Villaraigosa who, along with Broad, was instrumental in bringing Deasy to LAUSD, called in the really big gun by brokering a deal with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who contributed an additional million dollars for the Coalition –money education historian Diane Ravitch called “repugnant and an affront to democracy.”

What qualifies Bloomberg to buy a Board of Education three thousand miles distant? In New York with the help of the Gates Foundation, he closed more than 150 “failing schools” replacing them with smaller schools and charter schools. Sixty percent of these “new and improved” smaller elementary and middle schools now have lower passing rates than the schools they replaced. Just 38% of the students at elementary and middle schools created by the Bloomberg administration passed the reading exams, compared with 47% of students citywide. Former NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein, who raised proficiency rates by dramatically lowering expectations, pitched in another $25,000.

Bloomberg’s schools share this attribute with Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS), which have also been a dismal failure. Roosevelt High School was divided into seven small schools in the name of “improvement” in 2007. Only one of the seven principals had previous experience. In 2009, Roosevelt teachers gave Villaraigosa and PLAS an “F” because they saw no improvement. Now in 2013, many school and community members are in open revolt. Enrollment has plummeted. The LA Weekly, citing API scores, noted that Roosevelt made Compton Unified look like the “district of the freaking month.”

Mayor Villaraigosa called Bloomberg, “the most important voice in education reform today.” Education deform is more like it.

The Coalition for School Reform may as well be Deasy’s pocketbook. Megan Chernin, the head of Deasy's "nonprofit" group to raise money for LAUSD schools, is a major backer and the former head of charter operator L.A.’s Promise. So is Steven Prough, the current head, who contributed $10,000 personally. How good is L.A.’s Promise in keeping its promises? In 2010, 91% of West Adams Prep students were not proficient in English and 82% were not proficient in math. Manuel Arts, which L.A.’s Promise had also “promised” to turn into a Garden of Eden had astoundingly high non-proficiency rates of 97% and 90% respectively in 2010. Their achievement rates seem inversely proportional to the glossiness of their marketing brochures.

Jaimie Alter Lynton donated $100,000 to the Coalition. She, like Chernin, is on the board of Deasy’s fundraising nonprofit group. Lynton also launched L.A. School Report which is basically dedicated to extolling and promoting Deasy and electing both Anderson and Garcia while simultaneously denouncing the teachers’ union as the protector of pedophiles.

Kate Anderson has called Deasy “the best superintendent this district has had in decades” and wants to make all schools as “great” as New West Charter School. New West is 62% white and Asian, 24% Latino, and 12% Black. Only 11% of its students are on free or reduced lunches. It boasts not a single English Language Learner in the entire school. Special education statistics are unavailable for some mysterious reason. Let’s make all schools just like New West Charter School.

You want to know about Monica Garcia and Kate Anderson? Just follow the money.

Letter From a Los Angeles Teacher Jail

I delivered this speech before the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education and Superintendent Deasy on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, his real one on January 15 and not the pretend one the following Monday. I was only allowed three minutes to speak and thus had to read too quickly and even then did not quite get to finish. So I then sent this as a "letter" (an email) addressed to each school board member personally. By way of introduction, I wrote, "It is fitting that I should deliver this address on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Consider this my Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Birmingham in Los Angeles."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

April 16, 1963

Though I did not include it, King's words which follow his epiphany above are even more apropos for teachers today. 

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea."

As teachers today, we all need to be Chicago Teachers. We all need to be Seattle's Garfield High School teachers.

Here is my speech, my Letter from a Los Angeles Teacher Jail:

Thank you distinguished members of the Board of Education,

I am here to discuss the teacher prison network devised by the Superintendent. He has created within your LAUSD a prison industrial complex for teachers, teacher gulags, imprisoning 350 teachers with more added daily. LAUSD is now the Soviet Union of public education.

The superintendent has taken his personal frustration and the failings of district administrators relating to Miramonte and placed the blame on innocent teacher scapegoats. You must be aware this is happening. Are almost 350 teachers suddenly behaving “inappropriately” towards students or has the superintendent launched an unprecedented witch hunt using the ruse of “student safety” to destroy the lives of dedicated teaching professionals? 

In Superintendent Deasy’s teacher jails, teachers are abused, isolated, segregated, and humiliated. Teachers are now housed completely without thought or reasonableness. They are denied due process. Teachers are never spoken to until after LAUSD "completes" its so-called "investigations". It never interviews teachers ever. How do you conduct an investigation without interviewing the teacher? Unsupported allegations are treated as fact. 

LAUSD administrators who conduct the investigations have no training in the proper techniques for interviewing children and they are never videotaped to check later for improprieties such as manipulating children or asking leading questions. Parents, rarely informed ahead of time, are never asked for permission.  LAPD’s frequent dismissals of baseless charges are ignored by LAUSD. LAUSD treats LAPD as an inconvenience. 

Ms. Galatzan, you and others talk about streamlining the due process system, but the current administration has eliminated due process conducting charades instead. Everything is predetermined. Principals read prepared scripts they know are false out of fear of reprisals. Teacher input is denied or ignored. Meetings held to discuss "tentative decisions" are conducted around district documents stating the decision which are signed by various district administrators prior to the meeting. There is nothing "tentative" about anything. There are no Skelly Hearings, no real ones anyway. LAUSD doesn't even review the "evidence" with teachers. In LAUSD, facts don't matter. Allegations matter.

What you are witnessing is nothing less than a modern McCarthyism where teachers are being Blacklisted with false allegations. Instead of a Red Menace, Superintendent Deasy has invented a Teacher Menace.

I have been a proud teacher and administrator in LAUSD for 28 years going back to 1982 and garnished a number of distinctions. I was an assistant principal at Crenshaw for two years, brought in at the District’s request to help restore its WASC accreditation. I was a mentor teacher for six years and have written official LAUSD curriculum. My teaching has been recognized nationally twice by Johns Hopkins University as a Johns Hopkins Teaching Fellow. My classroom was the only one selected in California to be featured on the National Science Foundation’s live broadcast featuring students in classrooms across the nation and experts at JPL and NASA. Good Morning America once did a major feature on my classroom. A number of years ago at P**** Middle School, Cherie Hale, one of my sixth graders rose from the 49^th percentile to the 99^th percentile in math in a single year on the California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS). More recently at W********* Middle School, Josephine Galdomez (also 6^th grade) rose from Far Below Basic all the way to Advanced on the California Standards Test (CST) in a single year with me.

The contrivances being used to destroy this life and career came not from my principal who greatly admires my teaching, though he goose steps along like all site administrators now for fear of losing his job, but his superiors. There is a top down atmosphere of fear created and nurtured by a superintendent who is not focused on education or discipline, but only teacher termination. 

I stand before you as one of LAUSD’s finest teachers: a mentor teacher, a Johns Hopkins teaching fellow, an outstanding former administrator, and now suddenly a dishonored, miscreant according to your administration, to speak truth to power. Mr. Superintendent, you imprisoned one too many teachers. Me. I speak for all teacher prisoners and thousands of teachers. The allegations against me are beyond false. They are ludicrous. Yet you, sir, treat them as true. And I am by no means alone. You have criminalized teaching by making ludicrous allegations and even the most minor offense into a firing offense.

I quote army attorney Joseph Walsch who finally terminated the heinous Senator Joseph McCarthy and his McCarthyism.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last have you no sense of decency?”

Sincerely,
Joseph K
1/15/13