LAUSD’s $10M Image Makeover
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007The Daily News reports that Los Angeles Unified School District officials have quietly hired two consultants to help improve their public image.
The recent hirings come in addition to a six-person communications staff with a nearly $1.4 million budget, an overall $10 million communications budget, and a separate consulting contract with Darry Sragow, who helps LAUSD develop communications strategies and policy issues.
Their online poll asks whether hiring consultants help improve LAUSD’s image. So far, more than 90 percent of respondents say NO.
But the question is not whether consultants will help improve LAUSD’s image, but why LAUSD and UTLA would bother to provide the education that our taxpayers and children deserve.
After doubling their budget during thirty years of decline, why would they? So far, their formula for failure has delivered nothing but ever-increasing budgets.
LAUSD’s 50 percent drop-out rates, bloated bureaucracy, hemorrhaging budget, abysmal test scores, drug- and gang-infested campuses threaten hundreds of thousands of children each day, and Admiral Brewer plans to waste $10 million to promote their image? Why do lipstick and pigs come to mind?
Q-Tips, Honda, and LA’s private schools don’t sell because of their advertising, but because they provide superior products and services at a reasonable price. Spend $10 million to promote OJ and, no matter how slick the campaign, you still end up with a double murderer. Spending $10 million to report that no one was shot at Venice High today is NOT progress…
The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but that train ain’t comin’.
H/T AJK