Battle-scarred LAUSD ’sub’ speaks out
Migdia Chinea shares her experience as a substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She describes herself as UCLA-educated with honors, refined, empathetic, college-level Spanish fluent and a Googleable professional screenwriter.
She describes LAUSD this way:
There’s no teaching going on at LAUSD – only confinement of the sort one may find in a penal colony, complete with walkie-talkie-carrying wardens and bullhorns. And I have “confined” at many different schools within central Los Angeles in the last six months. Many students scream “suuuuuuuub” when they see someone like me – a “guest teacher” – in their classroom and trample anyone and/or anything as they push and shove their way inside…(One school is) surrounded by criminal street gangs and is widely considered one of the most dangerous campuses… most classes (are in) are in a complete state of disaster, absolutely filthy, with no computers available. There are no simple supplies, such as pencils, pens or paper, nothing to be found anywhere…
(M)any students… are violent and unpredictable. I was present, in fact, during a violent melee involving hundreds of students that brought in several police squad cars and helicopters flying overhead.
I have also endured several school “lock downs.” Here’s how a “lock down” works: As in a prison, the inmates and their jailers are not allowed to leave for any reason, nor let anyone out.
I always try to leave one classroom door open because I am often afraid for my life…
On Oct. 5, 2007, at another notorious middle school, I was deliberately body-slammed on the head by two to three large young men in a P.E. class of 53 students… I’m told by the local police that this sort of physical abuse on teachers occurs with disturbing regularity…
In my view, the LAUSD is completely corrupt, inept and broken, with many students having serious behavioral problems and disinterested in learning, whereas the teachers remain underpaid and exhausted – some of them just marking time until their retirement and giving out charity passing grades to high school students who can barely write or do math at a third-grade level… (
more HERE)
“Disturbing regularity” is gophers digging up your bulbs, an employee showing up drunk, or forgetting to take out the trash. But after 30 years of the institutionalized intellectual vandalism of our city’s most precious and needy children, when will we call it DELIBERATE regularity? If LAUSD was a private company, it would have collapsed a generation ago like the stinking necrotic tumor it is.
Compare LAUSD with the people it serves: LA City’s $6.5 billion budget employs 40,000 who serve 4,300,000 residents, while LAUSD’s $32 billion budget ($11B operations & $21B construction) employs 80,000 who (ostensibly) serve 650,000 students.
LAUSD is a criminal enterprise – a $32 billion dollar (allegedly $11B operations, $21B construction) protection racket that extorts tax dollars under the pretext of improvement and higher scores. It makes schools I’ve seen in Calcutta, Rio, and Nairobi look like Cal Tech and MIT.
LAUSD makes us lament the good old days before Brown v. Board of Education, when Democrats merely segregated minority children. What could we expect from school district officials after BROWN when, the day before, they supported segregation? When Republicans demanded an end to discrimination, Democrats responded by shuffling children in buses so that they could join gangs, do drugs, and get shot in other neighborhoods.
Like all other tumors, LAUSD cannot be fixed. It demands removal. Compared to LA City’s $6.5B budget for our 4,300,000 residents, LAUSD’s bloated $30 billion could be divided among its 650,000 students who could then pursue a real education with vouchers and charters. I suspect that Democrats oppose vouchers not because they don’t work, but because affluent Democrats don’t want their children to compete for seats in their own private schools far from the riff-raff of low-income families they pretend to care for.
If you disagree, how much more “disturbing regularity” do we plan to tolerate? As parents and voters, we have the power to change this. LAUSD is the lifeblood of the California Democrat Party:
Our Attorney General will not close down the operation that has fed his campaigns since the 1970s. Republicans might not be perfect, but Democrats have enjoyed exclusive control over LAUSD and California’s Legislature, courts, and media since the 1970s. There is no excuse for this to last longer than a few years - a few decades proves the institutionally imposed intellectual genocide of our students. Until we replace our anti-voucher anti-charter political enablers with voucher/charter supporters, nothing will change. And if we don’t change the way we vote then we have no one to blame but ourselves.
We have a choice - end the LAUSD criminal enterprise or be the reason it continues to thrive.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I wish I could see hope for California’s puke rotten political system. Short of a general collapse, a la the Huns sacking, burning and pillageing Sacramento, i see nothing stopping this state from sliding only deeper into its own sewage.
November 19th, 2007 at 5:41 am
If/when a school here in the United States is taken over by those practitioners of the religion of peace, and the “children” are slaughtered, hopefully it will be in the LAUSD because that will bring those practitioners the most publicity.
But for real change to occur in the “services” provided to the public by the service district it would take more than an act of Congress, it would take the suspension of the legal profession, replacement of the local political power structure, replacement of the activist “teachers”, disolvement of the teachers union and replacement of all the “touchy-feely” teaching methods instituted over the last few decades.
In other words, it would take the “willing suspension of disbelief.”
November 19th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
There’s one item missing from the “failure formula”: the ‘parents’. Unfortunately, they either don’t give a damn, they’re absent, or just as big of a criminal as their kids.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Re; Parents… I suspect that many public school parents give up because LAUSD beats them down. I offer two examples HERE.
My kids and I attended public school and my grandkids now attend private school. The private school is FAR MORE responsive to our needs than the public schools ever were. The difference isn’t as much about parent involvement as it is about WHO controls funding. Schools that receive money from the District are less likely to support parents and kids than when the PARENTS control the cash.
I’m much more involved today because controlling the funds gives me a more powerful voice. If the school doesn’t measure up, I take my cash elsewhere. Public schools don’t endure that threat and are therefore much less likely to be responsive.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:48 am
lAUSD IS EXACTLY A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE,i HAVE WORKED THERE 10 YEARS.iN 2002 THEY NAVY SEABEES,COMMANDERS,LT. COMMANDERS
THEY ARE DOING A GOOD JOB OF BUILDING NEW SCHOOLS,BUT THEY ARE BUILDING TO MUCH.
THE STUDENT POPULATION IS GOING DOWN,THEY CONVINCED THE BOARD TO SHIFT MONEY FROM MAINTENANCE TO THE NEW CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM,ABOUT 600 MILLION DOLLARS.wHY,BECAUSE THE WANT TO RETIRE WITH
PENSION,AFTER GETTING A PENSION FROM THE NAVY,EVEN THOUGH THEY DO NOT NEED SOME OF THE NEW SCHOOLS,THEY ARE TAKING LAND AWAY FROM PEOPLE AND HOUSES,THEY ARE DISPLACING THESE PEOPLE EMINENT DOMAIN.THIS IS A SHAME