Transparency has left the Beaudry Building!

"If this study shows anything, it shows that we've got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters, that's a red flag." -- Margaret E. Raymond (Director Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes CREDO 2009)

LAUSD President Monica Garcia and Vice President Yolie Flores Aguilar at the behest of ever the opportunist Mayor Villaraigosa and his boss Eli Broad have shown complete willingness to implement neoliberal Pinoche politics here in Los Angeles. Their no holds barred school privatization plan warms the hearts of extreme reactionary right wing corporatization advocates like Newt Gingrich, The Hoover Institution, The Hudson Institute, and the Cato Institute.

Ms. Garcia and Flores Aguilar's ruthless three step methodology for destroying public education:

Step 1: Vote to lay off hundreds and hundreds of hard working teachers. The direct results of their cynical vote is massive class size increases with some public schools suffering 40-60 students per class. This is by design, making public schools more prone to failure in order to bring in another wave of privatization.

Step 2: During the summer, when there is no resistance, pass the most sweeping privatization plan imaginable. Their Corporate Charter Choice resolution hands public schools and public property over to Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). CMOs are known for unelected boards whose hallmark is being utterly opaque, undemocratic, top down, private, and unaccountable -- despite taking the public's money and plenty of it. CMOs are entirely beholden to nefarious benefactors like the Waltons, Broads, Gates, and other right wing ideologues. Their hangers-on include unsavory characters like Marshall Tuck, Antony Ressler, Steve Barr, and Marco Petruzzi.

Step 3: ALL BUT ELIMINATE PUBLIC COMMENT, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, AND DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION in the district with their "Changes to Rules of the Board of Education." This is essentially Mayoral control (read corporate control) in everything but name. LAUSD Board Member Marguerite P. LaMotte's principled statement statement regarding Ms. Garcia and Flores Aguilar's reprehensible sneakiness is brilliant: "We are giving away our schools and now we want to get rid of transparency... so we can do whatever we want in the dark of night."