A great Op Ed in the LA Times by a teacher at Locke high school about the despicable tactics the union and bureaucracy are using to try to block Green Dot's takeover of the school:

On May 8, the day we finished collecting signatures, Principal Frank Wells was escorted off campus by an LAUSD official. Three days later, when the petition was filed with the district, I was relieved of all my non-teaching duties (coordinating assessments and writing our school improvement plan) and was assigned to supervising our legion of rebellious, tardy students. I lost my summer employment too, and thousands of dollars in pay.

The district's disinformation campaign was launched the next week. We had a mandatory after-school meeting, at which representatives from the LAUSD and the teachers union attacked the plan for three hours. Green Dot was barred from participating. Mat Taylor, the United Teachers Los Angeles rep from Fremont High School, told our faculty: "You fired yourselves when you signed that petition." Others said that Green Dot offered no healthcare benefits (a falsehood retracted after I objected), that a continual stream of unhappy Green Dot teachers reapply to the LAUSD and other distortions.

After all that, some teachers withdrew their signatures.

In the following week, six hours of meetings (time originally scheduled to prepare for reaccreditation) were spent hearing about five new rival proposals for Locke's future — as if we'd never made a choice. An anti-Green Dot petition was circulated persistently until, having cajoled, confused and intimidated our teachers, the LAUSD was satisfied: 17 had rescinded their signatures.

When the LAUSD threw out our charter petition, district officials, including Supt. David L. Brewer, insisted that no one was pressured or coerced. This simply strains credulity.

The LAUSD has proved again and again that it can't manage urban high schools.

 

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L.A. Unified: the school bully

A teacher's inside look at the district's aggressive campaign to keep Locke High School from going charter.

By Bruce William Smith, BRUCE WILLIAM SMITH teaches English at Locke High School.
June 7, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-smith7jun07,0,3610273.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

I AM ONE OF THE LEADERS of the teacher revolt at Locke High School. Locke was, for many years, the ashcan of the Los Angeles Unified School District, mismanaged in every way. Things have improved here, but not enough, and efforts to do more have been frustrated by district interference.