EARLIER this month, the LAUSD school board introduced one of the most revolutionary proposals to ever come before it: The Public School Choice Resolution, authored by board member Yolie Flores-Aguilar.
This resolution would force the Los Angeles Unified School District to compete against outside operators, such as community-based or charter management organizations, to run the more than 50 new schools opening in the next four years.
The parents of Los Angeles strongly support this resolution because it has the potential to drag the LAUSD kicking and screaming into the 21st century and literally force them to learn how to run great schools by competing with those who are already doing so.
So why all the pushback from LAUSD?
The problem isn’t that they don’t know how to run great schools. Rather, the LAUSD is failing because it’s not designed to succeed. It fails our kids because it’s designed to serve adults, special interests and bureaucrats at the expense of us all.
One by one, these special interests with financial ties to the district stood before the board earlier this month and issued denouncements of this resolution, along with thinly veiled threats against any board member who supported it. One spokesperson even admitted this resolution was a “yes” vote for kids but spoke out against it nonetheless because it didn’t serve a narrow agenda.
In response to this criticism, the school board decided to postpone the vote in an attempt to find a solution that all parties could support. While we share this goal, we absolutely will not accept a watered-down resolution. We all know where those compromises lead: mediocrity and more of the same. The job of a school board member is not to make everyone happy; it’s to ensure that our kids get the best possible public education. Period.
While watering down this resolution is unacceptable, we could still make this transformative resolution even better by expanding this freedom to all schools throughout the LAUSD that are failing kids, parents and communities. Why should parents trapped in failing schools, with no new construction, get left behind?
These powerful interests are employing the only political tool they know: fear. While we must of course consider the risk of change, we must also consider the risk of a status quo where 50 percent of our kids drop out of high school. We must consider the risk of a status quo where 90 percent of our kids don’t go to college.
We know for a fact that a kids-first reform agenda can thrive in a wall-to-wall unionized environment because we see it every single day at Locke High School. High-quality public charter schools throughout Los Angeles and public school districts across America are already answering President Obama’s call to revolutionize public education. They are taking the same kids dropping out of LAUSD schools and instead sending them to college.
Together, we have the power to make our schools great again by going back to basics. We believe that every single decision about our schools must be filtered through the lens of whether you’d make that same decision if it affected your own child.
The Parent Revolution, which is empowering parents all across Los Angeles to take back our schools, is gaining momentum because parents realize that we can no longer afford to settle for a status quo that has nothing to do with kids, and we no longer have to.
This resolution represents a critical crossroads for public education in Los Angeles. LAUSD officials can cut another politics-as-usual deal, embrace the status quo, and spend another 26 billion of our taxpayer dollars opening up beautiful new schools that begin to academically fail the day after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Or they can allow choice and competition to spark an education revolution, supercharge reform across the district, and give our children the education they need and the future they deserve.
The parents of Los Angeles are going to take back our schools from the special interests and the bureaucrats, with or without this resolution, for one simple reason: because we have no choice.
Change is coming whether the district likes it or not. It’s up to LAUSD if they want to embrace change and be a part of it, or be left on the sidelines of history.
The parents of Los Angeles are watching.
Ben Austin is executive director of the Los Angeles Parents Union.