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LAUSD flounders as superintendent rakes it in, David Brewer makes a lot of money for a man with no education credentials, and navigating the school district is still a parent's nightmare. Steve Lopez December 7, 2008 I had lunch with *Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David Brewerearlier this year at a restaurant near downtown Los Angeles and almost choked. Not on the food, but the prices. I wasn't that hungry, fortunately, so I had the Chinese chicken salad, which cost an eye-popping $28.95. Brewer wasn't famished either, so he just had an appetizer, the crab cakes, and those ran $16.95. Over lunch, he defended himself against widespread criticism that he's the wrong man for the job and has been a big disappointment. But instead of talking about students, he went on and on about building a "matrix" system and "vertical" as well as "horizontal articulation." By the end of it I had an expensive stomachache. The L.A. Times picked up the tab, but Brewer had chosen the restaurant and he seemed to know his way around there, so I started wondering if his tastes always run so high-end. To find out, I called the school district and requested all of his expense reports dating back to his hiring in 2006. When the documents arrived, much of the information had been blacked out. Why? Because several high-level officials use the same credit card account, I was told, and I hadn't asked for their expenses; only Brewer's. But there wasn't much listed for Brewer, other than airfare and hotels, so I asked if perhaps his restaurant tabs had been blacked out as well? No, I was told by the district's lawyer. He pays for meals and other things from an expense account that was written into his contract. He just gets that money and doesn't have to account for it. How much? Forty-five grand, I was told. Not bad at all. I could see myself developing a Pacific Dining Car habit with that kind of pocket money. He also gets a $3,000 monthly housing allowance, the district lawyer added. All of which sits on top of his $300,000-a-year salary. Nice. Just a month before that lunch, I had been to a meeting at my daughter's public school, where parents were asked to donate $500 per child or we'd lose three instructional aides. No telling what will be asked of us now that bigger cuts are looming. Meanwhile, as the L.A. Unified school board seems ready to finally admit its blockheaded blunder in hiring a Navy man with no education experience to run the nation's second-largest school district, Brewer is fighting to keep his job. And he's still collecting -- in expense account payments alone -- the equivalent of one year's pay for a starting teacher. Friday morning I had breakfast at a more reasonably priced restaurant, the Original Pantry Cafe, with Ben Austin, a current school board candidate and former deputy to ex-Mayor Richard Riordan. Austin, who now works as a consultant for the Green Dot charter schools, said he'd give the heave-ho to the admiral if he had a vote, but the problems are bigger than Brewer. They're tinkering with a bureaucracy that needs to be blown up, Austin said. "These are revolutionary times and they're going with pilot programs." The only way to look at the job, Austin said, whether you're an administrator or board member, a teacher or union official, is to point to the nearest school and ask yourself: "Would I send my own daughter there?" A lot of public elementary schools in L.A. Unified, like the one in my neighborhood, are pretty good. But once middle and high school come into play, most people have three lousy choices: Take whatever you get at the neighborhood public school. Come up with the $25,000 for private school. Or devote half your life to cracking the magnet school code. My wife told me the other day that it's time to start playing that game. Before she completed the first sentence, I felt stabbing pains behind my eyeballs, but she had only begun the torture. The way it works, she said, is that we have to start applying to magnet schools. Say what? Our daughter's perfectly happy at her neighborhood school. We're supposed to apply to schools she's not likely to get into, she explained, because then "you get points if you're rejected." You work toward building up enough of them that by middle school you've got enough priority to get into the magnet you were aiming for all along. She did not appear to be kidding. "What if we apply and she gets accepted now, at one of the magnet schools we don't want her to go to yet?" I asked. "I don't know," my wife said. This is why people move to South Pasadena. And it's why we don't have time for more of David Brewer's on-the-job training. As for the race angle and reports that some local leaders would like to keep Brewer, an African American, where he is, I say that if the house is burning and children are at risk, you want experience at the fire hose, regardless of skin color. Austin said he thought Brewer had good intentions. But, he noted, 90% of the district's students don't go to college and 50% don't graduate. "It's an understatement to say the system is broken. And you need more than just little cuts in bureaucracy; you need to change the job of the bureaucracy." Austin believes there's hope in the Green Dot model, which is now getting its most challenging test with its recent takeover of L.A. Unified's perennial disaster: Locke High School. It's way too soon to know if dividing the school into small campuses, and giving teachers more authority but requiring more accountability, will produce results. But as it is, Austin said, there's little accountability in L.A. Unified. Brewer got a four-year contract and Dining Car perks with no performance standards, and although the vast majority of teachers are solid, getting rid of the lousy ones is mission impossible. "It's all about politics and never about the kids," Austin said. Brewer, if you ask me, doesn't deserve as much blame as do school board members who were gullible enough to be dazzled by a guy with laudable desire but no applicable credentials. For future reference: If a superintendent candidate comes in quoting the corporate management book "Good to Great," as Brewer did, suggest that he apply to run Nabisco, not a 700,000-child school district. Of course, the perks probably wouldn't be nearly as good as they are at L.A. Unified. steve.lopez@latimes.com
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times *************************************** *What do students mean to LAUSD superintendent?by Sandy Banks December 6, 2008 I remember the moment in 2003 when I realized that my daughter was in good hands at her Los Angeles Unified middle school. Former Supt. Roy Romer was facing down an angry crowd of parents at Taft High in Woodland Hills after three students were wounded at a bus stop in a gang-related shooting. The parents wanted any kids suspected of gang ties kicked off campus and sent to "special" schools where they couldn't hurt "regular" kids. "Why are we wasting our money on those kids," one father asked, to applause and cheers. Romer grabbed the microphone and dove in: Even gang kids deserve an education, he told the crowd. That's their best route away from crime and violence. "They're not 'those' kids. They're our kids," he said. His scolding quieted the parents. Not everyone liked what he said, but his meaning was clear. You could feel the passion: Kids came first, no matter their status. Flash forward to March 2008. Supt. David Brewer was meeting with angry parents at Markham Middle School. Assistant Principal Steven Thomas Rooney had been charged with molesting a 13-year-old student. Rooney had been transferred to Markham after being arrested on a gun charge at his former campus, amid rumors that he was having sex with a student. How did he wind up at Markham, parents demanded of Brewer. Brewer apologized, took notes and nodded as parents vented. But he had no answers, displayed little outrage and said nothing after an anguished father told him, in Spanish, "You'd never let this happen if your kid went here." Brewer promised a public explanation and then turned the meeting over to school police officers and an expert in child sexual abuse. Then he returned to district headquarters and handed the case off to his assistant superintendent. Ultimately, a few supervisors got their hands slapped, but no heads rolled. Everybody blamed somebody else. Meanwhile, Rooney is awaiting trial on sex charges involving four students. At that meeting, I realized Brewer's days were probably numbered. Because instead of fighting for the children, he seemed to me to be siding with the bureaucrats. By now, Brewer's buyout seems like a foregone conclusion. Both school board members and bureaucrats have turned on him. He was hired into a bad situation during a district takeover attempt by the mayor. And he never did much to make it better. Now even his strongest supporters are backpedaling. Still, it's the school board that looks bad in its clumsy efforts to dump him after a Times editorial called for Brewer's ouster. Board President Monica Garcia tried so hard to orchestrate his removal this week that she roused a board member with pneumonia from his sick bed and chased the board's only black member through Union Station in an unsuccessful effort to get all seven members to meet. Then she started calling local business and civic leaders to tell them that the "role of the superintendent" would soon be taken up behind closed doors. But when pressed to explain, she was about as effective as Brewer when he went to Markham. City Councilman Bernard Parks told The Times that he asked Garcia why the board wanted to get rid of Brewer. Her answer: "It's an exempt position, so we don't have to have cause." Which makes me wonder whether the district's biggest problem is a superintendent who is moving too slowly, or a school board that doesn't know where he's supposed to be going. Brewer's supporters say he was blindsided by the sudden move to buy out his contract. If he's worried, he's trying hard not to let it show. In an upbeat e-mail he sent this week to his allies -- primarily black business and civic leaders -- he called himself "unflappable and undeterred . . . a warrior who is focused on the mission -- helping our children." I understand that his job is on the line and he's trying to mobilize an influential black constituency. On his list of accomplishments, he includes his partnership with 100 Black Men and his efforts to reform "two predominantly African American high schools," Westchester and Dorsey. I've spent about 20 years writing about LAUSD. I've seen the district's demographics shift and watched reforms get bogged down in racial politicking. And while I'm grateful for Brewer's attention to black students -- who languish at the bottom of academic performance charts -- his memo makes me squirm. The blatant appeal to race-based loyalty bothers me. I knew what Romer meant when he talked about "our" children because he defended troubled students, built schools in neglected neighborhoods, made sure every child had the same shot at learning to read. It didn't matter that he was a white man with no school district history. I wish I could feel the same about the current superintendent. I'm hoping that what happens next will let me know what our children mean to Brewer. And to the school board that hired him. sandy.banks@latimes.com
*Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times*
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times *************************************** *What do students mean to LAUSD superintendent?
*Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times*
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