Los Angeles Unfied School District - the last great live soap opera
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The Los Angeles Unified School District has it all! Comedy, intrigue, mystery, suspense, horror and stupidity. Lots and lots of stupidity.
The District is being micro managed by the political body that is supposed to set policy and as a result District staff is running scared. This is particularly evident at the top where major shifts in resources are made at the whim of anonymous complaints by phone.
The mystery and intrigue part comes from the so called Belmont High School scandal. Charges have been made that the school was built on an abandoned oil field because empoyees willfully bypassed environmental safeguards. Close scrutiny reveals that the environmental safeguards which these people supposedly bypassed were established AFTER the fact. I am reminded of the Soviet Union in this case where the law is passed after the fact so that no matter what you do, it is possible for you to be a criminal.
Back to the so called abandoned oil field. Anyone familiar with the Los Angeles area has seen the oil wells with the little pumps merrily bobbing away throughout the city. The property on which Belmont is being constructed was covered with residences that were as much as sixty years old. It is true that there is an oil field below the property. It is true that there were oil wells interspersed within the houses and apartment buildings that were torn down to make way for Belmont. It is also true that there are relatively few places in Los Angeles that do not lie above an oil field.
Charges have been made that a methane problem associated with constructing Belmont on this 'abandoned oil field' caught the District unprepared. This is not the case. Before ground broke on the project, the plans included an elaborate methane detection and management system as part of the structure.
Several people supposedly lost their jobs over Belmont. This is also not the case. At least three high ranking District employees were placed on suspension with pay. (I call that a vacation). These three were back at work for the District within two years. Three others have left the District. One was about to retire anyway, another worked for the District's Environmental Safety and Health Branch and found a better job elsewhere (hopefully among a population with fewer idiots.)
The District is a huge enterprise with a difficult job of educating children from a wide social and economic spectrum. They do a pretty good job. Unfortunately, it looks like the District will be dismembered by politicians using it as a campaign ploy.
The District was once a great place to work where there was a sense of accomplishment and a great deal of cooperation in helping to achieve the goals of providing an education to the city's children. That is no longer the case. Some of the more recent foolishness includes the E-rate program, a federally funded program to wire schools for technology. I will address this bit of schizophrenia in my next installment.
The District is being micro managed by the political body that is supposed to set policy and as a result District staff is running scared. This is particularly evident at the top where major shifts in resources are made at the whim of anonymous complaints by phone.
The mystery and intrigue part comes from the so called Belmont High School scandal. Charges have been made that the school was built on an abandoned oil field because empoyees willfully bypassed environmental safeguards. Close scrutiny reveals that the environmental safeguards which these people supposedly bypassed were established AFTER the fact. I am reminded of the Soviet Union in this case where the law is passed after the fact so that no matter what you do, it is possible for you to be a criminal.
Back to the so called abandoned oil field. Anyone familiar with the Los Angeles area has seen the oil wells with the little pumps merrily bobbing away throughout the city. The property on which Belmont is being constructed was covered with residences that were as much as sixty years old. It is true that there is an oil field below the property. It is true that there were oil wells interspersed within the houses and apartment buildings that were torn down to make way for Belmont. It is also true that there are relatively few places in Los Angeles that do not lie above an oil field.
Charges have been made that a methane problem associated with constructing Belmont on this 'abandoned oil field' caught the District unprepared. This is not the case. Before ground broke on the project, the plans included an elaborate methane detection and management system as part of the structure.
Several people supposedly lost their jobs over Belmont. This is also not the case. At least three high ranking District employees were placed on suspension with pay. (I call that a vacation). These three were back at work for the District within two years. Three others have left the District. One was about to retire anyway, another worked for the District's Environmental Safety and Health Branch and found a better job elsewhere (hopefully among a population with fewer idiots.)
The District is a huge enterprise with a difficult job of educating children from a wide social and economic spectrum. They do a pretty good job. Unfortunately, it looks like the District will be dismembered by politicians using it as a campaign ploy.
The District was once a great place to work where there was a sense of accomplishment and a great deal of cooperation in helping to achieve the goals of providing an education to the city's children. That is no longer the case. Some of the more recent foolishness includes the E-rate program, a federally funded program to wire schools for technology. I will address this bit of schizophrenia in my next installment.
