From my experience, people generally like what they are and have no intention at all of changing. Besides, in this Brave New World we have created for ourselves in CA we are about to terminate the state’s low income children’s medical plan in order to attempt to balance the budget – there will be no money for social programs in the schools and in fact the public schools are about to get massive budget cuts and layoffs.

I’m afraid that by delusional programming we will continue to lose the brights that do exist within the public school constituientcy that could have been brought forward by good competitive schooling. And I rather suspect that part of the reason we are doing this is that these brights are more frequently the children of immigrants especially asian immigrants. A competitive school program would deselect so much by race it would destroy the “all men are equal” mantra the schools are pushing. So it is considered preferable to ruin the schools for everyone.

Attempts to make over the underclass will fail as history shows. An AK to the head will do it but we can’t do that, can we?

I’m very open to the possibility that some of that $77.7 million is being spent on very worthwhile needs. The question is how much of that would the rest of us in the public be willing to prioritize if the decision was laid out before us more openly. Jack O’Connell, the OUSD central administration, and the consultants who are making so much money are obviously not saying no to continuing to spend so much. The burden of proof is on them to provide more details of that spending. If it really was that easy for people to point out and question such expenditures, a lot more people would be a lot more upset. Now that the clues about the magnitude are starting to come out, there will be attempts to distract us by telling us we do not have the clues we in fact already have.

But, you have already concluded that the $77.7 million paid out under professional services category was not justified. You are “upset by the decision to devote so much scarce resources to consulting” when you don’t even know what it represents. You have no detailed data. I wonder how you can make such a blanket accusation about money spent on consultants when you have no clue who they really are and what they do. Maybe because it’s so easy to.

How much was spent on special ed consultants? How much was spent on federal mandated consultants? Do you know?

Did you know OUSD provides some services to its students that other districts don’t? Do you know what services these are? It also helps to compare apples with apples, not oranges. OUSD is a large district that should be compared to other large districts

I’ll refrain from making any conclusions until I see detailed information. Til then, I’ll use my modifiers.

Turner

Modifiers like “most” “tangible” “usually” “easy” and “easily” don’t mean a whole lot without the data and specifics to back them up. What’s upsetting is not anything about particular consultants as individuals but the decision to devote so much scarce resources to consulting as a category when other districts (working under the same laws and very similar types of union contracts) spend so much less. We deserve more than pieties about the work that goes on “behind the scenes” when the price tag soars to $77.7 million (again, that’s $2,590 per student).

Consultants provide a professional service to the district. Some are political friends but most are legitimate with tangible contributions to the district. And, don’t forget consultants are usually hired to do work that the existing staff can’t do or get to due to union contractual obligations and prohibitions, time constraints or the existing level of competency.

And consultants are easy to pick on and vilify. They work behind the scenes. They don’t have guaranteed employment. They don’t have any representation and can be easily fired.

Turner

We still have the special day students, the GATE students, and the mainstream students who are proficient. I listened very carefully to what Tony had to say – he did not address ANY of these groups. He did not mention them at all. He did not lay out a plan for communication with them. He did not discuss the educational opportunities after school hours. He completely ignored them. They were disenfranchised last night by Tony.

And while our treatment of the lowest performing (children not reading) students in the district has been horrid, they do not deserve to be disenfranchised, and neither does any other student or group of students.

Tony’s fiscal policy is to raise parcel taxes, if they are approved by voters, and to take money from PTAs and functioning schools and give to other schools. Most Title 1 schools already receive between $2,000 – $3,000 more per student than non-title 1 schools. Money alone is not the answer. Poor fiscal control will only allow an entry into our district by the State of California once again.

The root causes of our children on welfare not learning is the 30 million word gap by age three of these children. Parents on welfare also give more negative feedback to their children than positive feedback. For information on the study please Google Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American Children. Copyright 1995.

Until we address the issue of parenting, there will be a learning gap. The way parents talk to their children, the number of words per day, the different words per hour create the difference in readers who comprehend and readers who sound out.

The vocabulary of the average 3 year old middle class child is larger than the average welfare parent. We need to have the parents in class learning the educational material alongside their children. See article in today’s Oakland Tribune for an example of where this is working in Oakland using foundation money from Toyota.

To speak to the body of information that has been studied is not disenfranchising anyone; it is beginning at the starting point that can make a difference in the educational lives of children.

I just don’t see how Tony is going to be able to do that because it will not allow for being “in partnership” with resistant parents.

Turner