But this in some ways is a sad day for the good guys. To a degree that many didn’t expect, Deasy has taken on the United Teachers Los Angeles, the union chapter that is so powerful that it dominates the broader strategic thinking of the California Teachers Association, the most powerful force in Sacramento. And it is the UTLA, not Deasy, that is primarily responsible for the long list of scandals and anti-student spectacles in Los Angeles Unified.

There could be 15 entries. But here’s the top three:

1. The Vergara case. In June, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who analyzed the effect of teacher tenure laws on education in LAUSD’s struggling schools concluded that they resulted in treatment of minority students that was so unacceptable that it violated California constitutional guarantees of access to a quality education. The neediest students, Judge Rolf Treu held, usually had the weakest, least experienced teachers.

Minority mistreatment, as it turns out, is a theme …

2. The Mark Berndt debacle. The veteran white teacher at a 99 percent minority south Los Angeles elementary school was caught in 2011 feeding semen to his students, but the district had to pay him $40,000 to get him to resign — thanks to extraordinary job protections the UTLA demanded and won for teachers.

3. The L.A. Times’ expose — which came out two years before the Berndt scandal — of all the teachers who not only didn’t get fired but stayed on the job even after their depraved behavior was exposed.

Taunting a suicidal student? What’s the big deal?

The anecdotal lead on the first story in the expose was absolutely wrenching:

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

Polanco looked at the cuts and said they “were weak,” according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. “Carve deeper next time,” he was said to have told the boy.

“Look,” Polanco allegedly said, “you can’t even kill yourself.”

The boy’s classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.

“See,” Polanco was quoted as saying, “even he knows how to commit suicide better than you.”

The kicker: Polanco was a UTLA official, not just a member. And, after he got a vigorous defense from the UTLA, Polanco received only trivial punishment from LAUSD.

A teacher taunting a suicidal child is no big deal in a district run by a teachers union, you see.

By Chris Reed

It’s time for a tale of comic-book villainy from San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest school district and one in which voracious unions so dominate decision-making that a stunning 92 percent of the operating budget goes to employee compensation.

When 11 of every 12 dollars goes to pay and benefit, the squeeze on the rest of the budget is enormous. And so you see students forced to pay for educational supplies, in defiance of the California Constitution. And so you see 30-year-bonds used to pay for routine maintenance and short-lived electronics like laptops and iPads.

And you see money specifically designated to be used to subsidize school lunches for tens of thousands of students from poor families grabbed for adult employees — over and over and over.

Adult employees 3, poor schoolkids 0

This is from my U-T San Diego editorial:

“On scams and scandals large and small [in California], the motivation is often protecting the interests of public employees, whether or not it serves the public interest. …

” … when it comes to sheer obnoxiousness, a local example is tough to beat. We refer to the three reports this year of San Diego Unified improperly diverting money to adult employees from school lunch programs meant to help low-income students.

“In February, a state Senate report blasted the district for improperly taking at least $4.5 million in federal lunch funds to help pay for the salaries and benefits that consume more than 90 percent of the district’s operating budget.

“Last month, the state Department of Education demanded a refund of $13.4 million from San Diego Unified because it had used funds from a federally reimbursed state program meant to subsidize lunches for poor children for other purposes, starting with $10.9 million in employee salaries.

“Last week, the district announced it would stop using funds that are supposed to subsidize lunches for low-income students to pay for gifts to encourage good “attendance” and other positive behavior by cafeteria workers. About $300,000 had been diverted for that purpose over the past 12 years.

“We suppose this represents progress, because in the first two cases, the school district flatly denies it has done anything wrong — even though the state laid out a lengthy, specific, unrefuted list of district violations in its May 15 letter demanding repayment of the $13.4 million.

“Nevertheless, San Diego Unified officials seek to depict these reports as inter-government squabbles over accounting procedures. Instead, they’re more properly seen as a pathetic serial scandal involving a district that repeatedly raids funds meant to help tens of thousands of low-income students so it can give the money to adult employees.” 

Even for California, this is pathetic

Even by the appallingly low standards of California governance, this is pretty extreme.

San Diego Unified’s leaders should be ashamed. If they’re capable of being ashamed.

By Chris Reed

My five-month-old crusade to get the California mainstream media to acknowledge the insanity of “construction bonds” which take 30 years to pay off being used routinely by school districts for short-lived electronics and basic maintenance hasn’t gotten far yet. The most significant article from a respected mainstream education reporter about this outrage came in December from John Fensterwald in EdSource. State newspapers’ education reporters? They can’t be bothered.

Yes, the California media do care about nutty capital appreciation bonds, which can’t be prepaid and delay initial repayments for 20 years out, leading to such ridiculousness as the Poway Unified school district borrowing $105 million that will take $981 million to repay — beginning two decades from now. But the problem of using 30-year borrowing for short-term needs is much worse than CABs. It’s far more common; it’s everywhere.

Maybe what the Los Angeles Unified school board did Wednesday finally will give this issue the attention it deserves:

“During the … meeting, the board also approved {Superintendent John] Deasy’s proposal to spend millions to supply every student and teacher with a tablet computer by 2014. …

“Deasy’s plan to supply all 650,000 students in the district with a tablet computer by 2014 will ultimately cost $500 million. The tablets are supposed to support the transition to Common Core Standards. They are being paid for by revenues raised for school construction bonds R, Y, and Q, which voters approved to address ‘unmet facilities needs.’

“Several school principals spoke during the meeting about a spike in math and English test scores after incorporating tablet apps into their lesson plans.

“Gina Russell-Williams, principal at Curtiss Middle School, said the tablets would help her teachers provide additional intervention and tutorial services to students. Other teachers said teaching students on tablets would allow them to compete with wealthier, smaller, private schools.

“Board member Bennett Kayser abstained from the vote, saying in a statement after the meeting that the process should be slowed down and studied further. No one voted against the measure.”

Is giving kids quality high-tech devices to assist in their education a good idea? Of course.

Is giving kids quality high-tech devices to assist in their education a good idea if bonds to pay for the devices are still being paid off in 2043 — decades after the devices stopped being usable? Of course not. That’s grotesquely irresponsible.

If CEOs did what superintendents did, they’d be in jail

But what would be criminal or subject to shareholder lawsuits in the private sector is just fine in the corrupt world of public education.

The L.A. school board’s actions confirm what I heretofore will refer to as Reed’s Law: Whether in the Legislature or in local school districts, the top priority is always freeing up or increasing revenue to allow tenured teachers to receive the automatic “step” raises that typically are provided for 15 of their first 20 years on the job — just for showing up.

That’s why we see lies about attendance and property tax receipts. That’s why we see grotesque bond abuses. It’s all about preserving the pay status quo for veteran teachers. Understand this, and California politics becomes demystified and uncomplicated.

It’s not “all about the kids.” It’s all about the veteran teachers.

Maybe L.A. Unified spending a half-billion dollars over the next 30 years on iPads that will be broken or stolen by 2016 will finally hammer this home.