#AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal
Is Equity Just A Talking Point?
LAUSD Board Member Monica Garcia talks a lot about how the children of the district deserve equity. Will she back those words up with action?
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- Waterford.org
At an LAUSD Board meeting last week, Monica Garcia called for a resolution to indefinitely suspend all committee meetings. At the same time, she asked the board’s president to create a committee that would address equity in the district. While most committees met monthly and the Special Education and Parent Engagement Committees met every other month before the pandemic, Garcia proposed that an Equity Committee should meet every week. Clearly, equity is an issue that is very important to the most senior board member.
Or is it?
Through court battles, the California Charter School Association (CCSA) has forced a PROP-39 co-location program on public schools that mandates that they hand over space to the publicly funded private schools that this organization represents. Classrooms that are used to provide equity to economically disadvantaged students in the form of parent engagement, after-school activities, and curriculum enrichment are sacrificed so that charter schools like Citizens of the World can take space for their own programs. The end result for public school students is a lack of access to programs meant to provide equity.
Garcia was reelected in the 2017 election with $173,333.85 in support from the CCSA and its supporters. At Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, I asked her to look beyond this legal bribe and stand up for the cause of providing equity to students who really could use the help:
