Sunday, August 5, 2012

We strongly suspect the pricey items we discovered are only part of the story. We believe there are




Want a 60% drop out rate?  LAUSD.  Want a district where an estimated 50% of student's are illegal aliens?  LAUSD.  Want a district where decisions are made in the union hall, not at school district HQ?  LAUSD.
" The district s budget deficit stood at $640 million. More than 2,000 employees bus tour companies had just been laid off. The school board had just approved a deal giving teachers five unpaid furlough days, and cutting five days from the academic calendar.
Yet the district managed to spend $416 million on health bus tour companies insurance premiums for teachers and retirees, with no contribution from the insured parties. Somehow bus tour companies it was able to spend $47 million on automatic, annual salary increases for teachers who remained on staff.
The district s budget deficit stood at $640 million. More than 2,000 employees had just been laid off. The school board had just approved a deal giving teachers five unpaid furlough days, and cutting five days from the academic calendar.
Yet the district managed to spend $416 million on health insurance premiums for teachers bus tour companies and retirees, with no contribution from the insured parties. Somehow it was able to spend $47 million on automatic, annual salary increases for teachers who remained on staff.
bus tour companies It turns out that LAUSD was indeed spending big bucks on many employee perks that have no connection to student learning. And this was happening as the school board continued to eliminate crucial instructional hours from the district schedule.
We strongly suspect the pricey items we discovered are only part of the story. We believe there are many other provisions in the 349-page CBA we did not inspect that cost the district even more money.
Some of the expenditures we list below may not come from the district's general fund. Some may be financed with state dollars or other sources of outside revenue. But if the money existed to pay for union perks and unnecessary programs, why can't money be found to prevent teacher layoffs, larger bus tour companies class sizes and furlough days?
Sadly the situation has not improved in the nation's second-largest school district. The school board and teachers union recently concluded a deal that will eliminate bus tour companies another five days of classroom instruction in 2012-13 and result in the layoff of another 1,300 employees.
Shamefully, there are still no signs that the school board is ready to confront the teachers union about runaway labor costs. Apparently the employees come first in Los Angeles, and students are an afterthought.
The Los Angeles school district spent $2.9 billion on salaries and benefits in 2010-11 for employees bus tour companies (mostly teachers) covered by the teachers bus tour companies union CBA. That represented 52 percent of all labor spending in the district bus tour companies that year ( $5.5 billion ) and 34 percent of the district's total expenditures ( $8.4 billion ).
Health and Welfare Fund. Health insurance enrollment in 2010-11 bus tour companies was open to all full-time and many part-time employees as well as spouses, domestic partners and dependents. We found no contractual language regarding responsibility for the payment of health insurance premiums, but the obligation obviously fell completely to the school district.
The Los Angeles Unified School bus tour companies District paid out $334 million in 2010-11 for health insurance premiums for employees covered by the teachers union CBA. The employees contributed nothing toward premiums, which is an increasingly unusual arrangement for an American bus tour companies school district.
The Los Angeles Unified School district paid out $82 million in 2010-11 for health insurance premiums for retirees covered by the teachers union CBA. The retirees contributed nothing toward premiums.
Teachers took 297,905 sick days and 39,873 personal days in 2010-11. That averaged out to 12 days of paid absence bus tour companies for the 27,925 full-time union teachers. There are also many types of unpaid absences allowed by the district. Substitutes were obviously needed on most occasions to cover for absent teachers.
The Los Angeles Unified School District reported spending $382 million bus tour companies for substitute teacher services in 2010-11. We thought that figure bus tour companies sounded a bit high, and we doublechecked with communication personnel at the district, to make sure it wasn't a typographical error. Despite their best efforts, they were unable to contact the departments that could either confirm or correct the reported dollar figure.
These are common in American school bus tour companies districts, and incredibly expensive. Contract terms guarantee most teachers an automatic raise every year, based on their years of service and level of college degree attained, with no regard to classroom performance.
According to a 2009 media report, there were more than 1,000 of these coaches working in the district at that time. The CBA says, "The goal of instructional coaches is to increase the opportunity for success of teachers and students by demonstrating, teaching and inspiring excellence in the profession." Instructional coaches are paid "according to the teacher preparation salary table plus a salary differential of $150 per pay period."
The CBA stipulated that "employees who were employed by the district for 1992-93, bus tour companies and then retire from the district commencing July 1, 1994 or thereafter, shall receive a lump sum bonus at the time of retirement. An employee will be paid an amount determined by multiplying the employee's regular daily rate for the year preceding the retirement date by 20.4."
development programs during the course of a school year. "Participation in such continued learning is a required professional duty and part of each teacher's basic personal obligation to the profession and to the students of the district," the contract said.
compensation to UTLA-represented permanent employees bus tour companies who work directly with students on a daily basis in a classroom setting who obtain National Board Certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Each qualified employee in permanent or probationary status shall receive bus tour companies compensation at their daily rate for actually working a number of additional days/hours equal to 7.5 percent of their work year (92 hours) and shall also receive a differential of 7.5 percent per year for a total of 15 percent increase in compensation above their base rate."
The CBA said, "A paid leave may … be granted by attendance at conferences and conventions sponsored by professional instructional organizations which are recognized by the State Board of Education or approved by the appropriate administrator." The leaves are not supposed to necessitate the hiring of a substitute teacher, unless the attendee is the official representative of the district or a workshop leader or speaker at the event.
absenteeism." The maximum yearly bonus payment is equal to the number of illness days actually earned by the employee during the school year, or a maximum of 10 days. Each hour of absenteeism due to illness or personal necessity is subtracted from that amount. Half of each employee's payments were put into an interest-gathering reserve fund, to be paid to the employee upon retirement.
The school district had a deficit of $640 million in 2010-11. A common sense approach to trimming that shortfall by nearly half, and limiting the number of layoffs and furlough days, would have been to reduce, delay or eliminate many of the expenditures listed above (as well as many others not listed). Nobody's base salary would have been cut, and retiree health insurance would not have been affected. Such a plan would have required the cooperation of the teachers union.
I sortbof agree with you on part of this. academic coaches are a waste. The union is a waste . If teachers need time off they can gphave it butbthey cannit be paid for 16 days a year. However you need to understand bus tour companies these figures are not reliable. The district has many reains to puff them up becuase it is abusing the funding. These TAj Mahalnschools are good reeason to fire all of thes administrators, which have grown 25% in a decade, audit and investigat their positions and hire back anyone whonis competent and uncorrupted. LBUSD serves a similr bus tour companies demographic and has some of the finest urban schools in the nation. Why won t LAUSD adopt some of their practices? Because Long Beach schools defer to teachers , whose union is small, silent and superfluous . There is a very small educracy. Modest school sites wwith no police bus tour companies ( security which is not armed nor oppressive) serve the students well as they are adopted to fit the communities evolving needs, they have a schedule that accomodates remediation as well as morning sessions for parents to learn how to help children do homework, they learn Engoish, take part in events and are treated like members of the community. Make no mistake, the principals bus tour companies can still be a holes and parents/teachers stikl are confronted by many issues, but the city oversees the schools rather than exploiting them or seeing profits rather than pupils.
How about turning your jaundiced eye towards the district police dept. these guys earn what rookie teachers do and then some, they get all the perks too. And guess what? Theyre hiring. They have a sizable operation all their own and act as gestapo for admin and officials when they arent hpjacking bangers for bags of weed and issuing trucance citations fo tardy students as they enter the school.
It seems unfaiir to say teachers who become board certified should be denied a reward. If you won the pulitzer prize in jounalism , you d be paid more. If one has more skills, ones that she can share with colleagues , she deserves to be paid for the hard work she invested to become NBC . Again those figures are amplified.
Notably you have failed to address the real problem: Administration and officials. They all command six figures. Many hire consultans that cost close to this to do their jobs for them. They arrange the conferences, the kickbacks, the contractors, the concessions to utla. They are the main reason we spend more on legal expenses than actual bus tour companies education for student

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