Here’s 100 Bucks for Every Day

George LaaseOP-ED

I would like to offer a new, easier-to- understand perspective on the School Board’s recent $31,000 retroactive raise that was given to the now-retired District Supt. Dr Laura McGaughey. If you think about how many days of the year she worked, it might come to 300 annually. Her negotiated contract with her employer, the School Board, called for $123,000 in salary, which is all the School Board would show the public. The Board refused to publicly account for her non-salary compensation or benefits. If you divide $123,000 by her 300 days worked, you come up with $410 a day. But by adding the $31,000 retroactive raise to her salary, this makes her last year’s salary $154,000. Divide that figure by the same 300 days ,and it now calculates to a salary of $513 a day. What logical reason could there be to give an already retiring employee a $100 a day retroactive raise? Is this good, sound fiscal management? It looks to me as if there’s more to it than what the School Board offered as trying to make the School District look more competitive in the marketplace. The best way to look competitive is to be competitive by offering the next Superintendent a competitive wage, not by spending that money on a past employee.

Shhh, School Board at Play

George LaaseOP-ED

It seems that some members of the School Board members still have short memory spans. At their May 23 meeting, they were given a refresher course on the Brown Act by their counsel. Yet, still in violation of the Brown Act, they refuse to publicly disclose all of the pertinent information about the District cost of the compensation package for Supt. Dr. Laura McGaughey.
 
 
A Refresher Course
 
I remind some Board members of the Preamble to the Brown Act. It states: "The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created."

The Retirement of Benefits

George LaaseOP-ED

     For years, school districts have been paying retiree benefits of former employees out of the general fund as bills come due.
     Now the independent Governmental Accounting Standards Board has called for districts to account differently for these expenditures.
     In the past, the cost of these benefits was recognized on a pay-as-you-go basis. The government board has determined that the non-disclosure of the benefits liability distorts a school district’s financial picture. 
     Therefore, the agency has adopted a policy requiring disclosure and expensing of retiree benefits on an accrual basis, that is, as the employees earn their benefits.

 

Blacks Unwelcome — Is That the Message?

George LaaseOP-ED

       If a school district cannot or is not willing to guarantee its students the opportunity of a good education, it is the right and the duty of the parent(s) to move the child from the underperforming district to one that has a history of results.
       Ultimately, it comes down to the education of a child.  Which school district can deliver on the state’s promise of a good education?
       The School District of Culver City suggested to employees in its Dec. 13, 2005, Interim Budget Report, on page 14, that they must confront the possibility of working in a district with a declining enrollment and escalating costs.

Yet, when presented with the possible transfer of three hundred and thirty-seven permanent students — right at our doorstep, asking to come into our district — the district cannot find time to fairly, consider the request from Ladera Heights.

Houston, We Have a Problem

George LaaseOP-ED

            When the editor of  this newspaper inquired about a strategically positioned blank space in the School District’s official recording of a School Board meeting — where remarkable comments were made about a Board member not present — he was told the recording equipment was antiquated and sometimes fails.
            Is it a sheer coincidence that the single crucial dialogue of the  evening, now under heavy scrutiny, is missing?
            Or could the tape that serves as a public record for the School District have been tampered with?
            Tapes fail sometimes, and so do recorders. It is possible that happened here, but not probable.  

The Selling of the Fear Factor

George LaaseOP-ED

Half the truth is often a great lie — Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, inventor (1706-1790) 
  I cannot get over the feeling that a major, unspoken but agreed-upon reason exists for the School Board’s staunch opposition to the proposed transfer of students living in Ladera Heights. 
            The Board does not seem to be giving the community all of the facts involved with the transfer, just the negative aspects. The reasons that have been given sound like excuses for continuing the status quo. 

A Peek at School Board’s Ladera Resolution

George LaaseOP-ED

            One week after Ladera Heights’ parents took their appeal to transfer their children from Inglewood to Culver City to the State Board of Education, we present for the first time the resolution that the Culver City School Board unanimously adopted last October.
            Almost three months before the County Board of Education rejected the Ladera Heights appeal on Jan. 18, the School Board made its opposition to the move clear.
            There is no doubt that this transfer would cause a substantial negative effect on the Inglewood District. But the School Board was elected — and is compensated — to oversee, to keep its focus on, this district, not Inglewood.

Culver City Students Less Fit?

George LaaseOP-ED

    Are Culver City students in the middle grades as healthy and fit as the boys and girls in neighboring communities? 
     When a comparison is drawn between students from the School District and students from the South Bay who took the California Fitness Test, most South Bay schools fared better. 
     In results taken from the Web site of the California Dept. of Education, Culver City finished down the line.

The Answer Should Have Been Yes

George LaaseOP-ED

          The Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization reports that the Ladera Heights families failed to meet three of nine conditions for the proposed transfer of their children from Inglewood to Culver City. Therefore, approval of the transfer seemed unlikely, and that is how it turned out in the Committee’s Jan. 18 vote.
          This is a commentary on the three negative ratings.
 

Condition #2: The districts are each organized on the basis of a substantial community identity.

George Laase: A War with Words as Weapons

George LaaseOP-ED

    With a showdown meeting of the School Board coming up Tuesday evening in the Robert Frost Auditorium, the School District and the Teachers Union now seem to be engaged in a posturing war of words, trying to influence public opinion.
     Both sides are close to the point of not being believable in releasing carefully orchestrated public statements.