Gates & Broad Purchase LAUSD One Boss At A Time

Los Angeles Unified School District new superintendent, John Deasy, has hired five new over-priced administrators at a time when LAUSD is slashing jobs and educational services and faces a $400 million deficit. The new administrators will be partially funded by philanthropists, particularly the Broad and Gates Foundations, according to the Los Angeles Times. The school board approved all five administrators in a closed door session.

Not surprisingly, Deasy chose the appointments to increase teacher accountability and support the creation of more charter schools. Both goals are consistent with the Broad/Gates agenda of privatizing public school systems and exerting greater managerial control over teachers. Furthermore, many of the new administrators, as well as some of the returning ones, have backgrounds working for charter schools and no doubt share these goals. All of which confirms that Deasy has become LAUSD’s new educational hit man, owned by Gates and Broad, given the task of gutting LAUSD for the benefit of private educational profiteers.

Not all administrators are on board with this agenda. The Times quoted Judy Perez, head of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, who said she was concerned about where Deasy’s loyalties will lie. "Broad basically has said a number of times publicly that he wants to dismantle Los Angeles Unified."

Broad has already been heavily involved in manipulation of LAUSD. He had been paying for several of former Superintendent Ramon Cortines’ aids. He also paid $250,000 for consultants to help with Deasy’s transition, according to the LA Times. However, the 4LAKids blog puts that figure at $775,000, including $500,000 to look for inefficiencies in the budget, money that would have been much better spent directly in the classroom. The Gates Foundation will pay for a data specialist (an expensive and unnecessary factotum who will most likely waste time and money obsessing over value-added scores. Both Gates and Broad have funded numerous private charter schools in the district.

Overall, Deasy’s team will cost nearly $1 million to pay six-figure salaries to numerous unnecessary bureaucrats, like Maria Casillas, a retired senior L.A. Unified administrator who runs the right wing nonprofit Families in Schools, who he has resurrected to serve as parent and community liaison for a bloated $170,000 a year. Casillas is also a supported of NCLB and is anti-union.