The Occupy movement has refused to heed the Anti-Defamation League’s call for “organizers, participants and supporters” to condemn the antisemitism in their midst.

Yesterday, the Anti-Defamation League applauded the decision by the Los Angeles Unified School District to fire an antisemitic substitute teacher who had made her views known at #OccupyLA protests.

However, organizers have refused to condemn that individual’s statements, or to dissociate their protest from her views–even after she doubled down on her initial statements, saying: “Jews have been run out of 109 countries throughout history. And we need to run them out of this one.”

From #OccupyLA:

The Occupy Wall Street mobs are getting plenty of attention from the media. The microphones are on.  The cameras are rolling.  The reporters are standing by, eager to get the mob’s message out.

But as is being chronicled all over the country, the radicals are the ones grabbing the limelight.

KTLA 5 recently did a news story about how #OccupyLA has now spread to the school district. Leftists have now claimed residency at #OccupyLAUSD.  Progressive activists have ruled those schools for years, but at least now they are being open about it.

The KTLA 5 story included comments from two far left LAUSD teachers: Sarah Knopp and Ron Gochez. Both are well known radicals.

In an EAGtv video from earlier this year, Knopp, along with a representative of the International Socialist Organization, discussed ways in which she pushes Marxism in the classroom.

Ron Gochez, a self-described Marxist, ranted in a different video about “global struggle against imperialism and capitalism.” He described Los Angeles as “stolen, occupied Mexico.”

(more…)

Hat tip – GetOffWallStreet.com:

Superintendent Deasy Issues Statement on Employee’s Controversial Remarks

Los Angeles – As Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), I want to emphasize that we condemn the remarks made recently by Patricia McAllister.

Her comments, made during non-work time at a recent protest rally, were her private opinions and were not made in the context of District services.  At LAUSD, we recognize that the law is very protective of the freedom of speech rights of public employees when they are speaking as private citizens during non-working time.

I further emphasize to our students, who watch us and look to us for guidance, to be role models and to represent the ideals by which LAUSD lives, that we will never stand for behavior that is disrespectful, intolerant or discriminatory.

As a day-to-day substitute teacher, Ms. McAllister was an at-will employee.  As of today, she is no longer an employee of the LAUSD.

(more…)

This is one part of a running series entitled “Indoctrination Fridays,” a weekly review of leftist propaganda incorporated into public school curriculum, much of it geared towards elementary students.  For more of the series, please visit PublicSchoolSpending.com.

In the late 1990s, the Los Angeles Unified School District partnered with United Teachers Los Angeles – funded by a federal grant – to produce a multi-part curriculum entitled, “Workplace Issues and Collective Bargaining in the Classroom.”

Education Action Group obtained it from the California Department of Education.

The purpose of the lessons is to get students to appreciate the need for collective bargaining, and experience first-hand how it works. During the lessons, which can take up to a week of class time, students pose as either “labor” or “management” and bargain a teachers’ contract.  They grapple with such issues as health insurance co-pays, raises and hiring procedures. Finally, the union has someone to feel its pain!

The curriculum includes a video which touts the success of the program.  It’s insightful that the very first speaker on the video is the president of the teachers union, A.J. Duffy:

“UTLA plays a unique role in the labor movement in L.A. As the second largest teachers’ union in the country, with all of our other responsibilities, we are in the position to educate the next generation of civic leaders by reaching out to high school students and having them participate in a unique UTLA program. … The Collective Bargaining Education Project brings the lessons of labor to the classroom by involving students in the same process UTLA and other unions engage in to gain better wages and working conditions for teachers and students at L.A. Unified Schools.”

The union endorsements of the curriculum don’t stop there.

Linda Tubach, one of the curriculum’s creators, says “The students have a very direct experience with the issues that they’re going to face in their workplaces and their experience is a collective one in small groups, mentored by coaches who have direct experience in the collective bargaining process.”

(more…)

Friday afternoon, I drove by a few schools on the way to my own children’s elementary school for the day’s dismissal.  Or rather, I should the day’s early dismissal.  The LAUSD School Board decided to let teachers chisel on their children’s education by cutting the school day short by 35 minutes.  Other school districts throughout the state actually permitted teachers to take off an entire day to protest for higher taxes in Sacramento.

Apparently, these “devoted” teachers who are just “acting on behalf of the kids” have no compunction about abandoning them for anywhere from 35 minutes to an entire day to protest possible state education cuts.   Now I have no problem with any employee, unionized or not, to protest against salary or benefit cuts.  However, that protest should happen on their OWN DAMN TIME. I was pleased to see, and not surprised, that the outstanding teachers at my public elementary school were not out marching in red shirts with signs calling for higher taxes.   Instead, there were just 5 chairs set outside the school with the names of the teachers who might be laid off.  Simple, tasteful, poignant.  Nobody chiseled on the kids, nor should they.  The most truly devoted teacher I ever had, Edwin Barlow, never once missed a single day of school in thirty-five years.  It didn’t matter how sick he was, how hungover he might have been, or if he had a cast on a leg he’d broken the night before.  He showed up.

(more…)

The flyers and handouts and signs and banners are up at my local elementary school.  Seven teachers are scheduled to be fired on June 30th because — big surprise — there’s just not enough money to keep them.  So stand up for these beloved teachers — and they are beloved — by writing to the local School Board rep and demanding that cuts take place somewhere else.

Oh, and parents, while you’re at it, put pressure on your state legislator to vote in favor of Jerry Brown’s tax increase extension.   That would be the 5-year extension Brown failed to ram through the legislature — an even longer extension than voters smacked down in a proposition vote in 2009.   That way we can keep these teachers at further expense to our pocketbooks and the California economy.  Not that this is a scare tactic, but it is a scare tactic.  You don’t want your kid to be in a 39-student classroom, do you?  Do you?  Because the sky IS falling.

Because God forbid that the Teacher’s Union should make concessions.

In talking with unnamed Administrators they said the cuts could easily come from within Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) at many different levels.  What needs to happen is that the Board needs to communicate directly with the teachers and administrators in the trenches to learn what could be cut.   That, of course, would be far too easy.

Instead, the union trumpets the fact that everyone — from lunch personnel and bus drivers to rank-and-file teachers — voted to increase the number of unpaid furlough days from seven to eleven.  So while this is technically a cut, it’s a selfish one.  Why?  Because all it does is give teachers four extra vacation days, while chiseling on the kids.  The ballsy, and morally upstanding move, would have been to cut salary by the same percentage while actually providing instruction.  You know, being devoted to the kids.

(more…)

About three miles south of Beverly Hills in the upper-middle class neighborhood of Beverlywood is Hamilton High School. An otherwise ordinary Los Angeles Unified School District-sponsored juvenile detention center, Hamilton is home to a couple of well regarded magnet programs, particularly the Academy of Music Magnet. The Music Magnet is the old stomping grounds of pop stars, Broadway talent, and even Hollywood A-listers who were drawn to a public school program that has a focus on the arts. Yet, even this rare LAUSD high school that students actually want to attend has become a casualty of the horrendous budget crises in the state of California.

Reporter Steve Lopez was dispatched to the scene to write up the various cutbacks for the Los Angeles Times. Lopez is known for being the journalist whose articles on a schizophrenic musician inspired the Robert Downey Jr./Jaime Foxx film The Soloist. Then all of a sudden, what had the makings of a compelling human interest piece on one of the handful of quintessentially Hollywood high schools quickly devolved into a sob story about how these poor teachers and students have been victimized by the dastardly Republicans and their resistance to tax hikes.

How did he do this?

First, Lopez paints a rosy picture of the school by glowingly describing a performance by the jazz band and cherry-picking quotes raving about teachers; his portrayal of Hamilton is a lot like Sean Penn’s depiction of Iraq in Team America:

As it happens, Hamilton is my local high school and I have family and friends who have graduated from the Music Magnet in recent years. To put it bluntly, many of their experiences didn’t resemble the mythical land of incredible teachers and students anxious to learn that Lopez describes. An anonymous Hamilton graduate told me she recalls students doing cocaine in the state-of the art auditorium (which was overhauled with a lavish grant to the Music Magnet)—in fact, the source recalled students showing up to class on an assortment of drugs. Faculty members were seen “celebrating” with students at cast parties after plays.

And I thought programs like these were meant to keep kids off drugs. (more…)

The brand-spanking new Robert F. Kennedy Community School opened in Los Angeles recently and carried a price tag of $578 million, making it the most expensive public school ever.

The reason it cost so much?  Well, Donald Trump, of course!  No, it wasn’t The Donald that ordered up this opulance – it was the big-spending bureaucrats of the L.A. Unified School District.

But have no fear, they guarantee a return on investment.  Well, sort of.  Maybe.  Oh, who cares?  Did you see the cool talking benches??  EAGtv reports: