Laguna Beach Unified School District Bylaw 9000 is a binding rule under CA Ed. Code Sec. 35010(b), providing that the School Board:
“…has been elected by the community to provide leadership…[and] shall ensure the District is responsive to values, beliefs, and priorities of the community…adhering to standards of responsible governance…in order to build support within the local community.”
Instead of following rules it imposes on others in the school community, the School Board once again has delegated its authority to sustain community values to a superintendent who like the board itself increasingly has become only selectively accessible and more secretive than the law requires or even allows.
If the Board majority and Superintendent wanted to determine whether community values require history of racism or future of racial justice to be the focus of more pronounced academic inquiry or socialization, there should have been open school meetings to hear from parents, teachers, students, administrators and the Board itself.
Instead, a secret committee with undisclosed membership was appointed by the Superintendent, and over a quarter-million education dollars were spent on a consulting business to enable the Board to impose a theory of racism the majority of the Board embraced before the consultant was hired.
Our superintendent and top-heavy senior staff are paid almost double many senior school staff who operate school systems 10 ten times larger. Including nearby schools that spend half as much as LBUSD per student, and get better academic results, especially in math and science.
The current assistant superintendent for human resources once told me paying staff more attracts families that want well-funded schools, and that keeps Laguna Beach property values high. Now he is the beneficiary of that political calculation, and I’m sure he is right as to parents who value the Laguna lifestyle brand over demonstrably enhanced academic opportunity and achievement in nearby schools.
Our teachers too often are jerked around by academic and social experimentation under senior staff and consultants who’ve lost touch with kids in the classroom. So, parents end up hiring tutors on core academics while the Board and its surrogates experiment.
Remember the “Math Pathways” fiasco? Now it’s racial culture war without input from a diversity of the school community, including teachers and parents. Instead, consultants spoon feed race theory to Board and senior staff who wouldn’t know validated race equity or race justice curriculum if it bit them.
Howard Hills, Laguna Beach
Howard
Great letter!
The problem is fear and apathy. This Superintendent with this School Board have been a disaster for his entire tenure. We have just had hundreds of students leave our ill performing school district and where is the outrage?
$71 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGET FOR 2700 STUDENTS?
Highest paid teachers, highest per capita spending on students, with 4 most of the beautiful campuses in the “Country”and yet parents are pulling their children out of LBUSD at levels NEVER seen in LBUSD history.
When you have a sycophant School Board who is only in place to protect the Superintendent and Boards failures (or personal agendas) this is the ultimate outcome.
Parents understand the backlash they will encounter if they object to self-hating Equity or White Privilege programs paid for through our taxes and designed to indoctrinate our children.
Parents understand what they will encounter if they buck this Superintendent or Teacher Union when they choose to stay home and recieve full-pay for remote learning when all the other Larger School Districts provide on- campus learning for their children with much less resources.
Parents understand how this School Board and Superintendent operate when you challenge them.
Parents understand LBUSD has unlimited spending for Lawyers to intimidate anyone who stands up against the abuses of the Superintendent and LBUSD.
Even when the Superior Court and Appellate Court find that this Superintendent “Abused his Discretion” with NO “Statutory Authority” in LBUSD’s loosing 2 year long tax payer funded case the consequence for his illegal action was a raise and extension to his contract.
Parents would rather choose to walk away, keep silent, pay for private schools, and most importantly pay their property taxes so the School Board can keep giving these failures raises.
Things will not change unless their is a critical mass to change it. I hope when that time comes it will not be to late.