Readers React: Deasy’s departure is no quick fix for LAUSD

To the editor: We all need to realize that former L.A. Unified School District Supt. John Deasy’s departure alone will not fix our schools. (“Too many maverick moments finally led to Deasy’s undoing at LAUSD,” Oct. 19)

There has been a punitive, uncollaborative culture created in the district. We need to see an end to “managing expectations” of a community seeking real reform in our schools and transition to a more thoughtful acknowledgment that our school communities (students, teachers, administrators, staff, parents and neighbors of the school sites) are our greatest asset in creating truly great public schools.

Deasy’s departure is the first step. Los Angeles has a new mayor and a community that has shown through recent Board of Education elections that we take pride in our public schools.

The selection of a new superintendent needs to be a transparent, collaborative process.

Let’s learn from our mistakes. Great things lie ahead.

Tracy Bartley, Woodland Hills

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To the editor: The school board has done it again. It has caved to the teachers union by getting rid of Deasy for good.

No one wants L.A. Unified to hold teachers accountable for teaching students, using rising test scores and graduation rates as evidence. No one wants to bring iPads into schools so we can create tech-savvy students and teachers.

Everyone wants the “safe” rehiring of a familiar administrator to be the interim superintendent, enabling the status quo.

All this Deasy hoopla will go away and things will get back to “normal.”

Joy Specht, Glendora

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To the editor: While bad software pretty much shut down Jefferson High School for two months, Deasy — instead of seeing to it that students got scheduled into their classes with pencil and paper, the way it was done for generations — wrote a declaration complaining about it.

This article calls that a “novel response,” a “maverick moment” and a “rationale” for terminating him that members of the school board “could, if necessary, defend in public.”

I think the expression you were looking for was “mind-boggling dereliction of duty of the sort that would require the immediate firing of any executive.”

Howard Posner, Los Angeles

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To the editor: What Deasy and his businessmen buddies have never understood — and apparently still don’t understand — is that digital devices and endless assessments don’t enhance the learning process.

The best way to raise student achievement is to put inspiring, well-compensated teachers in every classroom, reduce class sizes and restore to the curriculum programs in music, art and drama.

Jeff Lantos, Marina del Rey

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