LAUSD Bureaucracy Stifles Communication

* I am writing to you out of sheer frustration with the Los Angeles Unified School District. I am constantly reading about continuing efforts to provide quality education for our children. Yet I believe the public system has failed my family and many others at Encino Elementary. The utter lack of communication between school and families is appalling.

Five days after school began, my son was removed from his first-grade class and placed in another. He had already begun to make friends and establish a rapport with his teacher. The switch was made to convert the original class into a kindergarten/first-grade split. He was placed in a bilingual class (he does not speak Spanish) and the only other first-grade class was converted to a first/second split. There’s no opportunity for a traditional first-grade experience at this school.

Although I was told of the changes by my son’s original teacher, other parents in the class were never informed. Many are just now finding out through word of mouth. Parents should be notified of changes that so drastically affect our children.

It is a small wonder people have become so disheartened by the public school system. With funding on a per-student basis, one would think every effort would be made to meet each child’s needs, as well as to keep parents informed and perhaps even satisfied with their child’s educational experience.

ALLISON SPIRE

Van Nuys

* Every one of the 200-plus LEARN schools in the L.A. Unified School District has a big green-and-white banner that says “We Are a LEARN School Community.”

Recently, a couple of schools in the LAUSD--Sun Valley Middle School and Wilson High School--started to act like communities. They needed a new leader (also known as a principal) so they used the procedures of LEARN schools to pick one. Parents and teachers united to choose people who were already members of their communities. When a city picks a mayor, it picks him or her from the residents of that city so that he or she can relate to the people of that city.

Both schools chose people who were already assistant principals at their school and who possessed the administrative credentials that the state says qualifies them to serve as principals. The district turned these two people down for principal.

[Supt.] Sid Thompson just doesn’t get it. AALA doesn’t get it. A majority on the Board of Education doesn’t get it. Los Angeles schools have the problems they do because the top-down bureaucracy is not responsive to the needs of the local schools. Positive change will never occur while the district continues to ignore the wishes of local school communities.

JAY GEHRINGER

Van Nuys