School Bureaucracy

Mark Slavkin, president of the Los Angeles Board of Education, in his article opposing the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District (Commentary, Oct. 10), encourages us to “join hands to make our schools better today.” It sounds nice but, alas, after working as a teacher in L.A. for the last 13 years I have learned to be very weary of holding hands with this district’s bureaucracy. By and large, they are a self-serving, myopic, frightened bunch who are much more concerned about covering their butts than improving education.

I worked very hard last year to reveal how hundreds of thousands of dollars in special funding were being misspent and wasted at my school. My concerns were well-documented. I was also able to clearly demonstrate how my school’s administrators were impeding rather than encouraging local autonomy and local decision-making. The district reacted in typical knee-jerk fashion, rallying to defend incompetence. I was issued a below-standard performance evaluation and transferred to another school.

So, thanks for the advice, Mr. Slavkin, but, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep my hands to myself and vote for the breakup.

WARREN B. MERRIMAN

Los Angeles