LAUSD Problems

* As a teacher with LAUSD for 13 years, I absolutely agree that teachers and students should be held accountable. I also feel that the district should be held accountable.

Where are our facilities for teaching and learning? Teaching at a year-round school, I share a room that is too small for the number of students that I teach. I’m sure that the fire department would declare it unsafe, especially with the mainstreaming of students in wheelchairs.

The only storage space available has had a leaky roof for 10 years. The district has had the ceiling repaired, but the roof keeps leaking so the ceiling collapses every winter, and the floor is broken asbestos tile.

The only way we were able to get textbooks was through the federal Title 1 program for disadvantaged students. The district gave our high school of 3,600 students an $8,000 budget for textbooks last year. The average textbook is $45. What happened to the promise of a textbook for every student in every class?

[Interim Supt. Ramon C.] Cortines said he would make books and bathrooms a priority. The bathrooms are still a disgrace for students and staff alike.

Before pointing a finger in our faces and telling us how he will fix us, our new superintendent needs to visit the facilities his bureaucracy has provided and see what handicaps we have thanks to district ineptitude. We don’t need any more expensive standardized tests to tell us what the students aren’t learning. We need to make it possible for them to learn first.

TERESA NIELD

West Hills