Proposals for future of L.A. schools

Re “School escape plan,” editorial, June 2

Your editorial about the cities of the Los Angeles Unified School District is laughable. Try spending some time looking up the test scores in Montebello Unified, Lynwood, Compton and other proximate small districts and compare them to L.A. Unified’s test scores in the neighboring schools. Is small really beautiful in all cases?

Ask the people of Commerce and Bell Gardens if they would like to continue in their deteriorated school buildings compared to the ones built in South Gate or Huntington Park.

Research the small amounts of revenue that the individual cities contribute to the district and look at the massive expenditures through four school bonds shifted to help these cities handle the demographic growth of the last 30 years. Does it really matter to you that the voter approval of district bonds in these cities has often been nearly 80% “yes” for L.A. Unified?

Check with any desegregation lawyer or political scientist to find if the courts would look favorably at the removal of these cities without judicial scrutiny for the effects of increased segregation by your proposal.

Although some critics may say that L.A. Unified has outlived the Soviet Union, it’s good to know that your editorial team has outlived Pravda.

DAVID TOKOFSKY

Member

Board of Education

Los Angeles Unified School District

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While you raise many challenging questions in your editorial, at least one is easily answered and corrected.

You ask: “Who would be responsible for the district’s disastrous teacher pension commitment?” First, teacher pensions are a state commitment and not the responsibility of the local school district, beyond their requirement to pay into the system. Second, and more seriously, it is outrageous that you would consider a financial commitment to a teacher for a lifetime of service “disastrous.” Despite misleading claims by public pension opponents, the state teacher retirement system is neither a disaster nor in crisis. If no changes were made in the current system, it would have sufficient assets to pay full benefits for another 60 years.

The decisions to be made about the future of the Los Angeles schools are complex. False information does not help that debate.

GEORGE AVAK

President

California Retired Teachers Assn.

Sacramento