#  It’s Just Good Business

     Details    Sara Roos   ![logo](https://www.citywatchla.com//templates/ja_teline_v/images/logo.png)         June 06 2013       [ARCHIVE](https://www.citywatchla.com/archive)   - [  Previous Article **Tide May Be Turning for LA’s Neighborhood Councils (Video)** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5188:i-made-a-mistake-tide-may-be-turning-for-la-s-neighborhood-councils-video&catid=16)
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> ![](https://www.citywatchla.com/images/stories/June-2013/cw11046f.png)EDUCATION POLITICS - Business is all about [receiving a fifty-dollar return](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/business-models-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html) on a two-dollar investment. Beyond admiring such payback, our [modern capitalist](http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62644/azar-gat/the-return-of-authoritarian-great-powers) democracy lionizes it.

 And so we rank citizens are essentially unassailable in demanding as much of our school board. In public forum at [this week’s special budgetary LAUSD board meeting](http://audio3.lausd.k12.ca.us/cgi-bin/qt-dir-audio.pl?Special_Bd_Mtg//2013spclbd/), parent after parent stood up and detailed investments of precisely this intimate nature.

Professional teacher after administrator detailed the magnified glories of such investments, well-seeded. And the presentation by one “[recovering skool bored member](http://twitter.com/davidtokofsky)” about the specifics of one particular such opportunity even managed to arouse our otherwise [disdainful superintendent](http://redqueeninla.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/screen-shot-2013-06-05-at-10-43-44-am.png).

But why? A ‘penny-wise, pound-foolish’ strategy is inept long term planning.

If [funding for deserving title I students concentrated in not-coincidentally high-performing schools](http://venice.patch.com/groups/opinion/p/open-letter-to-lausd-superintendent-john-deasy) costs “$1-2 million” and staves off a loss to LAUSD of over 50 million dollars, why not demand it be so?

There are plenty of [righteous, moral, egalitarian and ideological reasons](http://venice.patch.com/groups/opinion/p/open-letter-to-lausd-superintendent-john-deasy) for demanding vital supplemental funding, but these entitlements can all be dispensed with in favor of the fashionable business-model. “[Business is business and business must grow](http://freepdfdb.com/pdf/the-lorax-dr-seuss-full-text), regardless of crummies in tummies you know”.

Investing 2 million dollars to head off the loss of 50 is good business. Title I students attending schools populated by relatively fewer low-income students [deserve the same supplemental funding](http://www.lacesmagnetschool.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=172050&type=d) that they enjoy elsewhere. Their need is not negated by the comparative high-performance of the school they have elected to attend. These schools’ success must be replicated. Punishing them by withdrawing funding is instead absurd, counterproductive, antithetical and … bad business.

Inversely, the shoehorning of ever-more students in front of one singular, demoralized and scapegoated teacher, will only sabotage the whole system of education. It is an abdication of sound long-term fiscal planning to sustain futile class sizing; research shows outcomes improve as class size diminishes continuously.

Parents with the option, simply never consider any school with “large” classes, as the experience of virtually *all* our local and [national leaders](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/29/michelle-rhee-a-private-school-parent/) exemplifies personally. And for our superintendent to enable lower class size among one type of “public” school (charters) at the expense of another (district schools) is simply duplicitous.

*ALL Children Deserve Smaller Classes In Order To Learn Better*. Period.

It’s simply good business.

***(**Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at [redqueeninla.wordpress.com](http://redqueeninla.wordpress.com) )*

*-cw*

*CityWatch*

*Vol 11 Issue 46*

*Pub: June 7, 2013*

  - [  Previous Article **Tide May Be Turning for LA’s Neighborhood Councils (Video)** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5188:i-made-a-mistake-tide-may-be-turning-for-la-s-neighborhood-councils-video&catid=16)
- [  Next Article **LA’s Parks System Crushed: Report Highlights Mayor and City Council’s Failed Parks Policy** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5190:la-s-parks-system-crushed-report-highlights-mayor-and-city-council-s-failed-parks-policy&catid=16)
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