EDUCATION POLITICS-There is a political brouhaha going on right now that really deserves your attention. Your attention as a parent, as a taxpayer, as a citizen.
It involves a pretty obscure committee known as the “Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee” … I know, I’d never heard of it until recently either.
Turns out, all that money we as tax payers empower agencies to borrow as “bonds” for a specific purpose or project – a whole endeavor with terms I don’t understand well – that money needs “watchdogging” because just mandating it to happen doesn’t say how it will happen, or by whom, etc. Such appropriations become a situation ripe for abuse, to which alert minds have been thinking about and attending the danger for a good long while.
For example, there is a whole League of Bond Oversight Committees. This tactic of funding specific projects is common enough and involves large enough sums of money, overseen by rank enough novices, that all across the state Oversight Committees have been formed to watch the process and these themselves end up needing instruction.
And right now we have a Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee in LA that is under attack. It is supposed to be an independent task force with appointees from various interest groups charged with scrutinizing the distribution of funds mandated by the taxpayers specifically for the purpose of funding school construction and infrastructure.
Our Board of Education ensures that the appointees to this committee, made by various special interest groups, are fit to serve (as in not, say, felons or pedophiles), but they are not to influence the selection of the representative. That is the purview of the designated special interests representatives that compose the committee (e.g., PTA, trades groups, architects, “parents”, etc).
You can read about the composition of this committee of constituents in this great summary blog posting by parent and PTSA representative Scott Folsom. It includes several good links to recent press articles for more information.
To me, right now, the critical issue is independent oversight and partisan backroom politicking.
Personally I feel our Board of Education is being manipulated by their own employee, their schools superintendent, for ulterior political ends. I feel this removes one of the last avenues of commentary that we parent-citizens had available to us.
I know you won’t just take my word on this; I hope you will research this issue yourself. You can even watch the Board’s action directly, here.
For astute, if partisan editorializing and commenting on the matter, please read former Undersecretary of Education, Dr. Diane Ravitch’s blog.
For further excellent, though likewise partisan information, see the Facebook page Repairs Not IPads:
After reviewing the evidence, if you agree with me that we citizens are being marginalized by political forces that wish simply to silence reflection, I hope you will join me in signing this petition to reinstate the American Institute of Architect’s nominee for the Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee, fellow Westside LAUSD parent Stuart Magruder.
(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.com)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 44
Pub: May 30, 2014