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“Which side are you on, boy…
Which side are you on…”

— Pete Seeger song, which got him blacklisted

I started my morning with a happy 3 year old insisting I go outside to hunt snails, and a 9 month old cooing in his high chair…my wife had coffee already made (!) and the dog, the birds and the fish had been fed…it was a good morning…but then (cue ominous music) came… the LA Times, with a front page story about the LAUSD – the Los Angeles Unified School District – an organization whose leaders act just like the CEOs of Enron. An entity that gets me standing in my PJ’s on a dining room chair, yelling “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

How is LAUSD like Enron?

1. Just as the leaders of Enron (and many publicly held companies) behave as if the company is their personal property, and theirs for their own gain, LAUSD administrators act as if they own the school system. They use our kids as pawns, as tools to keep money, jobs and power.

Make no mistake, public education has NOTHING to do with educating our kids.  It has EVERYTHING to do with the many school unions keeping the jobs of their members. For the unions, THAT is the acid test of any new reform program. NOT “Does it help the kids learn?” but “Does it keep our jobs, money and power?” They decide that first and then they “spin”… they dress up their positions in terms that sound like they give a damn about us and our kids future. Nonsense. If they cared, they’d all quit.

2. Just as the leaders of Enron kept lying to the public, claiming things were going great, even as THEY KNEW the company was going bankrupt, LAUSD knows full well that they are leading an academically bankrupt organization.  Now they’re spending hundreds of thousands of public dollars on lobbyists and PR consultants to convince the public that they’re doing fine, and we should stay the course.  (And forget about allowing the mayor to take over the school district. Horrors! A man who’s heroically willing to say “Hold ME responsible,” when everyone else just spends years passing the buck.)

3. Enron leaders claim they did nothing wrong, that they were taken down by investors’ panic and speculators.  Just like Enron, LAUSD similarly claims, “It’s not our fault.” For years LAUSD has produced nothing but excuses for failure (oh, to be fair, they also produced several generations of high schoolers who can’t read), and has never taken responsibility for the utter failure of their service to us. According to them it’s the fault of everything from poverty to parents, to immigration to nutrition. Well, there are only two choices: either they don’t know how to educate these kids or these kids are too stupid to be educated.  I know the answer to that, as do you.  Let’s ask them.

4. Enron was owned NOT by its leaders but by the public who invested their 401K money and their childrens’ college tuition funds in their stock.  Peoples’ lives were broken.  LAUSD leaders have also broken the lives of thousands of kids.  The LAUSD is not owned by the leaders of its unions, nor by the Board of Ed, nor even by the teachers.  It is owned by you.  Parents.

Until parents step up and TAKE–no, DEMAND–that ownership, there is no reason for school leaders to change anything.  They’ve proven that.

It would be great to be able to, as LAUSD asks, “to work together”. But that time has passed. They’ve caused too much damage. The only change will come with a fight. And it will pit LAUSD versus our kids.

“Which side are you on, boy…
Which side are you on…”

Bill Grundfest lives in LA with his two boys, a dog, two cockatiels, fish and a wife who loves him. He’s a TV writer/producer with numerous Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe Award and a car that gives him trouble.