First of two parts
True to his extremely well known public nature, School Board member Steve Gourley — who believes bashfulness should be illegal — was neither perplexed nor vexed by a challenge that has stumped the brightest minds in education.
The question did not even slow him down.
Is there a reasonable, achievable way for the public schools of California to avoid the every-year parade of pink slips for teachers and other critical personnel?
“Oh, yes,” said the independent, outspoken second-year Board member.
“Interestingly enough, we recently had a round-table discussion. In fact, I have kept my notes from that day in my office so I can check back. (Board President Jessica Beagles-Roos) asked what we wanted to see for the future, for the School Board and the School District. It came around to me. I did not want to be there in the first place. I have better things to do than a touchy-feely meeting.
“First, I said, you have to repeal Prop.13 so that the local districts have a way of raising money.
“Two, you have to get rid of Serrano v. Priest, which says that every district in California has to get so much per child. It says that spending more per child is discrimination, that somehow it amounts to a loss of rights for those children. An exception is special education, which the state does not pay for.
“Third, get the state and federal governments — with all their mandates, all their reports, all their tests — out of the schools. The cost of trying to comply with their mandates is overwhelming. You have people who do nothing but write for grants. You have people who do nothing but advise school districts on what money they can raise and what money they can’t raise.
“It has to increase the useless paperwork for schools by 50 percent.
“After we finished this touchy-feely meeting, [Board member] Scott Zeidman looked at me after I’d said my piece. I said, I am not looking at what is going to be in 3 years or in 5 years. I said that if you want to talk about changing public schools, you have to talk about what is going to happen in 20 years. You have to be thinking about the next generation. Because you are not going to do it now.
“The long-term solution is to get government out of it. They’re not supposed to be there, and they can’t handle it. What they do of it, they screw it up.
“Here is a classic, a typical example of wastefulness in the school system:
“Every several years, teachers have to do a Stull Report. You have to fill out where you are now and where you want to be in 4 or 5 years. Administrators have to make sure the reports are sent to the schools. The schools have to make sure the reports are sent to the L.A. County Office of Education, and the County has to make sure the reports are sent to the State Superintendent of Schools in Sacramento.
“Then it probably gets copied another million times and sent to the federal government — where it never gets read.
“Who the heck cares?
“But, I am saying for public financing, numerous classrooms are interrupted filling out the Stull Reports and holding up the bureaucracy all around us.
“Schools are strangling under state and federal mandates.
“From the time I started to school until I finished high school, I probably had 4 exams for going to college or what grade you should be in. We are giving right now, according to the primary expert on education in the world, my wife, Sharon, we give a ninth-grade-level test as an exit exam.
“High school students have to take it each year they don’t pass it, meaning somebody could take it at least 4 times.”
(To be concluded Friday)
