No city subsidy for Anaheim high schools
By Robert Loewen, Chairman of the Lincoln Club of Orange County
The Anaheim Union High School District wants Anaheim to part with money from its own budget to supplement the millions the school district already spends. Giving extra money to the bureaucracy that runs public education, however, only entrenches the status quo, which hurts the disadvantaged by forcing them to attend failing schools.
The city should take this opportunity to engage with Anaheim parents, whose children attend failing schools, about ways the city can assist them directly to improve public education for their children.
Of the 21 schools in the Anaheim Union High School District, 14 are failing. All of them are schools having high percentages of students identified as socio-economically disadvantaged.
According to California Policy Center, the AUHSD has one of the highest average compensation packages for its teachers, $115,437 a year in salary and benefits, but its average academic performance index for all schools is a meager 777, below what the state targets as the lowest acceptable limit of 800.
AUHSD Students
In the past few years, there has been more money for schools, but the people paid to run the schools at AUHSD have not improved things for the students who attend failing schools. In its most recent Local Education Agency Plan for failing schools, published in 2011, the AUHSD listed eight schools as failing. Since that time, the district has received millions in federal funding for programs to meet its specific needs, and it received money that voters were told was needed for education when Proposition 30 was enacted in 2012, and Measure H, a bond measure adopted in 2014, provided infrastructure funding specifically for the AUHSD.
Despite this additional funding, all eight schools listed as failing in the 2011 plan are still failing, and six more schools have been added to the list of failing schools.
Those who are paid to operate the AUHSD are accountable for this chronic failure of the public schools in their district. Yet the resolution presented by the AUHSD to the city blames underfunding, “State funding … continues to lag behind national averages,” and pats the bureaucracy on the back for being “dedicated … and committed.”
If you think about it, people employed by the government often blame problems on underfunding but almost never accept responsibility for the performance of their agencies. This is one reason why the status quo does not change, and public education continues to get worse.
For most who are disadvantaged, the status quo is terrible because they attend failing schools. If the city grants the AUHSD’s request for unrestricted funds, there is no reason to believe that the status quo will improve; by giving money, the city will only confirm the false narrative that underfunding, instead of poor performance, is responsible for failing schools. The city must not betray the disadvantaged students who desperately need a change in the failing schools they attend. Accordingly, the city must say no to the resolution and seek reform directly through the parents and students.
Kids at Palm Lane School
Parents at Palm Lane Elementary School, one of several failing schools within the Anaheim City School District, another district for which the Resolution seeks funding, took direct action to change the status quo last January. So far, they have been successful. An Orange County judge ordered the ACSD to allow them to turn Palm Lane Elementary into a charter school pursuant to the parent trigger provision of the Parent Empowerment Act.
The ACSD is spending $670,000 in legal fees and costs to appeal the order. Certainly, this behavior should not be rewarded with city funding that would, in effect, pay for the litigation to force Anaheim parents to send their children back to a failing school.
Palm Lane teaches that Parent Trigger should be used more broadly by Anaheim parents whose children attend failing schools. Instead of writing another check to be wasted by a failed bureaucracy, Anaheim should get involved directly with these parents to help them to understand their rights.
In the Palm Lane case, we learned that the school district will misuse the resources given to them by taxpayers to try to prevent parents from changing the status quo. The city should become the hero for Anaheim parents by leveling the playing field against the next school district that tries to bully parents out of their parent-trigger rights. Only when they know that Parent Trigger will be enforced can we expect school districts to find real solutions for chronically failing schools.
The city also has an opportunity to promote charter schools, something it has already begun to do. The Los Angeles Unified School District has a large number of charter schools created specifically for disadvantaged students, which are doing very well. Orange County lags behind in this area, but it should learn from the LAUSD model. Anaheim can and should lead the way. It should not go along with the funding charade proposed by the AUHSD’s resolution.
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Robert W. Loewen, partner at Gibson Dunn
About Robert Loewen:
Robert W. Loewen, a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’sOrange County office, joined the firm in 1977. He is a member of the firm’s Litigation Department.
Mr. Loewen focuses on general business litigation, with subspecialties that include toxic tort and cost recovery litigation.
Mr. Loewen received his bachelor of arts degree from Pomona College in 1970. He graduated first in his class with a law degree from the University of Southern California School of Law in 1975, where he served as Executive Editor of Lead Articles for the Southern California Law Review and was a member of the Order of the Coif. Prior to joining Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Mr. Loewen served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White at the United States Supreme Court and for Judge Walter Ely at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A member of the American and California Bar Associations, Mr. Loewen has been admitted to practice before the U.S. District Courts for the Central, Southern, Northern and Eastern Districts of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and all California State Courts.
Oh good, the elitists at the Lincoln Club are slumming it to weigh in on matters they know nothing about in a City where they don’t live. I was so afraid that Anaheim’s poor, uneducated and misguided residents (like myself) might have to figure this mess out all by ourselves without their wisdom handed down from the Balboa Bay Club.
Would this be the same Lincoln Club that openly disparages Tom Tait (barely endorsing his reelection only because they had to) while glorifying Kris Murray? Gee, how did that support reflect the values and viewpoints of Anaheim citizens once we all hit the voting booths? Yeah, NOT EVEN CLOSE.
This gentleman wishes to portray the proposed budget line item as a matter of feeding the education bureaucracy with yet another source of our hard earned tax dollars. We all understand that the bureaucracy is indeed bloated in many areas, and there is work to be done in moving resources to the classrooms rather than District offices. But none of it is the fault of children who are attending school in deplorable conditions, where facilities have been so grossly outgrown over the years that all the bond issues the District might be able to get approved are not going to correct the need for facilities expenditures. THAT is what this is about, FACILITIES. This is an opportunity to make those school campuses places we can be proud of as a community, which lets the schools focus on education. That is why IRVINE already did this, knowing that schools set the standard for a community.
Yes, yes, we know, the ONLY thing that defines a “great city” is whether 4 star hotels are willing to come there. Sorry, but many of us believe what defines a great city is when 4-star RESIDENTS are willing to LIVE there (I assume Mr. Loewen does NOT reside in Anaheim?) and what sells quality home buyers is SCHOOLS. What improves property values is SCHOOLS. rising property values means rising property TAXES which lets us improve the community, it is a great cycle if one can get the “economic engine” of NEIGHBORHOODS kicked into high gear. In fact, property values offer FAR more tax revenue to Anaheim than the beloved Resort, once you subtract the cost of feeding the mouse-eared beast back its subsidies and self-dealing infrastructure costs, and property tax is a FAR more STABLE tax base than TOT. As an economic generator, if a city has good schools and good neighborhoods, good jobs follow because employers will set up shop close to home to reduce their commute, let’s give small and medium sized business owners a city they are proud to live and work in and improve our economic base. Is this not all part of what I believed the Lincoln Club was all about? Or is “subsidy” the only language they speak over there anymore?
So why would anyone oppose a tool that improves quality of life for all Anaheim residents, including those with and without children, improves the visual streetscape with better maintained schools and nice green fields and sports centers that, with shared use, expand the City of Anaheim’s offerings to citizens on off-school hours, (as was intended before the schools began locking campuses after hours) and why would anyone want to punish today’s CHILDREN by forcing them to attend school in crowded and miserable conditions when a answer is readily available to us? Considering the monumental buckets of money wasted at City Hall every day (ARTIC anyone? how about the water recycling plant next to City Hall that produces irrigation costlier than Perrier or Evian?) I would much rather see a line item set aside to improve school facilities, and in turn aid our resale values and property tax base with a TRUE INVESTMENT vs just plain stupid spending schemes that Council confuses with investment.
Oh wait, there is a very good reason to want to prevent schools from improving. If schools do not continue to spiral downward, the for-profit Charter School providers like those licking their chops at the doors to Palm Lane Elementary would have a harder time getting us to turn over our children and our tax dollars to them. And I would bet that if I dig into the membership of Lincoln Club I will find at least one well-heeled Charter School provider with an application ready to go on Palm Lane, and any other schools that will continue to fail as the Districts struggle to put a roof over kids heads and books in their hands with the same dwindling funds.
Anyone want to take that bet?
YES you CAN hear “bitter and angry” in there, I DETEST anyone who uses our children as pawns in their freakish game of profit-mongering with public dollars.
“I DETEST anyone who uses our children as pawns in their freakish game of profit-mongering with public dollars”
I agree! Jose F. Moreno. Should be the first PIG taken down. You’ll never meet a bigger manipulator than this guy.
AHUSD has no justification shamelessly attempting insertion of yet ANOTHER stealth siphon hose to the taxpayers wallets, BEFORE it has delivered a plan to the public of HOW new funding would change the course of its current (low) level of achievement, and BEFORE it has exhausted attempts at private sector “partnership” funding. IT HAS DONE NEITHER. Implying that “more money” will somehow empower a panacea path to success is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has been awake for the last decade to see that false hypothesis FAIL throughout ALL levels of government. The comparison with Irvine ignores economic and demographic differences with Anaheim OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL as well as in cultural emphasis on education and achievement. Are we supposed to believe that shiny windows. do more for student performance results than shining teachers ?
Worse yet, the proposed “financial-only” conduit skirts accountability and spending control. Educational spending policy for best return on FURTHER taxpayer dollars will just be ANOTHER category for the City Council to show it self beyond its element, reducing this effort to a “feel-good” BLANK CHECK, from a City that has YET to recover its full Police staffing, on top of operational shortfalls in many other areas of policy execution. With the City itself ALREADY falling short in providing many other quality of life aspects, (street parking, parks vs homeless, etc) WHERE will funding arise for a NEW “line item”, or more likely, WHAT ELSE WILL BE CUT IN RETURN? The lack of an answer to THIS question in presenting the request, speaks to its naievite (or just opportunism ). With the lack of planned spending specifics or evidence of private sector funding efforts, it seems that changes in AUHSD focus and execution would cure more student performance shortfalls than unsupervised unaccountable funding boosts from an already overstressed public, and the Palm Lane controversy raises the question if new directions are more important than new funding for more of the same.