LAUSD: June 2008 Archives

UPDATE: Home Depot cancels June 24 meeting at Sunland-Tujunga meeting at school.

n following up the controversy over LAUSD issuing a permit to Home Depot to hold an "open house" in Sunland-Tujunga next week, I asked officials a series of questions and got a written response.

I also spoke with School Board Member Julie Korenstein who represents the area who said the officials in the district's Beyond The Bell program which manages civic center permits and other non-school issues were "just doing their job...as if it were an everyday permit."

She added: "I'm sure Home Depot would be far better off doing it in a neutral place...They're setting up what could be a problem."

Her reference was to the fact the No Home Depot activists are as welcome as anybody else at the Mt. Gleason Middle School event.

As for LAUSD, here's the bottom line: "The permit has been issued and the permit applicant will be permitted to use the facility in accordance with the rules and guidelines."

Here's the full statement from LAUSD's Beyond The Bell officials:

Question: According to the LAUSD website, school sites are available to nonprofits and by extension to community groups for what are pretty benign purposes, which are also spelled out in the state law on public school sites . Why was Home Depot, a highly profitablecompany, given a permit when it hopes to use the meeting to profit indirectly by winning public support for its story?

Answer: The civic center permit was given to Mr. Abraham Mercado who requested use of the facility to conduct a meeting open to the public.  Mr. Mercado submitted an application for a "public meeting re: Home Depot."  A meeting to discuss matters of general or public interest qualifies for a civic center permit.  The District's civic center permit application process is intended to be fair and neutral to all applicants.  We do not judge whether a proposed use is worthy of the use of a school facility because such a subjective determination could result in discrimination.  Mr. Mercado also checked the box indicating that no fees or charges or contributions would be collected at the public meeting.  If Mr. Mercado had indicated that he was going to collect fees, charges or contributions at the meeting, his application would have been denied.

The issuance or denial of an application for a civic center permit is not an indication or LAUSD's support or disapproval of a proposed use or activity.  Permits are granted to individuals, groups, and organizations (non-profit and for profit) based on the activity.  Examples of private and commercial venture groups/companies/associations, etc. that have been granted civic center permits in the past are: 20th Century Fox, Northrop Grumman/Litton, Tribune/KTLA, Ticketmaster, Fidelity National Title Company, Galpin Ford, and Cedar-Sinai Medical Center Group.  Education Code section 38130-38139 and the Rules adopted by the Board of Education for LAUSD apply to the issuance of civic center permits.  Education Code section 38130 and LAUSD Board Rules 1301 and 1302 do not restrict the issuance of civic center permits to solely non-profits or not-for-profit organizations.
 

I know now I will not be alone in a Bastille Day protest at City Hall.

So many others have stepped forward and said they too are fed up with the arrogance and failure of our city government that I know there will be a decent crowd at high noon on the 14th of July.

The question is whether there will be enough decent people to become an army that storms the bastille and shakes the foundation of L.A.'s corrupt political culture.

Saving L.A. -- that's the mission. Celebrating L.A. the place and demanding that it becomes a city, a real city where we all come together around a vision of something greater than ourselves, a great city.

We are at the tipping point. Too much greed. Too much poverty. Too many problems left  unsolved. Bad schools, over-development, traffic congestion, neighborhoods held hostage by gangs, official indifference to the values of the people, fragmented and weak communities -- L.A. teeters on the brink.

It doesn't have to be that way. We can have great schools and great neighborhoods, great streets and great parks, great busineses and great jobs. We can be greener and safer.We can be happier.

But we will never achieve that when all the leadership gives us is choices between paying twice for garbage collection or fewer cops, between power outages and water shortages and higher rates, between something bad and something worse.

City Hall has more than enough money to solve the city's problems. But too much is given away in sweetheart contracts and giveaways to developers and contractors for no purpose other than to maintain the system of failure. Too much is spent in ways that don't matter and too little on ways that would make our lives better and our communities more livable.

We need to spend our money smarter to create the kind of choices people want and the city needs. We need to raise the standards and create the kind of a city where we can choose to walk or ride a bike or take a bus or drive when we leave our homes to go to work or play. We need to able to choose between a good public school or a good charter school. We need good choices, not choices between the lesser of two evils.

The  leadership of this city is incapable of real change. It will take the people. It will take you to step forward and get the revolution started by joining the Saving L.A. Protest and make it a S.L.A.P. in the face of our elected officials, a wakeup call that the rules are changing, that the people are taking over.

I'm just a voice in the crowd. But people are stepping forward who have spent years working in the trenches to make their neighborhoods better, who know how to organize and make this happen. It will take more people to pull this off, to volunteer and turn this into something big and the start of something bigger.

So let me know if you're coming, if you want to help figure out how we make this protest a celebration of the spirit of L.A.'s people and their hopes for the future. We don't need to get mad to get even. We can come together and party and if there's enough of us there, they'll get the message.

This city belongs to you and me. So let's take our gripes and grievances down to City Hall and leave them there as a petition for redress. Every neighborhood, every group has their own set of issues, their own values. We don't need to agree on anything except our right to a government that serves us, not special interests, and our respect for each other's right to be empowered to affect public policy.

This S.L.A.P. in City Hall's face can be the beginning, the dawning of a new L.A. Come join the party!
 


 

Reader Stan Sugarman's letter responding to LAUSD board member Julie Korenstein's statement::

Ms. Korenstein,

Thank you for your response.  I must inform you that the information given to you by the School Superintendent is incomplete and incorrect.  The Civic Center Act within California's Education Code does not permit businesses, or their representatives, usage of public school facilities as Home Depot wishes to do.  If the permit specifically states that Home Depot, as a business, is the entity making the facility request then the permit is illegal.  Therefore, the permit given to them is illegal and must be revoked.  I ask that you proceed with this immediately.

For your information, the Civic Center Act is available for viewing on the Internet, as EDUCATION CODE SECTION 38130-38139 .  It's web address is:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=edc&group=38001-39000&file=38130-38139

As you read in Section 38131, you will note that it does not provide for a for-profit business to utilize public school facilities for it's own business motives.  It indicates that these groups can use the facilities: citizens, parent
teacher associations, Camp Fire girls, Boy Scout troops, veterans'
organizations, farmers' organizations, school-community advisory
councils, senior citizens' organizations, clubs, and associations.

UPDATE: I haven't been able to connect with LAUSD on the subject but I'm told that despite what the website says about non-profits only, the district has permitted developers and other commercial interests to use school sites in the past. And that's my point public rules for the public and private rules for special interests is the hallmark of LAUSD and City Hall for that matter.

It has been a long-standing policy of the LAUSD to allow the use of public school facilities after hours only to non-profit organizations.

That's why the Sunland-Tujanga community got so aroused when it found out Mt. Gleason school was being turned over to Home Depot for a community meeting June 24 to win support for its effort to convert a closed K-Mart into one of their stores.

They started an email campaign that inundated school officials this week with complaints that giving a permit to one of America's most profitable companies violated the district's own rule.

Whatever you might think about the community's years long fight to keep Home Depot out of Sunland-Tujunga, you should be concerned about how LAUSD solved the controversy.

This is what they put up on district's website today:

Civic Center Permits

---

 
The major function of the Civic Center Permit Office is the issuance of the appropriate permit to allow for the use of school facilities in conformance with the California Education Code mandate and the Board of Education rules, which require that each and every public school facility be made available as a civic center to members of the community and non-profit organizations for supervised recreational activities, meetings and public discussions, when regular school activities are not disrupted.

To qualify for a permit:
A group must be non-profit.(Incorrect)
Updated 6/12/08: The activity requested must be not for profit.

Poof, the problem is gone. Just change the rules. And for that I think the district with an unbroken record of failing millions of students for 30 years deserves the Chutzpah Award for pure blatant utter contempt for the public.

You got to give the bloated, overpaid and incompetent bureaucracy credit for nakedly showing exactly how they deal with all kinds of problems. Cross out the wrong answer and put in the right one. In a word, cheat.

That's exactly why the district fails. It gets the answers to problems wrong every day but instead of learning from its mistakes and getting better, it simply crosses out failure and writes in success That way there's no accountability, no growth.

And that's exactly why the people of Sunland-Tujunga feel that no matter what happens, the Home Depot store will be shoved down their throats Their experience with the city is no different than with the schools and that's what I'm hearing from people all over the city.

For my money, there is only one answer and that's to change tactics and to stop playing by the rules of a rigged game.

So if you care about the schools or the quality of life in your neighborhood or any other issues that affect your life because of local policies, join me and other community activists in a protest at City Hall on July 14, Bastille Day, the day the French Revolution began.