Purge Interrupted

“The CAC shall consist of members who are selected by their peers and then formally appointed annually by the LAUSD Board of Education.”

– LAUSD SELPA

Historically, the membership approval of the Community Advisory Committee is a formality. The LAUSD bureaucrats submit their list and the LAUSD Board rubber stamps it. While the selections may not be perfect, there is usually not enough controversy to even take the matter off of the consent calendar for further discussion.

This year, the District staff at the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement (SFACE) and the Special Education Division went too far in exercising their power over the process. Instead of using a scalpel to remove members they considered troublesome, the bureaucrats took a sledgehammer to the roster and rejected almost every member who was up for reelection, including members of the leadership team.

In response to this purge, the current Chair of the committee, John Perron (JP), with the backing of many of its members requested that approval of the roster proposed by District staffers be pulled from the agenda for the June 20, 2023, Board meeting noting:

There has been a near-total purge of Committee leadership, including that of one critical subcommittee, by the selection committee which is heavily weighted with staffers whose fiduciary duties are influenced by their status as District employees. The application rating scores do not reflect the accomplishments of the CAC, its current leadership, or the individuals — all volunteers — who have been tossed out.

If the committee’s work has been worthy of merit, then this work is not being respected. The many contributions made over the 2022-23 school year, some of which resulted in ‘first of its kind actions, including the creation of two videos in collaboration with KLCS, and giving presentations on the CAC Parent Ambassador program to parent and District employee groups, are not reflected in the list of proposed members that was provided to the Board.

In response to this request, approval of the next school year's CAC roster was delayed until August. Still to be determined is whether this delay will result in a membership that does not exclude vocal advocates for children with Special Education needs or if the District’s leaders just hoped that the additional time would allow the controversy to blow over.

The problems highlighted by the District’s purge are long-standing and this is not the first time that this state-mandated committee has been thrown into chaos after District staff overextended their influence over the CAC’s direction. Sonja Luchini served as a chair of the CAC until she was forced to resign in 2014 due to overreach by the District’s handlers. In the comments for a previous article about the CAC, she wrote this about her experience (edited for space):

In 2012-13, The Parent Collaborative (PCSB) was forced onto the CAC as a "facilitating body" over the use of a Division of Special Education "Parent Liaison," changing years of collaboration with the CAC. I fought against it for those two years when I served as Chair.

The PCSB "facilitation" was more like strong-arming us. Facilitators ignored the norms set by Roberts Rules of Order and interfered with my ability to run the meeting as its Chair.

Frustrated by heavy-handed "oversight" as opposed to "facilitation," the membership voted to include an item on the agenda to discuss voting to remove the PCSB as facilitators of the CAC. When the District staff was unsuccessful in their attempts to remove the item from the agenda, the facilitator unplugged my laptop from the power point projector before the meeting. After that, he made up a "rule" for the next CAC meeting where NO ONE could go into the meeting room before the start of the meeting.

I finally resigned when an LAUSD legal letter was put into our meeting info packets without the knowledge or approval of the officers. The letter claimed that I didn't understand the law and PCSB had full authority over CAC. Our meeting attendance went from 60 to 80 in attendance when hosted by special education centers to no quorum on the day I resigned.

Parents need to have better training on their rights and how to recognize when a facilitating entity is attempting to override the decisions of the committee, especially when those facilitators are NOT members or officers and have NO legal voice regarding CAC business.

The list provided by PFACE is only a recommendation and it is the LAUSD School Board that has the final responsibility of ensuring that a process was used that fulfills the requirement that the CAC consists of members who are selected by their peers. With the two-month delay, the members of this Board should step in and ensure that not only is the selection process fixed, but that the CAC is finally given the independence that is needed to fulfill its mission of advocating on behalf of the LAUSD’s most vulnerable students. The importance of instituting these reforms is magnified by the fact that during the next school year, the District’s SELPA is set to be rewritten. If the document that governs how services are to be provided is to truly reflect the needs of the Special Education community, then the CAC should be treated as a collaborative partner rather than a group that will just rubber-stamp whatever the LAUSD Bureaucrats put in front of it.

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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.