Summer Must be Over

Fortunately, the weather around here rarely changes, but I can tell that summer is over because I just wasted 2 hours of my life at another pointless BCS/LASD board meeting.  This time, it was the BCS board meeting, which I had been anticipating attending since last week.  The "plan", was for some members of the growth task force to jointly present their findings, and discuss how we can all work together.  Ironic, given what transpired.

Luckily, I found out about the last minute change in venue before I left my house, but UNFORTUNATELY, the change in venue occurred too late for the LASD board members to attend because they had to adhere to their publicly committed venue due to the Brown act.  Where did this leave us?  With just enough time to listen and learn the following:

• Apparently, LASD has locked BCS out of the new rooms at Blach until the facilities agreement is signed.  Unfortunately, this is preventing teachers from preparing for a successful start to the year, which is not what anyone wants.
• I don't know why the agreement is needed now, and wasn't before.  I also don't know why it hasn't been signed.  Basically, I don't know anything about it.
• I don't know why BCS moved the venue of this board meeting, but it had the unfortunate effect of spiraling a once promising collaborative meeting out of control into a useless waste of time
• Joe H was visibly upset with Doug for his lack of collaboration on this matter, which is quite unfortunate since they had appeared to develop a mutually respectful relationship up to this point
• No presence of LASD, including Jeff B, the board, etc, so none of the planned agenda items were discussed in the open session
• There seemed to be some discussion about a nice program that BCS held for low income students, but unfortunately I missed most of it because I had to step outside in my disgust at both board's behaviors

All around, a colossal waste of time for all.  We can count this as the "two steps back" portion of our "one step forward" dance... :(

From Lenin to Lennon

Hmm, never knew that the old "one step forward, two steps back" was a Vladimir Lenin quote?!?  While I'm on that trajectory, I'll borrow some wise words from a different Lennon - "Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one."  I, too, hope that we will all put down our differences, and work together in the best interests of educating ALL of our children, not just those biologically related to us.

I now understand a little bit more about what transpired in the meeting yesterday, and I'm disappointed to say that it sounds like the fact that the BCS teachers are "locked out of the new Blach facilities" seems to be caused by BCS' unwillingness to sign the document stipulating the agreement around the facilities use agreement (FUA).  Without the signed agreement, furnishing access seems like it would be a bit of putting the cart before the horse - especially, since one side seems to have a particularly itchy legal trigger finger.  Hopefully, the lawyers can work faster than the marketers, and we can sign the agreement and move forward on another fun filled year of edu-leg-cat-al-ion...