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Money and decisions in LAUSD

For some folks, $36 million just isn’t enough: 

A coalition of teachers union officials, students and parents Saturday demanded more money for Los Angeles Unified School District’s lowest performing schools, describing a plan to inject $36 million into 17 high school campuses as a welcome start but not enough.

Complaining about large class sizes, crumbling buildings and a shortage of counselors, speakers at a rally near Los Angeles High School also called on district officials to allow the schools, rather than the district, to decide how to spend the extra money.

"We applaud the district and think this is a step in the right direction, but we are concerned, and we would like to make it clear that these 17 schools should get a lot more than $2 million each," said Edgar Sanchez, a history teacher at Washington Preparatory High School. "Parents, students and teachers must have more autonomy to the make the decisions on how the money is spent." (emphasis added)

The underperforming, bloated bureaucracy that is LAUSD already gets $13.4 billion a year. $2 million more per school is a big chunk of change.  And not only is it not enough, but now students should get some control over the purse strings?!  We’re all about the money following the students, but this isn’t what we had in mind.