The case of the missing LAUSD art and music teachers – Daily News

Now for the Los Angeles Unified School District's three-card Monte game. Keep your eyes on the lady. It's the LAUSD school board meeting on June 18. The players at the table are the seven members of the LAUSD Board of Education. The dealer? None other than LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. His hands are quick. If you blink, you'll miss it. His words are quicker. If you're not fluent in the LAUSD bureaucratic dialect, you won't understand.

Sleight of hand #1: “The accountability test is NOT administered at the school…it is administered districtwide…is there any possibility of variances at schools? Absolutely,” Carvalho said. Translation: Your student did not get the extra art teachers he was promised, but my lawyers tell me that's OK.

Sleight of hand No. 2. “Given the level of confusion … regardless of the letter of the law,” Carvalho said. Translation: You are the ones who are confused. Don't trust your own eyes. Trust LAUSD instead.

Sleight of hand No. 3. “…we decided to create this additional fund and, uh, we put $30 million into this fund to do something completely different,” Carvalho said. Translation: We're not actually creating a new fund, we're just recreating the same fund that we illegally cut. But if we call it new, the board and the public might not realize what actually happened.

Where's the Queen? Have you caught her? Need a little help? This three-card Monte game is about a “missing person case.” More specifically, where are the elementary art teachers who went missing last year? Superintendent Carvalho and his administration would have you believe they were there, at hundreds of elementary schools across LA. Students, parents, principals, unions and stakeholders know they weren't there.

While working with a courageous LAUSD elementary school in the San Fernando Valley, I reviewed years of budget and district records and came to the clear conclusion that “School X” did not get three additional art teachers on its campus because LAUSD embezzled $81,954.50 of School X’s arts funding.

School X won't reveal its name because the school's administration fears retaliation from levels above it in the district bureaucracy all the way up. And what happened at School X happened at elementary schools across Los Angeles, according to arts activists.