Dan Chang: The case of the missing LAUSD arts and music teachers

Now, onto Los Angeles Unified School District’s game of three-card monte. Keep your eyes on the queen. It’s the June 18 LAUSD school board meeting. 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 fast. If you blink, you will miss it. His words are faster. If you are not fully fluent in LAUSD-Bureaucrat-ese, you won’t understand it.

Sleight of hand No. 1: “The accountability test is NOT done at the school site … it is done district-wide … is there a possibility of variance at schools? Absolutely,” said Carvalho. Translation: Your student did not get the additional arts teachers they were promised, but my attorneys tell me it is OK.

Sleight of hand No. 2. “Considering the degree of confusion … notwithstanding the letter of the law,” said Carvalho. Translation: You are the ones who are confused. Don’t believe your own eyes. Trust LAUSD instead.

Sleight of hand No. 3. “… we decided to create this additional fund, and, uh, we placed $30 million into this appropriation to do something very different,” said Carvalho. Translation: We are not actually creating a new fund, we are just restoring the same fund we illegally cut. But if we call it new, maybe the board and the public won’t realize what actually happened.

Where is the queen? Did you catch it? Need a little help? This game of three-card monte is a “missing persons” case. Specifically, where are last year’s missing elementary arts teachers? Superintendent Carvalho and his administration want you to believe that they were there, at hundreds of elementary schools across L.A. Students, parents, school principals, labor unions and advocates know that there were not.

Working with a courageous LAUSD elementary school in the San Fernando Valley, I reviewed years of budget data, district records and found conclusively that “School X” did not receive three additional arts teachers on their campus because LAUSD misappropriated $81,954.50 of School X’s arts funding.

School X will remain nameless because school leadership fears retribution from the layers above them in the district bureaucracy going all the way to the top. And, what happened at School X took place at elementary schools across Los Angeles, according to arts advocates.

As a LAUSD math teacher, district parent and budget expert, I’ve seen these games all too often. I exposed an attendance fraud scheme at my middle school. With School X, I’ve uncovered the budgetary shell game called Missing Arts Teachers. I’ve had enough. I am running for the LAUSD Board of Education seat in Board District 3 to put an end to LAUSD’s fraud, waste and abuse.

Today, I am taking it one step further. As part of my campaign to win LAUSD’s Board District 3 seat, I have assembled a toolkit to help every elementary school in LAUSD figure out exactly how much money and how many arts teachers they are owed by the district. My hope is that school communities, armed with the knowledge of what they are owed, will force the district to do what is right.

My challenge to Superintendent Carvalho and the seven current members of the LAUSD school board is simple. Superintendent, stop playing three card monte. Board members, stop entertaining yourself with the superintendent’s sleight of hand. Own up to the mistakes of last year and make every elementary school whole for their missing arts teachers.

Dan Chang is a math teacher in the LAUSD and a candidate for LAUSD School Board, District 3.