Former LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy

On Dec. 1 it will be a year since FBI agents showed up at LA Unified’s headquarters with a federal grand jury subpoena and carted off 20 boxes of documents related to the district’s controversial iPad program.

Since that day little if any new information has been publicly revealed about the investigation’s status, and that is primarily due to the secrecy laws that surround federal grand juries. Unless the jury issues an indictment or an investigative report, the evidence and testimony is by law to remain forever sealed, and leaks of federal grand jury evidence are extremely rare.

With almost a year passed since the subpoena, it is possible the grand jury found no evidence of wrong doing and has dissolved, but James A. Cohen, an associate law professor at Fordham University, said it’s unusual — though not impossible — for a grand jury investigation to take more than a year.

“It’s coming up on a year in December. It’s a long period, no question. It’s not that unusual, but it is still on the unusual side,” he said.

Cohen helps run Fordham’s Federal Litigation Clinic, which represents defendants charged with federal crimes; he has also written about and researched the grand jury system. Cohen pointed out that an LA Unified school board agenda item from August, as was reported by LA School Report, indicates that the district’s lawyers might have foreseen trouble coming from the investigation or a related lawsuit.

The brief item, which simply said the board was going to discuss the case in a closed session, was listed on the agenda due to a state law that reads “on the advice of its legal counsel, based on existing facts and circumstances, there is a significant exposure to litigation against the local agency.”

Cohen said this is an important indicator.

“I think what it means, what it has to mean, is somebody, a civil lawyer representing (LA Unified), has gone through the documents that were sent to the FBI and concluded that there is liability out there,” Cohen said.

The grand jury subpoena in particular sought information related to the bidding process for the massive $1.3 billion Common Core Technology Project. The controversial program, which aimed to give every student and teacher in LA Unified a computer tablet, was one of the major initiatives undertaken by former Superintendent John Deasy, who resigned 13 months ago.

Deasy paused the purchase of new iPads under the contract in August of 2014 after emails surfaced showing that he and a deputy, Jamie Aquino, had a close relationship with Apple and Pearson, a company that provided educational software for the iPads. Deasy’s successor, Ramon Cortines, cancelled the contract the day after the FBI seized the documents and later abandoned the goal of giving every student and teacher a tablet.

The emails showed that both Deasy and Aquino were in close contact with Pearson and Apple before the contract was awarded. Aquino was a former employee of a Pearson subsidiary, and to some it looked as if the bid was rigged in favor of Apple and Pearson. In media interviews, both Deasy and Aquinio denied any wrong doing. Aquino had already left the district when the emails were revealed, and Deasy resigned just a few months later.

While the targets of the FBI investigation are unknown, Cohen said anyone indicted on charges related to bid rigging would be facing the potential of serious jail time.

“Mail fraud and wire fraud are favorites of federal prosecutors. You’ve got all sorts of bribery statutes. Those would be the kind (from bid rigging). There’s also conspiracy and aiding and abetting,” he said.

While there is supreme secrecy surrounding federal grand juries, an exception is that anyone called to testify before a grand jury is free to speak publicly about their own testimony.

“The secrecy for grand juries is very strict. There is an attorney general in the state of Pennsylvania who is under indictment for leaking grand jury materials. It’s just a statement for how serious the courts take it,” Cohen said. “Witnesses are discouraged from (speaking publicly). So a prosecutor will have a meeting with them, making it clear that we strongly discourage you from saying anything about your testimony, and only if asked.”

Both Deasy and Aquinio did not respond to a request to comment on this story or to discuss any testimony they may have given to the grand jury, although it is unknown if they were subpoenaed to do so.

If the grand jury were not to issue any indictments, Cohen said there are only two possible outcomes. One is the jury will dissolve and any evidence it gathered would be forever sealed, barring a leak. The other option is for the jury to issue an investigative report, which essentially means it found no criminal liability on the part of any individuals but did find problems with how an organization is operating.

“The grand jury may in fact come up with nothing and they may not find anybody to indict, but the jury might say we find the following flaws in the bidding process,” Cohen said, adding that investigative reports are rare.

Click here to sign up for the LA School Report newsletter, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The settlement ends one aspect of the district’s iPad program, that was built upon a deal with Apple and Pearson and was finally halted after a series of problems.

“The parties believe that the agreement to reimburse the District is in the best interests of the students and stakeholders in Los Angeles,” the district said in a statement, referring to the original deal. “Due to multiple factors, it became clear that this was not the right solution for LAUSD’s technology program at this time.  However, we continue to work with Pearson in some areas.

It is just a single line in the agenda for tomorrow’s closed board meeting, but it may speak volumes.

Described as “anticipated litigation,” the board will be discussing possible ramifications of the FBI probe, arising out of state law that reads, “A point has been reached where, in the opinion of the legislative body of the local agency on the advice of its legal counsel, based on existing facts and circumstances, there is a significant exposure to litigation against the local agency.”

The document seizure happened as the result of a federal grand jury subpoena looking into potential bid rigging in the district’s $1.3 billion Common Core Technology Program, which sought to get a computer tablet in the hands of every student and teacher in the district.

Due to the secrecy laws surrounding federal grand juries, little has been known about the nature of the investigation since the seizure. But the board’s closed meeting agenda is the first indication that a grand jury might have identified legal problems with how the district conducted the bid process and, as a result, that the district might face legal action. No indictments have been brought in the case, and federal law requires that details of the grand jury investigations remain sealed unless one is brought.

LA Unified’s Director of Communications Shannon Haber said under the advisement of district General Counsel David Holmquist, she cannot comment on the closed session. Laura Eimiller, spokesperson for the FBI’s Los Angeles Division, did not return a call seeking comment.

The ambitious Common Core Technology Project was the brainchild of former Superintendent John Deasy, but it came under severe scrutiny when the public release of emails last August revealed that Deasy and a key underling, Jaime Aquino, had a high level of communication with the two companies that ultimately won the bid, Apple and Pearson.

That led to questions about whether Apple and Pearson had an inside track to win the contracts. Deasy and Aquino have always maintained that the bidding process was conducted fairly, with preference given to no one.

After the emails were revealed, Deasy cancelled the contract with Apple and Pearson and said he was going to reopen the bidding process to keep the program alive. With the program’s pilot and early rollout experiencing severe technical and logistical problems, public scrutiny of the program increased, and Deasy resigned in October.

Less than two months after Ramon Cortines was hired as Deasy’s replacement, the FBI seized at least 20 boxes of files and district officials confirmed they were the result of a federal grand jury probe. Cortines cancelled the Common Core Technology Project shortly after and publicly declared that the district could not afford any 1-to-1 tablet program.

Other board meeting notes

The board is technically holding two separate closed sessions tomorrow, with one dedicated to finding a new superintendent and the other for discussions over the FBI case and other legal issues, as well as some personnel and student discipline issues. The search for a new superintendent will also be part of the open meeting, scheduled to start at 1 p.m.

For the board’s regular public meeting, there are no major resolutions scheduled to come up for a vote. Board member Mónica García is bringing several resolutions forward for the district to recognize Latino Heritage Month, Student Attendance Month, National Coming Out Day and College Awareness Month.

There will also be several public hearings regarding charter school petitions.

The meeting into the now-cancelled $1.3 billion program was “informal,” according to the Los Angeles Times, which said it focused on if the district properly disclosed to investors and others how the bonds would be used.

District officials told the Times they were optimistic they had addressed the SEC’s concerns, and it is not clear if the inquiry is now closed or still ongoing.

“They asked us to come in and present to them on the bonds themselves,” Thomas Zaccaro, a partner with a law firm that presented information to the SEC along with the district, told The Associated Press. “All in all, we don’t see any issue with the disclosures.”

The meeting comes on the heels of an announcement by the district yesterday that it would seek reimbursements on thousands of devices that had been delivered with what it said was ineffective Pearson software.

The SEC does not typically comment on or even acknowledge the existence of an investigation, and declined to comment to the Times and the AP.

The SEC inquiry is the latest in a long line of bad news and poor outcomes for the iPad program, a signature initiative of former Superintendent John Deasy that sought to get an iPad loaded with educational software from Pearson into the hands of every student and teacher in the district.

The program, which was part of the Common Core Technology Project, faced controversy from the start, beginning with the unorthodox use bond funds to pay for the devices. Although unanimously approved by the LA Unified school board in 2013, support for the program began to erode as its pilot program was rolled out. The issues included ineffective Pearson software, students easily deactivating the devices ‘content filters and difficulties with distributing and tracking the devices.

In 2014, emails between Deasy, his deputy, Apple and Pearson raised questions about the bidding process, leading Deasy to cancel the contract with Apple and restart the bid in August. Although Deasy questioned the motives of his critics, he resigned in October. In December, the FBI seized files related to the program bidding process as part of a grand jury investigation.

Deasy’s replacement, Ramon Cortines, cancelled the entire iPad program shortly after the FBI investigation was made public.

The wireless iPads and Chromebooks represent part of a huge, $500 million technology investment by LA Unified that, just last year, was hailed as a pioneering effort to bridge the digital divide, a modern civil rights struggle.

But given the choice, Ayala didn’t want the shiny new devices for the test. He opted for the old technology — because it works.

“Once again, I am proud to report that our collective goal of having all Frost students using a real computer, instead of a tablet, has been met,” he announced on the school’s website yesterday, the first day eighth graders at the school began taking the exam. Eventually, all classes will cycle through one of the school’s three computer labs for the Common Core-aligned test, he explained.

“We discovered that the iPads were a little bit frustrating to the students,” he told LA School Report. “The screen was a little bit too small and the calibration of the screens needed to be tailored to each individual student, and that takes a lot.”

This can hardly come as welcome news to district officials, who have been debating for months the proper use of digital devices for instruction and testing. While hardly dispositive of the entire district, the choice at Robert Frost suggests that the school board has fallen short in assessing the attractiveness of tablets compared with more reliable hardwired desktops. It also suggests that principals, teachers and students didn’t have enough input in decision-making, if they had any at all.

Board Member Bennett Kayser raised the issue at last week’s school board meeting.

Despite months of preparation and costly modernizing projects by LA Unified, a district-wide practice run of the Smarter Balanced test earlier this month revealed a variety of technical issues. While most problems were caused by a crash of the state-operated testing website, many others stemmed from internet connectivity issues at the district and school levels. One third of students participating in the dress rehearsal, were unable to complete the test.

“Would [the practice run] have been better if students worked in computer labs? Were there less system issues in computer labs or with devices that were provided to students throughout the year?” Kayser asked Cynthia Lim, the district’s head of data and accountability,

Her response: “We didn’t collect that kind of data of, was it easier or was it a smoother experience. We just know that schools, whether they used desktops or Chromebooks, everyone encountered some kind of issue.”

But a report on the outcomes of the same exam last year, found students who took the test on a hardwired desktop experienced fewer technical snags than those on wireless devices. And, the “Chair’s Report on the Common Core Technology Project Ad Hoc Committee” spearheaded by board member Monica Ratliff, stated, “Anecdotal evidence was presented that desktop computers and/or devices with larger screens were the preferred device for test taking.”

The test is split into three distinct sections — English language, math and an essay — that must be taken on a computer. The exam is designed to be computer adaptive, changing the difficulty of questions based on previous answers, which is supposed to allow for more pointed assessments and results.

Ayala didn’t feel the need to wait for the district to decide which device was better. He listened to feedback from his students and stuck with what worked best for them.

At the end of the day, the first full day of test-taking, Ayala was happy with his student’s progress in the computer labs: no computer meltdowns and no reports of technical snafus.

“We were ready, and Frost is doing very well, ” he said. “We wanted to give our students the best advantage of taking the test in a very comfortable setting. It’s working for us.”

The aim is to identify and resolve any glitches in the technological infrastructure before the tests are given, Lydia Ramos, a district spokesperson told LA School Report.

The only open question is whether the results of the official tests will be used for high stakes accountability purposes, especially federal funding. Superintendent Ramon Cortines is among many high ranking officials around the state calling for a delay in using this year’s test scores to calculate future academic growth.

The State Board of Education is expected to make a final recommendation at its next meeting in mid-March.

In either case, LA Unified is using the rehearsal tests to make sure it’s ready.

“This way we’ll know if there are any connectivity issues or problems accessing the test before kids actually have to take it,” Ramos said.

The exam must be taken on a computer, which means a majority of LA Unified students will be taking it on an iPad. However, some older students will have access to laptops.

Every elementary, middle and high school throughout the district will administer the exam to at least one class of students in grades 3-8 and grade 11, Ramos said.

Additionally, schools will be asked to complete a survey Feb 20 to report any issues that arise.

“We’re simply trying to get ready for this new world of computerized testing,” said Ramos.

The district conducted a similar trial run last year and found many schools experienced technical difficulties; Students were unable to log onto the testing site, connections to the internet were spotty, and many students were booted out of the system, unable to complete the test.

At the time, Cynthia Lim, executive director of the department that oversees the deployment of devices for the Smarter Balanced test and the infrastructure required to administer it, contended a lot of the problems were “due to the fact they delivered the devices so close to the testing dates.”

But this year, the district failed to deliver testing devices on schedule. Several hiccups have delayed their delivery by four months. The district had initially promised an October delivery date, but even now, six schools are still waiting on their devices.

Those schools will still participate in the System Readiness test, Ramos confirmed.

“They’re going to get support from [the district’s central office] to make sure they can take the test,” she said. For now, the six schools are scheduled to receive the testing iPads next week.

On a related note, Board member Monica Ratliff informed the board last week that 399 iPads intended for testing have gone missing. She was wrong, says Bernadette Lucas, director of the district’s technology project.

“At this point we have 343 unaccounted for iPads,” she told LA School Report. “But they’re not considered lost or stolen.” It is possible, she added, that many of them are in an office or storage space in “off” mode where they cannot register to the system. “They’re not pinging because they’ve been off for a while,” she said.

Elementary and middle school students will official take  the Smarter Balance test between March 4 through June 4. The window for 11th grade students is shorter, from April 15 through June 4.

Members of the district’s Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Committee watched a video that featured students and staff at Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences in Granada Hills, one of three schools allowing tablets to go home, gushing about how their educational experience had improved.

“The minute that you let students take the iPad home, all of the sudden more work gets turned in,” Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences teacher Judith Quinones said in the video.

Students in the video told stories of coordinating their homework better, hauling fewer books around and communicating easier with their teachers when outside of class. Teachers spoke of increased engagement with students and a higher level of homework assignments being completed.

The video was part of a report on the results of the phase 1 rollout of the take-home project that was presented to the committee by Gerardo Loera, executive director of Curriculum, Instruction & School Support at LA Unified. (See the video embedded below.)

The video was purely anecdotal, and the district has yet to produce hard data or reports on whether using the devices at home is increasing student achievement. But it did provide evidence of positive results.

“The full instructional value of these devices, in particular at the secondary level, can only be fully realized when they go home,” Loera said.

Loera said eight more schools are set to begin sending devices home through next month.

Loera said 90 percent of students at the three schools had opted to take the devices home, a process that requires each student and a legal guardian to sign papers taking responsibility for it. According to the video, only one device was damaged and two were misplaced — but later recovered.

While committee chair Monica Ratliff and some of her colleagues had once expressed concern about the devices leaving campuses, none voiced any further concern at the meeting, as questions and comments were focused simply on the details of the take-home project.

Board member Bennett Kayser did wonder if the video included only positive comments from students and staff.

“Were there any partcipants who didn’t want to be in the video because they didn’t like it? Is this representative of everybody?” he asked.

Loera didn’t directly answer but responded that overwhelmingly more students were choosing to opt into the program and few if any had opted out after taking the devices home.

It was initially part of the massive Common Core Technology Project — now rebranded the Instructional Technology Initiative — for students to take the devices home. But the option was cancelled in the fall of 2013 as some among the first students to get the devices figured out how to disable their content filters.

Requiring that the devices stay on campus “created logistical challenges for schools to distribute and collect devices on a regular basis,” a September independent report on the program from American Institutes for Research (AIR) stated. District materials on the take-home rollout state that they have made significant improvements to the filters, but that “no web-filtering solution is 100 percent foolproof.”

The filter disabling was among the first of many problems for the iPad program, which has included serious questions about the bidding process that are now being investigated by a grand jury, logistical problems with distribution, a low use of the device’s pre-programmed educational software and a federal report that cited a general lack of a grand vision and metrics to judge the program’s effectiveness.

Some committee members expressed concern about the 10 percent of students who declined to take the devices home. Loera explained that teachers are required to give paper assignments to students opting out, and that while every effort is made to ensure that the educational experience is equitable for them, it is “one of the challenges that we deal with.”

LA Unified, citing new money, ups its offer to teachers
Bolstered by a more robust state budget, LA Unified said it was doubling its offer to UTLA.

Survey: Teachers support changes in state job protection laws
The majority of public school teachers who participated in a new survey support changes in state teacher job protection laws that were the focus of last year’s landmark ruling in Vergara v. California.

Deasy to work for Broad Center as ‘superintendent-in-residence’
Former LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy will be working as a consultant for The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems as a “superintendent-in-residence.”

Feds find lack of leadership, vision, planning on iPads, MiSiS
A report from the U.S. Education Department on the district’s troubled $1.3 billion iPad program and gitchy MiSiS computer system had few positive things to say.

LAUSD middle school among California’s ‘Schools to Watch’
LA Unified’s Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park was honored as a model middle school by the state program, “Schools to Watch-Taking Center Stage.”

Chief Strategy Officer Matt Hill

The LA Unified Bond Oversight Committee today agreed to approve another $25 million in bond fund spending to help the district fix MiSiS problems and equip schools with computers for standardized testing in the Spring.

A team of district officials, including Superintendent Ramon Cortines, made lengthy presentations to the nine member committee, insisting that in both cases the district would fail to comply with state and federal mandates without the additional financial help.

About $12.1 million of the money approved today is intended to provide a series of temporary “band aids” for MiSiS that will cover the costs of fixing bugs, stabilizing district servers so they can handle high volumes of traffic, and adding customer support and help desk staff. It will also pay for the implementation of MiSiS at the district’s charter schools, which the district has delayed doing despite a legal obligation.

“That part has been really difficult to do,” Chief Strategy Officer Matt Hill told the committee, referring to computer systems that would prove incompatible with MiSiS. “What we found is that the charter systems have bolted on other applications and tools to their data management systems and given the number of charters we have, it’s very difficult to get them into MiSiS.”

Hill estimates it will cost about $1.3 million to integrate them into the student data management system.

Earlier in the week, Cortines announced he would be asking the bond committee for $53 million, but today he said the district had revised the figure, pending an assessment of future needs by MiSiS team leaders.

“We are being prudent and responsible by only requesting enough funding to carry us through February 2015,” Cortines said. But he added that he will return to the committee in January to request more support.

“At this point, we don’t know what we don’t know,” he said. “In January we’ll have a better idea of what we’ll need for the rest of the year.”

The committee also gave the go-ahead for disbursing another $13 million to buy a combination of iPads, keyboards, Chromebooks and device carts in anticipation of the Smarter Balanced tests in the Spring.

All students in third through eighth grade and all 11th graders are required to take the computer exam this year. Last year only a small fraction of district students took the test, and a review of the field test found a slew of problems preventing students from completing the test. The most common complaint was that students were not able to connect to the internet.

The district’s plan is to spend the $13 million as well as an additional $9.2 million it has in reserves from the last batch of approved bond funds to buy approximately 20,000 testing devices. Unlike the tablets and computers purchased under the one-to-one program, these will not be pre-loaded with instructional curriculum.

Cortines assured the committee that, like the testing devices purchased last year, these will also be available for instructional use once the Smarter Balanced tests are completed. However, three months into the school year, many of those  tablets have yet to be delivered to classrooms.

Although, several committee members expressed skepticism over the district’s timeline for purchasing and deploying the devices, Cortines assured them they would arrive by January, giving students ample time to become familiar with them.

“It’s not fair to this community and the children that they’ve been denied the ability to practice while other districts have been practicing all year,” he said.

Principal Jose Huerta from Garfield High School put a finer point on it.

“Our teachers and our students have put in great effort into teaching and learning the Common Core standards and this is our chance to show that off,” he said. “But without the appropriate conditions and the right technology to take the test, we won’t be able to do that.”

A day of iPad use at Cimarron Elementary

Barely a week into his job as LA Unified superintendent, Ramon Cortines is pushing back against the school board that hired him, voicing opposition to using any more of the $1.3 billion in bond money to buy digital devices equipped with curriculum for use in classroom instruction.

Three times since his first day on the job, at the start of this week, he has suggested that the district should not use voter approved capital improvement funds for the Pearson software that the board approved for the iPads bought from Apple.

In a statement from the district today, he said he is committed to providing technology to students, but added, “I still need to meet with the Common Core Technology Project team to learn more about the plans in place but I think we will need to identify alternative sources to fund the curriculum ongoing.”

This morning, he was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, saying, “I don’t believe the curriculum should be paid for with bond funds, period.”

And at his first school board meeting two days ago, he publicly disagreed with the board’s unanimous decision to use money from bond sales to pay for the $1.3 billion program, characterizing the expenditure as “stealing” from taxpayer dollars.

His public pronouncements would appear to put him at odds with a board that just hired him to replace the architect of the iPad program, John Deasy, whose handling of the program drew widespread criticism from the LA Unified community, including board members. Nonetheless, at every step in planning, the board approved Deasy’s approach to getting all LA Unified students a tablet or laptop.

While it’s not clear if Cortines’s views arose during the vetting process prior to his hiring, some board members now appear to be promoting a robust discussion of the technology issues.

“The sustainability of the program is something that really does have to be dealt with, and I am excited that there’s going to be more discussion about this because I think once you start discussing not using bond dollars for curriculum then there really has to be a discussion about what general funds are we going to use, what bond dollars are we going to use for what items,” said Monica Ratliff, who chaired the district’s Common Core Technology Project Committee but was not yet a member of the board when the iPad program was initially approved.

“We need to have a discussion about what we’re going to do to move forward because I don’t think people are interested in having technology completely grind to a halt. I think what people are excited about is the concept of responsible spending and getting the best devices for the best price for our students so that the project rolls out smoothly.”

Board member Steve Zimmer said today the entire project should be re-examined, including “the terms of the project goal and in terms of the funding.” But he added, “[Cortines’s statements] do not close the door to the use of bond funds in any way shape of form.” “I continue to believe that technology expenditures are in the scope of that,”

Zimmer added. “I have never waivered on that. However, I am very supportive of a balanced approach that looks at other funding options for parts of this.”

Board President Richard Vladovic told LA School Report: “I believe Superintendent Cortines is open to our students’ receiving the instructional materials they need while also making sure that our schools in desperate need of repairs get the funds that they deserve.”

After considerable Monday-morning quarterbacking by the board, the iPad program was slowed down in its rollout, changed to include a pilot program providing laptops to seven high schools and was eventually halted by Deasy when he came under fire for behind-the-scenes communications with Apple and Pearson officials in the months leading up to the contract with the district.

An investigation into the correspondence by the Inspector General is ongoing, but the board, in accepting Deasy’s resignation last week, cleared him of any “ethical or unlawful violations” in his dealings with executives.

So far, the district has spent approximately $61 million for 90,841 devices under the original contract with Apple. About 36,200 of those contain Pearson curriculum. The rest were purchased for Common Core testing. As it stands now, iPads with Pearson software are will only get to students in 58 of the district’s 900 or so schools by the end of November.

The district has twice sought approval from the Bond Oversight Committee for more spending. Last month, the district proposed spending $16.7 million for 21,840 iPads or Chromebooks for Common Core and other testing next Spring, including keyboards, transport/charging carts, staff support and other costs.

The BOC recommended against the project and suggested that the district return to the committee with more justification for the recommendation. A second proposal was for $16.4 million for 3,340 laptop computers for 784 school site offices and 11,270 mobile devices for middle and high school teachers at schools that have not previously received mobile devices through the Common Core Technology Project to support the MiSiS roll-out.

The BOC recommended that one-third of the request be approved and that District staff return to the committee with justification for additional devices, as may be required. In addition, more than $500 million has been allocated to modernize the wireless infrastructure to support the use of devices throughout the district.

In theory, the district is preparing to re-open the bidding process to new vendors for tablets and laptops, in the wake of Deasy suspending the previous contracts. But, Shannon Haber, a district spokeswoman, told LA School Report that the Request for Proposals has yet to be issued.

“There is no timeline for the RFP,” she said. “At this time we don’t know when that will start.”

Efforts to reach three other board members for comment — George McKenna, Tamar Galatzan and Bennett Kayser — were unsuccessful. Monica Garcia declined to comment.

That was last year.

But here he is again, weeks away from his next performance review, and not much has changed.

This time, Deasy finds himself at the center of a two major controversies. Questions about his involvement in securing a deal for iPad maker, Apple and software developer, Pearson, have lead to a renewed investigation by the district’s Inspector General, and the bungled launch of a district wide data system, have put Deasy’s “autocratic” management style in stark relief, according to his critics.

The troubled superintendent also has a potential teachers strike on his hands if the district and their union, UTLA, can’t reach an agreement on a new contract.

Whether Deasy can weather the latest storms — or whether he even wants to — remains unclear, but if his days are numbered, and the board votes him out after next month’s evaluation, he would hardly be the first superintendent to leave LA Unified after a tumultuous tenure.

Here’s a look at his three most recent predecessors:

ROY ROMER (2000 – 2006)

A former three-term governor of Colorado, Romer has been the longest serving LA Unified superintendent in the last 27 years. He retired at the age of 78.

Over his time in charge, Romer grappled with severe over-crowding in classrooms, abysmal test scores and one of the highest drop-out rates in the country. No new schools had been built in more than 20 years but after a long slog, he succeeded in getting a  $19.5 billion construction bond passed. It remains the the largest municipal public works project in the nation’s history.

In addition to foes on the board, Romer also battled Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was trying to take mayoral control of the district. That effort failed but it left the relationship permanently strained.

DAVID BREWER (2006 – 2009)

Brewer took charge of the district after an exhaustive nationwide search following Romer’s retirement. But unlike the septuagenarian, Brewer was pushed out after just two and half years.

From the start, the former Navy admiral was criticized for lacking the education background and management skills required to run the second largest school district in the country. He also had an annual salary of $300,000 and, according to the LA Times, a $45,000 a year expense account. When he decided to bring on Ray Cortines as Deputy Superintendent, Brewer was attacked for outsourcing the most basic responsibilities.

His time at LA Unified was rocky from the start and he described his first months on the job as a “cascade of crises” in an interview with the LA Daily News. Early in his tenure, the district became embroiled in a payroll software fiasco that left some teachers unpaid and others overpaid. This was also the beginning of the great recession, which left Brewer the task of beginning the process of gutting a number of school programs.

After a failed attempt to fire him, the board paid him $517,500 to leave. He accepted, saying it was in the interest of the district’s children — his departure, not the settlement.

RAY CORTINES (2009 – 2011)

Cortines, a former Superintendent in San Francisco, San Jose and Pasadena, and a former New York City Schools Chancellor, rose to superintendent following Brewer’s swift and expensive departure.

As the financial crisis deepened over the next three years, Cortines was forced to cut a staggering $1.5 billion from the budget, leading to layoffs of 2,700 teachers and 4,900 other employees.

Cortines was Mayor Villaraigosa’s choice for the post and under his direction, the district developed the “public school choice” model, which allowed a proliferation of charter schools to set up shop in the district. That put him at odds with several board members who opposed charter school growth.

However, it wasn’t until after Cortines retired from the top spot that his reputation was marred by scandal. Shortly after stepping down, a former LA Unified senior manager sued him, charging sexual harassment.

Previous Posts: As work on MiSiS continues, LAUSD is creating MiSiS 2.0; LAUSD says concerns cited in iPad report were expected; What’s next *if* Deasy is out? Speculation abounds

What’s more, said Bernadette Lucas, director of the District’s technology project, they were thrilled to get the bad news.

“I couldn’t tell you the exuberance that our team had over this,” she said in a briefing with reporters.

The problems identified in the report by American Institutes for Research (AIR), mirror those the district is now tackling, and that validates the district’s plan moving into the next phase of the rollout, Lucas said.

“The vast majority of the challenges outlined in the report have have been worked on for quite a long time,” she added.

Conducted in spring, the report surveyed the 47 schools involved Phase 1 of the program. And although the district is now in Phase 2, planned for 58 schools, only a dozen have received the tablets this year. The remaining 46 schools will get devices by November — an exact date has not been determined.

Among the report’s key findings is that only 30 out of 245 classrooms built daily lessons on the Common Core curriculum from the Pearson software loaded onto devices. Teachers told the researchers that full implementation was hindered by delays in access to the curriculum and by problems with logging in. The report also determined the district spent too much time and focus on the deployment of the devices and not enough time on training teachers how to use them effectively in the classroom.

“That was because of the challenges in staffing,” Lucas said.

The district has since boosted professional development training for school leadership teams, made up of teachers, principals, parents and students. Throughout the spring semester and over the summer, Apple and Pearson trainers led the groups through training sessions, focusing on technical and curriculum instruction. These teams then began training other staff members at the local school site level.

Lucas said these training sessions are open to all district teachers, regardless of whether they are participating in the iPad/Pearson program because many schools have purchased similar technology out of their own budgets.

“The ed tech movement is about creativity and innovation…and that goes beyond just Pearson,” she said. “It’s just one of many doorways to the Common Core.”

In response to another issue, support staff has been ramped up. Curriculum and instruction specialists focusing on best practices for integrating technology in alignment with the Common Core standards have increased to 27 from 14. The district has also added the same number of technical support assistants who configure devices and wireless connectivity and fix hardware or software malfunctions.

One board member suggested that moving the program from the district’s Facilities division to Procurement for the new bidding process might alleviate future stress.

“We should structure the next phase so that people who have the expertise are doing the work they do best,” board member Tamar Galatzan said in a statement. “Leave the technical issues to our Information Technology Division, let the Office of Instruction train our educators, and have Procurement rather than Facilities handle the new contracts.”

Previously, Pearson lessons were loaded onto devices in a piecemeal fashion — as the year progressed lessons would be downloaded and added to the iPads. It was a slow and frustrating process for many teachers.

“This year we did something different,” said Gerardo Loera, the district’s director of curriculum and interaction. Now, the tablets are loaded with three years worth of curriculum, bookending a student’s current grade level.

“This to help the teacher have scope and sequence,” he said, adding that it allows teachers to assess students’ academic progress as they move along at their own pace.

As for the Pearson curriculum, which AIR concluded was not robust enough at the time of the study, Loera argued that it is intended as a “map and guide” for teachers and that it should be supplemented with other materials.

“The curricular guides are not dictating to teachers what part of concepts or lessons they should be on on a particular date,” he said. “We are shifting away from that as a practice.”

Previous Posts: Report on iPad program effectiveness gives mixed results; The Ratliff report: one view of the iPad program gone awry; Breaking News: Deasy says he’s cancelling iPad program

“Norm” day,” as it’s called, is set for Friday but problems with the new student data management system, MiSiS, have forced the district to devise a new plan: “The process will be a rolling process over a course of three weeks,” Deputy Superintendent Michelle King told the board.

Final student counts will be taken manually in a “double verification process,” and principals will get follow up visits from district staff to confirm numbers before any displacements occur, King told the board.

Schools experiencing the most severe problems are those enrolling kindergarten through eighth grade students, magnet schools and special education programs.

Chief Strategic Officer Matt Hill was contrite and optimistic addressing the board in the latest MiSiS update. “We rolled out the system with confidence that we can continue to improve it but there should have been a lot more testing,” he admitted to the board, echoing what many educators said in the months leading up to the disastrous launch of the program.

Another hurdle for the glitch-plagued system is printing student transcripts, a problem distressing to high school seniors who are now applying to colleges.

“Kids get one shot to apply to college … we can’t let our transition on this hurt a kid in their application process,” board member Steve Zimmer said.

But Hill assured the board that this aspect of system should be “fully functional” by the end of next week.

Board member Tamar Galatzan‘s resolution requiring charter management organizations to notify parents when they are in jeopardy of losing their charter generated a heated discussion when issues of revocation suddenly got mixed in with muffins.

The measure was put off for further consideration next month.

Before her motion could come before the members for a vote, Bennett Kayser offered what he called a “friendly” amendment, which would also require charter schools to inform parents of a range of other changes and actions involving such subjects as play space, teacher credential status, staff pay scale, instruction materials, special education services, curriculum content, food service and caloric content.

After a testy exchange, the members voted, 5-2, to approve Kayser’s amendment, which Galatzan characterized as “hostile.” At one point, Galatzan asked, “Are we supposed to notify parents if a school changes the muffin recipe?”

Rather than continue arguments over language or over whether any of Kayser’s inclusions were even legal, the board tabled the entire matter, pending a review by legal counsel.

One notable vote that did occur was to spend nearly $300,000 on a Microsoft system that will delete emails after a year, in compliance with a new district policy. The vote, 6-0, with new member George McKenna abstaining, effectively eliminates the ability to see or understand communications on any specific issue that were sent more than a year before the current date.

Had the system been in place this year, none of the emails between Superintendent John Deasy and a former deputy, Jaime Aquino, with Apple and Pearson, prior to the iPad bidding process, would have been uncovered.

And finally, after remaining relatively silent in his first board meeting two weeks ago, McKenna was an active participant yesterday, weighing in with useful thoughts on lots of issues.

In his first vote, however, he came down on the losing side, as the members voted, 5-2, to return the start of meetings to 1 pm from 4 pm.

Previous Posts: Deasy on his critics: Constant attacks are ‘politically motivated’; Deasy planning to hire his own liaison for MiSiS project; The Ratliff report: one view of the iPad program gone awry

President of UTLA, Alex Caputo-Pearl

* UPDATED

With a new contract on the line, the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, is stepping up its attack on Superintendent John Deasy, blaming him for problems large and small and the opening line the district has taken for a new contract with teachers.

Union president Alex Caputo-Pearl ratcheted up the tension at the district board meeting this morning, with a broadside against Deasy, who appeared unmoved throughout the barrage.

“This board has to look very carefully at what money is going into cleaning up after autocratic measures,” Caputo-Pearl told the members, referring to the recent problems surrounding the district’s iPad contract and the bungled roll out of MiSiS, a student data management system.

It was the latest of Caputo-Pearl’s references to Deasy as an autocrat, a broad criticism for unilaterally making policy decisions without consulting or completely ignoring the union’s position on issues.

Caputo-Pearl also used his brief appearance at the meeting to tell the board members they have $507 million in “unrestricted reserves,” suggesting that the money could be included in a new deal for teachers, who have been offered the same contract terms — raises of 2 percent, 2 percent and 2.5 percent over the next three years — as the district has offered its other unions.

“That’s a huge amount,” he said, and he returned to face the board hours later, after its closed session, to repeat his demand to use the $507 million for teachers.

But it’s not all available, according to district officials. Most of the $507 million has already been rolled into the 2014-2015 budget, which means it has been allocated to cover other costs, they said, adding that only $85.8 million remains in reserve for such expenditures as raises for teachers.

The district is also mindful of the impact of teacher raises on the district’s other bargaining units if UTLA were given a contract with higher percentage raises than other unions are receiving. The other unions have what is known informally as “me, too” clauses, which means an increase for one is an increase for all.

Speaking to reporters later, Caputo-Pearl switched gears to announce a hearing before an administrative law judge at Public Employment Relations Board tomorrow over union complaints of Deasy’s reorganization of Crenshaw High School, where Caputo Pearl taught for 12 years..

“The superintendent tried to illegally cleanse Crenshaw High School of union leaders,” he said, adding that Deasy specifically targeted a dozen active union teachers.

UTLA filed an unfair labor practice charge against the district a year ago after the reconstitution of Crenshaw. The move dismantled the existing school improvement model and split the school into three distinct magnet programs.

On another front, Caputo Pearl appeared to be trying to leverage pressure on Deasy through other board members. In a press release yesterday, Caputo Pearl said he called school board president Richard Vladovic asking him to demand Deasy abandon MiSiS.

While it’s unclear how often a UTLA president has ever called the LA Unified president to make a direct plea to influence behavior of the superintendent, the district’s chief employee, it was another unambiguous shot at Deasy.

“The UTLA President deals with the BOE President when the superintendent has proven to be tone deaf to the suffering of educators, students, and parents,” UTLA’s Executive Director Jeff Good told LA School Report.

The full court press against Deasy comes in the middle of labor negotiations for a new contract — the first in more than eight years — in which UTLA is seeking a 17.6 percent salary increase over two years, class size reductions, an end to the widespread practice of teacher jail, and greater access to electives.

After a handful of meetings the two sides remain far apart with no agreement in sight. The next “bargaining” session is tomorrow.

Previous Posts: Deasy on his critics: Constant attacks are ‘politically motivated’; The Ratliff report: one view of the iPad program gone awry; Deasy planning to hire his own liaison for MiSiS project

* Clarifies amount of money LA Unified is holding in reserve.

Unlikely Co-sponsors: Galatzan (left), Ratliff (right)

The LA Unified School Board returns tomorrow with a full agenda although a lot of the juicy stuff will be discussed in closed session.

In addition to the usual topics — personnel issues and ongoing litigation — the board will review labor negotiations, which at this point is down to the on-going talks with the teachers union, UTLA.

The union submitted its initial proposal to the board late last week and in it, UTLA called for discussions of various subjects, including salaries, teacher evaluations and discipline at future bargaining sessions. The proposal is the first item of business on the agenda for the board’s open session. However, the board will not publicly discuss the demands contained within the document nor any details of negotiations, such as they are.

Although an update on the student data system, MiSiS, is not officially on agenda it is inconceivable there wouldn’t be a lengthy discussion about it either in closed session or by a public speaker later in the day. Problems with the program have made it next to impossible to get an accurate count on the number of students enrolled in each school and in the right classes, according to school principals and school administrators. That has set schools back in making necessary teacher hiring adjustments.

It’s also possible, though unlikely, that the board members would take some action against Superintendent John Deasy over his role in the iPad procurement process. He has been the target of vociferous criticism, with accusations he steered the deal to Apple and Pearson. The members have the right to review his performance every month.

Meeting attendees will also witness a rarity– Board members Tamar Galatzan and Monica Ratliff have joined forces to co-sponsor a resolution. The two are often on opposite sides of issues and have had more than a few contentious exchanges on the horseshoe. Their resolution, “Keeping Parents Informed: Charter Transparency,” would address the kinds of issues that faced two magnolia charters, requiring all charter schools to notify parents within 72 hours when they receive a notice of revocation, non-renewal, or a violation of any kind.

“I want to make sure that parents know there are issues at a school that have put its charter in jeopardy,” Galatzan told LA School Report. “The information is public, but, unfortunately, schools don’t always share it with parents. The resolution will ensure that parents are notified so that can participate in public hearings about action that could impact their child’s education.”

A message sent to Ratliff seeking comment was not returned.

An effort by Galatzan to lower the Title I eligibility threshold to 40 percent and create a three-tiered funding system, has been put on hold. The district raised the eligibility threshold from 40 to 50 percent to shift more money to the highest-poverty schools in 2011. Since then, Galatzan has argued that many of the schools in her west Valley district are caught in a no-man’s land of funding with no access to federal funds because they fall just short of the  50 percent threshold.

Finally, Ratliff and board member Bennett Kayser are introducing a motion that would declassify any reports prepared by its Office of the Inspector General, relating to the procurement process for the Common Core Technology Project.

An Inspector General report cleared Deasy of interfering in the bidding process for the district’s one-to-one device, but the details of the investigation clearing him have not been released.

Previous Posts: Teachers union submits initial contract demands to LA Unified; Deasy planning to hire his own liaison for MiSiS project; Not everyone is rejoicing over halt to LAUSD’s iPad program

Superintendent John Deasy

Under withering criticism over the iPad program, a new student-tracking computer system and discordant relations with the teachers union, LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy said today that the attacks feel politically motivated at the expense of his agenda to improve the lives of district students.

“I serve at the pleasure of the board,” he said today in a wide-ranging interview with LA School Report. “If the board is not pleased, they can get rid of me at their pleasure.”

Asked if he would relieve them of that action by stepping down, he said, “I’m not prepared to answer that question.”

His tenure aside, Deasy said when he considers the acid tone of criticism over a confluence of issues, “I think it’s a troubling sign to me that the agenda is possibly no longer students. I had always assumed that the agenda was lifting students out of poverty. The agenda appears to be lifting Deasy out of LAUSD.”

The drumbeat of criticism is threatening to end a period of apparent comity and collegiality between Deasy and the school board that began last fall, shortly after it appeared that Deasy was resigning from a post he held since 2011.

Over the last 10 months or so, board meetings have played out with little of the tension that characterized previous meetings. Board President Richard Vladovic, especially, has shown a willingness to work closely and productively with Deasy.

But apparent unity could be cracking under the weight of problems with the iPad program and the bumpy implementation of a computer system that principals, teachers and parents rely on to track the progress and whereabouts of students.

Beyond that, Alex Caputo-Pearl, the new president of the teachers union, UTLA, has persisted in hammering Deasy over a wide range of issues, not least the district’s unwillingness to satisfy union demands for a 17.6 percent salary raise over the next two years.

The latest attack from the union came this morning at LA Unified headquarters, where union members staged a rally, calling for Deasy to be put in the same sort of “jail” that houses teachers who are pulled out of classrooms for reasons not made entirely clear to them.

Citing the district’s past efforts to deal with sexual predators in the classroom, which lead them to teacher “jail,” Deasy called the union’s rally “a terribly misguided effort to score political points.”

The iPad program has been a particular burden for Deasy, with almost daily accusations that he and a former lieutenant, Jaime Aquino, acted illegally, unethically or immorally in securing contracts with Apple and Pearson.

“It feels like a witch hunt,” Deasy said. “And people are feeding this.”

Two investigations into the bidding process — one by the district Inspector General and a second by the LA County District Attorney—  cleared him and Aquino of any improprieties.

Yet a series of emails released last week between Deasy and Aquino and the companies before the bid process has fueled new suspicions that they rigged the bid for Apple and Pearson to win it.

Board members Monica Ratliff and Bennett Kayser are introducing a measure at the next board meeting, on Sept. 9, asking that the Inspector General’s report be made public. Several board members say they would support a new investigation by the Inspector General into the pre-bid period.

In a six-page memo Deasy sent yesterday to board members, he outlined his actions regarding the iPad program before and during the bid process and defended them as proper business procedure. He reiterated his position to LA School Report, saying conversations with potential vendors prior to bids are routine for any purchase the district makes.

“If I want to buy rugs, I go to a company and say let me use them in the classroom for five months before I commit to buying them,” Deasy said. “It’s common industry practice.”

He referred specifically to an email urging the companies to make the lowest bid. “Damn sure I urged them to make a lowest bid,” he said. “Can you imagine the response if I had urged them to make the highest bid?”

He also said he had conversations with other vendors although the district has not released any emails or other communications confirming that.

In any case, his defenses have done little to quiet critics. Chief among them has been Ratliff, who as chair of the Common Core Technology Project Committee, presented her own overview of the iPad program, enumerating its failings and making recommendations for going forward.

As for the student-tracking computer system, Deasy conceded that criticisms were “very valid,” that the district has been working on it for years and “we’ve got to get this to a place where we do this better.”

As the board meets again next week, will the old animosites break into view?

“I don’t want them to,” Deasy said. “But that’s up to the board.”

Monica Ratliff, District 6 Board Member

It’s long. It’s detailed. And it’s dry.

But here it is, LA Unified board member Monica Ratliff’s report to her colleagues on the work of The Common Core Technology Project Ad Hoc Committee. She was chair.

By now, most people know the iPad program didn’t go swimmingly, leading Superintendent John Deasy to suspend it this week and reopen a bid process that would continue the effort to get digital devices to all 650,000 district students.

In her report, which she alone wrote, Ratliff offers recommendations for how to avoid problems in the future. And just what happened this time? In short, she concludes, the district messed up. Big time.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of UTLA

It might be the new school year, but it was a series of old problems awaiting the LA Unified school board yesterday as it met long into the night with a full complement of seven members for the first time in eight months.

After the swearing in of newly-elected District 1 member George McKenna, a closed session ran 2 1/2 hours late before the board emerged for an open session and spent the first hour grilling administrators about the anything-but-smooth implementation of the district’s latest student tracking system, known as MiSiS.

For the first time in public, the officials acknowledged that mistakes — seen and unforeseen — had plagued a rollout that began in June, causing “frustration, pain and suffering in our schools,” as described by Ron Chandler, the districts Chief Information Officer.

“This was not what we expected; it’s not what our students deserve,” said Matt Hill, LA Unified’s Chief Strategy Officer, who had the final say in putting the new system online. “We knew there’d be some issues, but not of this magnitude.”

MiSiS, which stands for My Integrated Student Information System, represents the final stage of a 10-year process for upgrading systems that allow administrators to enroll students in schools, make class assignments, and allow teachers and parents to track student progress.

Criticism of its flawed implementation echoed the response to the district’s iPad rollout last year — more on that later — particularly by the leadership of the teachers union, which has blamed the system for disrupting the first weeks of school for thousands of students.

Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl took a thinly-veiled shot at Superintendent John Deasy, calling the rollout an example of “autocratic decision making,” which he said must end.

He suggested that the district and union create a joint technology committee to avoid problems caused by big technological innovations; Deasy responded later, telling the board, “We welcome and look forward to that, strongly.”

Hill and Chandler were contrite before the board, taking time to explain in great detail how the program encountered problems, some of which have been fixed. They promised that the new system has been “stabilized” but did not promise that new issues would not arise in the months ahead.

Despite the difficulties, they defended the decision to go forward, with Chandler saying, “The issues were not great enough to not use the new system.”

The prelude to the meeting was another swirl of controversy over the district’s so-called “billion dollar iPad program” and Deasy’s decision on Monday to suspend the district’s contract with Apple, Inc. and its software partner, Pearson.

A series of emails released by the district appeared to suggest that Deasy and a former lieutenant, Jaime Aquino, had worked to help the two companies win a bid for the program. Deasy announced he was curtaining the Apple deal and opening a new bidding process.

The district is now considering a new investigation into the period before the contract bidding actually began, focusing on what, if anything, Deasy and Aquino did to help the two companies win the deal. Aquino, who worked for Pearson before joining LA Unified, may be of particular interest, in light of an email he wrote to his former employer in May 2012, which said, “I believe we would have to make sure that your bid is the lowest one.”

Another slice of the iPad issue arose at the board meeting through a brief dialogue, sometimes testy, between Tamar Galatzan and Monica Ratliff, who authored a critical report that reviewed the entire iPad program.

Ratliff had made a draft of the report available to board members and senior staff, only if they agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which Galatzan had refused to do, and was thus denied a copy.

Galatzan made her objections public in the open meeting, suggesting that members’ forcing each other sign such agreements was no way to conduct board business. Ratliff defended her action, saying she wanted to give recipients a chance to read it and offer comments.

“It was an attempt to maintain the integrity of the draft while it was in the draft process,” Ratliff said.

Caputo-Pearl also weighed in on the iPad program.

“We’ve always had educational concerns, we’ve also always had budget concerns… and now we’ve got a legal concern about what actually happened and whether there were illegalities in the procurement and bidding process,” he told reporters before the meeting, adding that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office should launch a new investigation into the matter.

He said the iPad program, too, was an an example of “autocratric behavior that isn’t healthy for public education and a public institution.”

Deasy’s decision to curtail the Apple deal means that the district is scrapping Phase 3 of iPad distribution plan, although six schools have yet to receive new devices. LA Unified has already purchased tablets designated for deployment in Phase 2 of the plan.

The open meeting didn’t start until 6:20 p.m. — a full two hours and twenty minutes late — and ended at 10:43 p.m., much to the frustration hundreds of parents, teachers and students who waited on the sidewalk before being allowed into the boardroom.

“We thought it [the closed session] would go faster and it didn’t,” the newly goateed board president, Richard Vladovic, told the audience. “I apologize…I take responsibility but we had to talk and we did.”

Much of the delay was due to lengthy discussion on the district’s labor negotiations with the teachers union, which is seeking it’s first new contract in seven years.

Another reason, according to a district staffer, was that the board had a lengthy discussion on increasing the budget for the Inspector General’s office. Ken Bramlett, head of the department, reportedly requested a boost in funding in light of the mounting number of investigations his office has been asked to conduct.

In addition to demands for a new investigation into the iPad emails, Bramlett’s office has also been asked to launch an investigation into the MiSiS rollout.

Further, an investigation in June into the accounting practices for two Magnolia Academy public charter schools cost $700,000, leading to a board vote to close the two schools. They remained open after a state superior court judge ruled that LA Unified officials circumvented the legal process for closing them.

Deasy has since asked for a review of six other Magnolia charters in the district.

Before adjourning, the board voted unanimously to approve the findings of the Magnolia audit, which determined that Magnolia Science Academy 6 and Magnolia Science Academy 7 were insolvent and engaged in suspect accounting practices. The complete document has yet to be released to the public or Magnolia officials.

About two hundred Magnolia Public School students and families — two busloads — waited late into the night to plead with the board not to adopt the Inspector General’s audit findings which could lead to a retroactive non-renewal of the two school charters.

Janelle Ruley, a lawyer representing Magnolia, said the court order bars the district from taking any action against the charters.

“If the board approves [the non-renewal] it will be doing so in direct defiance of the court order…and it will cause fear and uncertainty for hundreds of families,” she said.

Magnolia’s accountant, Kim Onesko also disputed claims that the charter school management organizations is insolvent. He told the board, “Magnolia is solvent. Period.”

As for McKenna, in his first full meeting, he was more of an observer than participant. He asked no questions nor did he weigh in on any of the 22 items before the board.

LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy told members of the school board yesterday that he is halting the district’s contract with Apple, Inc., effectively ending his grand plan to put an iPad in the hands of every district student.

Following the disclosure of emails that suggest he and aides had tailored the bid process to favor Apple and the software maker, Pearson, when the district was seeking proposals for digital devices, Deasy said the district would reopen the bidding to take advantage of a changing marketplace and student needs.

In his letter to board members, who are meeting today, Deasy said “Moving forward, we will no longer utilize our current contract with Apple Inc.” He explained the decision in adding, “Not only will this decision enable us to take advantage of an ever-changing marketplace and technology advances, it will also give us time to take into account concerns raised surrounding the CCTP and receive new information from the California Department of Education regarding assessments.”

CCTP stands for Common Core Technology Project, the district’s over-arching plan to supply and distribute digital devices to students. A committee headed by board member Monica Ratliff was appointed last year to oversee its implementation. It was after her draft report leaked was to media outlets last week that emails were disclosed, showing that Deasy and his deputy at the time, Jaime Aquino, exchanged ideas that appeared to some that the district was rigging the process to favor Apple and Pearson.

The original plan was for the devices to be rolled out in phases as part of a $1 billion spend. By his action yesterday, it will go no further than iPads delivered to 52 schools and laptops to 18,000 students under the existing contract, he told the members.

Under a new opening bidding procress, he said, the district “will be re-visiting the criteria on which original specifications were based, as well as review vendor responses and student feedback to the laptop pilot. We expect our current contractor and their subcontractor to participate in the upcoming (request for proposal).” Apple and Pearson can participate, he said.

Deasy has always insisted that the original bidding process was carried out with no improprieties, assertions supported by investigations conducted by the district’s inspector general and the LA County District Attorney. Still, problems and changes along the way raised serious questions about whether district officials thought the process through. For example, students figured out how to bypass safeguards to surf the Internet. And Ratliff, a former teacher, pushed for giving high school students laptops, rather than iPads, as a  device more suited to the kind of academic work they needed to perform.

Neither of the two investigations covered the months before the bidding process that were described in the emails, a new controversy almost certain to spur one or more board members to seek yet another probe into the bidding.

But the biggest question now may be: Can Deasy survive this latest episode, which has drawn the ire of persistent critics, including the teachers union, UTLA, which has complained from the beginning that the district was squandering an enormous amount of money for technology at the expense of teachers who haven’t had raises in seven years.

The union has also led the charge of criticism against Deasy in recent days for the rollout of another computer-based system, the student progress tracking system known as MiSiS, which has disrupted the start of the school year for thousands of students by sending them to the wrong — or no — classes.

With district and union negotiators now discussing a new labor contract, UTLA has not missed a chance to excoriate Deasy for any perceived misstep.

Even after the Los Angeles Times printed an incomplete account of Deasy’s action last night, the union issued a statement saying, “John Deasy needs to publicly explain his role in awarding the iPad contract to Apple and the curriculum contract to Pearson.  Deasy reportedly informed the school board that he is canceling the program that is crumbling around him . . . The superintendent does not get to just say, “never mind’ after all the problems the iPad rollout caused this district.”

While union criticism of the a reform-minded superintendent is business-as-usual, the union position — starting today — takes on greater influence because of the swearing in on a new board member. George McKenna, who won the election to replace Marguerite LaMotte for the District 1 seat, received substantial backing from the union during the campaign.

His membership now gives the pro-union forces on the board greater proximity to the four votes needed to carry any action, including the continued employment of Deasy, whose status is reviewed by the board monthly. As an at-will employee of the district, Deasy can be fired at any time.

Deasy’s letter to the board indicates that a new bidding process will continue the effort to bring technology to district students, many of whom would have no other access to a digital device.

The biggest question before the board now may be: Will Deasy continue with it.

Previous Posts: Teachers union says computer glitch cost students first day; Teachers union calls district contract offer ‘a non-starter’; iPad report shared only with LAUSD officials in secrecy

*Clarifies decision on Apple contract.

In a statement released by UTLA shortly after the failed bargaining session — just the third since Alex Caputo-Pearl won the UTLA presidency — the union said the meeting “was devoted entirely to the MiSiS Crisis, because it is taking such a toll on students, parents and educators.”

While a district press release, expressed frustration about not making any headway on teacher salaries.

“Teachers deserve more money, and LAUSD wants to see that they get it now,” Vivian Ekchian, the District’s chief negotiator said in the statement.

The district has proposed giving teachers a three-year deal with raises of 2 percent over the first two years and a 2.5 percent increase in the third year, with raises conditional on the financial state of the district.

But without improving the district’s most recent offer, which UTLA has called a “non-starter,” the union says there wasn’t much to discuss.

Instead, UTLA used the meeting to lay-out a proposal aimed at solving the problems caused by MiSiS, which has left thousands of students without proper class assignments for more than a week. The plan includes forming an advisory Joint Technology Committee “with an equal number of parents, teachers, administrators, and clerical staff to explore more efficient and effective ways of adopting, purchasing and implementing school technology systems.”

It also calls for extra IT support for staff, additional compensation for administrators and counselors who have worked overtime to enroll and program students, and halting the grade-keeping component of the new system.

Caputo-Pearl said, “Again and again the superintendent makes decisions in a bubble and as with the iPad fiasco, it is students, educators and parents who are paying for his mistakes.”

In response to LA School Report’s story that Superintendent John Deasy plans to hire his own liaison on MiSiS, Caputo-Pearl said, “it would be a typical Deasy move.”

Deasy is under fire again over the district’s one-to-one iPad program. An internal report by the LAUSD committee which provided oversight of the tablet rollout — leaked to the LA Times — found it was “beset by inadequate planning, lack of transparency and a flawed bidding process.

The next bargaining sessions are scheduled for Tuesday, September 2 and Thursday, October 2.

Previous Posts: LA Unified computer problems hampering special ed teachers; Teachers union blasts Deasy again for new computer system; UTLA’s Caputo-Pearl: ‘Our goal is to win a good contract’