RESCUE INITIATIVE NEEDED — The state of California is rapidly approaching the point where it can no longer provide a public education for its children. Owing to the state’s dismal fiscal condition, the Los Angeles Unified School District passed a terrible budget last week that will entail laying off teachers, foregoing purchasing textbooks and other learning materials, increasing class sizes, eliminating summer school and full-day kindergarten and curtailing other educational services, which are the very stuff of schools. Yet, during that same week, the LAUSD broke ground for the construction of another new school — Central Region High School No. 16 located at 54th and San Pedro streets! What’s wrong with this picture?

For more than 10 years now, the LAUSD has been on a frenzy invoking its eminent domain powers to displace residents and businesses from their neighborhoods so it could build all manner of fancy new state-of-the-art schools on every piece of land it saw — never mind that the district’s school-age population has been dwindling all the while. Last week’s dual LAUSD acts are an obscenity because we’re facing a situation where we can have more schools than we have teachers!

What is the point in building new schools when we won’t have teachers to teach in them, students to go to them, textbooks and materials to use in them and educational services to provide in them? The LAUSD has $20.1 billion (yeah, billion) in its New School Construction and Modernization Program for new schools, but it has virtually no funds to educate children in them. Why do we need to pass a “parcel tax” to pay teachers? Why can’t some of that construction money be used to buy teachers and counselors and nurses and a decent education for our children in the schools we already have?

I asked these questions of people who are supposed to know, and they said: “School construction funds are bond money (from measures BB, K, R and Y) passed by the electorate through the initiative process for the sole purpose of building and repairing school facilities and they cannot be used for anything else.” I asked: Why not? I was told: “The initiatives that created the bond measures were worded that way and that’s what the people voted for and enacted into law.”

I asked: Can we, the people, change our mind? Can we say we need teachers and educational programs now more than we need new schools and can we, therefore, divert some bond money to where it’s needed most? I was told: “Yes. The people can do anything they want.” Whoa! I then asked: How do we do it? I was told: “Through the same process that created the bond measures in the first place. You need to write a carefully constructed initiative that, in dire financial circumstances such as these facing school districts today, would allow school construction bond funds to be used to pay teachers and deliver educational services. Then get enough people to sign it so it can go on the ballot and then campaign to get the people to vote it into law. That sounds like a long, hard process, but people do it all the time.”

People who know how to write ballot initiatives need to get together and get busy and start crafting this one post haste, because it is an abomination before God for us to be building schools and laying off teachers and delivering a rank, regressive, substandard, 20th century education product to our 21st century kids while we have our hands on $20.1 billion! Shame on us!

IT’S A FLOOR FIGHT! — Rep. Maxine Waters got into a shouting and shoving match with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) June 25 over Obey’s refusal to appropriate $1 million to the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center, at 10925 S. Central Ave. A dispute broke about between the two on the House floor when Waters questioned Obey about his failure to allow the funding and he bellowed at her: “I’m not going to approve that earmark!” Obey, who is attempting to ban “monuments to me” in funding project requests, angrily told Waters: “I am not going to fund your request because you are attempting to circumvent my rule not to fund any project named after a member.”

In seeking to explain the altercation and to rally her colleagues’ support for the center’s funding, Waters argued that the funding would serve an official program in the poorest part of her district — and the nation — and that the center was named for her before she got to Congress. Waters wrote her colleagues: “At a time when unemployment in California and nationally is at record highs, and the recession is more like a depression for the Black and Latino residents of Watts, it seems we would want to fund and support a successful program like the center, which is a national model for employment training opportunities.” She said she told Obey it was unfair to fund private, affluent schools and other groups while denying a successful program serving an impoverished community. She said Obey became angry with her and shouted that he didn’t care about her plea and would not fund her request “and an angry exchange ensured between us.” Thus, the shouting and the shoving.

AT THE COUNTY LEVEL — Acting on a motion by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas last week, the Board of Supervisors called for lowering the two-thirds majority requirement for the Legislature to pass the state budget — a requirement that has caused California’s annual budget morass for as long as anyone can remember. Ridley-Thomas’ motion, approved on a 3-2 vote, instructs the county chief executive officer to work with the county’s lobbyists in Sacramento to reduce the threshold, a change that would require voters to amend the state Constitution.

The Board of Supervisors also supported Ridley-Thomas’ motion to uphold the county Regional Planning Commission’s denial of a conditional use permit for a wireless telecommunications facility on the rooftop of a CVS drugstore in the Windsor Hills area, an issue of significant concern which embroiled more than 700 affected residents in a year-long fight against the proposed erection of a T-Mobile tower in their midst. Score one for the people. That was the first victory for 2nd District county residents in 16 years.

THIS AND THAT — The newly seated state Sen. Curren Price has been appointed to serve on three of the Senate’s most powerful committees: Appropriations, Governmental Organization, and Banking and Finance and Insurance. … Lt. Gov. John Garamendi received the enthusiastic endorsement of the SEIU California State Council this week for his bid for 10th District congressman. Garamendi was running for governor until President Barack Obama tapped 10th District Rep. Ellen Tauscher for a State Department post in April. Since Tauscher’s seat is now vacant, Garamendi is seeking to fill it in an upcoming special election. The 10th District extends from San Francisco’s East Bay area to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES), located in school board member Marguerite LaMotte’s 1st District, has been named by Newsweek magazine 44th among the nation’s top 50 public high schools. Over the years, LACES has received numerous honors and distinctions as both a National Blue Ribbon School and a California Distinguished School. Needless to say, it has a student wait list that stretches from here to Mars.

The students, staff and parents of 186th St. Elementary School in Harbor Gateway recently joined Rep. Waters, Councilwoman Janice Hahn and the International Children’s Choir in launching the “Colors of Love and Peace” children’s book, a 40-page publication containing student-created artwork and messages to promote love, peace and healing to children in hospitals around the world. The book features a foreword written by the Dalai Lama, who was inspired by the students’ art projects. He called it a “bright, cheerful and practical expression of concern for others.”