Carefully orchestrated visits to school sites are not going to give Alberto Carvalho the information he needs to successfully run the LAUSD.

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The LAUSD's new Superintendent Alberto Carvalho visits a classroom.
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"How can he truly help if he doesn't see the reality." - LAUSD Parent on Parents Supporting Teachers

Whenever an executive from my employer's corporate office schedules a tour of our facility, an email is sent out to ensure that the plant is cleaned up appropriately. I have never understood the value in this as the interested party is not seeing how the plant operates, only that the employees know what condition it is supposed to be kept.

At least in this example, there is no downside to the action. While some resources may be diverted from production, the plant is being brought up to the condition that it should be in, even when a VIP is not visiting. The same cannot be said for how LAUSD's army of bureaucrats prepared for visits to school sites by the new Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, during his first week on the job.

According to a report from one school that was on Carvalho's itinerary, "They watered the grass nonstop for a week, mopped the floors of the rooms he was gonna be in, they put new tables in those rooms too then removed them the next day." Another parent responded that "They decorated it all nice for him to come and removed it the next day! They literally put down bark to make it look nice and threw it in trash bags after he left!"

To temporarily replace tables for a visit by the Superintendent is insulting to the students who spend every day in that classroom. The fact that they would put in temporary landscaping for a visit and discard it after the Superintendent left should offend every taxpayer whose money was literally thrown away.

It is also interesting to note which schools were selected for the itinerary. While the community at Pio Pico has been trying to get representatives from the district to discuss the scheduled closure of their campus, this school was not visited by the incoming Superintendent. Instead, he visited GALA, the school that will take its place on the campus. This reinforced the feelings at Pio Pico that their voices did not matter as they were being pushed from their campus with zero transparency.

Did Carvalho know that he was being given nothing more than a dog-and-pony show as he was shown around the district? His previous employer was the Miami-Dade County Public School District, which is the fourth-largest school district in the country, so he must be aware of how bureaucracies work. With this knowledge, he should know that the only way to get the information he needs is to make unscheduled, unannounced visits without the district's bureaucrats handling exactly what he will see and who he will speak with.

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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He is an elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and serves as the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD's District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him "a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles." For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.

Authors Website: http://www.changethelausd.com/

Authors Bio:

Carl Petersen is a parent, an advocate for students with special education needs, an elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council, a member of the LAUSD's CAC, and was a Green Party candidate in LAUSD's District 2 School Board race. During the campaign, the Network for Public Education (NPE) Action endorsed him, and Dr. Diane Ravitch called him a "strong supporter of public schools." For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.

Carl Petersen is a father of five, including two daughters who are on the autism spectrum. His involvement in education issues began when the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) refused to provide services that his daughters' teachers agreed they needed. It was then that his family was forced to sue the District.

At the end of two days of mediation at the District's headquarters, he turned to his wife, Nicole, and said: "somebody has to change this." His wife replied, "What about you?" He accepted the challenge and has run twice for a position on the LAUSD School Board. His platforms included advocacy for special education issues and strong support for public education. In his last election he was endorsed by Americans for Democratic Action Southern California, SFV/NELA Chapter of the National Organization for Women, and Network for Public Education (NPE) Action, a group co-founded by Dr. Diane Ravitch.

When Carl is not working or engaging in activism, he enjoys hanging out at theme parks with his family. He took his oldest daughter to Woodstock '94 when she was two and used to play in several local bands. If he is at his home in Northridge, California, there is a dog at his feet and he is probably writing one of his blogs which have been published in OpEdNews, Medium, Patch, and K-12 News Network.