L.A. school board votes to buy out David Brewer's contract

The Los Angeles Board of Education today has voted to buy out Supt. David L. Brewer midway through his four-year contract to run the nation’s second-largest school system.

No decision on a successor was announced, but it is widely expected that Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C. Cortines will accept the position on at least an interim basis. Cortines relayed through a spokesperson that he would have no comment at this time on the district’s leadership situation.

Brewer, 62, announced Monday his willingness to accept a buyout, one week after Board of Education President Monica Garcia made it clear she would seek to replace him. Brewer's contract entitles him to an 18-month buyout, which apparently could cost in excess of $500,000 including salary and expenses. But no details of the cost were immediately available.

Garcia -- and some of Brewer's critics -- have said the superintendent has not moved quickly enough and effectively enough to improve the school system. Brewer has pointed out that gains on test scores this year well outpaced the state as a whole and that the district last month successfully passed its largest bond issue ever. Since coming aboard eight months ago, Cortines has managed day-to-day operations as well as long-term planning for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Cortines, 76, brings with him one of the longest resumes in education, a stark contrast to Brewer, a retired Navy admiral with a passion for helping children but no direct experience in public education.

-- Jason Song and Howard Blume

Comments

[froby]

Brewer gets $500k for doing a junky job? Has to hire another person to actually run the district and now the kids pay. $500k would pay how many salaries for how long? PLEASE STOP PAYING OFF LOSERS!!!
STOP GOLDEN PARACHUTES!

[froby]

Brewer got his $500k. Now we are left holding the bag.
I wish the LAUSD would not give bozos a "Golden Parachute" for doing a junky job. Then he threatens a racially biased lawsuit and BLAMMO he has his dough and is gone.

[matt]

brewers comments about "discrimination" are a cheap shot for poor performance. saying those words are only inflamatory and serve his self interest to insure his buyout becuase between the lines brewer is saying in effect he will sue the city for "discrimination" which will cost far more than the buyout. its very very cynical what his has said and it is totally unecessary to get his blessed buyout. it shows he was always the wrong man for the job. hopefully many regular people like myself can see through the cynisim here, shame on him.

[S. Kincaid]

Yet another boondoggle by the School Board and LAUSD. Why was this man hired if he had no educational experience??? What does this say about the priorities of those who are supposed to be guiding the district? More money wasted, more lost opportunities.....Shame on you all, Board Members. Once again, the kids are the losers. It's not Brewer's faulit, IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!

[Oscar Y. Harward]

California taxpayers should be delighted for another ‘bailout’. It seem that all government employees and/or legislators fail to understand the local, state, and national state affairs of our financial crisis. Go ahead and spend this California money; just do not call on US taxpayers to bail you out. What and when is the next financial disaster? Why do you government elected and appointed officials extend contracts so long? Why do businesses and/or governments fail to install a good or bad performance clause in any and all contracts? How much money can government afford to spend? When will it end?

[j burk]

Way to go LABE... you've gone from a diansaur to a fossil!

[Observer]

Ray Cortines is incredibly dedicated and will certainly work toward providing kids a quality education. That said, we need to do one of two things or maybe both:

1. Get rid of the school board, as it's function has only served to politicize the school district with multiple and often politically conflicting interests . . . . or

2. Have a singlularly elected head of education (an elected superintendent) where the requirement is experience teaching.

[Toni]

It's really nice that the district has money to buy out his contract - especially when they have no more money left to buy essentials like paper and books. Good job on hiring him and buying out his contract. I wish I could get a job that paid that much and have no experience for. I wish more board members would lose their jobs - especially after having one scandal after another - Is that payroll system fixed, how is that Belmont learning center working out? Teachers will get pushed out next year because....there is no money left. Great job guys!

[you have to be kidding]

There are two kinds of Superintendent’s those who have failed and have been bought out; and those who haven’t been given enough time to fail. The system is scam, local boards without a clue are given vast state funds with no accountability and wave goodbye as it walks out the door. The students who dropout is the only ones who know what are going on.

[Peter]

Brewer was a total disaster, but if you are blaming him, your focus is in the wrong place. The School Board is to blame here - 100%. They should all have the dignity to resign. Also, do not confuse the $500k due to Brewer with a "golden parachute." This is taxpayers paying Brewer the remainder due under the contract the Board gave him. That's not Brewer's fault. Now the lazy Board will likely rush to give the job to Cortines, another LAUSD insider, and pay him as much or more than Brewer instead of looking for the best talent throughout the nation.

[Janet]

HELLLO PEOPLE....Monica Garcia is a puppet for Villaraigosa and Huizar. Look at all the money Huizar wasted when he was president of LAUSD and he did nothing but buy an expensive toliet for his new office. This is all corrupt BS. Villaraigosa wanted his boy Cortines in so like every election so far he promises and makes idiots like Garcia do as he says. This is why LA is the laughing stock of the nation. The 2nd largest city has the biggest morons running every entity. Sad how far below standards LAUSD has fallen starting from Huizar.

[Pam]

Let the kids run the department - I bet they could do a better job.

[gus]

Next time you give someone a contract be sure to include the words "based on preformance" when paying severance pay. its ashame to see all that money go waste on one ill performing person. I wonder how many books that could had bought. its time to tear down LAUSD, its too polictical and it no longer serves the children. we need local boards to serve the publicand our kids.

[AGEEPOO]

I guess your mayor got his way. He never wanted Brewer in that seat, and he never wanted Obama in the White House. I want to see what the next person will do with a school system that has been substandard for approximately twenty years. Teach english in the schools, and stop printing school lessons in two different languages. If parents start home schooling their children, this school system would be broken.

[sethook]

Failing while leading has become one of the newest "Cottage Industries" in the US. Run in promising the world and bail out under a golden parachute when things don't go so well. What better way to pad the ol' retirement fund and head off into the sunset.

[Brandyn Pierce]

I do not think it is fair to say Supt. Brewer did nothing during his tenure as Superintendant of Schools... In fact if you do some research you will see that he did much to improve the school district.. to name a few:

-Highest Academic Gains among the major CA school districts - 21 points in Academic Performance Index.. compared to 14 point average gain for the state.
-Dropout rate declining, retention is increasing.. largest 12 grade class since 1979 (34,768)
-Most schools to reach the state goal of 800 on the CA Academic Performance index in the last 9 years.
-Passed the largest school bond in US history.
-started the Innovation Division and formed partnerships with L.A. Schools and the Urband League and LMU.

This just names a few....you can e-mail me at elderbcp@aim.com for more on what he has done....

[jw]

of course brewer will resign. he gets paid not to work. has the LA school board ever heard of performance reviews? that's what all us regular folk have to work to. brewer should donate his salary to buy school supplies or give teachers bonuses.

[Cecil]

Who hired Brewer? They must go too after they initiated this disaster.

[Ron]

There are so many grammar and spelling mistakes on this blog posting, I wonder if these folks are LAUSD products? Wouldn't that be ironic? Well, not in the true sense of the word, of course. Frankly, you can't criticize Brewer entirely for bailing out on the job. Once he signed on, he probably realized immediately that he was surrounded by an incompetent and corrupt bunch of knuckleheads who couldn't run a lemonade stand, let alone a school system.

[Jackie]

Observer I agree with you BUT I don't think the criteria for a superintendent should be teaching experience. A superintendent is first and for most a business manager with a vision for success. Superintendent's should have management and budget experience. Teaching experience is a plus but being a good teacher doesn't mean you can manage a $20 billion/ 700,000 student district.

[cbradley]

The problem is, you can't fix a problem in two years that took over twenty years to create. Brewer was playing against a stack deck, he never had a chance. The Public School System needs a total overhaul. Also, and lets be honest, there is a whole Mexican contigent that didn't want him in office in the first place. I honestly don't know what can be done to fix the problem. I know we definitely have to fix relations between Black, Mexican, and Asian, the people that interact in public schools. We need to get it together.

[stefanie]

Interesting how everyone thinks Brewer should have a contract with a performance clause. I agree. But so should our unionized teachers. Can't buy out the bade ones or get rid of them. Sure, they don't make $300,000, they're only responsible for our precious children. Priceless.

[Ticked]

I have a suggestion: Get back to the way school's used to be run and should be run! Let the principal take charge of the school and the teacher's take charge of the classroom's. It has become a bureaucracy that has no educational abilities while draining the taxpayer. The schools functioned fantastic without the bureaucracy and politics getting in the way. Enough tax dollars spent, enough tried and failed policies, enough putting teacher's salaries on the line when the root of the problem is that the bureaucratic level has failed. I say let Brewer stay on~a contract is a contract~we've dealt with this failed system for so long what is another 2 years, rather than taxpayers suffer for 2 years let the school board suffer with it's decision in taking Mr. Brewer on.

[Broke Teacher]

I'm a teacher in one of the lowest performing schools in District 5. LAUSD just messed up my paycheck, as they have done for thousands of teachers over the years.

I'm not getting paid until February 5, 2009. Happy Holidays, Brewie. If you feel like throwing a couple of bucks my way, I might be able to afford my car to sleep in. The apartment's out, so I hope you feel that you've done an adequate job knowing that nearly homeless children now have a homeless English teacher.

[AR Williams]

I'm way over here in Philadelphia, and we have our fair share of problems with the public schools. But even 3,000 miles away I can see that Brewer was never given an opportunity to get the job done. When I hear "he wasn't moving fast enough" on a system that by all accounts has been one of the worst run school districts in the country for 20+ years, I can at least understand why some would see his ouster as questionable, if not discrimatory. The cards were stacked against him from the get go, and frankly any objective observer certainly cannot knock him for expecting to be paid for the remainder fo the contract he signed.

[Herb]

Brewer walked into, or was enticed into, a setup. Since 1965 we have imported a population that is prolific, does not speak English, is not interested in an academic education. Since 2003 we have given them paper-and-pencil academics and kidded ourselves that they will all graduate college-ready. The worst lying is lying to oneself which is what we do in LAUSD. Brewer himself once said he would need the first year just to figure out the job and then spend the next three years doing the job. He's stolid and slow-moving. A military guy should not have this sort of job in which orders are all subject to negotiation and discussion. Experienced teachers are used to shutting their doors and subverting or modifying any/all reforms that come toward them. No miracle-worker superintendent exists out there for LAUSD as long as we maintain the fiction that all students can and want to learn traditional academics.

[Disgusted in CA]

Monica Garcia's statement “The district is facing the worst financial outlook in 20 years.” has nothing to do with Supt. Brewer's job. He is not to blame for the financial crisis.

I definitely think that this move is racially motivated. It's sad when the numbers don't support firing or "forcing" someone from their livelihood. Mayor AV has wanted control of the school district since he ran for office. What the Mayor's office has to do with schools is beyond me. Next, L.A. will have a Chancellor like DC does. DC will be the model for AV and his cronies.

And when that fails, what then? Offer an "i'm sorry" to Supt. Brewer?

[confucius]

Merry Christmas... Hope you sleep well at night