School Board Was Right To Take Stand On
L.A. Hotels
Los Angeles Business Journal - March 24 2008
By Greg Good

The Los Angeles Unified School District board recently passed a resolution that expresses support for Los Angeles hotel workers and discourages LAUSD staff from booking events in hotels boycotted by local community and labor groups. Los Angeles-area hotels currently being boycotted include the Four Points Sheraton LAX, the Hilton LAX and the Wilshire Plaza.

The opinion pages of the Business Journal have aggressively criticized the board’s action and the critique goes something like this: the district’s job is too important for the board to “waste precious time” on labor disputes “wholly unrelated to public education.” These criticisms, unfortunately, reflect narrow and counter-productive analysis that conveniently ignores fundamental realities.

The notion that the school board stepped out of its purview by taking this position fails to account for the fact that LAUSD is a customer. As such, it has every right and is, in fact, obligated to think critically about its relationship – and criteria for contracting – with outside parties.

Some pockets of the business community frequently disregard this guiding premise. The truth, however, is that the public (i.e., LAUSD, City Hall, etc.) is a customer and the customer is always right. Besides, in a situation like this, where LAUSD has previously given substantial business to the currently boycotted hotels (last year alone, it spent over $390,000 at the Four Points Sheraton, LAX Hilton and Wilshire Plaza), it is impossible to remain neutral. To not take this position would, in effect, be taking a position.

Also, it’s important that LAUSD, as a customer, consider where it takes its business because it needs to get its business done. Understandably, therefore, it would be – and should be – alarmed by the possibility of:

• Having union employees refuse to attend events because labor disputes exist at the venue,
• Putting union employees in the compromising position of crossing picket lines at the venue, or
• Having its event disrupted by the actions that often accompany labor disputes.

Education challenges

That said, independent of these practical realities, the criticism of the board’s resolution invokes an even larger question about the challenges facing public education. For almost 10 years, I had the wonderful opportunity to spend time in classrooms and schools all over Los Angeles and across the country. Part of that time was spent as a classroom teacher in Inglewood and Compton Unified School Districts, while the other part was spent as Executive Director of Teach For America/Los Angeles (an experience that afforded me the chance to visit schools, teachers and administrators from the South Bronx, to the Mississippi Delta, to East and South L.A.). In both capacities, I saw first-hand an immutable truth: poverty impacts schools and classrooms in an excruciating way. To be sure, it can be overcome, it is often overcome – and all kids can learn. Nonetheless, on a macro level, households without healthcare, households without disposable income or disposable time to work on homework, and households saddled with the grinding stress of poverty, invariably send schools children with heightened needs and heightened challenges. To disregard this connection and its impact on the LAUSD is, frankly, naïve.

Therefore, if we consider the fact that Los Angeles-area hotel workers earn, on average, almost 25 percent less than hotel workers in other comparable U.S. cities, such as New York and Las Vegas, we can begin to see why public officials would be interested in what happens prospectively between local hotel workers and owners. More specific to the issue at hand, when we consider the fact that many hotel workers have children who attend LAUSD schools, we can see why the board would have an acute interest in how well those hotel workers can provide for their families.

As a city and society, we are poorly served by the assumption that critical social endeavors exist in a vacuum. This is most poignantly true in the case of public education, where we increasingly ask schools to fill countless gaps in the social safety net – and the price of myopic, one-dimensional thinking is nothing short of individual and societal failure.

The LAUSD board has an exceedingly difficult job, requiring its members to do everything from determining whom the district should contract with, to employing leadership and advocacy around citywide issues that affect its ability to accomplish its mission. The board members took a logical and courageous step in passing this resolution – and they should be applauded for it.

Greg Good is senior communications specialist for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.