Drive til you qualify to be a "mini-philanthropist"

The plan was to have some local Starbucks to distribute gift cards worth $10 simply for buying something at one of the coffee houses.  (And look at the free advertising Starbucks gets from lamestream media for this "generosity"!) Then the recipient could designate the gift card to any LAUSD school of their choice.

The problem is, Starbucks chose all the locations at which you could grab a gift card.  And for some schools in the LAUSD, notably in the West Valley, there isn't a participating SBUX within 15 miles.

Tamar Galatzan, the former Council District 2 hopeful who represents the West Valley on the LAUSD Board who once encouraged her district to make "lemonade" of the lemon-like situations in her region, thinks this is a pretty cool arrangement.  In fact, she's completely down with the fact that her own district residents have to drive far til they qualify for a donor card.

Of the SBUX situation, Galatzan said the following on her Facebook page this morning:

We talked to those in charge here at LAUSD & it turns out the Starbucks/ Wasserman / DonorsChoose campaign is separate from the LAUSD/DonorsChoose/ Wasserman campaign. The campaign that kicks off Monday is Starbucks’ effort to give back to the teachers, parents & communities of the entire LA region. Starbucks is trying to encourage everyday citizens to be mini-philanthropists at their schools.

[Before we analyze the statement--don't you just love that lead-in? "We talked to those in charge here at LAUSD..."  Never has there been a more naked admission that when you vote for an LAUSD Board member, you aren't really voting for someone in charge of the district.]

But back here on earth--to recap, here's what Tamar says the problem is....

She says--and forgive us for not quite catching this the first time around--that the...

Starbucks/Wasserman/DonorsChoose campaign

is separate from the

LAUSD/DonorsChoose/Wasserman campaign.

Which all of us who had never heard of either campaign before were just dying to know.  All in all, a delicious red herring meant to throw mommies far off the blame track and to feel bad that poor Tamar as a Board member doesn't get more say over these kinds of things.

In fact, those of us who watch such things suspect that the LAUSD campaign is the bogus campaign to which District people can point when parents and citizens express curiosity about the Starbucks campaign--the real campaign, whose top purpose is to get people into business-hopeful Starbucks of Starbucks' own choosing, has already been declared a success on TV, and that's all that matters.

So there goes Tamar Galatzan, explaining to her sub-district--which only has 105,000 students--why there are so few Starbucks sites in her own district participating in this program, even if "mini-philanthropists" can spend $20 on gas getting to a Starbucks to make a $10 donation.

At some point it may be important to remember that if you pay property taxes around here--even if you don't have children--you already are a "mini-philanthropist®" to the Los Angeles Unified School District.  On the average LA home, thanks to Prop K and other school bond measures that we've passed over the past dozen years, you pay $555 extra every year on your property taxes--that's beyond what you pay the state--to LAUSD for the sake of educating the kids down the block.  Other districts don't get this; but you voted yourself this philanthropy which other districts don't seem to require.

And believe it or not, you'll continue to pay that $555 each year through 2044--all for school buildings and athletic fields, and not a penny of it goes to either teachers, or books, or other tools of learning.  It all goes to marble, concrete, electricians, astroturf, bleacher seats, and plumbers, most of whom don't even live anywhere nearby.

The Deasy Regime at the LAUSD has been more than anxious to take some more from you.  Deasy's a corporate guy, so he likes to partner with corporations.  In this one, however, some boundaries should have been drawn--literally and figuratively, and very differently, both ways.