Patrick Judd and Lowell Billings: old friendships never die?
For many months school districts all over southern California have been doing Google searches for mysteriously retired superintendent Pat Judd of Mountain Empire School District. They all decided against him--except for a small charter school in Los Angeles.
It seems there's always a charter school with interesting board members who will give a job to a guy who has left his job under suspicious circumstances.
Judd is now a consultant at Accelerated Charter School in Los Angeles.
I looked at the school's web page and was taken aback to see that one of the trustees is none other than Lowell Billings, who is superintendent of Chula Vista Elementary School District in San Diego county, where Patrick Judd sits on the board.
What is Lowell Billings doing on the board of a charter school in Los Angeles, you may ask? It turns out that the world of education is a small one, which helps explain a lot of things, including the lack of new ideas.
I was chagrined, but not surprised, to also find that Charles Oppenheim, of the law firm Foley & Lardner, is on the board. Education attorney firms are given huge amounts of money to protect the status quo in education.
Judd is being paid as a consultant, and he's acting the only way he knows how to act: lots of hostility, little insight. Judd once memorably stated that we've known for a hundred years how to educate kids. This is a man firmly planted in the early 1900's. Apparently he hasn't noticed that kids have changed.
Reports have already started coming out of Accelerated Charter School about Patrick Judd's shenanigans.
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