The Deal Done; a Done Deal. Dum-de-dum-dum.

Note: 4LAKids normally goes out late Saturday, but events are transpiring fast and furious – and I've begun to organize my thinking. Perhaps I and all the rest of us are overreacting to what we don't know – but we are so used to being treated this way by LAUSD it has become a modus operandi.

We have seen neither a plan nor legislation from the Mayor and his homies in Sacramento. But my phone doesn't stop ringing as media types ask me what I think – and organizing those thoughts as of 7AM Thursday seems like a good idea.

P.O.W.E.R.S.: Pre-write, Organize, Write, Edit, Revise and Share. Sometimes one can't wait to share! – smf

THE MAYOR'S/LEGISLATOR'S/TEACHER'S UNION DEAL is unquestionably a step in the right direction …for all the wrong reasons.

GOOD NEWS: The mayor has set down the gun he has been toting in his self-declared "war" with the school district and is at least talking to people.

BAD NEWS: He's talking to the wrong people at the wrong time in the wrong venue.

A back room deal that creates a blueprint for paradise is no less a back room deal.

This is a pure political compromise to salvage a doomed-to-failure agenda — struck with state legislators and union leaders in Sacramento – 400 miles from LAUSD – upon which it is imposed. The Board of Education wasn't in the room. Parents and Principals – the folks theoretically being empowered – were not in the room. Students? Students are never in the room!

After a year of rhetoric, bombast and a "leaked" 42 page draft plan that even the mayor wouldn't endorse we are left with a "done deal" …and legislation that will be hastily written in the 36 hours before the legislative deadline.

This isn't "No Agenda Left Behind"; maybe Antonio's plan – or lack thereof – should be mercifully allowed to fail.

Yesterday (Wednesday) night Mayor Villaraigosa was scheduled to meet with the mayors of six other cities in LAUSD for a long scheduled public discussion of his plan – and their plan - with parents, students and community members. The other mayors were there. Parents, students and community members were there. The Mayor of Los Angeles didn't show up.

The California Constitution says: "No school or college or any other part of the Public School System shall be, directly or indirectly, transferred from the Public School System or placed under the jurisdiction of any authority other than one included within the Public School System." It continues: "No public money shall ever be appropriated for the support (of) any school not under the exclusive control of the officers of the public schools."

What part of "No" is it that the mayor, the legislature and union leadership don't understand? - smf