The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 1.25 Dolan Twins Funeral Controversy & Why The LAUSD Teacher Strike Will Ripple Through The US

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

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Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you've had a fantastic Friday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show And if you're new here on Fridays, we do things a little bit different. On Friday I try to cover viewer requested stories as well as stories from earlier in the week that I just didn't get around to or I Want to dive deeper into and this Friday is no exception, although it is a little bit different today We have two stories one shorter one longer one That is about what is happening on the internet and how that is bleeding into the real world and something that is just the real world. And both touching on stuff we're going to be seeing more and more of in the future, but with that said, let's just jump into it. The first thing we're gonna talk about today is a viewer requested story from earlier in the week, and it's a little about industry,

but it's also about celebrity, fandom, harassment, overreaction. At the center of this particular story, you have Grayson and Ethan Dolan, who if you don't know are just massively successful on this and several other platforms. And on Saturday they very unfortunately announced that their father, Sean Dolan, had died after battling cancer. Posting this on Instagram and saying, Although we were only granted 19 years here together, it feels like we've spent a million lifetimes together. You are such a strong soul and you've made such a strong impact on more people than you would believe. And while many fans shared condolences with the Dolan twins

There were some kpop fans that mocked their father's death and looking through this it appeared that fans were upset the brothers appeared in a video in June on Emma Chamberlain's channel with James Charles and in that video Grayson Dolan says Oh shit. Oh my god. You said passing out really came up. Which apparently was a joke because in the K-pop world many of the stars are often overworked to the point where they pass out. And so because of this you had some K-pop fans finding this joke to be insensitive. A few people responding on Twitter saying, Another writing, That wasn't funny at all. I honestly love the Dolan twins, but like, y'all should at least admit that what he said was fucked up.

And Grayson ended up responding in now-deleted tweets, saying, I think what I said in Emma's video is being misinterpreted. I was bringing awareness to the disgusting part of the industry that overworks people to the point of exhaustion. I love K-pop. If my tone seemed off-putting, sorry. That was the sarcastic mood of the video. Then going on to talk about wanting positive change, saying health is extremely important. And even going as far as to say, donDon't engage with anyone who has attacked me. "'There was a misunderstanding and I forgive.'" And then following that,

there was backlash over those comments. He apologizes again, says he wasn't trying to desensitize a serious topic. He then later deletes both of these tweets. And the reason I mentioned that previous situation where you had some angry K-pop fans, well, it's because apparently there were some K-pop fans that saw this family tragedy.

And you had some deciding to take this opportunity to make jokes about Sean's death. Tweets like, remember when the Dolan twins laughed about K-pop idols passing out? Who's alive now? Remember when the Dolan twins made fun of K-pop idols for being overworked? Looks like God overworked Sean, karma's a bitch.

Keep in mind, I am not trying to attribute all K-pop fans with these disgusting comments. One, to the people who wrote these comments, I really, really hope you get punched in the throat. And that has nothing to do with the people that you're throwing this disgusting stuff at, being the people who wrote these comments, I really, really hope you get punched in the throat. And that has nothing to do with the people that you're throwing this disgusting stuff at, being the Dolans, it's just not something you do. You're a sad, pathetic person if you got anything

out of saying that. But as I was saying, it's not like it was all K-pop fans. You had people finding the things to be completely disgusting. People writing things like, I want to apologize to fans of the Dolan Twins. Most of us do not react in such an inappropriate manner when someone passes away.

And the way some K-pop stans are acting is disgusting. And there were more, but unfortunately, that is not where the situation ended. There was also controversy surrounding Sean Dolan's funeral. All of a sudden, it appeared online that some fans were posting plans to attend the funeral and turn it into a meet and greet.

You saw the hashtag Sean Dolan meetup party and Sean Dolan funeral party both appearing on Twitter. There was also an Instagram account called Sean Dolan funeral, which has now been deleted, an Instagram account called Sean Dolan funeral which has now been deleted But did post a plan of action writing hey guys So here's the plan if you are on the Sean Dolan funeral list meetup one meet up at McDonald's altogether to get ready in my Hotel room three head to the funeral for pay our respects to Sean by going up to his casket and holding his hand and please Cry five hug the twins Cameron mom family and six speak with the twins after meeting taking pictures, etc

Be nice also following, there were parody accounts posting just really disgusting things about their father. And once again, obviously following all of this, there were a lot of people that were disgusted, know that this is completely wrong. The situation still kept growing to the point that Ethan Dolan had to tweet out, "'If you are a fan of Grayson and I,

"'we love you and appreciate you so much,' "'adding the best way you can support us "'during this tough time is to not show up "'at our father's wake or funeral Thank you guys, and please please please respect my wish Grayson also echoing that statement on his Twitter So this week we ended up seeing this story pop up everywhere But it's just for me this story is kind of the the showcasing of two polar opposites But both being horrible we've gotten to such a point where I mean we've talked about on the show you have

Parents driving their kids to youtubers houses This is the even more extreme horrible version of that if anyone was actually planning on going and I think with how many young people are Watching these creators. I think that there is an issue of not knowing where the line is I'm where you're having people that genuinely think that this person is their friend And I say this not because I'm like all these damn stupid kids I mean as parents or if you're an older person in a younger person's life,

I think it's our job to educate. I mean, for example, this situation's making me think of my own son. My son, back when I would let him watch more YouTube kids, he would watch Ryan Toys review. And when that family came in, my son met Ryan and he thought they were friends. Luckily, Ryan had seen Trey in some videos

and so they actually meshed really well. As these young kids grow up, it is our job as the people that care for them to let them know this is a disconnected relationship. They don't know you and as they get older, all of a sudden you're seeing situations where kids are showing up at people's houses or you have parents that are allowing and enabling it.

So that's just a big thing there. But then on the extreme other end, trolling and or hatred's gotten to such a point that there's no line there either and you have people making fun of someone's father dying. Because some found a comment he made earlier inappropriate. And really there's not a bigger final point other than that. I mean, I could rant for 60 more seconds

about how trolls suck and they're like pathetic. But most of the time when you're talking about trolls, they're so pathetic that even this, like taking a little bit of time to acknowledge a stupid action, they're like, I'm so sad, that's a win. And it's something that in my eyes, I mean, it's something that should be pitied. But you know what, actually, if there is a final note

that I can make, I don't know the Dolan twins, but I do want to send my well wishes and my sympathies over. One, it's already a horrible thing to happen. And two, it's an even worse thing to have to deal with the BS that the world throws at you. I mean, people are already not fully equipped to deal with such a heavy loss, and then you just add the chaos of everything

that's been thrown at them. It's disgusting. But yeah, that's where I'm gonna end this one. My, okay, this has just been unbuttoned the entire time. Great, that's every comment. Please don't, please actually comment on the stories. And the last thing we're gonna talk about today, the main story of this video,

involves the LAUSD teacher strike. And this is a story and situation I've touched on somewhat in a previous video. And you know, looking at that and several other pieces of coverage, I think that there's a big disconnect between the images of strikes and the real experiences in the classroom that led to this happening

in the first place. And even though they've already come to a resolution as of filming this video, the challenges these teachers face aren't just specific to LAUSD. They can be seen all over the country in America's public school system, which is why it likely won't be uncommon to see teachers going on strike more and more.

But with this story to catch you up before we go any further, Los Angeles Unified School District teachers went on strike for the first time in 30 years on Monday, January 14th. And estimates say that 32,000 teachers walked off the job and into the rain to protest, and you had 600,000 students without instructors.

To deal with this, they hired 400 substitutes, 2,000 administrators were reassigned to fill the gaps as best as possible, and you have the LAUSD Teachers Union, UTLA, saying that the district had over 1.8 billion in reserves by the end of the 2017-2018 school year. And a common misconception about this strike is that a lot of people just thought they want more money.

But LA teachers weren't striking just for money. They were looking to reduce class sizes as well as hire more instructors, nurses, librarians, and counselors, and reduce standardized testing. And you have the LAUSD Teachers Union, UTLA, saying that the district had over $1.8 billion in reserves by the end of the 2017-2018 school year.

But there was pushback from the school district who said they do not have the money in the budget to make these types of changes. And prior to the strike, LAUSD superintendent of schools, Austin Buettner, said in an op-ed, "'Over a three-year period that began last July, "'LA Unified will spend about $24 billion "'educating students.

"'Unfortunately, the state's forecasts tell us "'our revenue over that period will be closer to 22 billion "'and we will spend every penny of our reserves about $24 billion educating students. Unfortunately, the state's forecast tell us our revenue over that period will be closer to 22 billion and we will spend every penny of our reserves to cover the shortfall. The often cited $1.8 billion in reserves is already being spent. And before we talk about what deal

was actually agreed upon, I think it's really important for us to hear the challenges from the people actually facing them. And so that's why we reached out to some LAUSD teachers and staff, brought them in and just we asked them questions and let them just talk to us about what they're dealing with. So I'm Wendy. I am a LAUSD school psychologist and I work in the Watsau Central area. My name is Joe. I'm a teacher in LAUSD. I taught at middle school and high school. My name is Brent. I teach middle school. This is my 30th year teaching 8th graders. I also have a group of little 6th graders.

My name is Rosario. I am a middle school teacher for LAUSD. LAUSD is the second largest school district in the entire United States. The average class size has conflicting data, with 26 being thrown around in various publications and the LAUSD website showing numbers ranging from 30 to 43. UTLA contracts also specify caps, which limits how many students can be in a class with variations based on grade and type of class. But after the recession hit back in 2008, the district invoked section 1.5, which allows those caps to be ignored,

citing fiscal crisis. And that section has been called into effect every single year since, and was the biggest pushback for UTLA during negotiation. With teachers wanting section 1.5 eliminated and hard caps on class size enforced. So my current average class size is 43. My first period class is 42 kids.

My smallest class is 39 kids. It is a lot of kids. In the LAUSD system, like our cap number, it varies based on the grade that you teach and the type of school that you're at. And every school that I have taught at, I have taught at least one class per year that is over the maximum cap.

Not this year, but the last two years, I taught AP Government and I had classes of 47. It's really hard to manage a class with so many students and it's really hard to be able to get to all of them. You can't have a connection with all of your students and that's the most important part of teaching. It's very difficult for you to give one-on-one attention or any type of constructive support or criticism or build

relationships with students. We have an 80 minute block schedule with 47 kids that's two minutes per kid and I'm and I'm the period's done. You want a smaller classroom okay now we're going to rotate and we're going to do small class instruction because we have students that are academically really low because of 40 to 50 absences per school year. They don't have their glasses they're going through so much trauma in their home that kind of gives them that intimate time with the teacher to address them at the level that they're in and be able to provide that instruction. Really, the first biggest priority has to do with safety. When you don't have enough space in the classroom, if anyone needs to move or if there's an emergency or if there's an incident and you need to quickly

move to another spot in the room, let's say there's a fight, some kid hits some other kid and then you need to go stop that. It's very difficult for you to move if there's no place to move. The number of people that you would ask when you talk to them about their favorite teacher, it's the teacher that talked to them. It's the teacher that asked them about their home life. It's the teacher that really got involved with them. And when I only have one minute to two minutes per day or per period per student, you're just never going to get the type of connection that you need to affect the student,

to really start to have them believe in themselves, to think that they can do something or they can achieve this. And the one who really needs you the worst, you don't even see it because you can't even get to there. They're quiet, They're withdrawn. But they're overshadowed by the fact that you've got all these other kids that are calling attention to themselves. And I spend an awful lot of my day just putting out brush fires.

Also, there's the issue that many schools only have nurses on campus one to two days a week, which is something the staff hit on when we spoke with them. LA Unified pays for our nurse to be on our campus one day a week. We have a nurse two times a week, which is something the staff hit on when we spoke with them. LA Unified pays for our nurse to be on our campus one day a week. We have a nurse two times a week. That you have discretionary money. If you want a nurse there more days a week, just allocate it out of your discretionary money. I've been to two schools. The previous school I was at was a middle school, and they only had a nurse one day a week. Maybe it was two days. I think they bought the second day. And so I would send kids to the nurse.

And if the nurse was there that day, then they would get seen by the nurse. If not, then they said, oh, I went to the main office and they gave me a Band-Aid. Or I went to the main office and they called my mom. I'm going home. And we're sitting there going, so we can buy paper and pens and we can buy programs for the kids.

We can do field trips or we can have a nurse. We cannot have both. So, yes, we do have a nurse five days a week and it takes most of our discretionary funds to do that. But what else are we going to do? We have one nurse for our 1,100 and so students, and she's there about twice a week. The secretaries that are answering the phones, the ones that are in charge of taking care of the parents and taking care of basically everything in our school, have to take care of our students when they're sick. And usually it just depends on checking their temperature and if they

need band-aids or so or sometimes they just have to send them home. My office is very close to the nurse's office and there's at least five to six kids that are rotating on a daily basis. So now the secretary has to stop what she's doing and start taking temperatures and help the kids that are throwing up, send call parents and then we have parents and phone calls that she needs to address. I was trained on how to use the machine for asthma and how to use an EpiPen. And I'm like, like, damn if I do do it and damn if I don't, because now it's on me because I've technically been trained for it. Why would you send a student to school without having a nurse there?

If anything happens any other day, what are we going to do? Just send them to the hospital, just send them home? That's not safe. Additionally, many campuses only have one psychologist for hundreds or even sometimes thousands of students. And so with just so many young people, it's made it nearly impossible to provide the mental health support needed.

The biggest challenges is being able to meet the deadlines and being able to attend to the IEP meetings, being able to counsel all the students that I have on my caseload, being able to document it, but juggling that with what is faced in the schools. So, typical, especially in your lower economic, socioeconomic status communities, there's a lot of violence that's going on in their communities. Well, especially in your lower socioeconomic status communities, there's a lot of violence that's going on in their communities. Usually you'll have one parent household, but a lot of the trauma that the students come out, it manifests in those ways, through the defiance, through verbal aggression, physical aggression.

So I'm called to go ahead and address these behaviors. It could be one student that keeps roaming around the campus and punching the other students in the face or dropping their lunch, pouring milk on their heads. And then they're trying to escape the school, trying to jump up the fence. And this is elementary school. I have to also address students with suicidal behaviors or threat to others. So when they're harming themselves and have the intent to harm themselves, or when they're harming other people or say a threat, we have to take that very seriously, especially with the days that we're living in. So anytime someone even says shoot or kill, we have to stop what we're doing and follow

a protocol. That protocol takes at least two to three hours to complete, and it happens often. But it takes a village to be able to help these students as a whole and help the teachers in the classrooms. So my biggest challenge is being able to juggle it all, being all by myself. And at times, I'm the only mental health support for 500 students.

I have my colleagues that are the only mental health support for 2,000 students. How? And also another big portion of the UTLA contract is the discussion involving standardized testing with a union negotiating to add a new section to article 25 academic freedom and responsibility. In section 4.0 would state teachers shall be provided the academic freedom and unilateral professional discretion to determine what assessments are used in their classroom, how assessments are used in their classroom, and when assessments are used in their classroom. And for those that don't know, standardized testing requires a teacher to shift curriculum to test preparation. And so with 11 LAUSD tests and 10 state and federally mandated tests, the union is claiming that the education is in constant disruption.

This is my first year as the testing coordinator at my school site. And recently the leadership team, which like as one of the decision-making bodies at my school, asked for the testing calendar so they could like look into it. And basically there's like 20 tests in the spring semester alone. And we're going back to back fast. They're moving so fast and we can't slow down for them. Some of my students cannot keep up and I can't slow down to reteach. I can't slow down to practice the lesson, to do it more than once because we're on a timeline to try to test them. The amount of testing that happens requires the teacher to change course from the curriculum to either stop what they're doing in the curriculum or to

entirely modify their curriculum to match the testing as opposed to do the curriculum. I should be able to be creative in my own classroom, be able to make our lessons fun and not have to drain so much testing into them. And then of course there is the hot button issue of charter school accountability, which is a huge pushing point for UTLA. And for those who aren't aware, charter schools can receive government funding or can be privately operated,

and those that do get funding from the state are able to operate independently and with less regulation from the school system they reside in. They are called schools of choice. Charters are responsible for upholding academic performance and can be shut down if standards aren't met, which means it can often provide a higher quality education,

but at the same time, this can lead to students with low grades or behavioral problems to be dropped from their school. This leads to disputes over where public education funding goes with upwards of $500 million allocated to charters. And so here, teachers are asking for a cap on how many charters the district authorizes. It's not fair to paint the whole charter movement

with one brush. They're not. There's different charters. There's some fantastic charter schools out there, especially the local neighborhood ones. The corporate charters, where they're run more like a business. A huge problem for us as a public school for a number of reasons. And I wouldn't say I want to be clear, not every charter school is bad, but some of the biggest issues that we face with the charter schools that are problematic are things that are like, one, they cherry pick their students. And so if you aren't the best student or if you're a behavior problem, or if your parent doesn't volunteer enough time, or you're an attendance issue for

them, then they drop you from their school. Like students with disabilities, the many charter schools will say, oh, we don't offer those services. So you can't come to this school, or you could come here, but we can't offer you those services. And so then the parents will go, well, I'll just go to LAUSD, which is going to provide those services, so then the parents will go well I'll just go to LAUSD which is going to provide those services which then means the ratio of students with disabilities to standard students is significantly higher it also means that like in each class instead of having a roughly 10 percent students with disabilities to standard students you might have 15 or 20 percent and it just means that there's more differentiation that you need to do more time that you need to spend with each one of those students that you don't get to have when your class is 47 or 46 or 43 about six weeks

into the school year statewide we count the number of kids on our campus and that is our funding for the rest of the year. That's true just about every public and charter school. We noticed for years that right after norm day, a whole bunch of kids would come and enroll in our classes in our school. Where are you coming from? Oh, the charter up the street. And yet the funding for the kids stays at the charter for the rest of the year. So another thing that we've seen with charter schools is that not every charter school but some charter schools is that they'll mad rush to get as many kids enrolled in their school and then when they once norm day is hit and they have their funding then they start

kicking kids out then we didn't get more teachers to come accommodate the students that got kicked out for that, but we do have to take them because we have to, and we can't say no to those students. And so then our class sizes are going to go up, and we didn't get any more funding to get another teacher. These contract negotiations began back in April of 2017. Public school teachers and staff want public education to be a quality education, and they want to be able to compete with school choice, which requires resources, support, and manageable work conditions. But at the same time, you have also had district representatives saying that the growing budget deficit in the current budget is already unsustainable. We're not on strike for the money in our pockets or our benefits.

We're on strike for just a couple of things. Number one, we need a nurse at every school. We have to have that. Having a psychologist for our student every day, having their counselors there every day, making sure that every student has the bare minimum, all of the needs are met. That's what we want for them. Number two, a counselor cannot handle a caseload of 750 plus students and serve the kids and keep them from just even killing themselves,

let alone catching things before we get to that point. Ideally, it's being fully staffed. Of course, the smaller classrooms because of the reasons that I talked about, making sure that all the students have access to their education. If one, two students are starting to interrupt, but there's 30 that need to manage, now you're just babysitting all day and just managing all these little bodies that have so much trauma, so much things that they have taken in. And lastly, class sizes need to come down to contractual levels. The offer of 6% was already there when we walked out.

We didn't walk out for the money. And we're not out for the money. We're out because I can't teach 42 kids in my classroom and give them the education that they deserve. We really want to focus on class sizes, test scores, making sure that our students are safe. When we're out there, we want them to know that this is for them, that we are fighting for their education, for them to be able to be heard in a classroom, for us to be able to answer all of their questions in one class period.

And it's crazy because I have a line of students. I mean, I've made my room so decorative and so welcoming for the kids that I have a line of students that wanna come and sit with me and just have that one-on-one conversation. And they know that they win stuff, that they get to learn stuff. They're very excited about implementing it

in their classrooms and with their other friends. So that's very exciting for me I just want more of that because I can't do it all by myself while trying to meet deadlines and also trying to Address all the needs of the school personally for me I would take zero dollars and and I would rather have the other things the The six percent is is not that substantial compared to making my working conditions better or making it better for students to be more successful. Those are much more important to me personally, which is why even when the district offered 6%, we were like,

no, that's not really going to be good enough. You can't just buy us off. We want these other things that are important to public education. That's what doesn't make sense to me, is how is it that we have partial people, but yet you still have all these standards that we meet to meet and all these deadlines that we have to meet, but not giving us the equipment that we need in order to be successful. And I feel like we're being set up to fail and that's not okay. I try my best to talk to my students,

to make them feel heard, to let them know to stand up for themselves, to let them know that we're out here for them. And they know that. And that's all that matters. They know that we're out here for them. I don't want to say that I welcomed the strike because nobody welcomes this.

But this is a fight we've been having for at least 10 years, more like 20. It's time that we have this fight and we are all in. Now with all of that said, hearing from the people that were actually striking, since we recorded those videos, a deal has been made. And the tentative UTLA contract addresses much

of what we've discussed today. Section 1.5 has been removed. Class sizes will reduce over the next three and a half years to fit new contractual levels with ultimately four less students per class by 2022. For the 2019-2020 school year, the district will hire 150 full-time nurses. And then the following year, the district will hire at least another 150 full-time nurses, which, and this is the big thing here, will provide

a full-time nurse at every school five days a week. The district will also hire at least 17 additional full-time counselors by October 1st, 2019, allowing the district to maintain a counselor service ratio of 500 to 1 per secondary school. Additionally, in the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, a joint UTLA-LAUSD committee will be created and tasked with identifying all district assessments. And that committee will develop a plan to reduce the amount of assessments by 50%.

There's also a 6% salary increase. First 3% is a retro salary increase for the 2017-2018 school year. And the other 3% salary increase is retro to July 1st, 2018. Additionally, the Board of Education will vote on a resolution calling on the state to establish a charter school cap and the creation of a Governor's Committee to charter schools at the next BOE meeting. Ha! And that is where we are. Now with all of that said and hearing from the people we heard today, I do want to pass the question off to you.

What are your thoughts on this specific situation at hand, the things that were being discussed, the challenges, and now this resolution? And also, what are your thoughts in general regarding the public school system, the charter schools out there? And I'd really love to hear from you, whether you're a parent of students,

you are a student yourself, you are a teacher. Any and all thoughts, I'd love to hear from you, but that is where today's video is going to end. And of course, remember, if you like this video, you like our dives into the news, looking at the world, let us know. Hit that like button. And also, if you're new here, welcome. If you want to join the family, you want to make sure you get more of these deep dives in your future, hit that subscribe button, maybe ring that bell to turn on notifications. Also, if you're not 100% filled in, if you missed yesterday's Philip

DeFranco show, the Extra Morning News Deep Dive, you can click or tap right there to watch those. But with that said, of course, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco Show, The Extra Morning News Deep Dive. You can click or tap right there to watch those. But with that said, of course, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces and I'll see you Monday.