Is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Pushing To Replace L.A. Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines With John Deasy?
The conventional wisdom in local public education circles was that Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines would retire this spring... well, so much for that. 
LAUSD Deputy Superintendent John Deasy
HollywoodHighlands.org bloggers John Walsh and Miki Jackson and the Los Angeles Times are reporting Cortines could be gone by early next week, with deputy superintendent John Deasy taking over. An L.A. Unified insider told us the same thing, and that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is making all the moves behind the scenes to make it happen.
As reported by the Los Angeles Daily News, Deasy is already making $25,000 more than Cortines and the deputy superintendent took over his boss's office. So the change was destined to come.
People just didn't know it was going to take place so soon.
Just like our inside source, Jackson and Walsh say Villaraigosa and his people told L.A. Unified Board of Education President Monica Garcia in no uncertain terms that Deasy must become superintendent, and pronto.
The L.A. Times reports that Villaraigosa met with Garcia and Deasy on Wednesday to discuss "transition issues."
According to our source, there's now a battle of sorts between Villaraigosa and L.A. Unified Board members over how the promotion of Deasy goes down. Board members, according to our source, don't want to look as if they are the mayor's puppets. Yet Villaraigosa wants to somehow score political points since he's long talked about improving L.A.'s public schools.
As L.A. Weekly reported several months ago, John Deasy is no stranger to controversy.
Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.
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