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Via Los Angeles Times | By Steve Lopez 

This is not exactly a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story, but it sort of is.

Monica Ratliff was a reasonably happy teacher at San Pedro Elementary School on the edge of downtown Los Angeles.

“I just love the classroom,” said Ratliff, for whom teaching was a second career.

The Ivy League-trained lawyer had been working at San Fernando Valley Legal Services in Pacoima but decided a better way to help people escape poverty would be to teach. So she went back to school (UCLA) for a teaching degree and started her new career in 2001.

“I love schools, I love the environment, I love what you’re doing in there, and I love the kids,” Ratliff said.

But she didn’t love the way the district was managed, or the way edicts were imposed on teachers without full consideration of the effects, and she suspected there was a lot of waste in the L.A. Unified’s roughly $7-billion budget.

Read the full commentary here.