A Sense of Urgency
In event at L.A. Valley College, Villaraigosa says he wants fast action on school takeover plan
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his school takeover plan received a robust, generally positive reception last week in a San Fernando Valley area that has strongly favored the breakup of not only the school district but the city itself.
"These schools need a sense of urgency, of reform," the mayor told more than 800 people attending the third of four local Town Meetings he's holding to discuss state Assembly Bill 1381, which would give the mayor increased authority over the schools. In his presentation at Los Angeles Valley College, Villaraigosa urged Sacramento lawmakers to act on the school bill before the current legislative session recesses August 31.
The measure, sponsored by Democratic State Sens. Gloria Romero and Richard Alarcón, would, among other changes, give the mayor strong authority over the school district and move the power from the school board to the superintendent. Asked why he was putting the issue to the legislature rather than to the local ballot, Villaraigosa said that giving issues like this one to the lawmakers rather than the public at large eliminated prolonged and "costly election campaigns." He also said the change was a matter of "urgency," a word he used frequently during the hour-long Q&A.
The mayor took some 60 questions from the Valley Glen audience, few of which were hostile and most of which seemed supportive of the idea of radically refashioning the city's 700,000-pupil school system and its governance. Many of the crowd seemed to be teachers and school officials, who expressed their longstanding impatience with what they described as decades of unresponsive downtown bureaucracy and what some alleged was systemic corruption within the L.A. Unified School District.
Villaraigosa, who's been attacking the district's management relentlessly for weeks now, demurred on the idea that the district's alleged ineptitude was really criminal. But he did call the LAUSD bureaucracy "a black hole, in which things can fester - [a culture] with both perceived and very real flaws." He spoke of creating "a culture of responsibility, in which you have to participate in your child's school," noting that this kind of participation would necessitate a cultural change among some parents.
One listener, who identified herself as a veteran school principal, asked if AB 1381 wasn't really "just a shift from one bureaucracy to another?"
The mayor then dropped the name of British Prime Minister Tony Blair (with whom Villaraigosa had recently conferred on the topic of global warming). Blair, he said, had made epochal changes in England's thousand-year-old bureaucracy. Similar changes had been made in the city's, he added, citing $50 million in recent savings in this year's budget. But, he admitted, "there are few bureaucracies like Los Angeles United's."
Villaraigosa, however, has lately been gathering back pressure from some who feel that a legislative power shift is not the way to go, and that bypassing a vote of the people will shortchange the decision by not giving it the public mandate it needs. On the same day as the Valley hearing, several state and legislative officials said they doubted the legality of AB 1381 as it is currently written. Villaraigosa's supporters said an amended version of the litigation is already available.
Even one of Villaraigosa's key supporters - L.A. real estate mogul Eli Broad - is said to be unhappy with the measure's inclusion of teacher input into curriculum planning - a change which some feel gives the union too much power in running the district. Broad and Villaraigosa, once considered close allies, have recently engaged in testy exchanges of correspondence on this subject. Some of the Democratic state legislators whose votes are needed to pass the measure have also voiced skepticism.
"I don't think the answer is to centralize the decision-making for the L.A. school district in the mayor's office," Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza (D-Carson) told Copley News. Oropeza is a former Long Beach School District trustee.
The LAUSD has been holding its own public information events on the subject, featuring AB 1381 skeptics. Sen. Romero has accused the LAUSD of wasting precious funding on trying to fight her measure. District officials say they have a right to lobby against proposed laws they oppose that would affect their district.
Elsewhere in the Valley, on Tuesday, GOP Assemblyman Keith Richman and GOP State Sen. George Runner re-presented their long-touted proposal to break up the district and let the Valley run its own schools. This plan, however, has already been defeated in the legislature. Such a breakup may be, like the recent Valley secession initiative, an idea whose time has come. And gone.
One sign of this overall attitude shift was the fact that Ron Kaye, editor of the Valley's Los Angeles Daily News, which editorially championed both breakups, was the genial host of the Thursday night Villaraigosa event.
Some people in Villaraigosa's audience said they were not yet persuaded that his was the right answer. But most of these people did voice strong support for major changes in the district's operations.
Nevertheless, if the ideas presented by the Valley Glen audience are any indication, a future Villaraigosa-centered school administration might have to perform a straddle or two. One man who identified himself as a union electrical worker asked, "Didn't the dropping of trades teaching in the public schools bring up gang activities? Bring trades teaching back to the schools."
The mayor responded that he didn't "support the whole school of thought that we should focus on the university" as an after-high-school goal. If he were in charge, he said, he would "give the kids a lot of options. I am a big supporter of vocational education."
He then swerved to attack the LAUSD's claim that its dropout rate is about 25 percent. Outside studies, he said, suggest the rate exceeds 50 percent. "They don't really track the dropout rate," he said, asserting that he would track the rate.
Villaraigosa had told another questioner that he strongly supported college advanced placement courses, as a "focus to get the kids college-ready" for higher education.
The mayor reached an emotional peak when he spoke of how often he is called to a violent crime scene where "the suspect is almost always a dropout - or someone who can't read and write." This, he said, has to be changed.
Published: 08/10/2006
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