L.A. mayor calls for control of state’s largest school district 

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District, unveiled April 18 after months of speculation, calls for the state Legislature in Sacramento to strip the local school district’s board of education of most of its authority and hand those powers over to a 28-member council controlled by Villaraigosa himself.

Although the city and the school district share the same name, LAUSD’s boundaries extend far beyond the city limits to take in 26 other cities as well as unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County. The district is governed by a seven-member board elected by voters in regional districts.

Villaraigosa’s plan would limit the elected board’s authority to oversight of student discipline, transfers and issuance of an annual “accountability report card.” Control of the district’s multibillion-dollar budget, personnel matters – including appointment of the district’s superintendent – labor relations, instruction, curriculum and other matters would devolve to a “council of mayors,” with the Los Angeles mayor wielding dominant power under the framework scheme that he has proposed. Twenty-seven cities and the county board of supervisors would be represented in proportion to their percentage of the district’s population; since 80 percent of the people reside in Los Angeles, Villaraigosa would hold 80 percent of the power. The mayor is pursuing authority from the state Legislature for this experiment in school district governance for a six-year period, seeking to avoid the district-wide referendum that would be required to dissolve the elected school board.

“Mayor Villaraigosa’s proposal goes against the principle of representative government by a locally elected governing school board,” CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin said. “CSBA supports mayoral collaboration with school boards, and in fact encourages governance teams across the state to foster and maintain positive working relationships with their city and county officials. Our schools need civic and government leaders, like Mayor Villaraigosa, to focus on municipal issues such as crime, health care and affordable housing so that our schoolchildren can thrive in their learning environments.”

Villaraigosa’s speech lacked any specifics with any direct bearing on student achievement, but in fact the district has made great strides in that regard. For example:

• LAUSD’s ranking on the state’s Academic Performance Index has grown 30 percent in recent years – better than many other urban districts or the state as a whole.
• The number of district schools scoring above 600 on the API has risen 64 percent in the past six years, while the schools below 400 have fallen from 53 percent.
• Ninety-two percent of the district’s teachers are fully credentialed and “highly qualified” under the No Child Left Behind Act, 14 percent more than just three years earlier.

“While the mayor promotes his strategy as an effort to preserve the voters’ voice in an elected board, it remains a mayoral takeover, plain and simple. The plan would strip the school board of its legal authority to oversee the district’s $7 billion annual budget, set policies for the local schools, and hire and fire the superintendent,” Plotkin said.

“Even if the mayor’s proposal moves forward, it is guaranteed to be tied up in the court system as the legal issues are resolved. Instead of spending the next two to four years attacking the school district and playing politics, we call upon the mayor to work with the LAUSD board and staff to improve teaching and learning.’