Vantage Point: LAUSD bill--Politics trumped policy 

As the 2005-06 legislative session drew to a close, the California Legislature voted to pass Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Núñez’s Assembly Bill 1381. This is the hotly contested bill that changes the governance structure of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Fortunately, the final version of the bill is much better than the original in that it no longer calls for replacing the elected board with one appointed by the mayor. However, it still reduces the authority of the board, disenfranchises voters, blurs accountability and creates a number of governance and legal problems that will hamper effective management of the district.

The passage of this bill was a triumph of politics over policy. In moments of rare candor, several members of the Legislature openly admitted that this was the most politically leveraged bill they had ever seen. Privately, legislators and their staffs expressed serious concerns about the bill. Publicly, many of those same legislators voted yes. In the three hours it took to get the 41 votes needed for passage in the Assembly, legislators were called into Speaker Núñez’s office one at a time to meet with Núñez and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. One can only imagine the political arm-twisting and horse-trading that took place in those meetings in order to get the votes needed.

The fact that it was so hard to pass a bill that had the support of the speaker of the Assembly, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the governor is a testament to the effectiveness and tenacity of the opposition, led by LAUSD and CSBA, as well as to the numerous flaws in the bill itself. Many school board members—recognizing that a threat to the legitimacy of school boards anywhere is a threat to that legitimacy everywhere—went above and beyond the call of duty by repeatedly communicating their opposition to AB 1381 to the Legislature and the governor. I am personally grateful for the active involvement and dedication of these members.

At the same time, the triumph of politics over policy shows both a weakness in our political structures and a disconnect between our elected representatives and their constituents. No legislator would ever admit that their vote is not their own—that they don’t always vote their own consciences. The vote on AB 1381 is evidence to the contrary. It shows that, especially with safe, noncompetitive legislative districts, legislators have more to fear from—and therefore grant more allegiance to—their internal leadership than to their own constituents. That is not purely the fault of the system; it is also the result of a lack of active engagement on the part of those constituents.

We are changing that.

In the campaign to defeat AB 1381, CSBA sent out several Legislative Action Network alerts asking school board members and superintendents to express their opposition to members of the Legislature and the governor. The response was exceptional. Hundreds of school board members acted on the alerts, resulting in literally thousands of messages being received in the Capitol. School leaders also placed numerous telephone calls to Capitol and district offices. This is exactly the kind of effort we need, because we cannot always rely only on the soundness of policy arguments to prevail in the Legislature. Often, even the strongest of arguments need to be supplemented with a willingness to hold our representatives politically accountable.

But as impressive as your response was, I know that it is just the beginning of what CSBA can and must do if we are to continue to effectively influence state education policy. There is strength in numbers, and the numbers are on our side. There are more than 5,000 school board members in California—about 43 for every member of the Legislature. I believe that the activism you demonstrated on AB 1381 is the awakening of tremendous potential.

By pulling together with a “one for all, all for one” attitude and speaking with not just hundreds, but thousands of voices on fundamental education issues, we can hold our legislators accountable. In doing so, we can help ensure that those laws that have a direct impact on our districts—right down to the classroom level reflect—sound policy, and not political expediency.