CSBA board reacts strongly to LAUSD takeover plan
Published: July 1, 2006
The California School Boards Association Board of Directors is voicing strong opposition to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s bid to wrest control of the Los Angeles Unified School District away from its elected board of trustees.
At a previously scheduled meeting in Sacramento just three days after Villaraigosa announced a deal with teachers unions and key legislators June 21 to give the mayor near-complete control over the district, CSBA board members reacted incredulously to the limited details then available on Villaraigosa’s evolving proposal, and they vowed to resist the enabling legislation, Assembly Bill 1381, that Villaraigosa needs to implement his plan.
“The mayor and the teachers union have agreed about governing schools?” asked Bill Farris, a Sierra Sands USD trustee who represents Region 12 north of Los Angeles on the CSBA board. “This is crazy!”
Under the deal Villaraigosa originally announced, committees of teachers and principals at LAUSD’s 790 schools and education centers would make key curriculum and instruction decisions that are now under the seven-member elected school board’s authority—much as teachers had sought under AB 2160 in 2002. A revised draft of Villaraigosa’s new legislation abandoned that language but still assures teachers “an authentic and central role” in those decisions.
“They have slipped in through the back door what they couldn’t get accomplished in 2002,” confirmed CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin.
The Open Court reading program, adopted by the LAUSD school board districtwide over many teachers’ objections and credited with spurring a dramatic increase in elementary reading scores, would be in jeopardy, CSBA board members noted. Other aspects of the takeover would shift important controls over budget and personnel decisions from the elected board either to the school superintendent or to a Council of Mayors representing the 27 cities and unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County served by LAUSD. With 80 percent of the district’s enrollment residing in the city of Los Angeles, the weighted representation formula proposed for the council would give Mayor Villaraigosa effective control over both the council and the superintendent.
However, accountability would be dispersed among the council, school site committees, the superintendent, the trustees and the mayor—who, in addition to the powers given to him by the agreement, already holds considerable influence over students’ learning environment through his responsibilities for public safety, transportation, health care and other city services.
“You want enhanced accountability?” asked CSBA President Luan B. Rivera of the Ramona USD in San Diego County, echoing one of Villaraigosa’s key justifications for the takeover. “Then this bill is the wrong way to go about it.”
“This just goes against the grain of the grassroots work we all are trying to do,” agreed Dr. Susan Heredia, Director-at-Large, Hispanic, of the Natomas USD in Sacramento County.
David Tokofsky, a member of both CSBA’s and LAUSD’s governing boards, cited conflicts of interest for the mayor over issues such as selecting sites for new schools and litigation between the school district and the city, and he compared the arrangement to the 19th century “spoils system” of political patronage. A provision of the takeover plan that would give the mayor near-complete control over some three dozen schools as a demonstration project is “essentially an inner-city breakup” of the district, he said.
Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez is steering the legislation that would authorize LAUSD’s takeover by Villaraigosa—who himself served as the Assembly Speaker from 1998 to 2000. After a hearing in the Senate Education Committee on June 28, AB 1381 would advance to the Appropriations Committee and the Senate floor in August. If it survives that, the measure would face only a concurrence vote in the Assembly before becoming law next January, because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed it before a bill had even been written. However, legal challenges are also possible if it is enacted.
“This is the fastest track I think anyone has ever seen” for such important public education legislation, LAUSD board member Tokofsky noted.
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