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Hard Tasks Ahead for New Board

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Times Staff Writer

To help celebrate the swearing-in Tuesday of a reconstituted Los Angeles Board of Education, thunderous marching bands serenaded the crowd and speakers urged unity in seeking to improve academic achievement in the nation’s second largest school district.

But behind the jubilation were signals of difficulties ahead as the seven-member board tries to raise standardized test scores, hire qualified teachers fast enough to satisfy federal standards, ensure campus safety and keep an ambitious construction plan moving ahead -- all in a tough financial environment.

A new board majority, which won election with support from the teachers union, first will have to tackle painful budgetary decisions such as whether to keep the proposed 2 1/2- to five-day furloughs for all school employees. The trustees also will have to achieve a working relationship with Supt. Roy Romer, although he was hired by some of the people they defeated in the spring election.

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“I think it’s definitely going to be a change and a different approach,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. With the elections over and the well-liked Jose Huizar unanimously chosen Tuesday as the board’s president, the Los Angeles Unified School District will have “a much more friendly school board, but a much more unfriendly economic environment,” Guerra said Tuesday.

Those economic worries, exacerbated by the lack of a state budget, were voiced during the midmorning ceremony, which was held in the second-floor foyer of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown.

New board members Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte and Jon Lauritzen and reelected members David Tokofsky and Mike Lansing stepped forward for the oath of office and brief remarks.

‘A United Voice’

“Today, July 1, we see the formation of a school board which is firm in its desire to battle against the odds,” said LaMotte, a former Washington High School principal. This board, which “for the first time has more than one or two educators as members ... will hopefully speak with one voice, a united voice, as we move the agenda for kids’ sake.”

Neither LaMotte nor Lauritzen directly criticized the ousted incumbents, Genethia Hudley-Hayes and Caprice Young. But both alluded to the reform agenda of the two women, who came into office four years ago backed by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and businessman Eli Broad’s Coalition for Kids.

In what some audience members perceived as a sort of psychic payback, LaMotte had Barbara Boudreaux -- the former school board member who was ousted four years ago by Hudley-Hayes -- administer the oath of office to her.

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Lauritzen, a former math and computer science teacher, urged the district not to rely too much on technology. Young, a former IBM executive, had focused on getting high-speed access to the Internet installed in all of the district’s 689 schools and in getting the district’s financial systems the right technology tools.

“Two of the most important groups in our society cannot be replaced by technology,” said Lauritzen, “and that’s parents and teachers.”

LaMotte, Lauritzen and Tokofsky were supported by United Teachers-Los Angeles. Also part of their majority is incumbent Julie Korenstein, who was reelected two years ago with similar support.

But Lansing, who was backed by the Coalition for Kids, defended the actions of the board over the last four years as it hired Romer, reorganized the district’s facilities division, launched a major building initiative and achieved “historic academic gains” in elementary school test scores.

“We held a course, even when we had to make $800 million in cuts over the last 18 months,” Lansing said. Despite the cuts, the 746,000-student district is expected to have a $6-billion annual budget.

Teachers union President John Perez, reached by telephone in New Orleans, where he is attending a convention of the National Education Assn., said he thought the previous board had not done enough to safeguard the district’s classrooms from budget cuts and had spent too much money on lawyers, consultants and a new headquarters.

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Perez said he hopes the board will reconsider some of the cuts, including the $35 million that officials estimated would be saved by the furloughs, which would require most of the district’s 80,000 employees to give back 2 1/2 days of vacation or classroom preparation time. Those furloughs must be approved as part of contract negotiations.

“Our whole hope is that the classroom, as the foundation of the educational system, will become the true priority of this budget,” Perez said.

Romer acknowledged that the new board majority may make some changes in his budget for 2003-04. But he said that he, the board and the teachers union will cooperate to achieve long-term goals to ease crowding on campuses, find talented teachers, and push remedial education for middle and high school students who need help.

“I feel the agenda we are on is not going to substantially change,” he said. “There will be some changes, but I think they will be minor. The thrust of our emphasis on improving education is not going to change.”

Two hours after the swearing-in, the trustees held their first official meeting, in L.A. Unified’s boardroom.

Korenstein nominated Huizar as board president -- an expected choice that had been pushed by the union.

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Huizar was elected to the school board in 2001 with backing from United Teachers and the Coalition for Kids and is seen as a bridge between the two camps. After incumbent Marlene Canter decided not to seek the presidency last week, Huizar was the only person put forward for the post and was elected by unanimous consent.

Huizar, the only Latino on the board and the district’s fourth Latino board president, said he hopes to focus on improving student achievement. Earlier this year, he successfully pushed a plan to revive the troubled Belmont Learning Center project by tearing down the portions that are directly above an earthquake fault.

Election Struggle

The election struggle between the union and the Riordan-Broad group won’t matter much as the new board gets to work, Huizar said after the board meeting.

“This is a huge district with so many issues, so many things to fix,” he said. “So ... the reputation that people come with or the special interests of board members -- that all gets lost after a few months. They get their groove, and are out there, visiting schools and making policy.”

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