Villaraigosa, Other Mayors Discuss L.A. Unified Takeover

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and leaders from several neighboring cities met at City Hall on Thursday to strategize about a mayoral takeover of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Villaraigosa pledged to give his counterparts from Carson, South Gate, San Fernando and other cities served by L.A. Unified a hand in drafting legislation that would open the door to him controlling the schools.

The district’s 727,000 students come from Los Angeles and 26 smaller cities, whose leaders want a role in a possible Villaraigosa-led school system.

Villaraigosa said that any takeover plan must have a “voice that includes proportionality and decentralization.”

The Los Angeles mayor and the other officials also echoed a call for an independent “financial and performance” audit of the school system.

City Controller Laura Chick has sought to audit L.A. Unified, a move district leaders call unnecessary.

The mayors and council members of the neighboring cities said their meeting with Villaraigosa was productive, even though it did not yield specific power-sharing proposals.

“We’re waking up to the fact that the bureaucracy has to be pared down,” said Carson Mayor Jim Dear, who works as an L.A. Unified teacher part time.

Councilman George Cole of Bell said his city and others southeast of Los Angeles share a common perception of neglect at the hands of the school system. He hoped the budding collaboration with Los Angeles would change that.

“This meeting was a positive first step to repair a system that is badly broken,” Cole said.

Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer defended the school system, saying it has accomplished far more than critics recognize. Among other things, he said, the district has built new schools, introduced full-day kindergarten classes and raised elementary school test scores.

“There are massive changes occurring in this district,” Romer said. “It is not complacent. It is not status quo. It is not overloaded with bureaucracy. We’re remaking the face of Los Angeles. And it’s not [the mayor’s] structure that is doing it. It is our structure.”

Romer said that an outside audit would duplicate several independent reviews already underway. Two existing audits, he noted, are looking at district finances, and a third is examining the district’s organization.

Romer threw an olive branch to the officials from the 26 cities, saying he would meet with them and seek their ideas on how to make the district as transparent as possible.