L.A. School Board-Teacher Harmony Is a Possible Dream

An ugly mood pervades relations between administrators and teachers in Los Angeles these days.

Anger and distrust have reached record levels of intensity. Each side is accusing the other of deception and lying.

Remarkably, united teachers are refusing to perform some of their non-essential work to pressure hard-nosed school officials into offering more money than they have so far for much deserved salary increases.

Management has retaliated by docking the teachers’ salaries, escalating the bitterness of teachers and irritating low-level supervisors who are forced to fill in for the teachers.

In delightful contrast, harmony is prevailing in Dade County, Fla., between teachers and administrators. The system used there to achieve that happy state should be a pattern for relations between all of the nation’s school officials and 2.4 million teachers, including, of course, Los Angeles.

Administrators in Dade County, which includes metropolitan Miami, share their decision-making power almost equally with teachers. Teacher salaries are the top financial priority there.

Ironically, the two communities have a common bond: Leonard Britton.

As Dade County’s school superintendent for seven years, Britton helped create that community’s admirable power-sharing system, and for the past 15 months Britton has been superintendent of Los Angeles schools.

Leaders of the United Teachers/Los Angeles believed that an era of cooperation and progress was at hand when Britton arrived. Their expectations of a new, non-bellicose way of dealing with the difficult problems facing the giant Los Angeles school system were based on the rave notices that Britton had won as a teacher advocate in Florida.

Teachers and school administrators alike praised his role in bringing an end to years of turmoil in the schools.

But Britton has failed so far to improve the situation in Los Angeles, and, in fact, relations between teachers and administrators here are worse than ever.

He isn’t primarily responsible for the mess. He is still an outsider, learning about the system and trying to find out which of the long-entrenched, powerful administrators are his friends and which are not only his enemies but foes of the idea he preaches: sharing power with teachers.

Perhaps Britton isn’t trying hard enough. Even if he wants to stop the administration’s current fight with teachers by agreeing to some of their key proposals, he would have to challenge the judgment of the school board majority and that would jeopardize board support for his long-range goals--if they don’t fire him.

Only two board members have publicly indicated that they would be willing to do more for teachers than recommended by the district’s chief business and financial officer, Robert Booker, a 30-year veteran of the traditional adversarial system of teacher-administrator relationships in Los Angeles.

Booker and other school system money managers recommend the way money from the massive $3.5-billion budget should be allocated, including the size of teacher salaries. Those recommendations are sent for approval by board members, who rarely challenge them. Nor did Britton.

He says that with more time and more help from teachers, Los Angeles will have the Dade County power-sharing system, or something close to it.

But, in the meantime, he isn’t easing the strains here--having denounced the union president, Wayne Johnson, for allegedly “deliberately misleading teachers” about the district’s finances.

Britton’s harsh criticism of the union’s leader for what seem to be understandable differences about details of the district’s huge budget has apparently increased teacher distrust of Britton, infuriated Johnson and rallied teachers behind him since they seem to trust him more than the new superintendent.

The union leader knows he has won broad support from the 32,000 teachers during his four years in office by boldly--but also belligerently--fighting for their cause.

“Sure, my style is aggressive. If I don’t get what I want, I am hard to deal with,” he boasted last week. “We come in with reasonable proposals and, when management ignores them, then I do get aggressive.”

That belligerent stance might help Johnson’s reputation among teachers, but it does little to increase the trust between teachers and administrators that is so essential in resolving problems and, in the long run, creating a power-sharing system.

The present dispute will be settled, probably by the usual last-minute ability of the board to find more money for salaries.

And tensions may be further relieved next year by the expected infusion of funds into the budget as a result of Proposition 98, the landmark school finance measure.

But to achieve real peace and progress, teachers must be prepared to accept major responsibilities and realistically face the honestly presented problems that a tight budget poses.

Britton has to work more courageously and succeed in bringing Los Angeles what he helped achieve for Dade County: an agreement by school administrators to give up their authoritarian decision-making power and pay teachers salaries that adequately reward the dedication to teaching that most of them have.