Hard Lessons in School-Based Management : Education: A seminar at USC helps to lay groundwork for parents, teachers and principals who will be making the rules for their schools.

The principal, the teachers’ union representative and the mother of a Westchester High School student huddled on the steps of a USC class building last weekend to plan their next move.

It will be a big one. The three women, along with groups like them from about 70 other schools, are in the vanguard of a revolution that could rejuvenate or, once and for all, sink Los Angeles’ public schools.

It’s called school-based management, and the three women--who make up Westchester High’s proposal-writing team--spent most of last weekend learning how to go about it.

School-based management gives individual schools governing power over how the school will be run, including everything from the length of the school day to some budget matters--an awesome opportunity or a potential disaster, depending on how an adventure into the unknown is viewed.

It is the current trend in urban school districts, a trend fueled by dissatisfaction over public schools’ performance and a belief that a turnaround requires upending the bureaucracy.

“It finally gives parents and teachers and principals the freedom to be creative and find effective ways to serve their students,” said Mark Slavkin, a Westside school board member. “The current system is set up to guard against the very kind of creativity we’re trying to promote.”

For school-based management to succeed, the district--along with the state--must respond to the push from individual schools to rethink a Byzantine set of rules that, Slavkin said, impedes the schools’ true mission: to educate the children.

Speaking to the group last weekend, Los Angeles School Supt. Leonard Britton pledged cooperation, saying that if school-based management does not work, it will be a travesty for the district.

As part of its settlement of the teachers’ strike last year, the district agreed to require “shared decision-making councils” at all schools. The councils, which are advisory, include parents, teachers, the principal and, in secondary schools, student representatives.

School-based management is the second step, actually a series of steps, toward self-rule. Seventy schools will take the plunge next year--if they can complete the Herculean task of getting coordinated.

Thirteen of them are in the Westside region. They are: Hamilton High School, Hamilton Music Academy, Loyola Village School Magnet, Marquez Elementary, Pacific Palisades Elementary, Palisades High, Paul Revere Junior High, Webster Junior High, Westchester High, Westside Alternative, Westwood Elementary, Windsor Hills Elementary and Wright Junior High .

Under deadline pressure, the pioneers gathered in classes over the weekend to learn about everything from how to define their school’s mission to when to hold meetings of the school’s new governing council. Proposals have to be finished and approved by the faculty and staff before a parents meeting is held to obtain their approval. Absentee ballots for parents who don’t attend the meeting must be in the mail by June 22, the last day of school.

Proposals are due at the district in early July, an extension of an earlier deadline. Schools whose proposals are approved by the district will be notified by Aug. 23 for fall implementation. The board recently voted a second deadline in October for those of the 70 that require more time.

Among the ideas under discussion at various schools: extending the kindergarten day; teaming junior high students with the same teachers for three years, so they can get more individual attention, and various proposals for staff development.

On the steps outside of the USC class building, Westchester Principal Eileen Banta, teacher Adrienne Zeigler and parent Helen Rupp were reporting to each other what they had learned that morning and which seminars they should attend next.

Fresh from a seminar lead by a representative from the National Education Assn., Rupp was persuaded that they should not be too ambitious in their first proposal, because of the deadline and lack of time for research.

Banta urged action. “I say we go for it,” she said. “You can research it to death. . . . It’s better to be in the door and be creative.

The trick, she told the others, was to write a proposal with a broad enough brush to prevent getting backed into a corner.

And perhaps an even more difficult task than writing the proposals is understanding the district’s current regulations. At a Friday night session with a district budget official, teachers, principals and parents acted as though they were junior high students at an assembly. Each piece of information evoked chatter from the crowd.

At a Saturday seminar on governance, the buzzword was flatness --in this case meaning a minimum distance between the decision-makers and those affected by their decisions.

Barby Halstead-Worrell, from the National Education Assn., cautioned another group to set manageable goals that are concrete and winnable. “If you go into this process thinking you’re going to turn the world around in one year . . . you’re setting yourself up for a fall,” she warned.

The Westchester High School proposal writers ignored protocol for the third session when they all attended the same proposal-writing workshop.

And this week they got down to it. Banta reported Wednesday that the three were hoping to complete their task during a marathon session after school.

On Thursday, a weary Banta said that in nearly seven hours they had completed three pages, and were determined to “burn the midnight oil” and finish the task, an additional seven pages, before today.

Banta said they have identified their goals of improving student achievement and increasing staff effectiveness. They’re looking at seeking a waiver from the district so they can use student activity funds, such as proceeds from a fund-raising event, for curriculum needs.

Other plans on the table include interdisciplinary teaching of English, history and art, college-type scheduling for seniors and putting more students on the governing council “so they can feel a part of it.”

On Banta’s time line, the parents will get ballots on June 11, after the faculty has voted June 4 if it “ho, ho, ho” has been written by then, she said. “I’m very optimistic,” she added.