Some Schools Bold, Some Cautious With New Power

At Marshall High School in Los Angeles, students would have to perform 10 hours of community or school service in order to graduate.

Santa Monica Elementary School would create two classrooms where children are mixed across grade levels and allowed to learn without the pressure of grades.

At Portola Junior High School in Tarzana, reading classes would be eliminated from the sixth grade curriculum and integrated into all other courses, and the school day extended by one period for students wanting or needing tutoring or enrichment.

The three proposals are elements from some of the more ambitious of 27 school restructuring plans that will be presented to the Los Angeles Board of Education for consideration today, as the Los Angeles Unified School District moves into the second phase of the nation’s most ambitious experiment in school power-sharing.

Many of the schools’ proposals could have been implemented under current polices, such as programs to encourage parent involvement, cut the student dropout rate or improve attendance.

But at others, the proposals go far beyond what schools have traditionally been allowed to do--giving parents and teachers the power to approve new teachers and principals, toughening graduation requirements and lengthening or shortening school days.

Seventy of the district’s 600 schools were selected last spring to develop plans for what is being called school-based management. The plans spell out how the schools should operate to best meet students’ educational needs.

The schools had barely a month to prepare their proposals. Only 38 were able to submit plans by the July 16 deadline, and 11 of those were deemed incomplete by a review committee of community representatives, district officials and union leaders. Those will likely be revised and resubmitted in October, along with the remaining 32 from the original group.

Many of the plans take only baby steps toward the ultimate goal of school restructuring. But observers of the process say at least as important as the proposals themselves is the notion that parents, teachers and administrators are finally sitting down together to develop some communal vision of what their schools should be.

“What you’re looking at,” said teachers’ union official Day Higuchi, “is not the finished product, but the beginning of a process.”

The plans have not been approved yet by United Teachers-Los Angeles directors or the school board. The two share responsibility for implementing the restructuring plan, which was approved last year as part of the settlement of a nine-day strike by teachers.

With the support of both district and teachers’ union officials, Los Angeles moved quickly into restructuring last year, ordering each school to elect councils of teachers, parents, administrators and staff to make decisions in a few areas, such as use of campus supplies.

Ultimately, as groups of schools apply each year for more autonomy, each campus will be allowed to almost fully govern itself.

The power-sharing plan has been heralded by many as the way to pull the Los Angeles system from a quagmire of problems because it gives local schools the opportunity--and responsibility--of finding the best ways to educate their students, and it should ultimately raise student achievement. The plan is being watched by educators nationwide as schools across the country begin to experiment with the concept, although none have moved to implement it as quickly or broadly as Los Angeles.

Teachers’ union President Helen Bernstein said she was disappointed with some of the first proposals, although she is pleased with the range of ideas and the fact that all are geared toward meeting the needs of students.

“My real disappointment was that there were very few schools that restructured” to get away from traditional school concepts, she told a meeting last week of the district committee that reviewed the proposals. “There were some that had some reforms . . . some with very creative ideas, but very few that truly restructured.”

School board President Jackie Goldberg had not seen the proposals as of Friday, but said she is not surprised that many are not “far-reaching, given the short time they had to put these together.

“This is just the beginning of the process,” she said. “I’m sure at the end of a year, schools will look real hard at what they’ve done, then take a bolder step for next year.”

Many of the proposals will likely trigger debate among board members, who will be asked to grant waivers of district policy to allow many of the schools to effect their plans.

But both Goldberg and Bernstein said neither board members nor union officials should judge the ideas in the plans, only whether the plans meet guidelines requiring them to address all children’s needs, focus on raising achievement and consider the district’s multi-cultural diversity.

“We all have to be willing to set aside our personal and collective notion of whether we think these are good ideas,” Goldberg said. “If the only way to get a proposal approved is by suggesting something the board would have done anyway, what’s the point of a school having autonomy?”

The proposals run the gamut from merely adding district-approved programs, such as after-school tutoring and parent volunteer groups, to radical changes in what students study and how they are evaluated.

But some common themes emerged in many of the plans:

* Many schools want to lengthen the school day 10 or 15 minutes four days a week, then dismiss children early on the fifth day. That time after dismissal could be used by teachers to prepare lesson plans, hold staff meetings or attend training sessions.

Teachers complain that they have no common preparation time: Secondary teachers use free periods to meet with students and plan their lessons, but elementary instructors must find their own time before or after class. Staff training and teachers’ meetings are often restricted to a few days per semester.

* Several schools asked that a committee of the principal, teachers and sometimes parents be allowed to interview and hire teachers. Others suggested peer review systems under which teachers--and students--would evaluate the teaching staff.

Currently, the district assigns teachers to schools. Though principals sometimes participate in the selection, they do not have veto power. Teacher evaluation is done solely by the principal.

* Many schools are asking to control their budgets, and they want the freedom to contract with outside vendors for supplies, repairs and special building projects.

Schools presently have responsibility for only a few budget areas, and district policies require that most purchases and contracts be made through its central office--often at considerably higher prices than work arranged independently.

* Some elementary schools want to lengthen the kindergarten day and offer full-day programs for some youngsters entering school. At present, kindergarten lasts no more than three hours a day.

* Many junior highs and high schools have tried to create a “small school environment” by clustering teachers and students in small groups for blocks of classes, and assigning each pupil a teacher adviser. Research has shown that students learn better in more intimate settings than the district’s large schools can provide.

At the heart of many of the proposals is the recognition that a school’s special needs sometimes can be met only by stepping outside of district rules.

For instance, Marlton, a special education school in the Crenshaw district with many deaf students, is seeking permission to hire teaching assistants who are fluent in sign language, even if they cannot pass the district’s required English proficiency tests.

Anatola Elementary in Van Nuys, with a large number of immigrant students, would establish a newcomers’ program, where new students who do not speak English would spend most of their day together, in classrooms taught in their native language.

Chatsworth High School would expand curricula in English and math to allow courses such as business communications and computer programming to fulfill those requirements.

And both Jefferson and Marshall high schools have asked to reorganize the school day, with classes starting as early as 7 a.m and ending as late as 5 p.m., to allow students to fit school around work and family responsibilities.

Most of the 27 schools plan to have at least some elements of their proposals in place when school begins in September, although it may take several months to get waivers from the State Board of Education on the more drastic changes involving curriculum and scheduling.

“We’re really anxious to get started,” said Barbara Knight, a counselor at Marshall High who helped write her school’s proposal. “There’s so much excitement about this at our school. It’s been a lot of hard work, but people don’t mind that when they see what kind of changes we can make.”

Knight said their plan was overwhelmingly supported by Marshall teachers and parents, even though it contains some radical changes, such as toughening attendance and graduation policies, replacing failing grades with “no credit,” and having the principal teach a class each semester.

Others plans are less far-reaching, but take into account individual school problems that have not been addressed by the district.

Sutter Junior High in Canoga Park wants to establish a noon activity program, featuring organized sports, club meetings and multi-cultural events, to cut down on racial tension and fighting on the ethnically diverse campus.

Loyola Village Elementary wants to hire a psychiatric social worker to develop outreach and intervention programs for its increasing number of “at risk” students.

And Westwood Elementary wants to smooth the way for the hundreds of minority students bused there from overcrowded schools by buying more culturally diverse textbooks, setting up tours and meetings for new parents and students, and even raising money to fund enrichment programs at the schools that send it students.