L.A. Schools Prepare to Travel Down the Twisting Road of Local Control

On the surface, it seems like a fairly easy transition for schools involved in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s power-sharing plan: Principals might hand over the right to judge teacher performance to parent-teacher teams. A broken toilet or dripping faucet could be fixed by the neighborhood plumber, rather than a school district crew.

But the road to school-based management is full of twists and turns, and the first potential roadblock for many of the 27 schools seeking autonomy this semester lies in the sheaves of “waiver requests” being studied by officials of the district and teachers union.

Through the requests, the schools seek permission to operate outside of specific district rules and labor contract provisions. Similar requests, seeking exemptions from the state education code, must be filed in Sacramento when elements of the restructuring plans conflict with state requirements.

Many of the requests are simple and straightforward, and most deal with operational, rather than educational, issues. One school wants to combine all the money it receives from several state funding sources in one budget. Another wants to purchase equipment directly from private vendors, rather than through the district.

But the practical problems they pose bring the district’s grand experiment in local control face to face with the logistical realities of running the 610,000-student system. The showdown is likely to turn decades of established procedure on its ear--a prospect that makes even some supporters of school-based management uneasy.

“In some cases, (the waiver requests) represent a very different way of doing things in this district,” said Catherine Carey, spokeswoman for United Teachers-Los Angeles, the union that negotiated the power-sharing plan as part of the settlement of its strike last year. “It will take some effort to make them work.”

Union and district leaders say they are committed to doing just that, though they admit it will be a struggle for some to relinquish power to individual schools.

“In any large system, it’s difficult for people who are used to wielding power to let go,” said school board member Mark Slavkin. “For a board that’s been used to micromanaging the school district, backing away is not an easy process.”

Last month, the school board and UTLA leaders approved the 27 restructuring plans, directing district and union staffs to review the waiver requests to make sure that granting them would not cost the district more money or negatively affect other schools. That review process is under way and will likely take several weeks.

“We’re real committed to helping the schools implement anything they’re after, even if it’s something that hasn’t been allowed in the past,” said UTLA President Helen Bernstein.

“To give up certain things in our contract is even harder for us than for (the district) to give up its (education) code,” she said. “We fought with our blood for these things. But the overriding thing is if a school wants this and thinks it will help the kids, it’s not for us to say that it can’t be done.”

Virtually every school seeking to restructure itself needs some type of waiver, for things as mundane as changing the name or composition of its elected governing council to as complex as instituting new courses and schedules.

Because the process is so new, the analysis of the waiver requests requires district and union staffs to peer into the future, predicting all the things that might go wrong and building in safeguards.

“It’s a cumbersome process this first time around, trying to give the schools the flexibility they need, but anticipating the problems that might arise,” said Andrew Cazares, who heads the district’s School-Based Management Office.

For instance, many schools have asked to shorten or lengthen their school day. But what will that mean to students who are bused from other areas? Will bus routes and pickup times change? Will the district have to buy new buses to accommodate those changes?

Other schools want the right to select new faculty from a district-approved list rather than accepting assigned teachers. But what happens to teachers who are not selected by any schools? And who will ensure that teaching staffs achieve racial balance?

Some of the waiver requests threaten to dismantle hard-won district initiatives, such as the plan to put almost all 600 schools on a single year-round schedule next year, eliminating the chaos that results from the six calendars now in use.

The plan was adopted this spring after years of turmoil and debate. Now, two of the 27 schools seeking waivers want exemptions to use different calendars that provide shorter and more frequent vacation breaks.

And some of the exemptions would violate longstanding district policies intended to equalize the education of students in poor and affluent neighborhoods.

For example, Westwood Elementary wants to solicit grants and donations to help pay for such things as teachers’ aides, a school psychologist and enrichment programs. But a district rule prohibits schools from using donations to provide benefits that cannot be afforded by other schools.

Supporters of the school-based management process argue that the district must be willing to bend those rules if schools are to achieve the flexibility that is the cornerstone of the restructuring process.

“If you’re McDonald’s, you do it the exact same way in every restaurant and there’s a rule for everything, and there’s a value to that,” said Slavkin. “But there’s no single way of doing things that’s going to work for every student.

“What this process is about is finding different ways that are going to work, because if we keep doing it the same old way, we’re putting a generation of kids at tremendous risk.”