Dismantling L.A. School District

The column by Helen Bernstein, president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, and Richard Riordan, co-chairman of Kids First (“Don’t Atomize the School District,” Commentary, Oct. 17), is a sad apology for a district that is out of touch and out of control. Their call for a revolution is nothing more than the Establishment stalling for time.

As chairwoman of the Los Angeles Task Force for Better Education and a former Los Angeles Unified School District leader, I have witnessed a system in constant and rapid decline. According to the California Assessment Program tests, Los Angeles remains far below statewide averages in all subject areas and all grade levels tested. Crime and violence are a constant problem on LAUSD campuses--one that the administration seems unable to do anything about. The district has been unable to deal with a serious overcrowding problem and has built only six schools in the last eight years despite receiving $300 million in state construction funds.

Riordan and Bernstein call for innovative and daring solutions but they pass off the idea of reorganizing the district into smaller districts as simplistic. They state that a breakup would create many small and poor districts in Central and East Los Angeles. This is a thinly veiled reference that students in economically weaker areas will receive less education funding.

In fact, additional federal dollars are directed to students from low-income families and to those in need of bilingual or special education. The Little Hoover Commission lamented the LAUSD’s massive budget of $3.9 billion, which is $6,000 for every student in the district. These dollars will be better utilized when the central bureaucracy of the LAUSD is dismantled.

The answer to our education crisis is not the placebo of school-based management, which continues to keep control in the hands of school employees instead of parents. Only through locally accountable school districts with locally elected school boards will we see real reform.

To make the changes necessary to improve the quality of public education in Los Angeles will require significant changes in the structure of the existing school district. Instituting the necessary reforms will pose a major but surmountable challenge. The greatest difficulty will be overcoming the inertia caused by the apathy that grips many who have despaired of ever changing the current system. Great energy will be needed to overcome the determined resistance of those with the most to gain by maintaining the status quo.

MARIAN W. La FOLLETTE

Assemblywoman, R-Northridge