School Reform Needed to Avert More Civil Strife, Business Leaders Told

Warning that the breakdown of the city’s public education system could lead to more civil unrest, the head of a school reform group embarked on a drive Tuesday to win public support for a sweeping plan to overhaul the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Mike Roos, president of the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN), told a group of about 50 downtown business leaders that poorly educated youths will make for a poor and potentially volatile city work force.

“Filling out a basic employment application is beyond the reach of some of our youngsters leaving L.A. schools,” Roos told members of the Central City Assn. in his first presentation since a draft reform plan was released last week. “Today they are a vexing challenge for our society. But it is nothing (compared to) the challenge they will (face) in the next 15 years--another time bomb just like the one that exploded here in April.”

Roos received a polite response from the business crowd, many of whom had little knowledge of the plan but appeared to be interested in the proposals.

“I think it’s clear that if business is going to be competitive we have to have a competent work force--and a solid education system is critical,” said Todd Cooley, vice president of Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm. “This sounds like an interesting plan. . . . It seems amazing to me that it hasn’t bogged down already.”

Roos’ pitch to the business community is important because support from private industry--both monetary and through the expertise businesses can offer--will be crucial to the success of the plan.

The wide-ranging LEARN plan, created by a coalition of more than 600 business, civic and education leaders, calls for transferring much of the power for governing public education from downtown administrators to principals, teachers and parents.

Seven task forces have worked since January to devise a reform plan for the nation’s second-largest school district after studying successful school models through the United States and Canada.

Under the proposal, individual schools would have more control over spending and teaching programs, with the principal held accountable for a school’s failure to meet goals established by the school community.

Roos was critical of the district bureaucracy, which he said is “driven by rule compliance” to meet state standards. The central question that teachers are asked by superiors is “Did you get through your lesson plan?” instead of “What did your kids learn?” he said.

The LEARN campaign to gain broad-based approval for the plan will unfold on two fronts in the coming weeks. The 600 LEARN trustees who participated in drafting the plan will meet to fine-tune details of the proposal and must approve it before presenting it to the school board in early January.

Meanwhile, Roos, a former assemblyman, is making speeches and meeting with a wide variety of community business groups. The reform group hopes that the plan can be phased in at three high schools and their feeder campuses in August.

Roos told the business group that the reform plan offers them a way to save the school district at a time of fiscal and management crisis. In a campaign-style speech, he said the despair in parts of urban Los Angeles can be compared to the failure of public education to turn out student achievers.

“Action is needed now,” he said. “If we choose to wait, to quibble . . . to leave this meeting and without joining our minds and hands on the promise of constructive action, then we know what the future will be--more riots, more fires, more tragedies and more hopelessness.”