Innovative School May Soon Plot Own Course : Education: Already a trendsetter, The Open School is on the brink of becoming the district’s first charter campus.

A tiny Westside magnet school noted for its innovative approach to education is expected to be approved next month as the first “charter school” in the Los Angeles school district.

The Open School: Center for Individualization--a cluster of bungalows at the edge of the Crescent Heights Boulevard Elementary School campus--was among the first to apply for the new status that would free it from district and state control under state legislation that took effect last month.

“We see the charter school as the logical progression of where we have been going,” said Roberta Blatt, principal at the school for the past 12 years. “We are pushing our walls out further; we see ourselves as a laboratory school for the district, a place to explore what is going on in education.”

After enthusiastic school representatives outlined their plans before the Los Angeles Unified School District board and submitted a 26-page proposal two weeks ago, the board immediately scheduled a vote for March 15. State approval is also needed, but is largely a formality once the local school board approves.

“I see it as a way to allow one of the most outstanding elementary schools in this district to become that much better,” Westside board member Mark Slavkin told his colleagues. He noted that The Open School is not a dysfunctional school that is stymied because it can’t do what it wants, but rather a school that could, with charter status, do things that are now possible only if it “cheats or weasels” around certain rules.

“Give them leave to say, ‘Go for it,’ ” Slavkin said. “Give them room to make education decisions without regard to the 7,600-page state Education Code or the constraints of district rules and policies. This is my vision for every single school in this district, to have that kind of autonomy and ownership over their own programs.”

The 400-student school--where classes resume on Tuesday after the eight-week winter break--became one of the Los Angeles district’s first magnets in the ‘70s. It mixes children of all ages from 6 to 12 in unorthodox 64-student clusters that are identified by color--as in “the Purple Cluster.” They are taught by teams of teachers using a thematic approach and concepts borrowed from the British Infant School and educator Jerome Bruner.

The education process is usually noisy. Students do not sit at desks, but move freely through rooms, surrounded by a dizzying jumble of projects in progress, animals and gardens. The school has a close partnership with private industry, particularly an Apple Computer research venture, and a tutorial language program involving university students.

Little is traditional or standard about the place--except that students take the same standardized tests administered elsewhere in the district and consistently outperform their counterparts.

The racial-ethnic makeup is fairly typical for a Westside school--about 40% Anglo, 23% African-American, 20% Latino and 17% Asian-American. The school has about 600 names on its waiting list, with openings filled by lottery.

The school is not seeking immediate separation from the district, but rather a gradual withdrawal, school officials said. In the first phase of the transition, it would take charge of its own instructional programs and approaches to learning without the need for repeated waivers from the board.

Its petition for charter status carries the support of the school’s advisory council, the entire faculty and clerical staff, and the majority of parents. Groups held dozens of meetings to consider the charter concept and its ramifications.

The Open School does not want to secede from the district, at least not now. “We are not a neighborhood school; we depend on the district for transportation and student selection,” said parent Barbara Caplan, chair of the advisory council. “And we want to remain an integrated magnet.”

School officials said they decided their energies are best focused on improving learning, not making day-to-day business decisions. Busing, budget and general services would still be handled by the district.

“If we have to start hiring our own plumbers and paying for liability insurance, we’d have gone into the business of school management,” Blatt said. “We wanted to thoroughly throw ourselves into the business of curriculum and instruction.”

The school wants the freedom to bring in experts on a short-term basis and pay them, without worrying about delays, district waivers, and opposition to the use of non-credentialed personnel, she said.

Other goals include peer evaluation for teachers, portfolio assessment and parent-teacher-child conferences in place of traditional graded report cards, a redefined role for the principal, and new and better measures (already being developed with UCLA) of the effectiveness of its experimental methods.

Under the state charter school law, up to 100 schools throughout California, but no more than 10 from any one district, can be granted charter status--freeing them from the state Education Code while still providing state funding. Individual school charters, which are granted for five-year periods and may be revoked, are then substituted for state regulation.

On Thursday, nine schools, most of them in Northern California, became the first in the state to jump through the final administrative hoop when the state Board of Education approved their charter status. Several schools in the Los Angeles area have filed petitions with the school board here, but none have yet been approved.

President Clinton has publicly endorsed charter schools, but only two states--California and Minnesota--have enacted laws authorizing them.