L.A. Schools OK Historic Reforms : Education: Changes, devised by LEARN, will shift decision-making to local campuses. The plan has the potential to revolutionize the way schools operate.

In what educators and community leaders hailed as historic reforms, the Los Angeles Board of Education on Monday unanimously adopted a sweeping set of changes intended to raise student achievement and restore public confidence in the nation’s second-largest school district.

The plan, produced by the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now--known as LEARN, represents an extraordinary coming together of interests to reform the embattled school district, and even critics acknowledge it has the potential to revolutionize the way Los Angeles schools operate. It is expected to be watched closely by educators in urban areas nationwide as they wrestle with declining test scores and mounting economic woes.

In theory, the plan will shift decision-making from the district’s central bureaucracy to local campuses. Principals will control virtually every aspect of school management, but could be removed from their schools by a majority vote of teachers and parents.

Teacher training will be improved and teachers will be given considerably more authority to decide what and how they teach. Schools will offer on-campus social services; curriculum will be strengthened at every grade level, and vocational training for high school students will be improved.

Schools will be required to set clear standards for student achievement, and teachers and principals will be rewarded--or reprimanded--based on how well their schools perform. Parents will be allowed to select which school their children attend.

Developed by a coalition of 600 business leaders, educators and community activists, the LEARN plan draws on so-called best practices, which have been tested in school systems around the country and in Canada.

School board member Mark Slavkin said the plan will serve as “a new constitution for this school system.”

“Everything we do, starting tomorrow, has to be . . . moving toward the direction LEARN would have us go,” he said.

Although the reforms have the potential to revolutionize the way the city’s schools operate, there remains considerable uncertainty about how the broad goals will be accomplished in a school district that is broke and badly divided.

LEARN supporters predict that it will take five years and $60 million to spread the reforms to the district’s 650 schools.

The LEARN plan arrives amid a growing movement to dismantle the sprawling district--a movement started by San Fernando Valley parents who believe that the district is too large to be responsive to their needs.

The school board for the first time Monday formally took a stand opposing efforts to break up the district. A 5-2 majority condemned proposals offered by State Sen. Pro-Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) and Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) and accused them of fueling rancor and divisiveness in the district.

Board President Leticia Quezada said the vote would give school lobbyists more clout to oppose the breakup in Sacramento.

Board members Roberta Weintraub and Julie Korenstein, who favor a breakup, voted against the resolution.

After Monday’s actions, Roberti said the LEARN plan cannot accomplish its goal to raise student achievement.

“Reforms, such as LEARN, can only work in smaller districts where parents play a central role at the school site and in the board room. . . . The history of failed school reforms in the 1970s and ‘80s bear this out.”

Although implementing the LEARN reforms will provide major challenges for the cash-strapped school system, the package represents a rare show of unity for the city’s business interests, education Establishment, school labor unions and community groups.

The LEARN group, which includes Times Mirror Co., owner of The Times, mounted a massive public relations campaign to generate support for the package and has promised to raise the $3 million needed to introduce the reforms in 30 schools beginning this summer.

“The problems that face Los Angeles are national problems,” said LEARN President Mike Roos. “Our democracy will look very different 25 years from now if we don’t get our hands around public education in our nation’s urban school districts.”

Board members expressed concerns about how a district that has had to cut one-third of its $3.9-billion budget over the past three years will be able to afford the LEARN plan. But Roos and others predicted that government and private funding for education will increase if Los Angeles public schools demonstrate an improvement through the LEARN reforms.

“People around this country are watching and see this as a model for what happens when people come together to support public schools,” Slavkin said. “This has been a communitywide process for embracing school reform.”

The 7-0 vote to approve the LEARN plan came before an auditorium packed with the group’s supporters. A parade of children carried laundry baskets full of signed petitions endorsing the group’s effort, and the USC jazz band entertained at a rally outside.

The broad-based campaign for school changes began more than two years ago as an outgrowth of the Kids First campaign, which attracted almost 15,000 people to a 1990 rally to promote more parental involvement in schools.

“The message of LEARN is care about your schools, care about the kids who go there, get involved to make a difference,” said board member Jeff Horton. “We have never seen such broad participation in a school reform movement in the history of this district.”

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