Audit Outlines Ills of School District : Education: Draft of report finds an inefficient bureaucracy with poor accountability. More control at school level is recommended.

The Los Angeles Unified School District suffers from excessive layers of bureaucracy, where managers are unwilling to accept responsibility for decisions that often worsen problems and frustrate the public, according to a draft of one section of a long-awaited management audit.

To cut through the red tape, the audit calls for district restructuring that brings decision-making closer to school sites. It recommends the elimination of the district’s four regional offices in favor of about two dozen “community clusters” of high schools and their feeder campuses to oversee educational programs.

Guidelines to streamline the district bureaucracy are among the most significant recommendations of the sweeping, $500,000 audit performed by a team of analysts from Arthur Andersen & Co. The Times obtained a preliminary draft of the restructuring component of the audit.

Although details may change before the final draft is released to the public in about three weeks, the audit generally calls for streamlining central administration. It suggests that most district departments be consolidated into nine units, whose heads would be directly accountable to the superintendent.

Under the current system, control over such operations is left to multiple mid-level managers whose duties often overlap, leading to a fragmented bureaucracy in which accountability is elusive, the audit stated, noting that statements such as “It’s not my department” and “It’s not my fault” typified the attitude of district bureaucrats.

Supt. Sid Thompson and the Board of Education have promised to seriously consider all the recommendations in the costly report. Thompson has said that he expects the audit to once and for all determine whether long-held public and teacher union perceptions about the district are true.

The audit was proposed by school board member Mark Slavkin and approved by the board last fall. United Teachers-Los Angeles made it an issue during its contract fight with the district and won the right to hire its own auditors to review the final recommendations.

The draft of the audit supports allegations of a bloated district bureaucracy. While the restructuring section does not say how much money could be saved, it suggests that paring down some departments and merging others will lead to “cost savings and increased customer service.”

But the audit identified several obstacles, including animosity between the district and its unions, a fragmented computer system that cannot assemble information quickly and inadequately trained employees.

“Intuitively, I as well as many others have felt that those things are true but have not had the individual expertise to get into it department by department to make specific recommendations,” said Slavkin, who has not seen the report. “Hopefully, this report will bring credence and momentum to making these changes happen.”

Other components of the report will deal with specific guidelines for reshaping individual departments. Much of the information was gathered through parent surveys, focus groups and interviews with administrators. Every division of district operations was scrutinized.

The recommendations reflect the district’s recently adopted LEARN plan to decentralize power by giving authority to principals who must work with teachers and parents before making decisions. Like the LEARN plan, the audit recommends turning over budget and curriculum powers to individual schools.

“All these ideas are wonderful,” said board member Roberta Weintraub, who also had not seen the report. “But policy is one thing, implementation is a totally different matter. Unless it comes with implementation money, it’s like LEARN--LEARN’s a great idea, but where’s the beef?”

The LEARN plan ran into difficulties recently after teachers union leaders voted to withhold their support unless more teachers rights were included in the plan. Union President Helen Bernstein, who had not seen the report Thursday, said she and the union auditors will analyze it. She said that the preliminary findings appear to validate what she and other union leaders have been complaining about for some time. Bernstein said the community cluster idea originally was suggested by the union.