$500,000 Grant Gives LEARN Plan a Much-Needed Boost : Schools: But backers say concerns about the L.A. district’s future continue to make it difficult for them to raise funds.

Leaders of the LEARN school restructuring movement, who say it is difficult to raise money to help reform the embattled Los Angeles Unified School District, received a boost Thursday with the receipt of a major grant to partially fund a training academy that begins Monday.

The $500,000 grant from the Weingart Foundation is the first significant donation to LEARN, the coalition of business, civic and education leaders whose sweeping blueprint for systemwide reform was adopted by the school board in March.

But the drive to break up the 700-square-mile school district and a recent controversy among teachers union leaders who voiced opposition to LEARN have hurt fund-raising efforts, officials said.

About $500,000 more is needed to cover the $1.2-million cost of training principals and teachers at the 37 schools participating in the first phase. The price tag includes stipends for academy participants, housing during the two weeks of training and resources for an additional 10 months of staff development.

The UCLA School of Education, through a newly formed school management program, has also contributed about $200,000.

Concerns about the district’s future create “uncertainties, and funders want certainty,” said Mike Roos, LEARN president, who added that the parental choice initiative--which would provide tax dollars in the form of vouchers to spend on private school tuition--is also making donors reluctant to support public education.

“None of it is helpful,” Roos said. “On the other hand, we become the one proposal out there that does have momentum . . . and can make public education more responsive.”

“We like the (LEARN) program, we have great expectations for it,” said Charles Jacobsen, president of the Weingart Foundation, which emphasizes helping children.

LEARN, Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, promises to change the way the district operates by shifting decision making from central offices to campuses. Principals, working with teachers and parents, will control virtually every aspect of school management.

On Monday, the LEARN plan will move from concept to practice as principals and one teacher from each school begin an intense, two-week training course at Cal Poly Pomoma.

The course was developed by UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and the Graduate School of Education. Education experts will show participants how to radically change the way they devise budgets and develop leadership and teaching skills.

Despite the enthusiasm that appears to have enveloped LEARN schools, the plan was dealt a blow in late April when United Teachers-Los Angeles leaders voted to withhold support of the reform effort unless it incorporated more teacher rights. The group, including former UTLA President Wayne Johnson, was skeptical of a plan that gave more authority to principals.

The vote came just as schools were submitting final applications to become LEARN campuses, prompting several to pull out and causing many to fall short of a 75% staff vote needed to participate.

Since then, the union has softened its position. Although the vote has not been overturned, the leadership has agreed to support the schools participating in the first phase, UTLA President Helen Bernstein said Thursday.

A union task force has been formed to monitor LEARN progress, and language that protects teacher rights and employee contracts has been added to the LEARN document, she said.