L.A. District Is at a Crossroads as Year Begins : Education: Optimists hope reforms will revitalize system. Others fear new turmoil from voucher and breakup movements.

If public education seemed to be on a roller coaster ride last year, this year it takes off for Adventure Land.

The trip begins today, when the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 640,000 students return for the 1992-1993 school year, launching teachers, principals, administrators, students and parents on a course of unprecedented change and uncertainty.

For optimists, the new school year presents an opportunity to lift the beleaguered district from the budget crises, labor turmoil, campus violence and public castigation that seemed to bring education to a standstill last year. Their hopes lie in a top-to-bottom reorganization of the district administration and the initiation of LEARN (the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now) at 35 schools, 17 of them in the Valley.

But for worriers there are plenty of dangers ahead: a statewide vote Nov. 2 on whether a portion of the public school funds will be shifted to private schools, and the debate on whether to break up the nation’s second largest school district. The success of either measure could plunge the district into a new era of turmoil.

“It’s probably a pivotal year for the existence of public education as we have come to know it in Los Angeles,” said United Teachers of Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein. Among educators, there is a strong belief that the school district will determine its future by how it performs this year. Any early signs of failure could dissolve whatever public goodwill survived last year’s troubles.

“I think the way we behave between now and November is extremely important,” said Robert E. Ferris, associate professor of administration and policy with the USC School of Education. “A single event, a shooting on campus, a union unrest--and there doesn’t seem to be union unrest in the LAUSD now . . . any kind of negative event could just swing that percent of vote that could make a critical difference.”

For now, with the district’s budget balanced for the year and a two-year teacher contract in hand, the often quarreling personalities of the Board of Education, the school administration and the teachers’ union have drawn together in a united front opposing the voucher initiative, which could further drain district finances by shifting public educational funds to pay for private school tuition.

Yet, even if the voters reject the initiative, the district will most likely remain under the cloud of an even more threatening attack: the proposal of state Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys) to break the district into smaller units.

Though a measure to put a breakup plan on the ballot died in legislative committee in July, Roberti is trying to push a modified version through the Legislature before it adjourns Friday. Should he fail at that, as seems likely, he has vowed to start a signature-gathering campaign to qualify the breakup measure for the ballot.

With the dismantling of the district as the potential price for a lackluster year, administrators, teachers and parents appear solidly committed to school reform.

Demonstrating the urgency of reform, Supt. Sid Thompson got the school year off to an unusual start last Tuesday by assembling all principals for a pep talk in which he promised that the bureaucracy would be more responsive to schools, and stated his intention to bring about “a time of change.”

In a multi-pronged message, Thompson instructed the principals to enforce new rules designed to keep weapons off campuses and to involve parents and teachers in decisions on the future restructuring of the school district.

The enthusiasm carried away from the meeting was palpable.

“It’s going to be a challenging, exciting year of great progress,” said Sara Couglin, elementary region superintendent for the Valley. “I think the past several years we’ve had so many budget cuts and enormous problems connected with the recession. We’ve had low morale and we’ve had labor negotiations.

“This is the year when we’re kind of in place. We’re moving forward and there’s a renewed sense of getting about our business and restructuring schools and making sure that all children are learning.”

Adopting a more skeptical view, UTLA President Bernstein faulted the school board for the first blight on the new school year, a shortage of 700 full-time teachers whose duties must be filled with substitutes. She said she warned the board that the 10% pay cut teachers were forced to accept this summer would inhibit the hiring of new teachers.

In spite of their grievances, Bernstein said, the teachers too are committed to reform, but put the onus on the administration to make it work.

“The superintendent has said he will cut the bureaucracy, decentralize, make the district more accessible,” she said. “They really are under the microscope. They can’t be operating like they were in the past. I think you have to look back on the year when the year ends.”

Although widespread parent dissatisfaction with the educational system has been reported, district officials said they are expecting no exodus from the public schools. They foresee only a slight drop in enrollment this year, attributing it to loss of population caused by the continued recession. If that forecast bears out, close to 190,000 students will show up at the San Fernando Valley’s 180 campuses, including 17,000 arriving by bus from communities outside the Valley.

The keystone of the district’s program to better educate those students is LEARN, a plan that allows schools to take control of their own budgets and curriculum through a democratic process involving principals, teachers and parents.

Throughout the district, 35 schools chose to try LEARN. During this school year, those schools will be watched as the district sets up a process for many more to follow next year.

“My hope is that before this year is out, we will have clarified the process by which additional schools can join in,” said Valley board member Mark Slavkin. “The goal is that all schools will participate in this.”

For this year’s LEARN schools, the first week of classes will be full of bustle and discovery as teachers and parents meet to set their own course.

“Everybody as far as I understand, acts as an equal partner, from the plant manager to the principal,” said Van Gogh Street Elementary kindergarten teacher Paula Himmelstein, who was at the Granada Hills school last week preparing her classroom and eagerly awaiting a two-day LEARN planning session. “Everyone has a say in how to make our school even more special than it is now.”

While a small percentage of schools will be pioneering the LEARN reform, every school will have a hand in shaping next year’s reorganization. The district administration has a mandate to make itself sleeker and more accountable, as prescribed in a scathing management audit by Arthur Andersen & Co. of Chicago.

The audit, delivered to the school board in June, characterized the district’s central administration as bogged down in excessive layers of management, bureaucratic red tape, unclear job responsibilities and lack of accountability.

The board endorsed the firm’s recommendation that the district’s four regional offices should be eliminated and the schools reorganized into high school clusters to decentralize decision-making--including budget and curriculum planning.

Although the reorganization will not occur until the fall of 1994, the key decisions will be made this year as personnel are assigned and school clusters defined.

Thompson has said he wants teachers and parents at all schools involved in those decisions.

“My own goal for this year is to include that (reorganization) in every meeting we have,” said Valley-area superintendent Couglin. “Our region staff meets with about 500 parents every month. They go back to their schools and carry the word the principals have committed to involving parents in the process.”

With so much riding on the success of reform, one expert cautioned that all the rhetoric could lead to exaggerated expectations.

“I don’t think we can expect test scores to go up in a year,” said Priscilla Wohlstetter, associate professor of politics and policy with the USC School of Education. “We really need a couple years for the reform to take hold.”

In the meantime, Wohlstetter offered a more subtle gauge for the progress of this year’s educational journey.

“I think you would begin to see changes in the culture of the schools,” she said. “Are teachers focused on improving the schools? Do they have consensus around a shared vision? Morale, I would expect, would be up. Through autonomy, the school begins to develop its own personality, begins to develop some collegiality among the staff.”

“The students then become part of that culture,” Wohlstetter said.