A School LEARNs One Step at a Time : Education: Fernangeles finds out about the tortuous path to financial autonomy, part of the reform program.

The check for $2.7 million, payable to Fernangeles School, is not in the mail. Instead, it’s tacked up on the wall of the elementary school’s main office, enlarged to three times normal size and posted just a few feet above the heads of the children who troop in and out every morning and afternoon.

But the draft, dated June 28 and signed by city schools chief Sid Thompson, is more symbolic than real. The actual cash rests with the giant Los Angeles Unified School District--and largely, for now, so does authority over how and where the money is spent.

That situation is slowly changing as Fernangeles, along with 33 other campuses pioneering the vaunted LEARN reform effort, begins assuming control over 85% of its budget.

This first year is a test run, a paper exercise on school finance to give Fernangeles and others a chance to work out budget problems while still under the wings of the district. But starting next school year the district will relinquish most fiscal powers to LEARN schools and the Fernangeles spreadsheets will become hard-boiled reality.

However, the road to financial autonomy--a linchpin of the ambitious decentralization plan--has proved to be a tortuous one, snarled in a web of rules and regulations that seem to impede progress and paved with a budget of facts, figures and formulas that practically defy comprehension.

“Only God could understand it,” declared kindergarten teacher Robin Movich.

Over the past few months, Movich and other Fernangeles staff members have struggled to master the Los Angeles school system’s intricate budget process in an attempt to gain their fiscal freedom. Armed with printouts and calculators, school officials have crunched some numbers and rejiggered others to produce a campus budget that they could call their own.

But they soon found themselves hemmed in by a tangled skein of state and district regulations that sharply restrict their flexibility to spend money at their discretion.

Many public dollars come earmarked for certain programs or can only be applied toward specific purchases, such as hiring an extra teacher to help reduce class size. Other funds must pass through the central administration downtown and have a portion docked to help pay for certain services, such as special education, before the money reaches the school.

And everywhere are rules and laws, so convoluted and interwoven that tinkering with just one of them brings you up against the rest.

“It’s like that game where you drop all the sticks and you try to pull one out from under another--and the whole thing moves,” Principal Elisabeth Douglass said.

“You have to have rules, you have to have guidelines,” added Movich. “But sometimes the rules are old, and new rules haven’t replaced old rules, and new ways of thinking haven’t replaced old ways of thinking.”

In this case, new data hasn’t replaced old data.

Fernangeles officials must often work with three-year-old statistics that do not paint a completely accurate portrait of the current financial outlook. Within a month, the district expects to provide LEARN schools with some information from 1991-92, but a complete set of updated figures from last year will not be available anytime soon because of lengthy accounting procedures.

“The books were just closed for ‘92-’93 and are being audited right now,” said Henry Jones, the district’s budget director. “There’s some lag time. We’re moving . . . as rapidly as possible.”

According to the data available, expenses at Fernangeles outweigh its $2.7-million revenue by $33,000--an amount equal to the salary of one of the newer teachers on its 40-member faculty.

The shortfall, however, remains mostly theoretical at the moment, sparing the school from having to put on the chopping block any of the already cash-pinched programs that cater to its 1,100 students.

Nonetheless, the deficit projection has served notice to campus officials as they plot the course for next year.

“There isn’t a lot of leeway right now,” Douglass acknowledged. “We’re trying to find ways to get some more.”

One way, for other LEARN pioneers as well as Fernangeles, has been to question some longstanding budget practices as they scramble to achieve some measure of fiscal independence.

For example, each school’s payroll expenses--the lion’s share of a school’s costs--are now calculated using average, not actual, salary figures. At Fernangeles, Douglass estimates that if actual staffing costs were computed, the campus would be in the black--not the red--by as much as $40,000.

That extra cash, plus special federal funds that she hopes the school may be eligible to receive, “would make a tremendous difference,” she said. “Then you could have somebody running a computer lab, or (do) full-time nursing, or running the library.”

A newly formed budget committee of LEARN school and district officials is scheduled to meet for the first time this week to begin working through such issues. Jones said the transfer of budget authority to the local level has also been complicated by a court order mandating the equalization of spending patterns across the mammoth district.

“You have to be sensitive with maintaining compliance with the law,” he said. “Otherwise the district could be penalized and lose money not just for the one school but for all schools.”

Until the financial questions are resolved and potential funds materialize, many of the changes that LEARN schools hope to implement may have to remain on the wish list for now.

At Fernangeles, during two days of discussion last week to stitch together a vision for their school, teachers brainstormed a list of more than 60 ideas for improving campus life. Suggestions ranged from exposing students to fine arts to organizing camping trips.

But how to accomplish such goals without extra money--or, worse, while running a deficit?

“Good question,” said Douglass. “You can always go out and try for grants, but applying takes a lot of time, a lot of expertise. Maybe we need to go to some schools to see how they do things differently.”

Because changes have not reached the classroom, several teachers remain skeptical of the LEARN plan, or say the effort has yet to have a direct impact on them or what goes on between them and their students.

Also, the pace of reform is constrained by logistical realities, like the impossibility of holding constant staff meetings or arriving at a quick consensus among 50 people. Tension between administrators and teachers--and among teachers themselves--remains a handicap to building the rapport necessary to effect change together.

“Right now you can’t see the forest for the trees,” said Debbie Hoffman, who has taught at Fernangeles for a decade. “If you’re taking small steps, it’s hard to measure progress. . . .

“LEARN is trying to focus not only the school but the entire community on what is directly best for the children. It’s not the first time people have tried this, but hopefully it’s the last.”