Break District Into Clusters of Schools, Report Says : Education: High schools would be tied to feeder campuses, creating smaller, more manageable units, study says. But some parents and educators criticize the plan.

The massive Los Angeles Unified School District, which will undergo an unprecedented restructuring in the coming months, should be broken into 24 autonomous groups of high schools and their feeder campuses, according to a report to be submitted to Supt. Sid Thompson on Monday. .

The recommendations were drafted by a committee of teachers, administrators and parents who answered an invitation from Thompson in November to help decide how to radically reshape the 845-school district. “I think this has been an opportunity for us all to learn how to do things better at our schools and to learn how to work in a more collaborative manner,” said Marianne Hudz, a parent and chairwoman of the committee charged with reconfiguring the district.

But some say the report is badly flawed because committee meetings were unwieldy and marred by uneven attendance. Votes were tainted when large groups of people from one community packed some meetings to get their suggestions approved, critics said.

“I hope (Thompson) ignores it,” said Harriet Sculley, a cluster committee member and president of the Parent-Teacher Assn. district that serves the San Fernando Valley. “Whoever was the loudest or first to scream or whoever brought the most people from their neighborhood got what they wanted. . . . People were not willing to step out and say what is the greater good for the whole community.”

Hudz said that the task of reconfiguring the district’s 49 high schools “was like riding a wild horse. The democratic process is very messy.”

In the end, she said, “I believed the process worked and anyone who complains about it not having worked, all I can do is say we afforded as much opportunity as we could for input.”

The committee primarily used community identity and student populations to determine the groups. One of its first orders of business was a vocabulary lesson. A cluster is a self-governing group of one to three high schools and the nearby middle and elementary schools that provide students for them.

After lengthy debates, the committee voted to split the district’s 49 high schools and their feeder campuses into clusters that range from the small Sylmar-Verdugo Hills cluster with 17,074 students to the super-cluster of Bell, Huntington Park and South Gate high schools with 54,850 students.

Five high schools and their feeders--Belmont, Garfield, Roosevelt, San Pedro and San Fernando--should be individual clusters either because of their large student populations or distinct neighborhood affiliations, the committee recommended. Thompson said he intends to put the cluster plan up for more public discussion at school board meetings and will turn over his decision to the school board in mid-April.

“The important part of all this is the fact that these are recommendations,” Thompson said. “If people still want to put their 2 cents in they should send it to me and I’ll accept that.”

At least three groups that are upset with the recommendations will be submitting minority reports.

Palisades High School and its feeder schools want to be an individual cluster, Palisades Principal Merle Price said. Already, those schools have one of the most sophisticated collaborations in the district with all eight elementary and middle schools in the area working closely with Palisades High School on curriculum and other issues. Four campuses are in the state’s charter school program, which give schools more decision-making freedom.

Also, Fremont High School in Watts wants to be clustered with Locke High instead of Jordan High because it already shares services with Locke.

Another group of parents has complained that the Bell-Huntingtion super-cluster is too big.

Grouping the district into clusters forms the backbone of a sweeping plan to transform the nation’s second-largest school system from a centrally operated bureaucracy into smaller, more manageable units.

The reorganization plan would end a nearly 25-year-old system of regional offices, each run by an assistant superintendent and a cadre of administrators who issue orders to schools. Services such as maintenance, accounting and special programs, which are run from Downtown offices, will be handed over to the clusters.

Ideally, the new school clusters would be free to design their own instructional programs to develop higher-achieving students from kindergarten through high school. The smaller configurations would allow teachers to do a better job of tracking students from elementary to secondary schools. Clusters would be free to share resources such as janitors, school equipment and staff and parent training programs.

Cluster restructuring was designed to complement two other major reform efforts.

The district’s LEARN plan shifts virtually every aspect of school management to principals, who must collaborate with teachers and parents.

Although only 34 schools are involved in the first LEARN phase launched last year, another 60 schools will be added this spring and all the schools are expected to be on board within five years.

High School Clusters

Here is a draft list of school clusters proposed to begin next fall in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Each cluster would include one or more high schools and feeder elementary and middle schools. Schools in a cluster will share services and decision-making.

HIGH FEEDER SCHOOLS SCHOOLS ENROLLMENT Belmont 34 32,532 Garfield 26 22,388 Roosevelt 25 18,068 Lincoln 15 11,468 Wilson 17 11,460 Cluster total 22,928 Marshall 20 15,742 Eagle Rock 12 6,023 Franklin 16 11,673 Cluster total 33,438 Fairfax 18 9,323 Hollywood 15 11,710 Cluster total 21,033 Hamilton 21 11,337 Palisades 9 4,408 University 15 9,474 Cluster total 25,264 Venice 22 10,470 Westchester 13 7,141 Cluster total 17,611 Banning 11 10,897 Carson 20 14,587 Cluster total 25,484 Gardena 16 10,984 Narbonne 13 9,686 Cluster total 20,670 San Pedro 24 13,693 Manual Arts 18 18,458 Jefferson 24 24,325 Cluster total 42,783 Bell 13 20,002 Hunt. Park 12 16,387 South Gate 12 18,461 Cluster total 54,850 Fremont 30 27,849 Jordan 22 10,932 Cluster total 38,781 Locke 16 9,692 Washington 16 13,521 Cluster total 23,213 Dorsey 18 10,465 Crenshaw 15 9,344 Los Angeles 16 14,518 Cluster total 34,327 San Fernan. 30 23,789 Kennedy 14 8,368 Monroe 18 14,828 Cluster total 23,196 Chatsworth 12 9,995 Granada Hills 14 9,119 Cluster total 19,114 Francis Poly. 18 15,316 N. Hollywood 17 13,128 Cluster total 28,444 Grant 15 14,130 Van Nuys 16 11,462 Cluster total 25,592 Sylmar 11 10,164 Verdugo Hills 13 6,910 Cluster total 17,074 El Cam. Real 9 7,929 Canoga Park 10 7,012 Taft 8 6,409 Cluster total 21,350 Birmingham 16 9,738 Cleveland 10 7,807 Reseda 12 8,575 Cluster total 26,120

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District