District Should Ask: What Went Right Here? : It Needs to Take a Lesson From Pacoima Charter School

There are times when the Los Angeles Unified School District seems to resemble the firm that wishes former partners well as they set out to work on their own. Sure, they hope that their old stablemates are successful. . .just maybe not too successful. After all, if the folks who left wind up putting out a better product, it’s going to reflect a bit poorly on some of those business-as-usual bureaucrats at the old firm.

Thus, the worst-case scenario for the programs that shift more authority from the central bureaucracy to individual schools is that some of those bureaucrats might be more concerned with protecting their own jobs than anything else. The best-case scenario is one in which the school system simply decides to learn what it can from the local control efforts, and acts accordingly. Where the LAUSD stands at this point is open to debate, but it is not yet as close to the latter as we would like.

Take, for example, the somewhat begrudging praise the district had for one of its charter schools, the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, in Pacoima. Charter schools are free from state and district regulations.

A few weeks ago, Vaughn’s energetic principal, Yvonne Chan, was claiming an end-of-the-year savings of $1.2 million, a stupendous accomplishment in a school system with so much red ink.

Well, the district sent its auditors out to see what was what at Vaughn. We then heard about the special treatment and financial breaks the district gave Vaughn, breaks that cannot be extended to other schools. Then, we were told that Vaughn officials had miscalculated by about $200,000. Both of these facts, the district said, reduced Vaughn’s end-of-year surplus to about $300,000.

Still, it seems to us that coming in just $3,000 under budget in your first year of relative independence would be grounds for a pat on the school’s collective back and a hearty “well done.” Coming in $30,000 under projected expenditures would be grounds for a rousing cheer and a public relations campaign about how Vaughn and similar efforts are helping to turn the troubled LAUSD around. Hitting the finish line with $300,000 worth of gas left in your tank? We’re talking ticker tape parade here, from an accounting standpoint. The district should have been far more enthusiastic.

Other things that the district said about Vaughn were more on target. Chan, for example, was praised for being innovative and for serving as the catalyst for reforms that other schools are now trying to copy.

In the meantime, the auditors who were so thorough in pointing out that Vaughn really hadn’t done as well as it had claimed seem to be needed elsewhere.

It seems that the cash-strapped district so badly bungled its application for a National Science Foundation grant that it was one of only two urban school districts around the nation that were rejected. The cost to students was $15 million--money that could have been used to revamp the way math and science is taught. It gets worse.

Food 4 Less Foundation officials, who last year pledged $10 million to help upgrade the LAUSD’s deteriorating athletic facilities, are so miffed at the district that they have withheld payment on the second installment of the donation.

It seems that the LAUSD let $260,000 of the money already obtained from Food 4 Less sit unused for months. Some LAUSD officials contend that Food 4 Less might be trying to renege on its promise, but the foundation denies that.

“This is another example of what happens when things are assigned bureaucratically,” rather than as “red alert” priority issues, said Mike Roos, president of the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now school reform effort.

We have another way of putting it: score one for Vaughn, subtract two for the LAUSD bureaucracy.