Valley Commentary : Why Our Teachers Don’t Trust LEARN Program : Reform plan could help troubled public schools re-create themselves, but teachers are understandably wary of faddishness, financing and risks.

On those days when my enthusiasm wanes, I look at education in Los Angeles and feel like we’re caught in an eddy spiraling downward. I feel myself being pulled down by the educational bureaucracy, which, while it advocates change and even makes some changes, remains relatively untouched. I’m afraid LEARN may be just another paper tiger.

In 1991, a coalition of business leaders, educators and parents got together to determine how our schools should look as we enter the 21st Century. What the coalition proposed, under the title of Los Angeles Educational Assn. for Reform Now (LEARN), was that individual schools be given the opportunity to develop their own educational programs, according to the needs of the community and the students they serve.

Two years into the program, 87 Los Angeles Unified School District schools have begun developing schoolwide plans, the first step in becoming a LEARN school. Although LEARN’s director, former Assemblyman Mike Roos, said he’s encouraged by the level of participation, the number is still 13 short of the 100 projected for year two of the program and a far cry from the total of 650-plus L.A. public schools.

This newspaper has editorially declared LEARN to be the last chance the Los Angeles school district has of taking control of its own destiny. The community, rightly or wrongly, is demanding change. If not LEARN, its advocates suggest, then the options will be breaking up the district or issuing vouchers. Given the choices, teachers should be clamoring to jump on the LEARN bandwagon.

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Unfortunately, they aren’t.

A colleague and I brought the LEARN discussion to our school, proposing that we should, in Roos’ words, “be in a system where we can sit at the table and help make the decisions, rather than have them forced on us.” After a tumultuous six weeks during the spring semester of speeches, communiques to the faculty, guest speakers from the LEARN office, visits to LEARN schools and much heated discussion, our teachers overwhelmingly--65% to 35%--voted no on LEARN. That killed it. It takes a 75% favorable vote among teachers to install LEARN.

Our school isn’t unique. Most high school faculties in the Valley have turned it down or never discussed it formally at all. Even Helen Bernstein, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, couldn’t get the union to endorse LEARN.

Here are the seven reasons, not in any particular order, most often given by teachers voting no on LEARN:

1. We don’t trust the school district, the administrators, the superintendent or the school board.

2. Where’s the money going to come from? True, private funds were raised to pay for initial training, but who pays for LEARN’s offices or director or phones and staff? Still smarting from the “temporary” 10% pay cut about to enter its third year, teachers shout, “Not from my pay check, it isn’t!”

3. Nothing in the LEARN program promises lower class size, money for supplies, computers and more classrooms. You can only move resources around. My colleagues promise that even without any other education reform, they could do miracles if all classes were limited to 20 students and every class had at least one computer.

4. LEARN is just another faddish project. My more experienced colleagues assure me that if we wait around long enough, it too will pass.

5. At every step to organizing a LEARN school, teachers are expected to volunteer their time to serve on a seemingly endless round of committees tacked on to a job that is universally acknowledged to be among the most stressful.

6. Teachers are not risk-takers. We know what we have now. If we change it, things may be worse.

7. LEARN gives final control to the principal. The teachers union fought long and hard to protect teachers from vindictive principals; teachers are not willingly going to give back those protections.

I understand how the teachers feel. I even agree with them on some points. Still, I voted for LEARN and am sorry it lost.

I don’t agree with the severest critics of the public schools. What we’re doing now isn’t terrible. Kids who come to school every day do get an education, they do graduate and they do go on to jobs and colleges.

On the other hand, for many students--and teachers--school isn’t the exciting, dynamic, challenging place it could be. LEARN is no panacea, but it gives a school a chance to re-create itself.