Breakup of LAUSD Would Solve Nothing : Local reform initiative, implemented in 100 schools, is the answer. The system of semi-autonomous school sites empowers individual school communities.

The proposed breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District is a bad idea. While its backers believe that our city’s educational problems are best solved by giving more power to more administrators, the idea would have serious negative consequences for students.

The idea of a breakup has been around for years. The effort is to be renewed this year with the introduction of a bill in the Assembly, sponsored by two legislators representing parts of the San Fernando Valley, that would make the process easier.

All of us agree that there are enormous problems within our district. We have what appears to be a bloated and unresponsive administration. Students are not achieving at high levels. Teachers are underpaid, unhappy, and worry about their safety. Classrooms are overcrowded, and resources are scarce.

And, while the problems are evident, the solutions are elusive. The proponents of the breakup would have us believe that their solution is the panacea. Upon closer examination, however, we see that, rather than solve our problems, breaking up the school district would only replicate them.

I work for a premium television network that is marketed to households in every community in the country. To be successful, our company has had to strike the perfect balance between centrally managed marketing strategies and locally developed programs. The centralized approach enables us to benefit from economies of scale, whereas our local campaigns permit us to respond to the culture, values, economic profile and demographics of each city in which we want to do business.

As a result of this balanced approach to managing our business, our network has been the fastest-growing premium television network for five consecutive years. While the economic benefits and administrative efficiencies are important, at the end of the day it is the decisions that are made closest to our customers in local markets that guarantee our growth.

This model for success is applicable to our schools. Breaking up the LAUSD would not guarantee the creation of new districts that match this successful model. Only with an efficient central administration that empowers individual schools, where student results actually occur, can we ensure success.

LEARN, the local reform initiative implemented in nearly 100 schools, does just this. LEARN calls for decentralized units far smaller than those contemplated by any district breakup plan. LEARN creates a system of semi-autonomous school sites where individual school communities--parents, teachers, students, staff and principals--are empowered to create and maintain their own distinct character in response to the unique and local needs of their own students and are then held accountable for the result.

A role model for me is Rafe Esquith, a teacher at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles and the Walt Disney Co.’s outstanding teacher of 1992. Rafe works tirelessly and passionately to give his students a wide-ranging education. Each year his class of fifth- and sixth-graders, many of them recent immigrants to the United States, performs an entire Shakespearean play in his small classroom.

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In addition, he personally obtains or provides the funds to take his students across the nation, traveling to such places as Ashland, Ore., for its annual Shakespeare festival or to Washington to study our nation’s heritage. He has had to raise money from individuals and corporations to provide needed supplies for his students. For such teachers as Rafe, however, results are the bottom line. The walls of his classroom are lined with pennants from such colleges and universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton that his inner-city students have gone on to attend. In a world of scarce resources, Rafe hustles to make up for what is not available from the school district. It is men and women like Rafe who change students’ lives.

It is teachers like Rafe who are on the front lines, showing their care and love for students by giving them the instruction and inspiration they need to become informed and productive members of society. Any structure that becomes more focused on administrative structure and bureaucracy instead of students and teachers creates a serious roadblock to that goal.

California now spends $1,000 less per student than the national average, ranking us 40th in the nation on per-pupil spending. Breaking up the district would not bring one more dollar into the classroom where it is needed. Rather, funds from the available pool of resources would have to be spent to create new central offices with new bureaucracies and would in fact result in further decreases in our district’s per-pupil spending.

Let’s remember: Students learn in classrooms, not in central administration headquarters. The people within a school system most responsible for achieving students success are at the campuses, like Rafe Esquith, not school board members, superintendents or downtown bureaucrats.

The breakup of the L.A. Unified School District would create more administrations, more bureaucrats and more problems. It would empower the wrong people and do nothing to improve student achievement. In the end, once again, it is our students who would suffer.