103 Schools Added to L.A. District Reform Bid : Education: Board approves additional campuses for LEARN effort, but funding remains a question. Superintendent is asked to come up with answer.

The Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously added 103 schools to its LEARN reform effort Monday night--more than doubling the participating campuses--despite lingering questions about both funding and the district administration’s ability to cope with such a large increase.

To applause from what remained of a standing-room-only crowd after almost four hours of debate, the board approved the schools’ applications, saying the message of wholeheartedly supporting reform is more important than the technicalities of financing it.

“It’s exciting that you believe it’s possible to have change in this district,” board member Julie Korenstein told the audience. “I’m going to take somewhat of a chance by voting for this . . . because I really don’t know where the money is coming from.”

Board members asked Supt. Sid Thompson to tell them in two weeks where the estimated $4.2 million in district funds needed to pay for LEARN school training and other costs will be found in the district’s lean budget. One option presented Monday--using federal money intended to compensate for the inequities of poverty, known as Title 1--drew opposition from several board members.

“All you’d do is underwrite LEARN by raiding some other funds,” board member Barbara Boudreaux said. “That is totally unacceptable.”

This is the first year that LEARN applications have caused controversy, after two cycles of almost routine approvals in the rush to reform 540 Los Angeles Unified schools by 1998.

Earlier this year, however, an outside review suggested that the district was unlikely to meet that deadline anyway, largely because administrators were not adequately coordinating the reform effort at the existing 89 LEARN schools.

Although the majority of the parents who spoke Monday were enthusiastic about the reform effort, in recent months some parents have complained that their concerns were not being taken seriously at LEARN and potential LEARN schools.

Some board members also have previously expressed growing impatience that LEARN cannot yet prove it has improved student performance, its ultimate goal.

None of those issues were discussed by the board Monday, but board President Mark Slavkin said they would be topics of future meetings.

Teachers union President Helen Bernstein was not so confident.

“In an arena such as this, the real issues of systemic change will never be discussed and therefore will never be resolved,” she said. “There are 200 principals in (LEARN) now. Are you telling me all of them are ready to do this?”

Nationally, reform experts said the complaints--and whether the board is willing to respond to them--could mark a crucial turning point for LEARN. If the concerns are addressed now, they said the chances for true reform could be enhanced. If the complaints are ignored, LEARN could become just another false start.

“There are always growing pains, whenever any large districts try to go through reform of any kind,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the national Center for Education Reform. “But this raises a question of whether you can really reform a large district like Los Angeles’ from within. . . . If you still have most of the same people accountable, you can’t make a lot of headway in restoring local control.”

The Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now began as the brainchild of a “working group” of educators, politicians, parents and business people, led by former state Assemblyman Mike Roos. The Board of Education adopted the plan in March, 1993, and the first 34 schools were accepted later that year.

In LEARN, panels of school “stake-holders”--including teachers and parents--are allowed to make vital decisions and then are held accountable for their outcomes. The district is responsible for coordinating that restructuring, then providing advice and assistance as it relinquishes control of the budget to the stake-holders.

But the review conducted in January for the LEARN working group by McKinsey & Company Inc. found that some of the budget transfers had been held up by bureaucratic complications.

It also said the level of LEARN’s success at participating schools depended greatly on the abilities of the principals. It criticized the district for not punishing the laggards and for failing to groom and promote those more capable of instituting reforms.

Under the heading “radical options,” the report suggested that LEARN could consider breaking away into a separate district, an idea that infuriated school board members but which even Roos repeatedly has stated is not favored by LEARN’s own board.