LAUSD Can Better Serve Students by Breaking Up : LEARN, cited as a reason to keep the district intact, is too much of a challenge in high schools. The argument that small districts are top-heavy with management is unsound.

If you say “break up the school district” in front of defenders of the Los Angeles public schools, the reply is apt to be, “Wait! Look at LEARN.”

LEARN, which is short for Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Reform Now, has become almost an automatic response by advocates of saving the district.

Mark Slavkin, president of the L.A. Board of Education, argues against the breakup on the grounds that it would result in endless red tape and litigation. Furthermore, he cautions, while we are trying to figure out all the particulars, it would be business as usual and education would get a back seat. He points to the LEARN agenda as a viable alternative.

LEARN may be the best plan on the table at this time, but its success is dependent first on an outstanding principal--a rare breed--and, second, on volunteer teachers and others willing to participate in countless after-school meetings.

Even at Francis Polytechnic High School, a second-year LEARN school with one of the best principals in the district, fewer than 10% of the teachers are actively working on LEARN reform.

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There are some successful LEARN schools. They tend to have small faculties used to discussing students’ progress from year to year, and active parent groups. LEARN can work in elementary and even in middle schools. Los Angeles high schools, however, with students in the thousands and faculties of 100 or more who can hardly agree about anything, offer an almost insurmountable challenge.

Slavkin is correct in believing that those schools that have dynamic principals and small, dedicated staffs will not readily give up the autonomy they have gained through LEARN. It may well be that the LEARN program, under which schools can choose to become more autonomous from the central office, is the best hope for the giant school district. But that is not quite the same thing as saying that the district ought to be saved.

Teachers, parents and community members want a voice in governance, in goal setting and in allocation of resources. But they do not want to be involved in micromanagement. Teaching all day is job enough, as is raising a family or running a business. Administrators are paid to run schools, and L.A.’s administrators are the highest paid in the county. If we had quality administrators with strong leadership skills--innovative visionaries well-trained in preparing budgets--we wouldn’t need LEARN.

If every school could hire its own principal and teachers, effective immediately, we probably wouldn’t be discussing a breakup. And that is a decision the Board of Education could make right now.

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Another standard argument against the breakup is that because one district would be replaced by many, one administration would be replaced by many. Each district, breakup opponents argue, would need its own superintendent and central office support staff, resulting not in less bureaucracy but more.

For instance, John Perez, a vice president of the teachers union, says a breakup would lead to increased costs because of the proliferation of administrations. According to his figures, several smaller districts would spend an additional $33 million in administrative costs, resulting in the loss of 600 teaching positions, which in turn would result in larger classes.

Anyone who’s seen LAUSD’s table of organization would be skeptical of Perez’s conclusions. Seeking to test them, I called the Las Virgenes School District, a small district with 11,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It manages with one superintendent and three assistants in charge of business, education and personnel. The assistants don’t have assistants. The five board members each receive a stipend of $240 a month, and one declines to accept even that. Board members have no district-provided cars with cellular phones, no chauffeurs, no offices and no secretaries.

The Hart Union High School District, with 11,500 students in grades 7 through 12, manages with one superintendent and two assistants. Its five board members receive $400 a month if they attend all board meetings. There are no clusters as in the L.A. district, no highly paid cluster leaders, no even more highly paid supervisors of cluster leaders. Just a few administrators, principals and assistant principals, clerical and janitorial crews--and teachers.

My view of the Los Angeles Unified School District is from inside a classroom, and it’s not a pretty sight. I am convinced that if the district continues to do things the way it has always done them, we’ll get the kind of results we’ve always gotten. And with the lowest test scores and the highest dropout rate in the state, that’s not good enough.

I once asked Mark Slavkin, “What’s so good about being big?” He replied, “Nothing.” I couldn’t agree more.