Breakup Plan Unites LAUSD, Teachers Union

Despite a pledge this week by the Los Angeles city schools chief to cooperate with breakup forces, district and teachers union officials are working behind-the-scenes to defend themselves and thousands of employees from efforts to carve up the nation’s second largest district.

The two mammoth organizations, long at odds over issues of wages and working conditions, suddenly face a common enemy expected to spring from legislation approved this month making it easier for voters to divide the sprawling district.

Part of the district’s battle plan is to dilute the breakup campaign by improving educational reform programs--especially one that divides the district into 27 groups of schools.

District officials are hoping they can reverse widespread community dissatisfaction by touting this division of the 708-square-mile district into smaller administrative areas. The year-old plan provides the benefits of smaller districts, but without widespread layoffs or transfers involving the district’s 55,000 employees, officials said.

For its part, United Teachers-Los Angeles--the union representing 28,000 teachers--is seeking guarantees that it retain power as the city’s sole bargaining unit. To that end, UTLA is negotiating for a multiyear contract that would bind any new districts created in a breakup plan.

Union President Helen Bernstein said she is likely to seek financial and legal help from national labor union affiliates. One course may be for the teachers union to promote its own reorganization of the city school district, she said.

“I do empathize with the desire for more local control,” Bernstein said. “But the truth is, I don’t want people to create little districts that don’t do anything better for kids.”

Los Angeles schools Supt. Sid Thompson this week offered to share information with activists seeking smaller school systems, telling a San Fernando Valley business group that the district would not launch a “crusade” against breakup efforts.

“I’m trying to keep . . . kind of an open mind that says, ‘Don’t have preconceived notions about whether this should be or not,’ ” Thompson said.

Through such an open-door policy, district officials hope to show activists the complexities--and advantages--of the current system. Thompson and other district officials say a breakup campaign could collapse under the burden of legal, financial and political requirements, once they are revealed in detail.

“I don’t think the people who want to break up the district, who get all the information, will come back with any decision that’s any different from mine,” said Associate Supt. Ron Prescott, the district’s chief Sacramento lobbyist.

But Connie Moreno of the California School Employees Assn.--a union representing district clerks and office workers--said she has her doubts about the district’s new cooperation.

“It takes an act of Congress to get any information,” she said. “It’s a charade if anyone thinks they are going to get information easily from this school district.”

Breakup supporters also remain skeptical about the district’s promises of help, saying district bureaucrats are unlikely to give up their power and position without a fight.

Further, supporters say the district should not underestimate their desire--or ability--to improve public schools in Los Angeles.

“The party’s over,” said Bob Scott, a member of Valley Advocates for Local Unified Education, who supports dividing the Valley into three school districts. “I think they know we’re really going to do it.”

Thompson’s remarks about the district’s cooperative stance created tension among school board members who say he does not speak for them.

Board of Education member David Tokofsky, who represents parts of East Los Angeles and the east San Fernando Valley, said: “It ain’t our policy.”

Tokofsky said the district should be promoting charter schools--those that run independent of the district. The district’s current reform plan--dividing the schools into so-called clusters--is not working, he said.

“I call them the clutters,” Tokofsky said. “My feeling is we should abandon or seriously reorganize them. I think we’ve developed the clusters and we don’t even know what the hell they are.”

A recent district survey also shows widespread dissatisfaction with the reform measure. Of the 104 parents and community members who responded to a poll this summer, less than one-third said they were “generally satisfied” with the cluster program.

Nonetheless, Thompson maintained that the small groups of schools could appease breakup proponents.

The district’s last line of defense may be the provisions in legislation authored by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and pending before the governor, that maintain strict racial and funding guidelines for any new districts.

Prescott, the district’s lobbyist, said the measure’s restrictions protect the district from any dramatic changes.

“If they can create a district that meets the requirements in the Hayden bill--why not?” Prescott said. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Yes, it’s the same thing with a new name and a new feeling, but it would be what folks want. It wouldn’t be terrifically different from this one.”

Hayden and other breakup supporters, however, disagree.

“No one would want to leave L.A. Unified and duplicate it,” Hayden said. “All my legislation does is make it possible to create smaller school districts. . . . I think it sets tough but reasonable standards.”

State Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) went further, saying, “There couldn’t be anything worse than this district, there couldn’t be anything more unorganized, more ineffective.” She wrote the new law easing the way for a breakup by dramatically reducing the number of voter signatures required for a plan to be placed on the ballot. It also strips the Board of Education of its veto power over a breakup plan.

Although district officials have said they would not file a discrimination lawsuit--using the Hayden legislation--to block a breakup plan, others might.

“Litigation is something that is always in our arsenal. It’s always something we consider,” said Theresa Fay-Bustillos, vice president of legal programs for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund.