Educators Map Plans to Prevent District Breakup : LAUSD: The key is to bring reform to all campuses, following lead of LEARN program, school leaders say at summit.

At the first summit of all 192 Los Angeles Unified School District campuses immersed in reform, top education officials began Friday to detail their strongest defense strategy against the campaign to break up the district.

It can be summed up in one word: LEARN, the reform program started by business, political and educational leaders three years ago.

First, school board President Mark Slavkin issued a strong warning to the 700 teachers, principals and administrators filling a Los Angeles Convention Center auditorium:

“Many people believe in the LEARN reform effort but don’t believe the district has the will or capacity to make it happen. The district must prove them wrong or we will no longer exist.”

Then Supt. Sid Thompson described his arsenal:

* He will compile data by January comparing student test scores and attendance records at LEARN schools with those at the other district schools.

* He will bring an additional 150 schools into LEARN this year, increasing program ranks beyond the halfway mark toward inclusion of all 660 schools. And he will beef up the central office staff charged with coordinating reform.

* He will ask the school board to increase graduation requirements at all schools to 17 core courses, from the current 13, and include more math, science and language arts.

* And he will hire a nationally known expert in education reform--Mike Strembitsky, former superintendent of Edmonton, Canada, schools--to help decentralize district bureaucracy and budgeting.

Long-simmering efforts to break apart the district have been rejuvenated by recent state legislation that dramatically lowered the number of signatures required to place a breakup plan on the ballot.

Some worry that effort might threaten LEARN’s continued growth. Yet camaraderie overshadowed fear and frustration at Friday’s event.

Participants marveled at their progress, commiserated over the grueling schedules that making changes require and celebrated tangible proof that they were not in this alone.

Indeed, from a core group of several hundred teachers, parents and principals at three dozen schools in 1992, the ranks of active converts to the LEARN school reform program have grown into the thousands.

“In some ways I miss the way it was. . . . It was our little family. We really bonded with each other,” said Margaret Gascoigne, LEARN lead teacher at Overland Avenue Elementary, which was in the first group of reform schools.

“But this,” she said, her eyes sweeping the gathering, “gives you a sense of success.”

Mayor Richard Riordan, who gave the luncheon address, said that LEARN offers the only hope for the district with or without the breakup, which he also supports.

He said the reforms would work in any size district and offer more immediate relief than dividing the district, which could take years.

He also praised the district’s willingness to have LEARN schools included in a fledgling program by state Supt. Delain Eastin that would allow schools freedom from some state regulations, in exchange for a promise of higher student achievement.

“The power that the LEARN schools have now is only delegated power, so the state and the school board can fool around with it,” Riordan said after his speech. “They need more power of their own.”

Riordan, one of the architects of LEARN, offered a partial apology for his recent attacks on the district, blaming them on impatience. He drew hisses from the crowd when he conceded that he may have exaggerated in describing Los Angeles Unified as “the worst school system in the country.”

When Riordan and others first designed LEARN, they drew heavily from a 12-year-old reform program in Edmonton, which had succeeded in part because it gave school principals control of their own budgets.

Strembitsky, who led that effort, has since moved on to a reform think tank, the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Details of his one-year contract with Los Angeles Unified have not been finalized, but part of the cost is expected to be financed through a grant from the Annenberg Foundation.

Teachers’ union President Helen Bernstein, who often opposes administrative expenditures, applauded Thompson’s decision to hire Strembitsky.

“It’s a great idea,” Bernstein said. “He will end up paying for himself . . . streamlining the operation so money is freed up at the school sites.”