Agreement Reached on School Grant

More than a year after the money was promised, the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday unanimously approved an agreement with a private foundation that could bring at least $21 million to the school district over the next five years.

The grant is part of a plan by former U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg to support and further reform in several cities across the country, an effort known locally as the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, or LAAMP.

Delays in release of the funds, caused by fund-raising complications and political skirmishes, left the district still negotiating with the project when the grant announcement passed its first anniversary in November. It took several more months to reach a final agreement, in part because of concern over the project’s requirement that districts promise to refund the money if mutually agreed-upon goals are not met.

The final contract approved Tuesday does not prescribe new kinds of reforms for the Los Angeles Unified School District, but instead commits it to reach its own previously stated benchmarks, such as decentralized governance and improved student performance--ranging from ensuring every third-grader can read to enrolling most middle school students in algebra.

“We’re not coming to you with a pattern from Vogue or anywhere else about how it should be done,” said project Chairman Virgil Roberts, a Los Angeles attorney long involved with school reform.

In fact, the project’s major amendment to the district’s LEARN reform movement is a call for it to create groupings of schools known as “families” in which reform pioneer campuses are to nurture similar changes at neighboring schools.

Roberts said the provision is intended to bring elements of LEARN to the schools that need change the most but are least able to embark on reforms themselves. LEARN, which gives parents, teachers and community members more say in the running of schools, currently exists at nearly a third of the district’s 660 campuses.

Supt. Sid Thompson said district officials began talking with administrators at some of the most troubled campuses last week. “We’re pulling together a process whereby we can go into schools and help them,” Thompson said. “Otherwise we’ll go down the way and we’ll hit a wall.”