Riordan Storms an Educational Bastille

It’s making the education insiders furious, but Mayor Richard Riordan is intensifying his unprecedented efforts to shake up the creaking old L.A. school district.

The depth of the opposition to the mayor was clear when I talked to school board member Victoria Castro. “I think the mayor should stay within the scope of the city,” she said. “There’s a lot to be done there.” Castro even suggested a job for the mayor. “I think he should get us a football team,” she said.

Given the anti-L.A. bias of the fatheads who run the National Football League, getting a team is no easy job. Still, it’s simpler than the task the mayor has chosen for himself--trying to turn around a district that has fought change for decades.

*

The effort is not part of the L.A. mayor’s job description. In fact, the mayor has no statutory authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is run by an elected five-member board.

Past mayors have relentlessly avoided the school district quagmire even though public education is always among their constituents’ top concerns. The most famous example of this was in the late ‘70s when Mayor Tom Bradley, citing school board independence, refused to take a stand on a school busing dispute that was traumatizing the city.

This mayor has a different vision of his responsibility, as was evident Tuesday when he came over to the paper to have coffee with several staff members who cover politics and government.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of our conversation, I have to explain something about Mayor Riordan. He does not like to be quoted as saying anything controversial. But he can’t seem to stop himself from being a troublemaker when he starts talking.

His way around this is to employ several journalistic conventions that sources rely on to conceal their identity: off the record, background, deep background or not for attribution.

He shifted from on the record to off the record so frequently that I left the session unclear as to just what I could quote, except to know Riordan was mad as hell at the school district. Or, as he put it, (on the record, I believe), we “need a revolution.”

Specifically, he wants Supt. Ruben Zacarias to fire incompetent school principals. And he wants Zacarias to give the school district’s new business czar authority to bring in his own staff, and fire subordinates who can’t perform.

What Riordan wants is to make officials accountable--principals responsible for bad test scores in their schools and individual bureaucrats accountable for multimillion-dollar decisions.

This would be a revolution for the Los Angeles school district. It is an immense bureaucracy where an incompetent is, on occasion, punished by a shift to another, possibly better, job and where decision-making by committee shields individuals from blame.

*

Some may wonder how can the mayor start a revolution in such an organization, given the fact that he has no power over the school district.

The fact is, he could do plenty.

For starters, Riordan is focusing the sharp light of critical publicity on the district. This gives us another view of the vast bureaucracy, one at odds with the picture painted by defenders of the status quo.

Riordan is the best known public official in the region and, judging from his easy reelection and his showing in public opinion polls, a popular one. School board members, on the other hand, are pretty well unknown, elected by small turnouts in their own districts. In a fight for public opinion, the mayor holds all the cards.

Riordan has a second weapon. The city, through an amendment to its charter, can expand the school board, increasing the chances of new ideas infiltrating school headquarters. It can also require at-large elections, bad news for current board members who would have to leave their comfortable districts and run citywide.

These ideas could presumably be part of a reform of the City Charter now being considered by two commissions. While perhaps short of revolutionary, they certainly would shake up the status quo.

As school board member Castro’s comments indicate, many in the school district crowd think the mayor is engaged in a power grab or acting like a playground bully.

That’s not to say he’s without any support in school district headquarters.

“I think it’s good,” said school board member David Tokofsky, who thinks Riordan’s school activism is part of his job as mayor. “The tax base of the city depends on people staying in the city and people staying in the city depends on schools, as well as parks and libraries,” he said.

There will be a lot of rhetoric directed against Riordan as he pursues his campaign. Even school officials who don’t publicly oppose the mayor may just give lip service to his suggestions, and then stab him in the back.

But the mayor is on a worthwhile crusade. And while his arsenal of weapons is small, it, along with his ability to attract public attention, may be enough to do the job.