Compton Voters Have a Right to Be Heard

In 1993, the state superintendent of public instruction, under an agreement with the Compton Unified School District Board of Trustees, assumed control of the Compton schools. Consequently, the school district became the first and only one in the state in which a state administrator was authorized to exercise the full power and authority of the local board of education. The results of this arrangement have not been encouraging.

Parents in Compton were stripped of their right to participate, through their representatives, in matters affecting the education of their children.

After five years and five different state administrators, and despite marginal improvement in reading and math test scores, Compton students “are still ranked at the lowest levels statewide,” according to the state’s own progress report.

Vital repairs to Compton schools were not made until a class-action lawsuit by the ACLU was filed on behalf of a group of parents. At the same time, however, administrative overhead expenditures for the board and superintendent have exceeded $2 million annually, nearly seven times the amount spent by Glendale and Pomona unified school districts, two local districts with comparable enrollments.

Most recently, a firestorm of controversy was created by the administrator’s insistence on using his statutory authority to make an appointment to fill a vacancy on the board of trustees, rather than allowing the citizenry to exercise their right to vote in a special election. His action, which created a board majority for his initiatives, eliminated even the pretense that the views of the local community might have any value or import.

The power assumed by the state in its takeover of Compton Unified was absolute, and with it should have come an equal measure of responsibility. Such a broad usurpation of electoral power and community involvement requires, at the very least, a clear justification. In the case of the Compton schools, this justification should have included a clear set of criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the state’s actions. Such criteria could have been used as a means by which to define programs of action and to gauge their effectiveness in meeting the goals of the state’s intervention. To date, however, the goals of the state--the means by which to register its purpose and tenure in Compton--remain vague and shifting.

Moreover, by disenfranchising the voters of the Compton school district, the state made the city’s municipal government the only public body through which the local voters could be heard. It is against this backdrop that the city leadership has begun to monitor the state’s administration of the district.

We have taken upon ourselves the responsibility of supporting the community in its efforts to force the administrator to follow the board’s bylaws in his exercise of power. We have been compelled to step in to protect schoolchildren from being subjected to harmful fumes and chemicals and to assert the right of the people to elect their own representatives. We are prepared to work out a plan with the state that addresses the district’s fiscal and academic issues and which restores control of the district’s affairs to the duly elected school board.

Much has been made of the turmoil in our city and some have suggested that my administration is responsible. That conclusion can only be reached if one believes that what the state has done and continues to do in Compton is in the best interest of the children and the community. We don’t agree.

I am reminded of the words that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass uttered during another time of conflict over the right to self-determination. He said, “Power concedes nothing without demand! It never has and it never will.” Quite simply, the conflict in Compton is about the right of its citizens to vote for their representatives and to have meaningful local control over its schools. The citizens of Compton demand and deserve both.