Shake-Up on Marvin Avenue

Los Angeles Schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias has cast a sharp eye on Anna McLinn, principal of Marvin Avenue Elementary, because of allegations of serious financial irregularities at the Mid-City school. Adding to the management problems is a rising, racially tinged conflict on the campus. Needless to say, not much learning is going on. Zacarias has to get to the source of the financial and racial troubles and remove all of those responsible for creating or fomenting them.

Still unanswered is what happened to more than $300,000 in missing federal earthquake recovery funds, $32,000 in private donations and some big-screen television sets. A final report on those matters is expected next week.

The teachers union has long been at odds with McLinn; it cites high teacher turnover at the campus, a high concentration of inexperienced teachers and other evidence of management problems. But union activists must share the blame for the school’s situation. They reprehensibly organized neighborhood meetings that pitted Latino parents against the black principal. Now, for the sake of school peace, they should cancel a meeting set for Wednesday.

While the adults warred, student test scores suffered. Third-graders ranked at the ninth percentile in reading on the recent statewide test; most other grades scored in the teens. Even students at the small dual-language magnet school on the campus scored well below the national average.

Marvin Avenue is ripe for reconstitution, a last-ditch remedy that replaces administrators outright and requires faculty and staff members to reapply for their jobs. The San Francisco district pioneered reconstitution and has gotten generally winning results. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, overly strong union protections require permission from the teachers union for such a move. The union, having helped inflame tensions, has no good grounds for declining to cooperate. To calm the campus, any new leadership in the school’s administration will need experienced, neutral teachers who carry no baggage.

Principals in the LAUSD, like the teachers and most members of supporting staffs, are unionized, a status at odds with the principals’ managerial positions and an obstacle to Zacarias’ promise to weed out ineffective ones. Even so, Zacarias claims he has quietly demoted or encouraged to retire 17 principals. He promises more bad news next week for leaders of the 100 lowest-performing schools that posted further declines on the statewide test.

A great principal can make all the difference in the life of a school, and in student achievement. The students of Marvin Avenue, and of some other LAUSD campuses, deserve better.