Reorganization Plan Prompts Breakup Call

The first signs of opposition to Supt. Ramon C. Cortines’ plan to reorganize the Los Angeles Unified School District surfaced Thursday as the head of an association of school principals suggested that the time may have come to break up the sprawling district.

“I don’t see any need to keep the district in one piece if the interim superintendent is saying it’s no good,” said Eli Brent, director of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. “Maybe the time is right to break it up into different school districts--and I don’t mean into the 11 mini-districts Cortines has suggested under his reorganization plan.”

The plan Cortines and Howard Miller, the district’s chief operating officer, are scheduled to unveil next month would eliminate as many as half the staff positions in the district’s central administration. Some administrators are likely to end up replacing existing school principals as a result of reassignments.

Although Cortines has declined to specify precisely how many jobs would be eliminated, other district officials have pegged the number at between 800 and 1,000 of the 2,000 administrative staff members.

The plan would turn the district’s downtown headquarters into a new high school and move headquarters to a smaller building.

In addition, it would link teachers’ pay raises to students’ performance--a proposal that has already been denounced by leaders of the teachers’ union.

Cortines and Miller plan to release the details of the massive reorganization plan March 15 and push the Board of Education to approve it by April 11.

Even as administrators and union activists took potshots at the two self-styled reformers and their plan, the two solidified support where it counts: with the Board of Education.

School board President Genethia Hayes said, “This board is supportive of both Cortines and Miller, and we are looking forward to details of their plan.

“We need people who are decisive; I understand that makes some people nervous,” she said. “But when you’re talking about changing an institution’s culture and focus, we can’t do that by just tinkering around the edges or reshuffling folks like we’ve been doing for years and years.”

Cortines expects to have the reorganization plan up and running before he steps down in July for a yet-to-be named replacement.

He said he will not be deterred. “The days of status quo are over,” Cortines said.

Miller acknowledged that the district will have to go through a difficult period of adjustment this spring.

“But things must change,” he said. “Right now, there are more bathrooms on the second floor of the main administration building than in any of the over 800 schools in the district. In my mind, that symbolizes an administration that has been oblivious to the realities of urban education.”

Both men say draconian measures are essential to refocus the district on providing quality education and resisting outside forces that want to splinter the district into smaller pieces.

Board member Victoria Castro said she saw an additional agenda in the proposed cutbacks. She believes Cortines and Miller want to give teachers unions a big pay increase this year, using the savings from slashing administrative positions and reassigning personnel to the schools.

“This is a year of collective bargaining negotiations,” she said, “so we’re trying to develop a pool of money that will strengthen the district’s bargaining position.”

The proposed cuts, she suggested, “will help us cut out the [administrative] fat and avoid a strike.”

Miller flatly denied any such motivation.

“The administration has to be cut in order to make the district more efficient,” he said. “The collective-bargaining financial issues are separate.”

On Thursday, Day Higuchi, president of the 40,000-member United Teachers-Los Angeles, met with Cortines seeking clarification of his call to tie teachers’ pay incentives to students’ performance.

Cortines described the meeting as “professional and friendly.”

Higuchi characterized it a bit differently: “You can disagree without shouting at each other.”

“I was very clear,” he said, explaining again the union’s opposition to tying pay to student performance.

“Merit pay is a failed idea; it doesn’t work and I challenged him to name me one district in the past 200 years where it was used successfully,” he said. “If they mean individual so-called merit pay for students’ results, then it’s going to be a very long year.”

Addressing another problem facing the district, Miller set a deadline for a private contractor helping to repair and build schools to replace six of its employees who were fired earlier this month by Cortines. If the contractor doesn’t comply within one week, its contract may be terminated, Miller said.

Alan Krusi, president of 3D/I-O’Brien Kreitzberg, has promised to cooperate with Cortines and Miller, who contend the dismissals were needed to improve efficiency and teamwork on the project funded through the $2.4-billion Proposition BB.

But Miller said he is running out of patience.

“We’d like them to bring people forward as soon as possible,” Miller said. “If another week goes by and we don’t have new people, we have to consider others.”