Critics of Riordan’s Schools Involvement See Ulterior Motive

With less than five months remaining in office, Mayor Richard Riordan plans a series of events this week designed to raise his profile as an educational leader, fueling speculation that--officially or not--he wants to run the Los Angeles Unified School District.

In a bus tour of several Los Angeles schools and two wide-ranging policy addresses, Riordan will outline a new agenda including expanding after-school programs, strengthening the ties between City Hall and the schools, and leaning on both parents and corporations to get more involved in schools.

Aides said the mayor will also weigh in on more sensitive educational topics, proposing new programs for students who can’t read at the end of the first grade and trying to spur discussions on a Chicago-like system in which mayors appoint school board members.

The education blitz--coming shortly before an election that could leave Riordan-backed candidates in six of the seven seats--is fanning months-old speculation that he is angling to make himself superintendent after leaving office June 30.

“Rumors are rampant,” said Julie Korenstein, one of two board members Riordan is targeting in the April 10 election. “It’s all over the district as well as out in the community.”

But questions about Riordan’s intentions run deeper than the possibility of his assuming the district’s top job, an ambition that he disavows though he has said he wants to work in the district after his term.

The mayor has already put his imprint on the school board with a 1997 campaign in which he raised $2 million for a slate of candidates, including three challengers, all of whom won.

That scenario has sent a shudder through the Los Angeles teachers union, which supports both candidates the mayor opposes this year. In a political cartoon in an upcoming edition of the union newspaper, Riordan is portrayed as a puppet master using campaign contributions garnered from his wealthy friends to gain total control of the $8.9-billion institution.

“He won’t officially say he wants to run the school district,” United Teachers-Los Angeles President Day Higuchi said. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt a change of one school board member could make a majority to fire the superintendent and get whoever they want.”

Riordan said he doesn’t ask board members to do his bidding, and in an interview he stressed that “by far the finest thing I’ve done as mayor is to put up the people for the school board.”

The hardest part was finding the right people, he said. “I don’t want anybody who is beholden to me. I need people who think for themselves and hopefully think somewhat the way I do. I want them to be independent, tough-minded.”

However, his influence was evident in the board’s reaction to the proposed new labor contract negotiated by Supt. Roy Romer.

Board members Genethia Hayes, Mike Lansing and Caprice Young, whose campaigns Riordan bankrolled two years ago, all said they would vote against an 11.5% teacher pay raise because it would drain money from critical needs such as books and teacher training, much as the mayor has said.

Nor did Riordan try to dispel rumors over his intentions when he planned this week’s visit to five Los Angeles schools without consulting the superintendent.

Despite grumbling from UTLA and some district officials, Romer supported Riordan, saying the tour “of things in his city” is something he would expect of any late-term mayor.

“I’m totally comfortable with my relationship with the mayor,” Romer said. “He’s helpful. It’s my duty to utilize any help I can get.”

Romer said he would welcome Riordan to a position in the district, though the two have not yet discussed what form it would take. Riordan has expressed interest in improving computer technology in classrooms.

In light of the mayor’s political involvement with the board, Romer said he would want to put a “firewall” between Riordan and the district’s administrative chain of command. Though Romer did not elaborate, the implication is that Riordan would not be involved in such matters as personnel decisions.

In the interview with The Times, Riordan said he is not trying to usurp Romer’s position.

“I’ll be a good chauffeur,” he said. “I want Gov. Romer to succeed, and I want to be the guy who helps him to succeed.”

Nonetheless, the mayor has discussed his education agenda mostly off the record and has made few public comments about his actions.

His ambitious schedule this week leaves little doubt that he is maneuvering at once to secure a legacy for two terms as mayor and to plot a future for himself.

Each stop on his highly orchestrated bus tour will represent an aspect of “how far we’ve come over the last 7 1/2 years, but how far we still have to go,” said Deputy Mayor Ben Austin.

First the bus will pick up 20 children from a downtown-area hotel today and drive them to Norwood Elementary, a school known for its principal’s success in engaging parents. The message, Austin said, will be that principals can be held accountable for parental involvement.

The next stop will be a company that will announce its adoption of a school and a new scholarship program. The message: The corporate community must play its part.

Then it’s on to the Van Nuys Primary Center, built under the guidance of a task force of business people convened by the mayor. The message: Innovative ideas--especially from the private sector--are needed to get more children to attend neighborhood schools.

At the Marlton School for special education students, Riordan will talk about a trip to Washington, D.C., he and Romer plan in March to lobby for more federal support for special education programs.

A demolition of an abandoned, gang-harboring house near two schools will highlight the city’s role in making schools safe.

The cavalcade of messages will end with the unveiling of an IBM-Riordan Young Explorers computer program at Sage Children’s Center and an observation of the Menlo Elementary School L.A’s Best after-school program.

In an address Tuesday at Weemes Elementary School, Riordan will wrap all these themes into a prescription for the remainder of his own term and for his successor, Austin said.

It will include calls for more corporate involvement, more parental involvement, more pre-kindergarten and after-school programs with a stronger instructional content, more accountability for principals and more city and school district cooperation.

In the same speech, Riordan will venture into broader educational policy by pushing for new ways of thinking about students who don’t learn how to read in the first grade. Austin said the mayor is trying to provoke public discourse on how to eliminate “social promotion” without falling back on the stigmatizing practice of retaining students.

On Thursday Riordan is scheduled as the keynote speaker for a Brown University conference on urban schools. It is there that he intends to discuss the possibility of the appointment of school board members by mayors.

In his interview with the Times, Riordan said he had wanted to establish such a system in Los Angeles, but the political landscape wasn’t ready for it.

Putting up candidates for the school board was “a very cumbersome way to turn around the management of a school district.”

If the candidates he is supporting prevail in April, some observers say, there is little reason for Riordan to want the superintendent’s job.

“My view of him has always been that he likes to influence who is going to call the shots more than he likes to implement the day-to-day decisions,” said Raphael Sonenshein, Los Angeles specialist in the Cal State Fullerton political sciences department, who said he admires the way Riordan used his office to push an educational agenda.

Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, also praised Riordan’s education initiatives and said he could see the mayor as an informal advisor to both the board and Romer. But, Guerra said he wouldn’t expect Riordan to take any existing job.

Either way, Guerra said, “Riordan is taking some ownership in the school district.”

For those who’d rather he stay away, what form that takes isn’t the important point.

“He can get leverage in two ways,” board member Korenstein said. “One, he becomes superintendent. Two, he owns the board. Either way he gets what he wants.”