Bridging Concerns of City and Schools

In trying to cast themselves as the next education mayor, candidates James K. Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa have both outlined platforms that stretch the bounds of mayoral authority.

After-school programs, a staple of both candidates’ proposals, are funded largely by state and federal tax dollars. And the measures they promise to streamline city review of school construction projects would be mostly meaningless because permits for schools come from Sacramento.

Of course, the mayor of Los Angeles can be a factor in education by lobbying legislators in Sacramento and Washington, by focusing business leaders on the public schools, and even by backing candidates in school board elections.

But officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District say the new mayor could be especially helpful as a partner in the construction of 85 new schools across the city.

On the campaign trail, both candidates have talked in general terms about building bridges with the school district. But when presented with real cases in which the interests of the city and school district are colliding, they had significantly different ideas about how to solve the problems.

Hahn, the phlegmatic city attorney for the past 16 years, sees the mayor’s role as working within the system. Villaraigosa, the brash former Assembly speaker, is more inclined to look outside City Hall for solutions, and at times offers radical ideas.

In one case, the city’s efforts to create a new park appear to be slowing down the construction of a school in Westlake, which is woefully short of both schools and parks.

A developer who owns the former Loreto Catholic school wants to bring it up to state code and sell it to the school district. District officials hoped the city would take a church next door for its park. But the city is taking steps to condemn the Catholic school and raze the building for a park. If that happens, the district would probably buy the church and tear it down for the school, steps that would considerably delay the project and probably raise the cost.

At one point, Mayor Richard Riordan stepped in to nudge all the parties to the negotiating table, but impatient school district officials are getting ready to bolt.

“It does not make sense,” said Anita Landecker, a school development specialist. “This is where better parks department and school district cooperation could have created a wonderful project.”

The Loreto case illustrates the kinds of obstacles that make city and school district cooperation elusive even after years of well-intentioned policy pronouncements about combining schools, parks and libraries.

“To get these two big organizations working together and get all these layers of financing issues together, that’s quite a feat,” said Dan Niemann, the developer who owns Loreto. “Can a new mayor help expedite this process and make it happen? Sure. It’s a tremendous opportunity.”

Hahn and Villaraigosa both said they thought the school should come first.

Hahn criticized former Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg for pushing for the park to the detriment of the school project. He said he would address such problems through the traditional powers of the mayor, such as appointing commissioners and setting budgets.

“The City Council members are going to fight for their districts, but the mayor has to look to the overall benefit of the city,” Hahn said.

Villaraigosa saw a need for consensus-building.

“What you do in that situation is you bring the stakeholders together,” he said. “You get them to see the benefits of doing this in a way that meets both needs as efficiently as possible.”

Rivals Reveal Their Different Approaches

The men revealed their different styles in assessing an abortive school district attempt to acquire a small city park in North Hollywood. District officials wanted to trade land with the city, acre-for-acre, and use the park to establish a buffer area between a new middle school in Valley Plaza and an adjacent commercial development.

City park officials dismissed the idea, saying it violates the city charter.

“Once our board dedicates park property, it remains public park property in perpetuity,” said Gene Dudley, director of real estate for the Parks and Recreation Department.

As mayor, Villaraigosa said, he would order park officials to cooperate with the district and, if necessary, change the charter to make the swap possible.

“You’re going to see a guy who is willing to try things,” Villaraigosa said. “What we have now is gridlock. A failure to act is unacceptable.”

Hahn, on the other hand, said he would pursue an agreement to share the park with the school, but would not let it out of the city’s hands. “Once you save open space for parks, you should keep it for park purposes,” he said.

One especially treacherous issue for the new mayor deals with the thousands of homeowners and apartment dwellers whose homes will be razed to make way for new schools. The district is required by law to compensate property owners for their land and to pay tenants potentially large sums to relocate.

But district officials are concerned, both for humanitarian and political reasons, that their projects could dump thousands of people into a market that cannot offer comparable housing.

Housing advocates are incensed over the city’s failure to prepare for the coming wave of displacements.

“The present mayor is all into education, but not from a housing standpoint,” said Jan Breidenbach, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Nonprofit Housing. “We’ve got two huge crises out there. You’ve got the school crisis and the housing crisis.”

Currently, the city pays a meager $5 million annually for its affordable-housing program, Breidenbach said. After consulting with her, both candidates have proposed establishing a $100-million housing fund.

“They’re saying the right thing,” Breidenbach said. “Now we need to make sure they’re doing the right thing.”

Because of the many overlaying jurisdictions and diverse players in the affordable-housing industry, the job would call on skillful use of the mayor’s bully pulpit, she suggested.

“I think the mayor should call a summit of the president of the school board, the housing department, financial people, private developers, the people who know how to do this,” Breidenbach said. “They should be put into a room and they should not come out until they have a plan.”

Both candidates endorsed such a summit and support one-for-one replacement of any housing removed for a school. Their approaches would be different.

Villaraigosa said he would try to establish a mechanism so that anyone displaced for school construction could go to the front of long waiting lists for new housing.

Hahn, however, said he could not justify special treatment because a school is involved.

“There’s people being dislocated for a lot of reasons,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter to them what the reason is. Obviously, we’re going to try to help.”

Partly because of the cajoling of Riordan and the escalating importance of coordination between the city and school district, bureaucrats at the two institutions are trying to overcome a tradition of mutual distrust. But even when there is a will, joint projects can face huge obstacles.

Head Librarian Susan Kent has long fostered an association with schools, requiring every branch library to send a representative to every class of every elementary school annually.

The Recreation and Parks Department has also appointed a liaison to the school district.

But the utopian idea of shiny new libraries, parks and schools sprouting together across the city with shared facilities remains far from a reality.

City libraries and librarians have far different missions from those of the schools, Kent and her L.A. Unified counterpart, Bonnie Nissman, agree.

In fact, the sole city library on a school campus, at Castelar Street School in Chinatown, will soon move into a separate facility because the combined operation proved inadequate for both the school and the community.

Even the idea of sharing park space and school facilities--so appealing in concept--can prove wanting in practice. For example, a communication breakdown could result in a gymnasium scheduled at the same time for a city league and a school PTA meeting, city planning director Con Howe said.

“Where it falls apart is at the ground level, the janitor responsible for locking the gate,” he added.

At Odds Over Financing to Keep Housing Intact

Joint use also raises nettlesome issues about liability when accidents occur and the responsibility for maintaining buildings and fields.

“We’re not solving the underlying problem that neither of us has the money,” said Kathi Littmann, head of the district’s school construction team.

In his most significant policy difference from his opponent, Hahn is proposing the formation of a joint city-district agency to identify and acquire school sites and build the schools.

Hahn said he believes that more school sites can be found that do not impinge on sound residential neighborhoods and that a super agency provides the city the best mechanism to look after its interest in protecting neighborhoods.

Villaraigosa said the city should pitch in with financial assistance to keep the middle-class housing intact.

“That is the backbone,” he said.

He clearly puts more emphasis than Hahn on the role of the mayor as a creative facilitator. Villaraigosa said he would look for extra money to help the district protect the community.

“That’s were we could become a partner,” Villaraigosa said. “There are times when you say this is eight bucks less, but the other one improves the quality of the neighborhood. I intend to look for those dollars from the federal and state government.”

Hahn sees no role for the city to participate financially with the district on the more expensive option.

“If all they’re concerned about is the bottom line, some real unfortunate dislocations will come about,” he said.