A Compromise on Preschool Plan

After weeks of intense political wrangling, Los Angeles County officials reached a compromise Monday on the composition of a new agency to control a $600-million tobacco tax-funded preschool program and gave the Board of Supervisors a greater role in its operations.

The new entity, Los Angeles Universal Preschool Inc., will have a 13-member board of directors. The five members of the Board of Supervisors will each appoint a representative and are expected to submit candidates by Aug. 1, said Supervisor Don Knabe, who is also the chairman of the panel that controls tobacco taxes locally.

That agency, First 5 Los Angeles, on Monday approved eight members for the preschool board, all chosen by an advisory committee that has been developing the program for more than 18 months. As it stands, the new board probably won’t meet before September. Planners had hoped to begin enrolling students in September but say the last-minute infighting probably has pushed the launch date to 2005.

The actions came after a weekend of lobbying by filmmaker and children’s advocate Rob Reiner and others to placate county officials seeking greater control over the program and members of the planning team, who had feared too much county interference.

The spat raised questions about who is answerable for the millions of dollars of public money raised through 1998’s voter-approved Proposition 10, which levied a 50-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes to pay for preschool and other early-childhood education and health programs. A contract approved Monday strengthened the power of the supervisors and First 5 Los Angeles to oversee the nearly $600 million expected to be generated for preschools over the next five years.

“I’m really pleased,” said Reiner, the statewide First 5 chairman who early during Monday’s meeting jokingly suggested that no one would be allowed to leave without an agreement. “Ultimately, it came down to people of goodwill who at the end of the day cared more about children than whatever parochial issues.”

A key sticking point was the proposed size of the governing body, with the planning team initially submitting a 23-member list. Some county officials, including Knabe, urged a more compact body of nine members.

The sides settled on 13, although some on the advisory team, including Nancy Daly Riordan, a children’s advocate and the wife of the state education secretary, had insisted that number was too few for the massive effort to enroll 150,000 children in preschool and raise private and public funds to sustain the system. Riordan was among those named to the new board.

The compromise also seeks to ensure that the board is ethnically and geographically diverse. Two slots will be given to early-childhood education experts and two to parent representatives.

The agency will oversee a system being built from the ground up. It was scheduled, before the delays, to begin enrolling up to 5,000 children age 4 in the fall and up to 150,000 over the next decade. Home-based child care providers and existing preschools such as Head Start will be used to extend classes from half day to full day. Scores of new centers are to be built.

Karen Hill-Scott, an education consultant who has led the planning, said the new agency probably will be independent once it is up and running.

“It saddens me that it takes so much struggle to agree on issues of control and governance, but it’s always that way,” said Hill-Scott. “This in a way was sort of like a political campaign. I think initially it will be closely monitored, and that as the system demonstrates its accountability and ability to deliver on the master plan, everyone will relax.”

Besides Riordan, those named to the new board were Shizuko Akasaki, director of special projects for the Los Angeles Unified School District; Al Osborne, a UCLA business professor and faculty director of a Head Start training program; John Agoglia, former president of NBC Enterprises and president of the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners (nominated as the interim executive director of the preschool agency); philanthropist Wallis Annenberg; Vilma Martinez, attorney and former president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Robert K. Ross, president and chief executive of the California Endowment; and Donald Tang, senior managing director of Bear Stearns & Co.