School Control Bill Put on Hold

State lawmakers put the brakes Wednesday on a bid to give the Los Angeles mayor authority over the city’s schools after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- who had endorsed the idea during his campaign -- opposed the legislative proposal.

With PTA officials and teachers unions also against the measure and questions about its legality unresolved, state Senate Education Committee Chairman Jack Scott (D-Altadena) persuaded the bill’s author, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) to try to forge more support and work out the bill’s kinks.

“I don’t think the Senate is ready to vote for this,” Scott said.

After a two-hour hearing, the education panel voted 8 to 2 to back Romero’s proposal, a signal that members want to keep alive the possibility of giving the mayor the power to appoint school board members as part of any effort to improve the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But that support was conditioned on Romero’s promise not to move the bill forward this year and to bring any revised version she develops back to the committee next year.

Separately, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) also urged lawmakers to proceed carefully.

“That isn’t just a school district that represents the city of Los Angeles,” he said, noting that the district serves many other cities. “We’ve got to take the time to do this right.”

The cool reception was an odd sort of a victory for Villaraigosa, because he won the mayor’s office this year with a platform that included a promise to assert “ultimate control and oversight” over the city’s schools.

But he balked at Romero’s effort. And the Legislature’s lawyers delivered another blow this week, concluding that state lawmakers could not alter the school board without a change in the City Charter, which defines the board’s structure.

One senator on the panel, Jeff Denham (R-Salinas), said Villaraigosa contacted him Wednesday morning and said he did not support the bill. Denham opposed the measure.

A Villaraigosa spokeswoman said mayoral advisors called senators and registered concerns but did not ask anyone to vote down the measure.

“The Los Angeles Unified School District needs fundamental reform, and I am committed to fighting for change,” Villaraigosa said in a statement. “I am concerned that the Romero bill, despite the good intentions of its author, could impede rather than speed reform efforts.”

Romero’s proposal, SB 767, would have allowed the mayor to gradually take over the school board by letting him appoint people to the seven elective seats as they became vacant. Two additional members from outside Los Angeles would have been appointed by the county supervisors and leaders of the 27 other cities the school district serves.

Under the proposal, the mayor would not have been required to make those appointments and could have done so only after declaring an “educational failure” based on excessive dropout rates and lack of improvement in test scores.

With 742,000 students, the district is the second largest in the nation, and mayoral control would allow Los Angeles to follow other major urban cities, including New York and Chicago, where mayors have been given responsibility for schools.

Romero, a member of the Senate Education Committee, argued that it was the best way for voters to know whom to hold accountable for the condition of the schools, which she characterized as greatly inadequate.

“Most constituents do not know who their school board member is, but they know who the mayor is,” she said.

But opponents told the Senate panel that the district was making improvements and that parents would lose their valuable contacts with school board members who represented their neighborhoods, if the mayor were given control.

Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.