Charter Schools Promote Reform

A group headed by a well-connected charter schools operator launched a $1.5-million campaign Wednesday aimed at winning support for its version of education reform from the city’s mayoral candidates and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Small Schools Alliance, whose contributors include state Education Secretary Richard Riordan and others long interested in reshaping the nation’s second-largest school district, began running television ads Wednesday to increase public awareness and backing.

The ads, one featuring teachers and the other students, tout the benefits of small, autonomous schools and urge viewers to visit the group’s website, www.smallschools.org, and sign its “contract to transform L.A. schools.”

Political activist Steve Barr, founder of the Green Dot Public Schools charter school group and chairman of the Small Schools Alliance, said the new group wanted to challenge business, school and political leaders to “make fundamental education reform their top priority.”

Barr worked on Democratic Party causes before founding the first of five high-performing charter high schools, most of them in low-income, crowded neighborhoods of mainly Latinos and African Americans in the South Bay and Los Angeles.

The Small Schools Alliance, whose backers include philanthropist Eli Broad, calls for Los Angeles Unified, amid a $14-billion building campaign, to pattern its secondary schools on Green Dot’s guiding principles, which include:

* School enrollments of 500 students or fewer.

* A college-preparatory curriculum offered for all students.

* Most decision-making, including budgets, conducted at the school by staff members, not district administrators.

* Teachers receiving higher pay, generated by low administrative costs.

* Requiring parents to give at least 30 hours a year to school activities.

* Schools remaining open until 5 p.m.

Except for a call by mayoral candidate and former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg to break up the school district and give the mayor some authority over it, education has not been a front-burner issue for the major candidates in this year’s race for mayor, an office that has no jurisdiction over the schools.

Barr said he wanted schools “to be part of the discussion” in the mayor’s race and for every other officeholder, including City Council members.

Barr said he did not support breaking up the district and had not endorsed a candidate for mayor, though he acknowledged that some alliance members had offered endorsements. The alliance cannot legally contribute to or endorse a candidate in a political campaign nor run an independent campaign on behalf of a candidate.

Some mayoral candidates said they welcomed the alliance’s efforts but hadn’t yet had time to study them. The alliance asked the candidates to sign on within 10 days.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley), also seeking the mayor’s job, said he supported several of the group’s ideas but added that some were too costly to be practical.

“I commend them for trying to raise these ideas to the public’s attention,” Alarcon said.

A spokeswoman for Councilman Bernard C. Parks’ mayoral bid said that though the former L.A. police chief believes high schools are too big -- some have 4,000-plus students -- he “cannot buy into” schools of just 500 or fewer.

Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa supports many of the alliance’s ideas but hasn’t yet seen the details, a spokesman for Villaraigosa’s mayoral campaign said. “These are all the kinds of things he has been talking about,” said spokesman Nathan James.

Hertzberg said he believed the group had “worthy objectives” that he supported as part of his efforts to break up the school district.

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.