City Control of Schools Advocated

In a controversial proposal that could end voter control over the Los Angeles school board, Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday that the mayor should appoint the board overseeing the nation’s second-largest school system.

“I am prepared to say that, ultimately, I think the mayor should be able to appoint all the members of the school board,” Villaraigosa told a state legislative committee during a public hearing on school governance held in downtown Los Angeles.

The seven board members who oversee the 740,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District are elected from geographic districts. But big-city mayors, including those in New York City and Boston, have increasingly sought greater control over their school boards.

“I am not looking for more power. I just got elected to a great job and have plenty of that,” Villaraigosa said while addressing the panel. “I’m looking for accountability.”

The mayor-elect said he saw control over the board as just one piece of a “transformation” that he hoped would give parents and teachers “the authority they need to improve the quality of our schools.” He also called for safer campuses, more parental involvement, better teaching and more money for schools.

His comments come as both the City Council and the school board launch commissions to explore school governance.

But Villaraigosa’s proposal is fraught with legal and political complications and would face serious hurdles.

Chief among them would be what to do about the more than two dozen other cities whose children attend the district’s schools but whose citizens have no voice in electing the Los Angeles mayor. A mayor-appointed school board would also require significant changes in state law.

Politically, it also faces opposition from the powerful United Teachers Los Angeles union, whose new leader, A.J. Duffy, has vowed to fight such a plan “tooth and nail.”

Villaraigosa, who will officially take office on July 1, made education a centerpiece of his campaign. Two days after Mayor James K. Hahn proposed that the mayor appoint three members to the school board, Villaraigosa called for the mayor to have “ultimate control” over the schools but offered few details on what he meant by control.

On Friday, he said he would proceed cautiously, working to build consensus among parents, teachers and school officials.

“This is not going to happen overnight,” he said in an interview.

A push to make school board appointments would pit Villaraigosa against some of his most ardent supporters. UTLA, which once employed Villaraigosa, spent $185,000 on radio ads to support him, and the California Teachers Assn. spent $500,000 on a television ad mocking Hahn’s education record.

“Changing governance won’t build one school, it won’t buy one textbook,” said John Perez, outgoing UTLA president and a Villaraigosa ally. “It will just create a system where the board members are much more distant from the community.”

Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Assn., also expressed disapproval. “There are a lot of things that Antonio can do as mayor to work with the school district and [the union] to improve schools, but taking over the district is not one of them,” she said. “We like Antonio, but this is a philosophical disagreement.”

Others questioned whether giving the mayor control of the district would result in improvements. Few deny that the district faces daunting challenges. Recent studies have shown that fewer than half of high school students graduate. And this spring, there have been incidents of on-campus racial tension and violence.

“The problems of LAUSD aren’t because of who is on the school board,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor and expert on Los Angeles politics and governance. “I’m skeptical of how much difference it would really make.”

He said former Mayor Richard Riordan, who later served as state secretary of education, in essence seized control of the school board when he funded the election of a slate of candidates that supported his reforms.

Four years later, most of those members have been voted off, and the district, he said, “didn’t really change.”

Villaraigosa said Riordan’s efforts were “not the same thing” as his proposal.

School board member David Tokofsky called Villaraigosa’s move “a distraction” in a district that is grappling with enormous challenges, including severe overcrowding at some schools. “He’s trying to do the right thing, but it’s not governance that matters as much curriculum and instruction,” Tokofsky said.

But political analysts said Villaraigosa’s comments, which came in response to questions from state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), showed that he did not intend to back away from an issue of vital importance to voters. Throughout the mayoral campaign, voters repeatedly said education was their top priority, even though the mayor has no direct control over the school system.

“It’s a grandiose way of really coming out in support of a pledge he made during the campaign,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “Realistically, it probably sets off a series of negotiations, both publicly and behind doors, to see what’s doable.”

Romero, a Villaraigosa ally who chairs the Senate select committee on urban school governance, said she was happy to hear Villaraigosa’s pledge. The legislator said she was considering proposing legislation that would grant the mayor greater control over schools.

Calling the present system of elected board members “broken,” Romero said, “I believe the mayor should have a much more prominent role.”

Also at the hearing, Riordan, Hahn and former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg expressed their support for mayoral control of the school board. Hertzberg, who also ran for mayor, made education one of the chief issues in the campaign with his proposal to split up the district.

In recent years, mayors of other large cities, including Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Oakland and New York, have sought greater power over school districts, chipping away at rules that have guaranteed independent school districts in this country.

Mayor-controlled school systems have had a mixed record.

Last fall, voters in Detroit abandoned their appointed school board and returned to a system of elected trustees. And Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown recently declared that his run at adding appointees to the seven-member elected board had been a failure.

But in Chicago and Boston, school officials have said they think mayoral control has brought improvements.

School chiefs from Boston, Chicago and New York addressed the state Senate committee via remote video feeds.

“There is greater accountability,” said Boston schools Supt. Thomas Payzant. “With the mayor in charge, it’s very clear who it is that the people are going to look to when the results are in.”

But the situation in Los Angeles is more complicated because the sprawling district encompasses part or all of 28 other cities as well as unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.

“Those are all issues that we’d have to work out,” Villaraigosa said. “I’m going to work to build public support among all the stakeholders.”