Accountability for all

AS MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA’S plan to share control of the Los Angeles public schools heads to the Legislature next week, its supporters are emphasizing one provision of the bill in particular: the part that would give Villaraigosa control over about three dozen low-performing schools in the district. It’s almost as if they want people to think that’s all the bill does. Unfortunately, it does a lot more.

There is little doubt that this provision is the most attractive and comprehensible section of AB 1381. As Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), a friend and political supporter of the mayor, told The Times editorial board Wednesday, the mayor would be able to focus his energy, charisma and political skills -- and some of his fundraising prowess -- on improving those L.A. Unified schools.

But the schools that the mayor would directly control make up only about 5% of the district’s schools, and whatever nice new staffing and supplemental programs they might get would not help the rest of the district’s more than 700,000 students. Their schools would stumble along without the added money and attention lavished on the mayor’s schools, and they would be governed by one of the clumsier systems ever devised for an educational system.

New versions of the bill make no progress in curing the ills of the original legislation: Responsibilities for hiring, curriculum, budget and contracts would still be parceled out according to a confusing and overly detailed set of rules among the school board, mayor and superintendent (and a few others). The superintendent would have to follow the board’s orders -- but would depend on the mayor to keep his or her job. The school board would set the budget, but the superintendent would settle lawsuits that could have a major effect on the budget. The superintendent would negotiate most contracts, but the board would negotiate the biggest: the teachers’ contract.

Supporters of the bill are eager to stress the importance of the “mayor’s schools” as a kind of pilot project, showcasing what the mayor could do if he had real control. No doubt these schools would serve that purpose. But their success would come at the cost of creating a muddled everybody-has-a-piece-of-the-schools management structure for the rest of the district. Doesn’t every school deserve the clean lines of accountability that AB 1381 would give some of the district’s worst schools?