Panel’s Reforms for Schools Buck Mayor

As the debate over control of the Los Angeles Unified School District raged around it, a little-watched commission exploring reforms to the public school system formally agreed Thursday to a set of sweeping recommendations.

The 29-member commission, created last year by City Councilmen Alex Padilla and Jose Huizar, a former president of the Board of Education, released its main findings and met to finalize wording on dozens of other less significant proposals.

The commission’s most striking suggestion was its call to preserve the seven-member elected school board as the “primary governing body” of the school district. The board should retain crucial powers, such as the ability to hire and fire the district superintendent, select principals and decide where to build new campuses, the commission recommended.

Those conclusions, which are not binding, come after months of tense jockeying over the district as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has sought to wrest some control from the school board. A bill currently making its way through the Legislature would, among other changes, give the mayor veto power over the selection of a superintendent and control of three clusters of low-performing schools.

The commission, led by former Councilman David Cunningham and former district official Maria Casillas, also recommended that the 727,000-student school district be dramatically decentralized. Teachers and principals at each school would gain increased responsibility over budgets and student performance. Moreover, the group concluded that schools should be reorganized into clusters, in which high schools are grouped with the middle and elementary schools that feed into them. Currently, the district is divided into eight regions, but that cluster system has been attempted in the past.

Three of the commission’s recommendations have gained some traction in the City Council. This week a council committee approved a motion by Huizar for a ballot measure that would place term limits on school board members, hold them to the same campaign fundraising rules as council members, and increase their annual salaries from the current $24,000. The entire council is expected to vote on the motion next week.

If it passes, the measure will be put before voters in November.

Beyond that, the effect of the commission’s report is uncertain.