Board stiffs

FACED WITH A HOSTILE TAKEOVER attempt by the mayor of Los Angeles, the school board has laced up its boxing gloves and is prepared for a good fight. Unfortunately, like an insecure fighter at a pre-match news conference, it also has decided to engage in some stunt-pulling that benefits neither its reputation nor its cause.

The board just about shredded what remains of its integrity and dignity Tuesday when it pretended to have a meeting about parental involvement. In fact, it was a staged “mayoral control stinks” rally. The district paid about $2,000 to bring in parent speakers who oppose mayoral control in New York, Chicago and Detroit.

The board has every right to put up its dukes. With Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa owning a substantial bully pulpit, why shouldn’t the board get speakers from the other side? And if the mayor can fly East to do photo-ops with New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, why can’t the board fly a few parents West? Coach, of course.

But the board should have done away with the pretense and simply called a meeting of the Committee of the Whole Against Antonio. By pretending that these speakers were there to present “case studies” on parental involvement, the board made a mockery of itself even as it illustrated one of its weakest points: Information, or even balanced opinion, is rarely on the agenda at school board meetings. Only one of the invited speakers Tuesday was a mayor’s representative -- from San Francisco, where the mayor has rejected the idea of taking over the schools.

The tirades from these ringer parents prompted some whoops of approval from the audience as members of the board sat back with satisfied smiles.

The smiles faltered a bit when the mother from New York complained that Bloomberg standardized the curriculum throughout the district. One of the L.A. administration’s proudest accomplishments has been standardizing the reading curriculum, which improved scores in the elementary schools. And the Chicago father’s pep talk turned awkward when he railed against charter schools for giving parents no voice. The board has approved more charter schools than any other board, and the schools are so popular that L.A. parents queue up for spots in them.

The bash -- in both senses of the word -- turned more somber at the end, when the meeting opened to L.A. parents. Several lambasted the district, saying that their experience with the board was not exactly welcoming. One parent noted that this was the first time her group had been invited to a meeting. If the board weren’t feeling the heat from Villaraigosa, she said, such an invitation would probably never have come. Her remarks seemed to embarrass the board members -- or maybe they finally realized what an embarrassment the afternoon’s charade had been.