School escape plan

ONE MAJOR OBSTACLE TO the Los Angeles mayor’s plan to take control of the Los Angeles schools is that they aren’t all Los Angeles schools. They’re also the schools of Carson, South Gate and a couple dozen other cities, whose residents are understandably worried about having their schools governed by a mayor they don’t elect. Paradoxically, the best way for them to retain power over the Los Angeles Unified School District may be to leave it.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s solution to the school district’s patchwork boundaries is a “council of mayors” to decide budget matters and hire the superintendent. The other mayors find fault with this because the mayor of L.A., with 80% of the population of the district, would retain 80% of the vote. Nor have the mayors been appeased by Villaraigosa’s latest power-sharing plan, giving them the ability to veto his decisions on these matters by a majority or two-thirds vote.

It’s hard to understand why the mayors of these other cities think this system of school governance would be worse than the current one. But if they do, rather than stop progress because of outdated boundaries, it would make better sense to change those boundaries.

There might not be 50 ways to leave your district, but these cities have a range of options. The most obvious would be to secede formally but contract with the Los Angeles schools. If the L.A. district doesn’t do the job right, the cities could move to their other options: contracting with one or more charter operators; contracting with or joining another adjacent school district, or banding together to form a district of their own.

From the mayors’ standpoint, the best option would be to use the threat of secession to ensure that Villaraigosa takes care of their students. But first, secession has to be a viable threat.

Under current law, seceding from a school district is a long and uncertain process. But because the Legislature is already expected to consider a bill that would remake L.A. Unified, it could also consider a provision that would allow its component cities to secede if they wish. Villaraigosa may even be able to drum up more support for his takeover plan if he adds such an escape clause.

There would be complications. Who owns the school buildings? Who would be responsible for the district’s disastrous teacher-pension commitment? Villaraigosa, however, is a master at smoothing over complications (sometimes, it must be said, at an unacceptable cost). In this case, the results -- newly empowered small cities, school boundaries that make sense and, best of all, the removal of a political barrier to mayoral takeover and better accountability for the schools -- could be worth it.