A is for accountability

WHEN MAYORS TAKE OVER complex urban school districts, suddenly there is one clear line of authority -- and accountability. That’s one of the best reasons to advocate mayoral control for the schools in Los Angeles, where parents complain that no one listens to their concerns, voters are unsure who is responsible for the schools’ shortcomings and decision-making gets stalled in endless board discussion and micromanagement.

The model for mayoral control advocated Friday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, though, threatens to muddle things further, not clear them up.

The mayor proposed a kind of split-powers arrangement with the school board. The elected board would continue but with more narrowly defined responsibilities, which the mayor has not yet specified. The mayor would be able to hire and fire the superintendent and would oversee other school matters, such as the district’s budget.

So who’s really in charge? Even the superintendent is bound to be uncertain on that question, and parents and the public will be downright befuddled.

Moreover, the board will not give up powers easily. Even if its authority were officially limited, board members would seek as much involvement as possible. They didn’t run for public office to take care of housekeeping chores, and their constituents didn’t elect them to be weak players. The greater the board’s power, though, the lesser the mayor’s.

Unlike mayors who run schools in other cities, such as New York or Chicago, Villaraigosa faces a complicated legal landscape. The district’s strange boundaries, spilling over city lines into more than two dozen other municipalities, create barriers to change. Why should the voters of, say, Carson, which has about 17,000 students in the district, cede control to a mayor they did not elect? The mayor obviously sees keeping an elected board -- which gives people throughout the district a chance to vote, as they do now -- as the way around this dilemma.

It’s a noble attempt, but it’s practically unworkable. It may be no more realistic to suggest that the mayor ask the state to give him full administrative authority and reduce the board to an advisory role. Yet that’s the way the governance system works in other cities with mayoral control: There is one person clearly in charge, with one clear mission. Mistakes are still made, of course. But they can generally be corrected more quickly.

Under the partial-control model that Villaraigosa has suggested, it’s easy to imagine the board pointing to the mayor as the source of problems, while the mayor complains that his plans are being undermined by the board. Parents and lobbying groups will ask the board members they elected for help if the mayor denies their requests (and will ask the mayor if ignored by the board). As the district seeks a replacement for retiring schools Supt. Roy Romer, candidates would undoubtedly size up a confused situation like this and say: No thanks.

Villaraigosa is in New York today to see how strong mayoral control works. The best lesson he could learn from Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Go for full charge of the schools -- or none at all.