Mayor Faces School Skeptics

In an effort to shore up support for his quest to win control of the Los Angeles public schools, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will go to Sacramento today to lobby business and labor leaders, as legislators warn that the major initiative of his term could be in trouble.

Villaraigosa’s plan to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District is meeting increasingly stiff resistance from lawmakers wary of allowing the mayor to bypass local voters and who question whether he -- or any city official -- has the expertise to run a nearly $30-billion educational enterprise.

Democrats and Republicans alike are asking whether Villaraigosa’s proposal would make a difference in student achievement or simply alter the mammoth bureaucracy. The concerns have delayed legislation that the mayor needs to advance his takeover bid.

“A lot of people up here are former school board members who don’t want to see a mayor take over the district,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), who served on the Los Angeles school board and now chairs the lower house’s Education Committee. “The mayor is going to force the issue, and it’s not going to be a good thing.”

Such objections reflect the difficult road ahead for Villaraigosa, who has made the takeover of Los Angeles schools the centerpiece of his young administration and staked much of his political capital on winning that fight.

Rather than face local referendums on school district restructuring, the mayor sought legislative permission to establish a “council of mayors” -- composed of himself and the leaders of 26 other cities served by the district. That council would oversee L.A. Unified’s budget and hire and fire its superintendent. The seven-member elected school board, meanwhile, would assume a limited advisory role.

Villaraigosa is teaming up with State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who has agreed to sponsor the takeover legislation that is still being crafted.

Several members of the Senate and Assembly education committees applauded Villaraigosa for focusing attention on the public schools. Still, some wondered about the wisdom of pairing the state’s largest school system with its largest city.

“Doesn’t the mayor of Los Angeles have enough on his plate fighting crime, smog and traffic?” asked Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Salinas), an Education Committee member whose Central California district is largely agricultural. “And now he wants to take on the schools?”

Villaraigosa acknowledged the difficult task of persuading a majority of legislators to back his plan. He has visited the Capitol in recent weeks to lobby lawmakers, some of them old friends from his six years in the Assembly in the late 1990s, including two as speaker.

In those visits, Villaraigosa has argued that mayoral control would streamline school district bureaucracy rather than increase it, pushing more money and resources into classrooms. And he has said that he and his fellow mayors would bring decisive leadership to a district beset by institutional inertia and unacceptably high dropout rates.

“I understood from the very beginning that the road to reform of our schools was going to be an uphill journey, that the education bureaucracy would defend the status quo and seek to undermine any effort to impose accountability in our schools,” Villaraigosa said.

In Sacramento today, the mayor will pitch his school reforms to officials from the California Chamber of Commerce, the state Parent Teacher Assn. and a broad range of labor leaders.

Villaraigosa has plenty of lobbying company in the Capitol. School board President Marlene Canter, Supt. Roy Romer and other district officials have launched a public relations offensive to counter the mayor.

In recent meetings with Senate and Assembly members, the district leaders have touted rising elementary school test scores and an ambitious construction program that is slated to produce about 150 new schools. They also have pledged to continue pursuing aggressive reforms to improve academic performance in the upper grades.

“It is important that Los Angeles Unified have a personalized face with legislators, because this conversation needs to be a thoughtful one,” said Canter, who has met with about 15 lawmakers during several trips to the Capitol in recent weeks.

Villaraigosa’s proposed takeover enjoys the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has pledged to sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.

The mayor’s plan has also been warmly received by some Democrats and Republicans, who view the school district as a bureaucratic and academic disappointment in need of a fresh start.

“If you can present a plan that looks like it would stand a chance of getting results, I think there would be support for it ... at least on the Republican side,” said Assemblyman Mark Wyland (R-Escondido), a former school board member from San Diego County who is vice chairman of the lower house’s Education Committee.

Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena), the head of the Senate Education Committee, said that he recently met with Villaraigosa and was pleased to hear that he wants to strengthen the district superintendent’s hand.

Scott declined to say whether he supports mayoral control but added: “I’m quite willing to discuss this at the state level.”

The fate of Villaraigosa’s takeover could hinge most heavily on the state and local teachers unions -- organizations that have been among his most generous supporters but now condemn his mayoral control initiative as a misguided waste of time.

Villaraigosa started his career in the Los Angeles teachers union and has long been a champion of teachers’ rights. Still, the state teachers union, with vast financial resources and an army of teachers-turned-political foot soldiers, could be his biggest stumbling block. The unions wield considerable clout in Sacramento.

Wary of ceding power to Villaraigosa, the California Teachers Assn. already has begun to mobilize. Last week, 200 union leaders from around the state converged on the Capitol to lobby for more education funding and, in many cases, protest Villaraigosa’s plan.

No date has been set for introducing the takeover legislation. The delay has led to speculation in the Capitol, which Villaraigosa confirmed, that the governor could be asked to call a special session of the Legislature to consider the matter.

Such a session would allow the bill’s supporters to bypass the scrutiny of the Legislature’s education committees.

“There are a number of options, and that could be one of them,” Villaraigosa said.

Romero said she was waiting for a green light from Villaraigosa and that a bill would be in play before the Legislature adjourns at the end of summer.

“I want to make sure that when the mayor is ready, I’ll be right there at his side,” she said.

Some of Romero’s and Villaraigosa’s biggest skeptics are from the Los Angeles area. Several local legislators said the takeover proposal was short on details. Others objected to placing so much power in one person’s hands.

Although Villaraigosa has agreed to share power though the council of mayors, he would still maintain the controlling role in a newly configured school district.

“Is the council of mayors a fig leaf to make people think they have a voice when in reality the majority shareholder is still Antonio Villaraigosa?” asked state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier). She represents Bell, Maywood, South Gate and other cities in the district’s southeast corner that are trying to form a joint powers authority to exert more control over their schools.

“Is that fair?” Escutia asked. “Are my cities going to settle for that?”

Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) also questioned whether Villaraigosa’s proposal is the right solution for the school district.

“Where the mayor gets everyone’s attention is on the need for reform,” said Ridley-Thomas. “Where it breaks down is what that reform constitutes. I’m not sold on mayoral control of L.A. Unified.”

Ridley-Thomas, Escutia and Goldberg are all liberal Democrats who share a similar political outlook with the mayor. Their tough questions are indicative of their wariness of the wisdom and viability of the takeover plan.

Villaraigosa remains undaunted and says he won’t give up until he has brought the school system out of its torpor.

“I just don’t see any other option right now,” he said. “While I’ve said there’s no magic bullet in mayoral oversight, there will at least be accountability.”