An odd civics lesson for 7 L.A. schools

The election Tuesday was unlike any other. At stake was no candidate, no law, no taxes, no bond issue -- only a promise by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to make seven Los Angeles schools a lot richer and a lot better.

To vote, a participant didn’t need to be a citizen. And some got more than one vote.

And another oddity: There was no organized opposition.

In the end, teachers and parents at most of the seven apparently voted Tuesday to join Villaraigosa in a new partnership, capping a months-long organizing campaign.

Villaraigosa prevailed at two high schools: his alma mater, Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights and the Santee Education Complex south of downtown, according to unofficial results provided by the mayor’s office. He also won at Stevenson and Hollenbeck middle schools on the Eastside and at Markham and Gompers middle schools in Watts.

The mayor may have fallen short of the mark at Jordan High School in Watts. The outcome there was too close to call.

Under the mayor’s partnership, control of the low-achieving campuses would shift from the Los Angeles Unified School District to a nonprofit that would offer extra support and money. It required a majority vote of both teachers and parents at the selected campuses.

Villaraigosa said the results signaled a “historic” new direction for the school district.

“The overwhelming support of parents and teachers reaffirms my belief that the winds of change have shaken this bureaucracy to its very core,” he said late Tuesday night.

The mayor has made improving the schools a centerpiece of his administration. Last year, he had pushed legislation in Sacramento that would have given him a large measure of control over the nation’s second-largest district. When the state Court of Appeal thwarted that effort, he scaled back and focused on only a few troubled schools.

Parents and teachers had the choice to vote yes for the mayor’s tempting but vague proposal, when a no vote would have placed those schools under Supt. David L. Brewer’s own plan for low-performing campuses, a program that the mayor criticized as a business-as-usual, top-down approach.

Parents who couldn’t make it to vote between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. could fax in a ballot to a “secure” number. For those without a fax machine, the district had a van at the ready to retrieve voting cards.

Ballots were counted at each school by an election committee, then delivered to school district headquarters downtown, where the names of voters were checked late Tuesday night against rosters of parents and teachers.

The election exposed both high hopes and sharp divisions over which is the best course. It also raised questions about voting procedures that could open the results to challenge.

The process brought complaints from administrators and non-teaching employees, including security guards and clerks, who were not allowed to vote but who could fill out index cards to register support.

Many teachers said they lacked adequate information, even after repeated campus visits by Villaraigosa and his aides.

“I don’t like giving out blank checks,” said Teresa Sidney, Markham’s testing coordinator. “We know what we’re getting with the district. They have a plan. The partnership is vague about details.”

The superintendent’s alternative plan is broader, covering 34 of the lowest performing schools; the school board is scheduled to consider it next week.

“I’d like to vote no on both of them,” said a Roosevelt science teacher who requested anonymity. “I think things are going to be dumped on the teachers. How about we get some students who can read and write out of middle school? I only had nine kids out of 30 do their homework last night.”

“That’s better than I did,” responded biology teacher Joseph Rowland, who stood nearby. He voted yes on “faith,” he said, “because this brings a chance for some outside-the-box possibilities.”

English teacher Brendan Schallert, who also supported the mayor, sported a sticker that read: “I voted for my school.”

“That’s the choice we have,” he said, “to vote for the kind of schools we want to work for.”

The rules for this election, in which teachers and parents voted separately, were as unique as the premise.

Although more than half the teachers at each school had to OK the mayor’s plan, the parent tally required only a majority of those who cast ballots. The district wanted all parents to vote regardless of citizenship. Parents got one vote for each child in a school, which meant that Gil Castellanos, for example, voted at Markham and Jordan.

“If this change takes place, I’m going to be more involved in this school to [make] the best decision for the school and the parents,” Castellanos, an auto mechanic, said of Jordan High. “Parents don’t know much about the school.”

A problem could arise because some parents had more votes than others.

“The Supreme Court has said that most of the time, elections need to be conducted with the one-person, one-vote rule, but there are certain kinds of elections that don’t have to comply,” said Loyola Law School professor Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law. A court challenge might fail, but it would not be frivolous, he added.

The mayor’s team budgeted $200,000 of donated funds to organize support, recruiting or hiring community groups to canvass neighborhoods.

At Jordan, support for Villaraigosa’s plan suffered because of rumors that counseling positions would be lost. Principal Stephen Strachan and the local district superintendent, Carol Truscott, called the rumors unfounded.

College advisor Erica Thomas, who voted against joining Villaraigosa, said she wanted a definitive answer over whether the school would control philanthropic money raised by the mayor. Besides, she said, “I’d rather do what we’re doing now than adding another layer of bureaucracy.”

Brewer has endorsed the exit of all these schools from the regular district hierarchy, although some administrators under him apparently opposed the change.

There also was balloting Tuesday at two Westside schools, but not about entering the mayor’s partnership. Wright Middle and Kentwood Elementary were to decide whether to join a reform alliance with nearby Loyola Marymount University. Results of those votes were pending late Tuesday night.

Alberto Hernandez, an auto mechanic whose eighth-grade daughter will attend Roosevelt next year, left work to cast his lot with Villaraigosa.

“This system, no matter how many attempts are made to fix it, is obsolete and doesn’t work,” Hernandez said in Spanish.

“And the ones who pay the consequences are our children, who can’t go to university or get a good career. I’m poor, but the best inheritance I can leave for my family is an education.”

howard.blume@latimes.com

duke.helfand@latimes.com