A shaky start on an ambitious agenda

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says he’s trying to fix public education, and for that, he deserves a pat on the back.

But his attempts so far don’t always inspire confidence. And I’m not just talking about his sloppy legislative power grab that was laughed out of the courts earlier this year. The latest example was last week’s banana republic-style elections at seven campuses the mayor wants to control.

Roughly 90% of the parents at the schools skipped the election. And that was despite enticements that included raffle tickets for Jordan High parents who came to hear the mayor speak. Hizzoner himself picked the winning tickets for a TV, a camera and a Target gift certificate.

It’s not clear whether the low turnout was due to all the usual reasons for parental disengagement, or if parents simply couldn’t tell exactly what the mayor was trying to sell. But either way, the numbers are a little scary.

Meanwhile, some teachers were still contesting the voting rules days after last Tuesday’s elections, and results were in dispute at more than one school. By week’s end, the mayor’s claim of a clean sweep was shakier than his assertion that he knows how to make low-performing schools better.

To give him his due, he seems to have won clear control of at least five schools that were desperate to get out from under the control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. That’s amazing when you consider that the mayor never explained what he’d do differently, other than vague promises of more autonomy and resources.

“It’s all these wonderful things about doing more for the children,” said Jordan High’s Miranda Manners, who teaches English as a second language. “But there are no nuts and bolts involved.”

I spoke to Manners in the classroom of art history and French teacher Audrey O’Keefe, another veteran who thought the pitch by the mayor and his team deserved a grade of Incomplete.

They voted against Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Schools, a nonprofit that would take over management of Jordan and the six other schools from L.A. Unified. Although Villaraigosa eked out a 54-51 win at Jordan, the teachers union is crying foul. It claims more than 50% of all certificated employees had to vote yes, not just 50% of those who voted.

Conveniently enough for the mayor, there doesn’t appear to be any provision in the election rules for contesting the results. Jeez, even Florida had an appeals process.

Manners and O’Keefe say the campaign at their Watts school seemed all but rigged, with the mayor’s minions bringing free Starbucks and pastries to pitch meetings and pro-mayor paraphernalia adorning the polling place on election day.

“I was furious,” O’Keefe said of the shenanigans.

But her bigger concern was the absence of a clear plan to help teachers overcome disengaged parents, students who aren’t up to snuff after years of social promotion and gang violence so prevalent that the high school is occasionally in lockdown.

Allowing teachers to help manage their own school is intriguing, they said.

“But who will do all that work, and how do you decide who’s directing it?” asked O’Keefe.

On Friday morning I went to Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights to get some answers. I was hoping to meet with the mayor, but his office sent me Marshall Tuck, executive director of the partnership.

Tuck, a bright young do-gooder with a Harvard MBA, spoke passionately about the shameful mediocrity of urban public education in America. At Roosevelt in 2003, he said, there were 1,800 freshmen and 786 seniors, meaning the dropout rate was astronomical.

Understood, but how’s the mayor going to change that?

Tuck answered in generalities for the most part. Being vague was part of the mayor’s political strategy all along, because a specific plan might have alienated those whose support was needed. And besides, the mayor was selling the fuzzy idea that each school would design its own plan.

Sounds good in theory. But when Tuck talked about handing control over to a council of teachers, parents and administrators, I found myself wondering how they’d ever reach consensus on anything. It’s an exciting proposition, but frankly a terrifying one, as well, given the different agenda each party will bring to the table, not to mention the possibility of opposition to specific reforms by the teachers union.

But let’s say they get it together at Roosevelt, where faculty and staff voted 152-62 in favor of the mayor. How will the school change?

Hopefully, Tuck said, the energy level will get a boost when beaten-down teachers and parents who’ve lost faith become reengaged. Maybe a few of the small-learning centers at Roosevelt can be moved off campus to ease overcrowding. There could be more money for teacher training and computers, and with stronger connections to businesses and service agencies in the area, Roosevelt students might find new ways to prosper.

“We don’t pretend to have all the answers,” Tuck admitted. But it is time for a bold change, he said, and any success the mayor’s team achieves can be a model for the rest of the district.

It could also help Villaraigosa in his lust for higher office, and don’t think that isn’t part of the calculation. Get a few benefactors to pour money and resources into a handful of schools, bump up test scores a bit and take your bows.

Meanwhile, students at roughly 1,000 other schools in the district will be looking on like kids whose house got missed by Santa.

For one Roosevelt teacher, voting for a new direction was a no-brainer.

“I don’t trust the district,” he said flatly, giving me his frustration, his logic and everything but his name.

The teacher wanted a say in what to teach his students. And the bureaucracy is a nightmare in every way, he said, telling the story of his broken classroom door. It took weeks to get someone to look at it, he said, and it’ll take weeks for a second person to come and actually fix it.

In the meantime, he waited so long for someone to fix a broken window, a second window was broken. A repairman showed up, fixed the first window and left without fixing the second one.

He said he didn’t have a requisition order for two windows.

The teacher said the mayor’s team didn’t do a very good job of explaining its plan, but he voted for “the lesser of two evils” because he saw nothing to lose.

It would have been better all around, I think, if teachers and parents voted for something new and specific rather than against something old and broken. For the sake of the kids, though, let’s hope the mayor’s promised improvements materialize someday.

In the Roosevelt courtyard, Tuck spotted a supportive teacher named Jorge Lopez and they shook hands to celebrate the victory. Lopez then said something the mayor should take to heart.

“Now comes the hard work.”

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steve.lopez@latimes.com