A learning campaign

FOR SOMEONE WHO wasn’t even on the ballot, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa did OK on election day. Of the three school board candidates he endorsed and funded, one won outright and the other two led their races, though by too little to avoid a runoff.

This gives supporters of change in the Los Angeles Unified School District reason both to mourn and celebrate. They can mourn because this election illustrates how mayoral control of schools could have worked in Los Angeles. A high-visibility politician with popular appeal and fundraising prowess can make things happen, even in races typically funded and owned by the anti-reform union. And they can celebrate because, though not all his candidates won outright, Villaraigosa showed that even an officially powerless mayor can have some sway over the school board.

By now it is clear that the district will not be governed by the mayor anytime soon. (Even if Villaraigosa wins his foundering court battle over the takeover plan, it would only give him partial control of the district.) The questions now are whether the mayor can gain control of the board and, if so, can he do more with it than former Mayor Richard Riordan did?

Villaraigosa already has one ally on the board -- Monica Garcia -- and with the election of Yolie Flores Aguilar on Tuesday, he will have another. But to gain a majority on the seven-member board, he needs both of his candidates to win in the runoff election, which is scheduled for May. And even then, control of the school board is a far cry from control of the district.

Still, a board majority could hand Villaraigosa the cluster of schools he’s wanted to run by agreeing to let him form a charter organization to operate them. The pilot project is the one attractive thing about the mayor’s beleaguered school-takeover bill, AB 1381, and a chance for Villaraigosa to show on a small scale what a mayor’s fundraising and political clout can achieve.

That clout may not be what it was a year ago, when it seemed practically impregnable both locally and in Sacramento. Now Villaraigosa is reduced to mending fences with an embittered school board.

Pals with the board or not, however, he should not relent in his vociferous campaign for better-run schools. Admittedly, he has sometimes gone over the top with his criticisms (the schools don’t have the dropout rate he ascribes to them, for instance). But as Riordan learned, a reform-minded board can quickly lose its progressive majority or sink into complacency. It takes an empowered and, yes, sometimes strident voice to remind this city that it does not have the schools that its children or its future need.