BOARD TO RESTUDY GIVING UP POWER TO BUILD SCHOOLS.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Putting the brakes on efforts to strip the Los Angeles school district of its power to build schools, Board of Education members voted Tuesday to study the idea further before taking a stand on it.

The vote came after several members complained that the proposal, created in response to problems at the Belmont Learning Complex construction site, had been hatched without their input. State Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles, who drafted it with Los Angeles schools Superintendent Ruben Zacarias, announced it two weeks ago and asked the board to act on it within 30 days.

``I don't want to be steamrolled,'' said Valerie Fields, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley. ``I don't care who's pressuring us.''

She added that if Hayden wanted to run the district, he should resign from the Senate and ask the board to give him Zacarias' job.

Tuesday's debate was triggered by a motion from member Jeff Horton asking the board to back Zacarias' exploration of the issue with Hayden.

The motion did not ask board members to vote immediately on giving away their construction authority. But with state legislators already debating the idea, Horton said the board needed to officially join the conversation.

``That's all this motion does - it puts the board in the discussion, so we're not just watching and listening while other people talk about how to build schools,'' Horton said.

But other board members, worried that the process was already moving too quickly, did not want to give the impression of supporting Hayden's proposal. In the end, five of the seven board members approved a revised motion sending the construction proposal to a committee for study and directing Zacarias to continue discussing school construction in general.

Only one element of Horton's original motion - a paragraph asking state officials to grant subpoena power to the school district's top auditor - received unanimous approval.

Hayden's far-reaching construction proposal has placed board members in a difficult political position.

With the district planning to build 51 schools in the next decade, board members want to be seen making sure they don't repeat embarrassing mistakes made at Belmont, where soil contamination has slowed construction and added to the project's cost.

Horton's past support for Belmont has dogged him during his current campaign for re-election.

Some board members and other education officials have deep misgivings about allowing someone else to build the district's schools.

Hayden's proposal could create another large bureaucracy with even less accountability to voters, they said.

Day Higuchi, head of Los Angeles' powerful teachers union, argued Tuesday that giving such immense power to another agency would not, in itself, protect against abuses.

``Moving it somewhere else does not guarantee that corruption, waste, whatever you want to call it, won't be repeated,'' he said. ``It doesn't guarantee that those bucks will be well-spent.''

Zacarias emphasized that the idea of giving away construction authority was still just an idea, not a done deal.