CHARTER REFORM MAY IMPACT LAUSD.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer

Deep in the city's 72-year-old charter is the power to fundamentally reform the Los Angeles Unified School District, local and state officials say.

Given the volatility of debate over education in Los Angeles - and efforts over the years to break up the sprawling LAUSD - that could set the stage for a bruising battle as the city goes about rewriting the charter.

To date, public debate of charter reform has focused almost exclusively on the form that charter reform commissions should take.

But there is an emerging view that remaking the public school system will be a key goal of rewriting the charter.

``There has to be a revolution in education,'' Mayor Richard Riordan said in an interview Friday. ``That revolution has to be in the governance of the schools and in the accountability in the schools.''

Riordan stopped short of insisting that education reform is a necessary component of charter reform, saying he would leave it to members of charter reform commissions to debate that.

Helen Bernstein, director of a teachers union reform network and Riordan's senior policy adviser on education, said the City Charter reform movement is bound to ``bring attention'' to school issues.

``This is the moment where something has to happen,'' Bernstein said. ``It is more clearly seen that the city's health depends on its educational system.''

Mike Roos, president of Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, said the charter reform movement offers a provocative forum for addressing the structure and effectiveness of the school system.

``The questions are: Do we want to keep this charter section the same or to amend it? . . . Can there be a derivative benefit to the larger community with more substantial resources made available for the development of our children?''

One big appeal, Roos said, is that a charter change could bring some of the city's resources to bear upon what most educators contend is a vastly underfunded school system.

``In every part of the community, you hear a clamoring for more and more control,'' Roos said, ``and what is more central to that than the schools - especially as meeting places, or as school grounds that would be open to children into the early evenings?

``All of that makes sense when you begin to meld the interest and focus of the city budget with the LAUSD in a culture of decentralization.''

The charter section that covers education sets the ``manner, times and terms'' under which school board members are elected, and it grants school board seat redistricting powers to the City Council.

The charter section has remained virtually untouched since the 1930s. But attorneys with the state Department of Education say there is no question that city government - within certain limits, spelled out in state law - could still use its power to transform the city's school board.

Most California cities were incorporated without their own charters.

``The charters' unique powers say cities (which have charters) can decide how a board is made up, who's on it and how they're appointed,'' said Joseph Symkowick, general counsel for the state Education Department. ``How it is leveraged to improve the school district is an issue.''

Howard Friedman, an assistant general counsel for the LAUSD, called the potential for City Charter reform to push school reform ``provocative,'' but said it is relatively unresearched.

``No one has taken an extended look at what authority the city has,'' Friedman said. ``It (the charter) seems pretty bare bones, but I haven't had an opportunity to take a serious look at what latitude the city does in fact have.''

The school issue is an early example of how wide-ranging the debate is likely to be in some rewriting of the 892-page charter over at least the next two years.

A commission appointed by the council already has begun to meet, and in April voters will be asked to elect another commission, as advocated by Riordan.

Even those pushing hardest for City Charter reform say they recognize and don't want to scuttle school reform efforts already under way in the LAUSD - most notably through the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now or LEARN. Local school faculties and parents have more control over educational content and budgets in LEARN schools.

There are 125 LEARN schools in the San Fernando Valley alone.

``I'd like to see charter changes that would help LEARN, not ones that would completely revamp the school district,'' said attorney David Fleming, a leader in the mayor's charter commission effort.

One option, Fleming said, might be to reconstitute the school board to ensure the LAUSD is run by parents who have schoolchildren in the district, teachers and principals.

``The board should be dominated by those kinds of people, rather than people sitting downtown in an ivory tower miles away who don't know what is going on,'' Fleming said.

Under state law, cities with a population of more than 1.9 million are required to have seven school board members, but Fleming and others want that requirement changed to add more board seats.

Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg, D-Sherman Oaks, said he would consider introducing such legislation to ``give charter reform as much flexibility as possible.''

On the cautionary side are people like Valley school board member Julie Korenstein, who worries that school reform will get caught up in a political struggle, to the detriment of students.

``If it becomes highly politicized, if it becomes a pingpong match with kids in the middle, I'd be concerned,'' said Korenstein, a proponent of reforming the schools by, in part, creating a separate San Fernando Valley School District.

Xandra Kayden, a UCLA political scientist and Councilman Marvin Braude's appointee to the council's Charter Reform Commission, said residents want to keep the schools independent of mayors' authority in most cities.

Also, she said LEARN and other reform movements have taken much of the steam out of more far-reaching reform proposals, such as a district breakup.

Still, she said any charter reform debate about bringing government closer to the city's neighborhoods could serve as a venue for residents to discuss their local schools.

Others, including Bernstein, suggested that rather than create city oversight of the schools under the charter, a better option would be to create a blue-ribbon commission to make LEARN work better and to hold administrators and others accountable for providing quality education.

Some local leaders say the charter's powers have been used over the years to diminish the influence of the Valley on the school board, and that needs to be reversed.

In 1978, the Valley's population advantage was diluted when board members ceased to be elected at large and instead were elected by districts.

Since then, redistricting has steadily reduced the number of all-Valley seats, until today there is only one such seat to represent 35 percent of the city's population. Two other seats are split between the Valley and the rest of the city.

That redistricting, combined with disillusionment among parents who have watched student scores decline, funding dip, and accountability by administrators erode, prompted recent efforts to remove the San Fernando Valley from the rest of the school district.

Valley activist Paula Boland succeeded in passing a state law making such a breakup easier during her tenure as an assemblywoman. But, the signature drive and fund-raising for the effort have largely stalled.

Boland said last week she plans to re-ignite the breakup movement this month, and she also intends to run for a charter commission seat, in part to try to use a commission seat as a vehicle for school reform.

``I want to take the charter and analyze it to see what you can give a school district without interfering in the day-to-day operations of the schools,'' Boland said. ``I'm not talking about too much mix, but the city can say we want our children to learn, to get the best education possible.''