EDITORIAL A HIDDEN AGENDA?

Proposal to turn over control of the LAUSD to the state sabotages school reformON its face, state Sen. Richard Polanco's legislative proposal to put the Los Angeles Unified School District under the thumb of a state monitor seems like just another misguided attempt to sabotage the genuine reform efforts under way.

That would be a tragedy since the children of Polanco's inner-city constituents are among the biggest victims of a succession of incompetent superintendents who failed the poor and the immigrant community so badly.

But the machinations of the powerful Democratic leader are never so easy to discern.

Under Polanco's revised plan, the LAUSD would have to show improvement in eight areas - none of which is student performance - over the next three years or the state would break up the district into small pieces.

During that time, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin would appoint a monitor to oversee the actions of the elected school board and its appointee as superintendent, undermining their authority and making them largely irrelevant - which is no way to treat the taxpayers, voters, parents and children of Los Angeles.

Polanco's curve ball No. 1 is that the monitor would have to be a member of the State Teachers Retirement System, which would make any of the series of failed LAUSD superintendents eligible - Sid Thompson, Bill Anton and Ruben Zacarias.

Zacarias, who Polanco has turned into a heroic figure even though he failed to achieve results, let the bumbling bureaucracy run all over him and carried out construction of that monument to LAUSD's failure, the $175 million abandoned Belmont Learning Center.

Curve ball No. 2: Eastin and the state Board of Education will play pivotal roles in deciding whether to allow the San Fernando Valley to create its own school districts out of the carnage of the LAUSD.

If mandated by the Legislature to give the LAUSD three years to meet loose standards, the kind Zacarias loved so much, the state would have ample cover to deny the petition by FREE, Finally Restoring Excellence to Education, the Valley's breakup organization, to create local and responsive school districts.

Curve ball No. 3: An outrageous proposal of this sort may well bring a high price in terms of patronage appointments and contract awarding that LAUSD officials could find reasonable so they can get on with the task of actually trying to improve the quality of education provided to children.

The public should be skeptical about how the political system is trying to exploit the broad desire of decent people to improve education in California.

Polanco's ploy, Gov. Gray Davis' ridiculous offer to abolish the income tax for teachers, the push to lower from two-thirds to 55 percent the majority needed to pass school bonds after voters just rejected a 50 percent measure: they are all twisted attempts to take advantage of the public's good will without solving problems.

And that is a sad commentary on the state of California's political leadership.