EDITORIAL BREAKING UP LAUSD EVERY COMMUNITY DESERVES OWNERSHIP OF THE SCHOOLS.HARD at work to rally support for his education-reform plan, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Antonio Ramon Villaraigosa (born Antonio (Tony) Ramon Villar, Jr. on January 23, 1953) is the mayor of Los Angeles, California. He is the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Cristobal Aguilar in 1872. has offered a sweet enticement to the southeastern cities that are part of the LAUSD LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District (Los Angeles, CA) : Local control over some of their worst schools. It's the right idea, and it ought to be applied throughout Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. Unified -- breakup breakup The division of a company into separate parts. The most famous breakup to date was the 1984 division of AT&T (formerly, American Telephone & Telegraph Company). This breakup was intended to increase competition in the communications industry. without breaking apart the entire district. Under the existing terms of Assembly Bill 1381, Villaraigosa would assume control over three clusters of underperforming schools within city limits. Naturally, that left the neighboring neigh·bor n. 1. One who lives near or next to another. 2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another. 3. A fellow human. 4. Used as a form of familiar address. v. cities that are part of the LAUSD feeling short-changed. If L.A.'s mayor can take charge of some of his city's worst schools, why can't they do the same? So Villaraigosa, recognizing the fairness of this complaint and the political necessity of appeasing ap·pease tr.v. ap·peased, ap·peas·ing, ap·peas·es 1. To bring peace, quiet, or calm to; soothe. 2. To satisfy or relieve: appease one's thirst. 3. the smaller cities, has agreed to offer these communities the same power. Which is great -- for them. But what about the rest of us? Under AB 1381, the vast majority of LAUSD schools would still remain largely under control of the remote and out-of-touch district bureaucracy. And even the L.A. schools that would fall under the mayor's control would be led from City Hall, and not from within the local community. But if local control is the answer to our schools' woes -- and most everyone, from the mayor to the teachers unions to the Presidents' Joint Commission on LAUSD Governance agrees that it is -- why not extend it far and wide? This is why the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. tried, in vain, to break apart from the LAUSD: To give local parents, teachers and community leaders more say in their kids' education. But breakup never got a fair hearing, with the education and political establishments, as always, standing firmly against community empowerment in the Valley. Villaraigosa has shaken up that power structure with his school-takeover plan and his intention to make the LAUSD superintendent an education czar. With the lone exception of the entrenched en·trench also in·trench v. en·trenched, en·trench·ing, en·trench·es v.tr. 1. To provide with a trench, especially for the purpose of fortifying or defending. 2. LAUSD bureaucracy, everyone who has examined the keys to successful public schools found the formula rests on local control: teachers, principals, parents and communities that feel ownership of their schools. The mayor knows that too. It is part of his plan. It's what he's prepared to give smaller cities. It's what the people in the Valley and every other community in the area want. Let the cry from the neighborhoods be this: Give us back our schools. |
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