EDITORIAL LAUSD IN LIMBO STUDENTS STUCK WHILE POWER BROKERS SLUG IT OUT.

JUST a few months ago, it seemed as though there might be resolutions to some of the Los Angeles Unified School District's most intractable problems. Yet now more than ever, the LAUSD seems to be stuck in limbo.

Back in August, after much wrangling in Sacramento, the state Legislature finally approved Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's quasi-takeover plan. And in May, teachers at Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills embraced a union-backed, quasi-charter plan that was heralded as the blueprint for ending the district's long-standing animosity toward charters.

Now both quasi-plans are in a whole lot of trouble.

After Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Villaraigosa's school-reform plan, the L.A. school board wasted no time challenging it in court, a process that could go on for ages. And last week United Teachers Los Angeles narrowly voted to oppose the plan -- even though the union's earlier support had proved invaluable to getting AB 1381 passed in Sacramento.

Meanwhile, it didn't take teachers at Parkman -- now Woodland Hills Academy -- long to decide that the ``charter lite'' concept was a no-go. Teachers there have overwhelmingly voted to ditch the system they adopted just two months after its implementation, and instead want to make the school a true charter.

So to recap: The school-reform plan once backed by the teachers union is now opposed by the teachers union. And the supposed solution to the charter wars has been handily rejected, thereby assuring that the charter wars will continue to rage on.

All of which leaves the LAUSD and its students ... nowhere.

We have a school district that might or might not get taken over by a mayor whom school board members openly revile. We have a new superintendent whom the board deliberately chose without the mayor's consultation. And we have a union that is now fighting both the mayor and charters -- i.e., the only two serious reforms around.

Students and families carry on in a system that's manifestly failing them, while those in charge play their power games.

The players all talk about the need to put students first, but no one seems willing to put their agenda aside to make that happen. And reform might be possible some day -- but how many generations of students will be lost while we wait?