EDITORIAL MORE THAN BUILDINGS ROMER NEEDS TO OFFER MORE THAN NEW SCHOOLS TO KEEP THE LAUSD TOGETHER.

WITH decades of frustration bubbling to the surface, public support for a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District is on the rise. Bob Hertzberg made breakup the centerpiece of his near-miss campaign for mayor, and since then he has become the darling of would-be education reformers, both inside the district and out.

And that has Superintendent Roy Romer worried.

In a pre-emptive strike against a potential breakup effort, Romer spoke out against the idea Friday in his address to the San Fernando Valley Economic Alliance. But rather than allay the fears of breakup, he only reinforced so much about what so many perceive to be wrong with the LAUSD.

To hear Romer tell it, the best reason to keep the district together is ... construction.

Citing the district's mad rush to add 160,000 more classroom seats to its real-estate holdings, Romer said, ``We wouldn't have been able to do it if we didn't have the size we did.''

In other words, we need to keep the district huge - the second-largest in the nation - so we can keep raising money, and keep building new schools. In November, Romer plans to hit up voters for $3.8 billion more on top of the $14 billion the district has already raised.

But while construction might be Romer's top concern, those who actually send their kids to the LAUSD have a different priority - education.

What good are all the bond measures, all the construction projects, all the new campuses if kids aren't learning what they need to in order to be productive, informed members of society?

Romer insists that education is improving at the LAUSD, but concedes that ``you can't look at the test scores and be satisfied.''

And it's not just the test scores. It's dropout rates. It's parents' feelings of powerlessness within the district. It's a system where good teachers languish and bad teachers go unreformed. It's a bureaucracy that's massive, unmanageable and out of touch.

Romer has staked his leadership on the schools' construction program, and, for the most part, he has done a good job in this department. He has put new, competent people in the LAUSD's facilities division, and despite lax oversight and serious concerns about how the money is spent, they are largely making good on their aims to build a record number of schools in breakneck speed.

But Romer's greatest achievement has also been his greatest liability. His laser-like focus on facilities has caused him to pay too little attention to academics, to reforming the bureaucracy, to making the district responsive to the families and communities of its 700,000 students.

Only Romer would consider construction a compelling argument for holding together a district that continues to fail on so many other fronts. If there is a breakup fight in the near future, he'll need to come up with much better arguments - and real, tangible signs of progress - to make his case.