LAUSD'S ANSWERS REST WITH TEACHERS.

Byline: A.J. DUFFY Local View

MOST of us know that there are no simple solutions to complex problems. Take urban public education, for example.

In Los Angeles, literally hundreds of thousands of students go to school each day without proper medical or dental care, without a safe way to get there, and without an enriched learning environment at home. The schools they arrive at are likely to have some combination of overcrowded classrooms, insufficient books and supplies and a demoralized staff of teachers and site administrators.

For some, these difficult problems suggest a single magic bullet -- district breakup, mayoral oversight, charter schools, merit pay. But none of these ``solutions'' actually addresses the causes of low student achievement and high dropout rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District. What is really needed is a sober analysis of those causes and an end to the blame game.

United Teachers Los Angeles, for example, has been working with several community-based organizations to promote a positive, progressive vision of school reform. This vision has formed the basis of our bargaining demands for the next contract and the legislative proposals we are crafting in Sacramento.

We propose improving instruction by giving teachers -- not district bureaucrats -- the time, support and autonomy to choose their professional development and plan standards-based lessons that meet the needs of all their students. And high-needs schools must have extra resources to attract excellent teachers.

It's critical that we allow teachers the freedom and support to develop a rigorous, culturally relevant, student-centered curriculum.

Moreover, the LAUSD needs an overall devolution of power. We need to empower school-based councils with the support to make key decisions over school budgets, staff hiring and scheduling. Schools should be able to partner with community-based organizations to increase the involvement of parents and other family members in working with teachers to improve student achievement.

To achieve these reforms, we must secure sufficient funding from the state and shift district resources from the central and local district bureaucracies to the classroom. This is key to significantly lowering class sizes, hiring more support personnel, expanding professional development, developing parent academies and -- yes -- increasing teacher salaries so that the LAUSD is competitive with other districts.

Yet rather than acknowledge these proposals and engage with them, some have focused solely on UTLA's salary demands. Worse, several media outlets have mistakenly announced that our salary demand is 14 percent, when the bargaining proposal clearly states that UTLA would not advance a specific salary proposal until the state budget is finalized.

Yes, UTLA did say that LAUSD teachers deserve to be among the highest-paid in the county, given the difficulties of teaching here and the high cost of living. And we noted that that would require up to a 14 percent salary increase. But this was in no way this year's contract demand, but a goal.

All sides in this discussion must be accurately heard and respected. Rather than rancorous divisiveness, the public wants good-faith cooperation and problem-solving between all parties.