LAUSD BOARD'S COSTLY COMBAT DISTRICT SPENDING BIG TO FIGHT MAYOR.

Byline: NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN Staff Writer

Los Angeles Unified officials so far have spent nearly $250,000 in district funds to mount a massive, orchestrated fight against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school-takeover plan.

School board members have spent at least $5,500 to fly to Sacramento to lobby legislators, bring in opponents of mayoral control from around the country to speak at a May 31 board meeting, and bus about 50 parents to Sacramento earlier this week for the first hearing on the Villaraigosa legislation.

In all, the district has spent $236,000 since November on a campaign that has included guidance from high-priced political consultants on how the district can overhaul its image and rally opposition to Villaraigosa's proposed school-takeover legislation.

``Any time you do public relations, lobbying and legal work -- and you spend a large amount of money on it -- you do raise the question of how much is too much and whether that money could be better spent in the classroom,'' said Steve Levin, political reform project director at the Center for Governmental Studies.

``It's a matter of using discretion and knowing when a certain amount is too much.''

For at least one alliance of parent and community groups -- The Say Yes to Children Network -- the amount the district has spent already is too much.

``They're spending their resources on opposing, in a public way, reform, and resisting change,'' director and founder John Jackson said at a rally earlier this week at district headquarters.

``If they would spend their time and money to improve the education of children, then the outcomes would be a whole lot different than what we're seeing right now.''

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy, a proponent of the mayor's legislation, called the district's spending ``obscene.''

``I think it's the bureaucracy circling the wagons to protect itself. They're not offering much in terms of reform,'' said Duffy. ``They don't even want to start the dialogue. They just want to go out, get public-relations firms to talk about the rise in test scores.''

Despite the concerns, board President Marlene Canter said the district will continue to spend whatever it takes to fight the bill in Sacramento.

``Until we feel that the successes that we have made are not being jeopardized by the language in the proposed bill, we will continue to incur expenses on behalf of that for the kids,'' Canter said.

``If there's one criticism we faced up here in Sacramento, it is the district does not have a good enough communications strategy. We will continue to incur expenses in order for our story to be told and protect the successes we have been making.''

LAUSD officials have long maintained that their communications department is so lean -- with seven employees and a budget of $862,000 -- that it cannot handle more than day-to-day tasks.

In November, the school board signed an eight-month, $168,000 contract with the powerhouse lobbying firm Rose and Kindel, with Superintendent Roy Romer emphasizing that the firm spend more time on fighting the legislation.

For the first four months of this year, the board also had a $7,500-a-month contract with the firm of attorney Darry Sragow to fight the legislation. In May, the board increased the contract to $20,000 a month.

Sragow has long maintained that the LAUSD lacks adequate communication resources and said his firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, has been hired to provide legal and policy advice on school-reform issues.

``It became clear this was taking a lot of my time, more than anyone had anticipated,'' said Sragow, who ran all four of the district's successful pushes to get construction bonds approved.

Sragow estimated he's putting in about $40,000 to $50,000 worth of work each month on the reform issue.

``There is no question the district has failed to explain to the community the work that it's doing,'' he said.

The district has used consultants to deal with tricky public-relations problems in the past.

Days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his support for an effort to break up the LAUSD, Romer quietly created a nonprofit organization that raised nearly $150,000 to tout the district's accomplishments and counter criticism by then-mayoral challenger Bob Hertzberg.

In its current battle, the district faces an equally critical Villaraigosa, who has established a Committee on Government Excellence and Accountability -- a political action committee -- with funds left when Villaraigosa left the Assembly, said Nathan James, spokesman for the committee.

James would not disclose how much money is in the account or how much had been spent on efforts so far to promote the legislation, but said the information would be filed by a July 31 reporting deadline.

The committee is in addition to the mayor's communications office, which has nine employees -- one dedicated full time to education issues -- who are paid a total of $688,000 in annual salaries.

``It would frankly be much more effective public relations for the district to be getting down to work and doing its job educating the kids than board members flying up to Sacramento to hire a team of P.R. experts to convince the public otherwise,'' James said.

But Romer said he had no compunction about spending for legal advice and lobbying to fight the mayor's plan.

``When you're attacked on an issue, you have to defend yourself,'' he said during a lobbying trip this week to the Capitol.

``The mayor has put massive resources in attacking us. We have to put some resources in defending. ... I have no embarrassment whatsoever to defend what's good for children. That's what we're doing.''

Staff Writer Harrison Sheppard contributed to this report.

naush.boghossian(at)dailynews.com

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