LAUSD FACES AN UNWANTED AUDIT MAYOR, BREWER PUSH PERFORMANCE REVIEWS.

Byline: NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN Staff Writer

In their first in a series of weekly meetings, Los Angeles Unified Superintendent David Brewer III and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa agreed Monday they'll push for an audit of the school district and performance reviews of its teachers.

At a City Hall news conference that followed their closed-door meeting, the leaders said they would pursue a performance and budget review of the LAUSD -- action the district has long rejected -- to determine where they can trim the bureaucracy and eliminate waste.

``Expect transformation,'' said Brewer, who was hired last month to the $300,000-a-year post. ``The mayor and I are going to transform this school district.''

Villaraigosa said the meeting had been amicable, and he and his ``good friend'' were ``finishing each other's sentences'' as they discussed ways to reform the nation's second-largest school district. Among their top priorities, he said, is lobbying aggressively to get more federal and state money for Los Angeles' public schools.

``I'm now even more certain there's a meeting of the minds when it comes to reform at L.A. Unified,'' he said. ``We agreed to work together to go to Washington, D.C., and Sacramento and get our fair share.''

Brewer repeated earlier promises to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom -- an idea the mayor echoed -- and promised to restructure the district to make it more efficient.

But school board member David Tokofsky questioned the effectiveness of the proposed financial and management analyses. ``The people who keep wanting to audit have to realize that the costs of those audits are taking money from teachers and classrooms,'' he said.

Both Villaraigosa and Brewer emphasized their desire to increase professional development and leadership training for educators, with Brewer saying he'll work with the unions to create an in-house training program.

A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said he's eager to discuss his ideas for changing principal academies to create a new breed of administrators.

``They're building a house of cards if they're going to continue to produce the same types of administrators that are top-down autocrats rather than what we all believe is the best model, which is a bottom-up team-builder that regards teachers and parents as true partners,'' Duffy said. But he also thinks the district needs to change its professional development program, as well.

``We have so much professional development that most of it is meaningless,'' he said. ``What we need is professional development that's homegrown, by the faculty and by teachers, to truly meet the needs of the students that they teach.''

The mayor is set to assume a significant role in the operations of the 707,000-student district on Jan.1, under legislation signed into law in September by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Assembly Bill 1381 also shifts significant authority from the school board to the superintendent. The school district has challenged the legality of the legislation, and a hearing is scheduled to begin on Dec.15.

[e-mail]

[phone]