LAUSD TAKEOVER TALK CREATING A DISTRACTION.

Byline: LUAN B. RIVERA Local View

A back-room deal cooked up in Sacramento threatens to rob the parents and voters of the Los Angeles Unified School District of their proper role in the management of their schools.

The state teachers' unions, their local United Teachers Los Angeles affiliate and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa shut out the existing governance team that has put the district's 720,000 students on a path of steady progress toward improved educational achievement. The lamentable result? A cock-eyed plan that would erase the clear line of responsibility connecting the district's seven elected school board members to the community, replacing it with a hash of vague, overlapping and sometimes conflicting authority.

These muddied lines of accountability would put the teachers' union in the driver's seat at the school site level, giving it control over curriculum, instruction and instructional materials. The Legislature roundly rejected this idea in 2002, when Assembly Bill 2160 would have rolled those crucial issues into collective bargaining agreements.

Meanwhile, nothing in Villaraigosa's plan would do anything to hold teachers accountable for their students' learning.

Much of the school board's budget and contracting authority would shift to the district superintendent, but it's unclear who the superintendent's boss would be. The board would nominate a superintendent, but a Council of Mayors representing the 27 cities and unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County within the LAUSD would ratify the choice -- and Villaraigosa would constitute a majority of one on that panel under the weighted voting formula he has concocted.

This end-run around the local voters and the state Constitution would inevitably wind up in the courts, further confusing the issue. Our children would take a back seat to litigation and politics, distracting everyone from working on the real goal -- student achievement -- and impeding the real, measurable progress in academic performance that is already under way in the state's largest school district.

To wit:

The LAUSD's ranking on California's Academic Performance Index has risen a strong 30 percent in six years, better than many other urban California districts and the state as a whole.

The number of schools scoring above 600 on the API has soared from 25 percent to 89 percent.

The number of schools below 499 on the API has fallen from 53 percent in 1999 to less than 1 percent in 2005.

The number of fully credentialed teachers on the district's roster has risen 14 percent in the past three years, to 92 percent, putting the LAUSD closer to the No Child Left Behind Act's goals than many other districts throughout the country.

The mayor discounts those measurable, verifiable gains and instead trots out unreliable data on graduation and dropout rates that are twice as high as the district's own figures. He and his allies also question the district's fiscal management, but the parents aren't fooled. They've signaled a repeated vote of confidence in the LAUSD's fiscal management, with $19.2 billion in school construction and renovation bonds approved in recent years.

The mayor does have a proper role to play in the future of Los Angeles' children. He can make the city's streets safer, its residents healthier, its housing more affordable. And he can wield his considerable influence to strengthen the community by building coalitions for positive, productive change.

``I have a bully pulpit, remember,'' Villaraigosa said in announcing the bargain he had struck with the teachers' unions 400 miles away from his constituents, in Sacramento, after a yearlong drive for control of Los Angeles' schools. ``My voice will be heard on the school board.''

It was clear, as he stood before a swarm of TV cameras and reporters, that his voice can carry far. Now it can only be hoped that he will lower his voice and pursue a constructive dialogue instead of continuing to raise it in unhelpful demagoguery.