MAYOR TOLD FIGHT NEEDED TO SAVE HIS LAUSD PLAN.

Byline: HARRISON SHEPPARD Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO -- Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to take over the LAUSD is in danger of collapsing under an aggressive onslaught of lobbying by powerful union and school board opponents.

Even though final legislation has not yet been introduced to lawmakers, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said Thursday that he was so concerned that he called the mayor and urged him to return to Sacramento soon to prop up the effort.

While Villaraigosa, a former Assembly speaker, has visited Sacramento several times in the past year to lobby for the legislation, Nunez said the teachers unions and Los Angeles Unified School District board members have been more effective in reaching Democratic members of the education committee.

``He's the best salesman we've got on this,'' Nunez said. ``The other side is working this pretty hard. I want the mayor to be successful and I want our schools to be successful.''

Nunez said he supports the bill but has not been able to spend much time lobbying for it because he has been occupied with budget negotiations and the primary election earlier this month. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also supports the mayor's plan, saying he would sign the bill if sent to him.

Villaraigosa's staff quickly put together a trip Monday, when the mayor is expected to meet with Nunez and other key lawmakers. But Villaraigosa said he wasn't surprised the effort has been difficult.

``We've always said this was going to be an uphill battle,'' Villaraigosa said in a telephone interview. ``There are strong forces defending the status quo. And I strongly believe the status quo is just not good enough.''

Villaraigosa's proposal, contained in legislation authored by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, calls for creating a Council of Mayors to replace the current school board in overseeing the district.

The council would be comprised of all the mayors in the district, with the most power granted to Los Angeles based on its biggest share of the district's student population.

The mayors would hire the district superintendent, who would be granted increased powers to oversee the LAUSD's day-to-day operations. The school board would continue to exist, but in a diminished capacity.

Romero submitted a draft of her legislation to the state Legislative Counsel's Office, but it has yet to come back to the Legislature in its official language. So lawmakers who form opinions now are doing so based on what they are being told by the two sides before they have a chance to read the details for themselves.

Some key members of the Education Committee said they have not yet heard from the mayor.

Assemblyman Mark Wyland, R-Vista, vice chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, said he has not made up his mind yet, but has had ``substantial contact'' with opponents of the effort. He said he has not heard from the mayor.

The California Teachers Association, which opposes the bill, is considered one of the most influential political groups in the state, as a big contributor of money and personnel to many Democratic campaigns. United Teachers Los Angeles is affiliated with the CTA.

CTA President Barbara Kerr said even though it is a Los Angeles issue, the group has gotten members from throughout the state involved in expressing opposition.

``We've been saying for almost a year now that mayoral control is not the way to go,'' Kerr said. ``The mayor has his heart in the right place and he needs to work with the teachers. He needs to work together to make some real change. Mayoral control is not the real change.''

Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, said she believes the bill is still far from the 41 votes it would need to get out of the Assembly.

Goldberg opposes the bill because she believes it is premature, and said the mayor should work more on fully detailing his plan and explaining it to the public.

And she said the issue should be decided locally, not by legislators from all over the state.

``I'm not that anxious to have someone from Fresno or Kern County or Riverside making a decision about how the schools will be governed in Los Angeles,'' Goldberg said.

School board President Marlene Canter said she has been traveling to Sacramento once a week for the past seven weeks to meet with lawmakers to express the board's opposition to legislation.

The argument she has made to lawmakers is that the district is already improving without a reorganization, as test scores and other measures of achievement rise.

``I've been up there really on behalf of making sure that the legislators were fully briefed on how come I and others keep saying LAUSD is a district on the move,'' Canter said. ``And to substantiate the progress we have made in the last six years with a reform superintendent, Roy Romer, not only in the area of construction but in the area of instruction.''

harrison.sheppard(at)dailynews.com

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