RIORDAN: LOCAL CONTROL KEY FORMER MAYOR FACES TOUGH SELL.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - State Secretary of Education Richard Riordan has a simple message for the state's education establishment: local control.

It's a theme the former Los Angeles mayor has been working to sell to school boards and superintendents since being named to the education post by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year.

His message is similar to one that he preached as mayor: Let individual schools - their principals, parents and teachers - control their own destiny and their own purse strings.

It sounds simple, but it was a tough sell in Los Angeles and just as tough across the state where the powerful education establishment has a long tradition of supporting centralized authority.

That has meant the state has played a bigger and bigger role in education, creating an intricate set of rules and funding formulas designed to deal with specific issues but which, critics argue, collectively add up to a massive tangle of bureaucracy.

``Essentially ... the teachers, the parents have virtually no control over the schools,'' Riordan said in a recent interview. ``If they want to get a bathroom repaired, they have no control. They can't just pick up a phone and call a plumber. They can't even call a parent and ask them to do it pro bono. Some good principals ignore those rules and go ahead and do it.''

Riordan has been floating a controversial idea to revamp the basic formula for funding schools, with a plan called weighted student average.

In effect, it would provide schools a basic amount of money per student, then an additional amount for students with special needs such as English learners and special education. It is simpler than the current formula, which is based more on earmarking funds for specific programs.

The new plan would give principals more authority over spending the money that comes to their schools. The formula could also mean more money for poorer urban districts that have a higher number of those special needs students and English-language learners.

Selling local control has taken Riordan to schools across the state but he is stopping short of pushing a radical change in funding for the moment.

``That is not on my agenda right now,'' Riordan said. ``I think that is something people will look at down the road.''

``In putting control and accountability at the local level - that includes the budget. The question is, how is the budget at the school level determined? Weighted student formula is one way, and there are other ways. I'm not sold on weighted student formula. But we are looking hard at the different ways the amount of funding schools get will be determined.''

Along with that, he and Schwarzenegger are looking to reduce the number of ``categoricals'' - special programs the state requires local school districts to implement.

Schwarzenegger's budget proposes consolidating 22 categorical programs, adding up to about $2 billion in funding that schools would have more flexibility to spend. The programs include, for example, dropout prevention, bilingual teacher training, home-to-school transportation and English learner assistance.

Riordan is expected to appear before the Legislature next week to defend the governor's education budget.

Critics say Riordan's plan for local control may sound good as a concept, but there are problems: for one, do we really want principals focused on fixing toilets instead of overseeing teachers?

``We have an awful lot of principals - not just in this district but across the country - that can't run the schools now,'' said John Perez, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, who speaks well of Riordan personally but says he has some ``very strange'' ideas.

``What makes them think if you give them money their personnel skills are going to improve? It just doesn't follow.''

Ultimately, Perez said, changing how money is doled out without adding more money to the system is still a zero-sum game. It is only by spending the money to reduce class sizes that the state will make its biggest achievement gains, he said.

Kevin Gordon, executive director of the California Association of School Business Officials, remains skeptical of the idea of giving principals too much responsibility. He said principals, after all, are educators - not experts on budgeting, finance and building maintenance.

``They need to be more focused on academic achievement and the teaching and learning that's happening in their schools, than on replacing the toilets. Someone else should be focused on replacing the toilet, but it shouldn't be the principal.''

Harrison Sheppard, [phone]

harrison.sheppard(at)dailynews.com

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Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, now the state's education secretary, has goals for more local school control.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer