SCHOOL BOARD EXPECTED TO OK REFORM PACT.

Byline: Kimberly Kindy Daily News Staff Writer

The Los Angeles school board is set today to approve an agreement with the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project that will bring at least $21 million to district reform efforts over the next five years.

The privately funded educational foundation has attached conditions that require the Los Angeles Unified School District to take strict accounting steps and provide annual progress reports.

The district must also spend $8.8 million annually - some of it through matching funds - through the year 2000 for the district's Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now reform program.

"By and large, it's a good agreement because Annenberg is making a generous commitment to giving money to reform efforts," said board President Mark Slavkin. "Hopefully, the board will approve it."

The Annenberg Foundation announced plans in 1994 to establish a local nonprofit group that would oversee distributing $53 million to fund educational reforms throughout Los Angeles County. The funding pact up for approval today by the school board is part of that program.

In June, when officials began developing the agreement, LAAMP director Maria Casillas said the school district would have to "put its money where its mouth is" before the foundation provided assistance.

Although Casillas was referring to matching funds - which would be less than half the annual $8.8 million commitment - Slavkin said the district funding is appropriate and must be found because it is for systemwide improvements.

"It is the fundamental priority of the district to support the LEARN effort to improve achievement in all schools," Slavkin said. "And the only way you can sustain it over time is to make the commitment annually."

Developed by 600 community, education, business and civic leaders, LEARN's goal is to improve student performance, make educators more accountable for the success or failure of the students and transfer decision-making power from the district to the schools.

In July, the school district will enter its fourth year of the reform program. The goal is to have all schools enrolled in LEARN by the 1998-99 school year.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein, a member of LEARN's board of directors, said the district's financial commitment to reform is not enough.

"This is a drop in the bucket for a district the size of ours," she said. "They ought to be ashamed they are spending that little."

Board member David Tokofsky said he is concerned that the Annenberg agreement earmarks money explicitly for LEARN schools but does not say it will support other reform efforts such as charter schools.

"I don't think it was the intention of LEARN to substitute the old bureaucratic uniformity for a new uniformity," he said. "We should be allowing hundreds of different flowers to bloom, and the central office should just be holding schools accountable for tangible results."

LAAMP and LEARN offices were closed Monday, and officials were not available for comment.