SCHOOL BOARD MAY TRY TO REUNITE LOCAL DISTRICTS.

Byline: Helen Gao Staff Writer

Three years after dividing the Los Angeles Unified School District into 11 semiautonomous parts, school board members are talking about consolidating - or even eliminating - the local districts in order to save money.

The local districts were created in 2000 under then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines to stave off district breakup and achieve local control. But critics maintain they have failed to achieve these goals and have seemingly added another layer of costly bureaucracy.

Like a number of other issues, the local district question appears to pit the new union-dominated school board against Superintendent Roy Romer, who credits the local districts with the academic strides the LAUSD made in the last few years.

``This is the first three or four years you have consistent performance increase and you are sitting there criticizing an organization that produced it,'' he said.

Romer insisted that eliminating the local districts would save only a negligible amount of money because he would still have to find offices in district headquarters to house the personnel and provide the services the minidistricts do now.

Board member David Tokofksy has long championed reform of local districts, but the issue has gained prominence only recently because of a looming budget deficit of $400 million to $600 million and pressure to raise teacher salaries.

``It's been three years. We have to ask ourselves, are local districts working and achieving more local accountability?'' said school board President Jose Huizar.

``If not, does it make sense to do away with them completely, cut them down or add more? I don't know what the answer is.''

United Teachers Los Angeles, which helped elect a board majority in recent elections, is pushing to trim the subdistricts. It's currently negotiating a new contract with LAUSD, which has said it has no money for pay raises.

``The cost-effectiveness (of local districts) has come into question. Is it the best way to use money in this tight budget situation?'' said board member Jon Lauritzen, a former teacher elected with the help of UTLA who represents the west San Fernando Valley.

Board members acknowledged in interviews they don't know the actual cost and size of the subdistrict operation because there has never been a study.

A Daily News review of budget documents shows significant discrepancies among different sets of data. One report said annual local district expenditures totaled $40 million in 2002-2003; another, $99 million; and a third, $786 million.

UTLA accountant Neal Gluckman estimated local district budgets at about $100 million a year. He said he has been trying since June to come up with actual figures but hasn't come close to an answer.

``In the last few months, each set of numbers I have received (from the LAUSD) is inconsistent with the previous set,'' he said.

LAUSD officials disputed Gluckman's estimate but were unable to provide what they claim are more accurate numbers. They said a significant portion of the local districts' budget consists of ``pass-through'' money waiting to be distributed to schools.

And if local district budgets have increased, officials said, it's because of efforts to improve special education services, and math and literacy instruction.

``If we are going to improve student achievement, we need to provide a support system,'' said Local District A superintendent Deborah Leidner.

Each local district has its own superintendent and a staff to support instruction and other needs, as well as coordinators who oversee a legion of 851 math and literacy coaches dispatched to local schools.

UTLA President John Perez said he believes subdistricts are sucking up valuable resources.

``It seems to me the minidistricts are costing us more money, not less,'' he said. ``Just because they say it's less, it doesn't mean it's less.''

When Cortines created the minidistricts in 2000, he promised to cut personnel and save money. The Daily News reported the restructuring would eliminate 834 positions at district headquarters, with most of those people expected to reapply for 501 jobs created in subdistricts.

But according to LAUSD analysts, district employees totaled 81,691 in 2002-2003, compared to 80,065 in 2000-2001. The minidistrict staff totaled 848 in 2000-2001 and reached 896 in 2002-2003.

But even as the district's total head count grew, the number of teachers and classroom aides went down from a high of 54,708 in 2001-2002 to 51,708 in 2002-2003 while enrollment continued to climb.

William Ouchi, professor of management at the University of California, Los Angeles, who recently published a book called ``Making Schools Work,'' tied the district's continued growth of personnel to its centralized management style.

He argued that if the district gave schools control over their budgets and let them decide how to spend the money, overhead could be cut dramatically. His analysis showed that decentralized districts end up spending more money in the classroom than highly centralized districts and perform better academically.

``The key always is who controls the money. The golden rule is he who controls the gold makes the rule,'' he said. ``As long as the central office controls the money, then whatever they call decentralization is phony decentralization.''

However, even advocates for reform argue that some kind of middle management is necessary to replace the current structure, given the size of the district.

LAUSD has 987 schools, early child-education centers and occupational centers spread over 704 square miles. Each local district is about the size of San Francisco Unified School District.

``Cutting it from 11 to seven, is the amount of money you can save ... justified in terms of the services you will lose?'' asked board member Mike Lansing. ``Most people philosophically feel that the local districts provide a local level of support that is needed.''

Lansing said he supports reform, but he felt the current discussion on subdistricts is driven largely by politics, not a desire to improve services.

``It's being looked at much more closely now because people are scrambling for dollars, and bargaining units are looking for raises,'' he said. ``It's about money and taking it from Peter to pay Paul. From that side of the debate, I am going to be obviously against that.''

Mike O'Sullivan, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, who has worked for LAUSD for 38 years, said the district has gone through a variation of decentralization every few years. Clusters preceded subdistricts, and zones preceded clusters.

``The theory of local control is very popular - that decision-making being made as close to the school as possible,'' he said. ``Realism also kicks in. There needs to be some kind of overriding bureaucratic structure that allows the school district to function in a reasonably consistent manner from one end to the other.''

But O'Sullivan also strongly believes the subdistricts need to be reformed based on rigorous cost and benefit analysis.

``We here at AALA would suggest that we need to have some hard and fast figures on the cost of minidistricts,'' he said, ``and some hard and fast figures of what the results would be financially, if you were to reduce the number.''

Helen Gao, [phone]

helen.gao(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 boxes, map

Box:

THE BIG THREE

SOURCE: Organizational Configuration and Performance study by Ouchi and colleagues

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist

Box/Map:

LAUSD - BY THE NUMBERS

SOURCE: Los Angeles Unified School District

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist