TEACHERS IN CHARGE FOR CHANGE.

Byline: SONJA EDDINGS BROWN Local View

WITH the gates of our public schools firmly shut for the summer, there is change in the wind. Everywhere educators and parents turn, there is another plan emerging with promises of reforming the ailing Los Angeles Unified School District.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's much-debated legislative initiative, if passed, could allow him to handpick LAUSD's superintendent as well as oversee L.A.'s lowest-achieving schools.

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy has come up with his own plan, which would allow schools to apply for ``waivers'' from suffocating, one-size fits all LAUSD policies.

Former L.A. school board president Caprice Young's California Charter Association, which specializes in creating charter schools around the state, has so many requests for meetings with LAUSD schools, she doesn't have enough staff to take them.

Yet surprisingly, one of the year's most promising innovations came from inside LAUSD itself, and was crafted by District One Superintendent Jean Brown.

When educators at Woodland Hills' Parkman Middle School voted to leave the LAUSD and become a charter school, Brown invented a way for them to stay. She encouraged the teachers' desire to innovate and improve their school and she granted them control over their curriculum.

Most importantly, Superintendent Brown listened. For Parkman's staff and the community, it was like throwing open the windows and letting in a fresh breeze.

Other district officials and California politicians might want to take a page from Brown's book and begin putting their faith in local schools and educators as well. Consider that three of the most outstanding public schools in the San Fernando Valley are schools who realized that departing the Los Angeles Unified School District was the only pathway to real improvement.

Vaughn Street Elementary in San Fernando and Fenton Avenue Elementary in Lakeview Terrace are renowned for turning out computer-literate fifth-graders and putting dreams in the minds of kids in some of the neediest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Granada Hills Charter High School is one of the biggest and most successful education-reform movements in the country.

And Granada's sparkling new football field, sharply outfitted marching band, and well-paid staff aren't going unnoticed by other L.A. schools hungry for change.

The growing crop of charter schools in Los Angeles and California are the real catalyst behind the sudden interest in true education reform. Bureaucrats and politicians are racing to stop the dam from breaking.

But too many of them still believe that the secret to success in education can be determined in a skyscraper. The truth is teachers are the ones who belong in the driver's seat.

Superintendent Brown has the right idea.

The best way to find out how to improve education is to listen to a teacher. No one knows better where school funds are really needed than a committed educator who has dipped into his or her own wallet year after year.

Our public school teachers in Los Angeles are a tried and tested bunch. They have seen pay raises granted and revoked. They have watched endless incarnations of curriculum arrive and depart. They have greeted students for decades wondering if there would be enough paper to go around.

Our teachers do the sacred work of teaching our children each and every day, and there will be no reform unless we give them the freedom to meet the changing needs of kids in their own diverse neighborhoods.

Real reform means putting our tax dollars as close to the classroom as we can get it. And real reform will mean more parents adjusting their schedules to be first in line to support their children's schools.

But most of all, real education reform will mean giving school teachers something they deserve a lot more of: respect.