Ex-Adversaries Unite to Back All-Year Classes

Less than a year ago, Los Angeles schools Supt. Leonard Britton and teachers union President Wayne Johnson were opposing generals in the city’s nine-day teachers strike, exchanging insults that to many seemed to demonstrate a genuine dislike between the two men.

Johnson, at one point during the strike, remarked that Britton was a “second-rate bozo” and the comment was aired on local television news shows. And Britton said publicly that his adversary was lying about negotiations.

But with the strike long over, with teachers winning big raises, Britton and Johnson have apparently made their peace. They talked genially while eating chef’s salads during a luncheon Thursday in Encino and put up a united front against criticism of year-round schools, as well as suggestions that the 610,000-student school system be separated into smaller districts.

“We are probably viewed as terrible adversaries,” said Johnson, speaking to members of the Encino Chamber of Commerce. “But we do have a common goal: to make the changes in the district necessary to raise the achievement level of our students.”

Britton told the assembled business leaders that he and Johnson “are very much alike” in their beliefs of how best to improve the ailing school district.

The chamber billed the event as a debate on year-round schools but it came closer to being a joint pitch for more local spending on Los Angeles public schools.

The school board last month voted to relieve classroom overcrowding by operating city schools on year-round schedules, beginning in the 1990-91 school year. Britton and Johnson said they agreed that running year-round schools is the most efficient way to handle the district’s population boom, which is projected to continue through the end of the century.

West San Fernando Valley board member Julie Korenstein, who also spoke at the luncheon, said the only long-term solution is to build schools, but she said that this cannot be accomplished without higher local taxes.

An $800-million statewide school construction bond is scheduled to go before voters in June, but district officials say that Los Angeles’ share of that amount would be inadequate.

Korenstein said the district is hoping to put a measure on the June, 1991, ballot asking Los Angeles voters to approve a tax hike to pay for school construction. She said state law, however, must first be changed to allow such tax increases to be approved with a simple majority vote. Currently, such measures require a two-thirds majority, which is usually impossible to muster.

Britton and Johnson said they oppose efforts based in the Valley to break up the school district, saying that plans to shift more power to local schools through governing councils of parents, teachers and school employees would accomplish much the same result by reducing district bureaucracy.

Johnson, displaying a bit of his past antagonism, told the group that many at the union office still describe the district’s teaching philosophy as “stack ‘em deep and teach ‘em cheap.”