NEWS ANALYSIS : LEARN Plan Mired in Factionalism

What has been widely hailed as the best solution to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s educational failures has emerged as one of its biggest problems, a symbol of the inability of competing factions to work together.

Two years in the making, the LEARN reform package is caught in a cross-fire, mired in politics, personality disputes and a distrust bordering on hatred between the district’s teachers and its administration.

The first significant challenge to the plan came in last week’s unexpected rejection by teachers union leaders, splintering a carefully crafted picture of unity that its proponents had painted.

The union’s House of Representatives voted 2 to 1 not to support the LEARN package unless it incorporates a “teachers bill of rights” promising job security and limiting principals’ powers. The motion was sponsored by one of the union’s most popular and outspoken leaders, former President Wayne Johnson, and opposed by current President Helen Bernstein.

The action leaves the future of the reform plan in doubt, with even some of its most ardent supporters wonder whether it will survive past its first year.

“The problem is that LEARN is really the last hope” for a school district threatened by a breakup campaign and a private-school voucher initiative, said Rosalinda Lugo, one of 15 board members of Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, the coalition of civic, business and education leaders that drafted the reform plan.

“The union’s ‘no’ vote is basically telling the community that as far as teachers are concerned, things will stay the same. It sends a very negative message,” Lugo said. “If the teachers union and the leadership are not willing to take a risk . . . then maybe we should take a serious look at breaking up the school district.”

Lugo has been one of LEARN’s staunchest advocates, delivering a constituency of thousands of Latino families from the city’s Eastside. But she said she is so disheartened by the union vote that “I have serious, serious reservations about the possibility of implementing LEARN in the LAUSD.”

The LEARN plan shifts power to local schools and gives principals authority over virtually every aspect of campus management. It encourages collaboration with teachers and parents by allowing them to recall unpopular principals.

Bernstein maintains that last week’s union action was a “vote of the moment,” reflecting teachers’ intense anger over labor problems rather than a mandate against reform.

But the union did not poll its 30,000 members, making it difficult to gauge teachers’ opinions or to determine whether LEARN will ever garner the rank-and-file support it needs to spread meaningful reforms districtwide.

What’s more, teachers are getting mixed signals from two of their most respected leaders--Johnson and Bernstein--and say they have not received enough detailed information about the LEARN plan to be able to sort things out on their own.

“There is no clear signal and the teachers don’t know who is right,” said Margrit Cheeseboro, economics teacher and union steward at Crenshaw High School. “Teachers don’t know if it will benefit the teachers or the administrators or the children or no one.”

It was only two months ago that the school board voted unanimously to launch the LEARN reforms this fall. Schools were asked to volunteer to pilot the program; their faculties and parents began voting on whether to participate.

One hundred schools applied, and the district whittled that down to the 38 schools with the highest levels of teacher support. The school board will decide May 17 which schools will launch the reforms this fall.

At some schools, last week’s union rejection has touched off confusion and second-guessing, leading district officials to delay selection of the pilot schools, which had been scheduled for this week.

There have been strong signs for weeks among members of the LEARN executive board that the program’s launching was running into difficulties.

* Though there were many applications from Westside and San Fernando Valley schools, there were few from South-Central and Eastside campuses--a disappointment to school board President Leticia Quezada, who had insisted that pilot schools come from every area.

* The long-running contract feud between the teachers union and the district made it difficult for LEARN leaders to raise $3 million from private sources that is needed to finance the first year of the program. LEARN officials will not say how much money has been raised.

* Aware that a vocal union faction had begun mobilizing its opposition, Bernstein asked LEARN members to help her pitch the plan to demoralized teachers.

As the April 23 application deadline drew near, a growing number of teachers were pleading for more information about LEARN, criticizing a slick public relations campaign that they complained was more slogan than content.

At a meeting with teachers at Garfield High School, LEARN President Mike Roos delivered a sales pitch that angered teachers who were eager for details, said Sharon Castro, a biology teacher and the school’s union steward.

“He tried to sell the plan, saying it’s the only thing that’s going to save the district, it’s the last chance,” she said. “I don’t think most teachers believe it and I don’t believe it. We’ve seen too many (reform plans) come and go.”

Johnson said he plans to capitalize on teachers’ doubts and will mount a campaign to undermine the reform package unless it is changed to address their concerns.

Union leaders, he contends, “lost their objectivity” by serving on LEARN task forces that developed the reforms.

But Roos said the package is fair to teachers and offers them “decision-making discretion in a collaborative environment.”

Roos said he is heartened that despite the union’s lack of support, enough schools have volunteered so that the reforms have a chance to succeed. The bigger risk, he said, is that the rift between the union and other LEARN supporters will jeopardize the community support the overhaul effort has thrived on.