Breaking Up Is Too Hard to Do : L.A. Unified: We can have local control faster by letting communities ‘contract’ with the district to run their schools.

The discussion about breaking up the Los Angeles Unified School District must now advance beyond the district-bashing phase so people can begin to consider how our public schools should best be organized. We should know our goal before we begin the fight over how to get there.

There are at least two popular theories about how best to govern schools. The most commonly held one is that educators are not to be trusted. Under this theory, the community elects lay leaders to oversee the schools and ensure that the voters’ wishes are imposed and enforced. I call this the political control theory. The recent legislative debate on the so-called breakup bills focused largely on these issues, such as the nature and scope of school board roles and responsibilities.

The second theory holds that real educational decisions affecting classroom teaching and learning are best made at the school site level and that schools should be mostly autonomous and self-governing. Most private schools operate this way; they are accountable to the families they serve and to a school committee but not to higher bureaucratic or political authorities. This is the theory that is behind the district’s Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) reform plan and the charter school movement.

The 194 schools already participating in the LEARN reforms and our nine charter schools control their own budgets, have broad authority over hiring decisions and have been granted flexibility to chart the course best designed to help their students achieve at higher levels. While LEARN implementation is just beginning its third year, I believe these reforms are most likely to produce true local control.

Before charging off in support of a breakup plan, I encourage voters to consider whether our goal should be tighter and more hands-on political control or real authority and accountability at the local school level. While these goals don’t have to be mutually exclusive, they are not the same thing.

I fear that the creation of more political subdivisions will actually impede rather than promote local school autonomy. Newly elected school board members in the many new districts are likely to want to start from scratch and put their own imprint on policy rather than promptly delegate key decisions to the schools. The assertion that the LEARN reforms will simply carry on in the new districts is naive and unrealistic. People run for school boards to advance their own agendas, not to mimic someone else’s.

The question is whether true and meaningful local control can be achieved without adding new structures of political control. I think it can. The voters I talk to are not clamoring to confront the legal and financial morass of creating new governmental jurisdictions. However, voters very much want schools that work and the ability to make a positive difference at the neighborhood level.

So why not offer the communities around each of our 49 high schools and their feeder middle and elementary schools the ability to assume authority over school governance and school budgets right now and avoid the costly and time-consuming battle over a breakup? Those communities in which parents, teachers, principals and other concerned citizens believe they can better manage and direct their local schools should be vested with this authority.

We should allow communities to “contract” with the central district to run their own schools, similar to the way the charter school process works. This can and should be done now. In fact, the Pacific Palisades High School complex has submitted a proposal to the Board of Education to do just this.

The fight over dividing up the assets of a large district and building new replicas on a smaller scale will not be worth it. Years will be lost to the political posturing and diversions created by this very complicated process. I have two young children in L.A. schools and I know they can’t wait for the dust to settle on these adult battles. Let’s put the political fireworks aside and join hands to make our schools better today.