Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa faces a formidable challenge in trying to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District. But the legislative deal that gives him partial control of the school system also provides him with an opportunity.
Despite predictions of impending political doom for the ambitious mayor, the gambit to improve the schools has a lot going for it, some educators and political analysts believe.
Villaraigosa will help run a district in which elementary school test scores have been rising steadily. He can build on that success, touting even modest further improvement as proof that his involvement has paid off.
He will have a say, through the superintendent, in the district's school-building program, a $19-billion enterprise that has proved to be one of L.A. Unified's biggest successes -- and one that incidentally raises the specter of mayoral patronage in school construction projects.
Perhaps most intriguing, Villaraigosa will have direct control of three clusters of low-performing schools with the promise of significant private foundation money and a wealth of expertise he can tap for campuses in this "demonstration project."
According to the legislation, Villaraigosa will have wide latitude in choosing the three high schools and the elementary and middle schools that feed into them.
The only requirements are that he pick them in concert with the district superintendent with consultation from parents, community leaders, teachers, school administrators and other school employees, and that the high schools have students who are among the lowest-achieving in the district. An L.A. Unified official would be appointed to work with each cluster.
The school district's authority over the campuses would be transferred to the new community partnership overseeing the schools.
The mayor's new education advisor, former interim L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon Cortines, will have a central role in shaping the reforms at these roughly three dozen campuses.
Cortines and the school and community leaders will explore the effectiveness of the campuses -- asking whether they have adequate programs to serve special education students, others who are still learning English and those who may want to learn a trade rather than go to college.
The reformers will also look at the organization of the schools and ask whether they have arts and gifted-student programs that other campuses offer.
