Los Angeles Education

She despises the new law. Dictionaries and textbooks from the now-junked bilingual program still sit on her classroom shelves. Spanish slips easily into her speech. But no one can accuse Yvette Olivares-Estrada, a home-grown teacher from the barrio, of failing to carry out Proposition 227 with vigor.

At a time when community colleges are taking on an increasing role statewide in preparing workers for the new economy, the nation's largest two-year system--the Los Angeles Community College District--is struggling to recover from its worst crisis during a two-decade decline. A confluence of chronic under-funding, excessive union influence, declining enrollment, administrative instability and a bloated bureaucracy have pushed the system to the edge of bankruptcy.

The Los Angeles Community College District, under fire from several public agencies for its management practices, is home to $100,000-a-year teachers and $80,000-a-year campus police officers. Such salaries, while not typical, are made possible by the extraordinary power of the unions representing most of the 5,900 district employees, from gardeners to academic deans, officials say.

Mexican-born mother Marta Lopez feared that if she left her three U.S.-born children in public schools, they would end up like her--in a Boyle Heights housing project surrounded by gangs and drug dealers. A gang clique was laying after-school ambushes for Yolanda, 13. Lopez's sixth-grader, Sylvia, still spoke no English. Older boys were beating up Roberto, 6, her Spanish-speaking first-grader. In January, she persuaded the city's poorest Catholic school, Dolores Mission, to take all three.

Two wealthy supporters of private school vouchers are scheduled to announce today in New York the creation of a $200-million fund to help low-income families in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities pay tuition for their children. The fund, set up by venture capitalist Theodore J. Forstmann and heir to the Wal-Mart store fortune John T. Walton, would far exceed the amount now being spent on such scholarships nationally, school choice advocates said.

The courtroom hushed and about 200 eager listeners sat on the edges of their seats as the jury returned its decision in the case of the County of Titan v. Jack Sprat, held in a mock courtroom Thursday at the Laurence 2000 School. The verdict: Sprat was innocent of charges that he attempted to murder the giant and steal Goldie, a goose that lays cholesterol-lowering eggs.

The president of the Los Angeles teachers union Wednesday criticized the campaign to dismantle the Los Angeles Unified School District, telling a small gathering of parents that the effort will lead to political fights without improving student achievement. Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, warned an audience of 30 at El Camino Real High School that a district breakup would drain local resources.

In the first major speech of his seven-month tenure as superintendent of schools, Ruben Zacarias on Thursday promised to raise standardized test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District by 8 percentile points over the next four years--a 25% increase from where students now languish.

A long-awaited report on the progress of the Los Angeles Unified School District's largest reform program--LEARN--was hastily buried last week, just eight days before the superintendent was to give his state-of-the-district speech.

Opportunities to enroll children in choice public schools outside their neighborhoods, a well-received program that began four years ago during a downturn in enrollment, have dwindled significantly because of surging demographics. The Los Angeles Unified School District announced last week that only 7,400 seats are available this fall in its open enrollment program, about two-thirds of last year's number and down from a high of nearly 22,000 when the program began in 1994.