Coalition of groups challenges L.A. law giving Mayor Villaraigosa partial control of the school district

A coalition led by Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and including the League of Women Voters, the California School Boards Association (CSBA), the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the district’s two PTA groups, and several parents has filed suit in state court challenging California’s recently enacted law giving Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa partial control over the nation’s second largest school district. Court papers assert the law "creates a new governance structure for the Los Angeles Unified School District which is completely inconsistent with the constitutional... framework that governs the state's schools." The suit also alleges that the takeover "eliminates the rights of LAUSD parents and voters to control the governance of their school district … [and] dilutes and diminishes the voting rights of a substantial percentage of citizens within LAUSD, treats them differently than other citizens of the district, and impairs their right to elect the representatives of their choice." LAUSD general counsel Kevin Reed says, "We are questioning a law by which the mayor of Los Angeles will have all the authority that would otherwise belong to the superintendent and the school board over as many as 80,000 students, which would be the fifth-largest school district in the state. The Los Angeles City Charter, as enacted by the voters, does not contemplate that."

The mayor’s office quickly characterized the suit as "frivolous" and "a desperate attempt to preserve the failed status quo." "Instead of dedicating precious dollars and attention to the classroom, the school board is buying high-priced lawyers to obstruct the education reforms supported by the governor, the Legislature and a broad coalition of parents, teachers and community leaders," says mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo. The mayor’s chief counsel, Tom Saenz, adds, "The school board's penchant for micromanagement has led them to somehow believe that the charter would give in varying detail exactly what the mayor's permitted to do, but in fact the charter does what most constitutionalized documents do, they set out broad parameters of what the mayor can do." Although leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles have sided with the mayor, the union's membership last week repudiated their leadership's support. Both sides vow to take the case to the state supreme court if necessary, but Loyola Law School professor Karl Manheim thinks this unlikely. "It's not apparent to me that there's anything in the constitution that would limit the Legislature's power to transfer some of the power from the school district to the mayors," he says. "This disempowers the existing school board, but I don't think it's a serious injury. It has to disrupt the operation of the schools in some form to be granted the injunction."

LAUSD superintendent Roy Romer says the district followed through on its threatened suit because it wanted a definitive decision, especially after the state's legislative counsel and the city's legislative analyst questioned the act’s legality. School Board President Marlene Canter vows that the board will move forward to establish a partnership with the mayor, despite the lawsuit. But the suit comes days after the school board rejected public appeals from the mayor to involve him in the search for Mr. Romer's replacement. School district officials have said they could announce the new superintendent before Oct. 21, when the mayor is expected to return from a trip to Asia. Although State Senator George Runner thinks the suit is appropriate because of the legal questions raised by the state legislative counsel, he says the district's actions in filing it and possibly announcing a new superintendent when the mayor is out of town smack of gamesmanship. "But I think this whole process has been a bit of gamesmanship on both sides," he adds.

[Editor’s Note: A summary of the arguments being made in the suit and the complete legal complaint filed in the case are below, as is background on the dispute from past issues of Legal Clips. In a recent Washington Post opinion column on District of Columbia mayoral candidate Adrian Fenty’s interest in asserting a role in school reform, Thomas Toch and Sara Mead of the think tank Education Sector note that one of the many problems afflicting D.C. public schools is that they are "at the mercy of a large and changing cast of political authorities," including the superintendent, the school board, an independent city finance director, the mayor, the city council, and even Congress and U.S. Department of Education. For background on the possibility of a larger mayoral role in D.C. school affairs, see the last link.]