Mayor Villaraigosa partners with former Los Angeles Unified School District adversaries
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his former adversaries from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have announced a partnership that will provide the mayor with a scaled-back version of the authority he has sought over city schools. Mr. Villaraigosa and his senior education aides will play a major role in overseeing two of the city's lowest-achieving high schools and the middle and elementary schools that feed them under an agreement with the Board of Education and schools Superintendent David L. Brewer. But Mr. Villaraigosa must first win over skeptical teachers and community organizers. The president of the Los Angeles teachers union says he wants two-thirds of the teachers at any school under consideration to agree before joining the mayor's partnership, a higher threshold than the simple majority required to convert to a charter school, which operates free from many rules. School board member Tamar Galatzan, a Villaraigosa ally, says Mr. Duffy's two-thirds demand would pose too steep an obstacle for grass-roots reformers. "If you make it harder to join [the partnership] than to join a charter, you're going to push schools that don't want to go charter in that direction." Until recently, Mr. Villaraigosa and district leaders had been engaged in a protracted legal fight over legislation that would have given him substantial control over the school district, which has struggled for years to raise student performance and reduce the number of dropouts. After losing two rounds in court, however, Mr. Villaraigosa abandoned his original plan in May and sought the partnership with district leaders, including a new board majority that he helped elect last spring. The deal calls for the creation of a nonprofit organization, representing the city, the district, parents, and others, that would contract with the district to manage two families of schools during an initial five-year period. The nonprofit group also would work with the district's innovation division to spread successful practices from the mayor's schools districtwide.
Los Angeles Times By Duke Helfand & David Zahniser
[Editor’s Note: The article below notes that the proposal is "subject to approval by the LAUSD Board of Education and the parents and teachers of the selected schools." Partnership schools will control their own budgets and be responsible for recruiting staff and developing curriculum but "will be bound by current union contracts." They also "will have governing councils made up of principals, teachers, staff members, students and parents." Background on the LA governance debate is available starting at the second link.]
Los Angeles Wave By Alice Walton (City News Service)
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