Bidding to run L.A.’s schools

The initiative that will allow outside operators to run some of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s schools moves forward this week as parents at each school (as well as teachers and high school students) vote for their favorite applicants. We opposed these advisory votes from the start, and recent events have only confirmed our belief that they would transform what should be an educational process into a political one. They also put pressure on the school district to pick the “winning” applicants rather than the best ones.

The district opened 18 new and 12 existing schools to applicants in this first year of the multiyear Public School Choice initiative. For many of the schools -- mainly the newly constructed ones -- there has been hot competition, largely pitting charter school organizations against teacher groups that have drawn up their own proposals.

But with some mudslinging and questionable behavior by some district staff, the application process has occasionally deteriorated into an ugly disinformation campaign. At the beginning of the process, for instance, a Spanish-language flier was distributed near Gratts Primary Center, falsely warning illegal immigrant parents that they would be deported if they supported switching to charter management. Another flier for parents of Hillcrest Elementary School students warned that if the charter operator Inner City Education Foundation took control of the school, children who didn’t get accepted via lottery would have to be bused out of the neighborhood, and “we don’t know where they will land up.” That’s not true; under the school choice initiative, charter operators must accept all students within the school’s attendance boundaries.

Problems also have cropped up with the informational meetings where each applicant presents its education plan to the community. Los Angeles Unified unthinkingly distributed a flier that told parents to get more information about an upcoming meeting by contacting the local mini-district -- which, as it happens, was one of the competing applicants. Despite a directive from Supt. Ramon C. Cortines restricting electioneering, a principal showed up at the meeting for his school wearing a button that said “No Outsiders,” and teachers union members have waved signs and been disruptive at certain meetings. Cortines said it also appears that some staff have been inappropriately lobbying their students during school hours.

One application to run a new school has been submitted by a partnership of Local District 7 and United Teachers Los Angeles. On Jan. 18, the superintendent of the mini-district, George J. McKenna III, sent a letter to parents on official letterhead lauding the positive things the partnership “will” accomplish at the school -- as though it were a done deal. He did not mention that the partnership is one of three applicants vying to run the school, or even that there is a selection process involved. Charter school operators weren’t given access to parents’ addresses, let alone to district letterhead, although after one charter organization complained, McKenna offered to send out a mailing for the competitors as well.

(We also have some disappointments with charter operators during this first round of applications. They applied almost solely for the newly constructed schools that will open in the fall; there was just one charter proposal for an existing school, Hillcrest Elementary. We understand that shiny, well-equipped campuses are more attractive, and that it is easier to open a successful new school than to turn around an old one. But it was teacher groups, not charters, that were more willing to undertake the challenging job of improving older schools.)

Hard-charging and sometimes less-than-ethical tactics are ubiquitous in political campaigns, but that’s just the point. The time for politics is during school board elections, not during what should be a thoughtful process that focuses on the relative strengths of the applicants. After the recent shenanigans, Cortines sent an e-mail to all employees banning the use of district resources to promote applicants and criticizing the false accusations. But his statement that this “is not a popularity contest” was disingenuous. The school board made it one. And of course, teachers will do everything in their power to hold onto their jobs.

We hope parents will look beyond the hype and vote for the most solid academic and safety plans, whether those come from charter operators, teacher groups or other entities such as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. If they don’t, at least the votes aren’t binding.

Unfortunately, by agreeing to these advisory votes, the school board put the district in an awkward situation. If it overrules some of the votes, it risks looking indifferent to families and the community. Any new school operator that wasn’t “voted in” also would face parental disgruntlement even before the school opened. Still, the district must not compound its initial error by placing popularity over sound instruction. Los Angeles Unified will have to muster the courage to make its decisions based on one overriding factor: the best education.