A LESSON IN LEARNING

Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, or LEARN, is the latest effort to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest. Here is a look at how the reform effort began, where it is at now and how the first 34 schools have fared as they complete their first year in the program. Also included are some observations of critics and “stakeholders,” LEARN’s name for those who are integrally involved in the restructuringprocess.

THE PROCESS The LEARN school journey involves many steps. In addition to several parent days and regular “stakeholder” meetings, each of the initial 34 LEARN schools went through the following: 1. Start-up Nearly 100 schools express interes in participating. However only 34 meet the criteria of demonstrated support from parents, principal, school staff, students and teachers. Their applications are sent to the superintendent, who reviews applications in collaboration with teachers, parents and clerical and support staff leaders, with final approval from the school board. 2. Training. Each school community received the equivalent of $68,000 worth of outside help from the following two groups: UCLA Advanced Management program This 15-month training cycle involves intensive leadership development primarily for the principal and a teacher representative, called a “lead” teacher. Subjects include budgeting, strategic planning and conflict resolution. It also links each school with a mentor and other technical expertise from the business world. *Los Angeles Educational Partnership This 15-month training cycle with this 10-year-old nonprofit agency involves the entire school community. Principals and teachers are joined by classified staff and parents in workshops at the schools. The group looks at subjects ranging from grant writing to transforming classroom practices. Each school is assigned an on-site “school change” consultant to help through the transition. 3. Outcomes All school stakeholders reach consensus upon a final site action plan to improve academic achievement for all students and with clear timelines and targets. By the end of the first year, all plans will be in place. Some plan components are already being implemented. Other parts of the plan will be implemented in the next school year.

HOW TWO SCHOOLS FARED Carthay Center Elementary Southgate area Wayne Moore, Principal “Our weakest link is getting more parents buying in, though the attitude of parents has changed. The parents were very honest with us and said, don’t give us workshops, give us projects to do. So with them we repainted the school auditorium. Ad we had two ‘clean and trim’ days, where they trimmed and removed bushes and reseeded the lawn.

“This is the first reform effort in my career where the follow-through is as well thought out as the report. For example, I have business mentor who’s a professional running a business. I know how to run a school, but Christopher Forman, president of Pacific Theatres Realty Corp., helps me stay on a steady course of management. LEARN is going to help us run schools as a business, where the children are the clients.” *Paula Tsou, Kindergarten / first-grade teacher “We extended the traditional three-hour kindergarten to 8:25 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. LEARN gave us the flexibility to create this kind of program. I have seen a remarkable growth in the students academically. Many of them are reading already.

“As LEARN lead teacher, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of things I’ve had to do. I’ve had my regular class and I feel like I’ve got another part-time job. What I’ve learned is that there can be true collaboration between administrators and other stakeholders.” *Sharie LaKind, Mother of kindergartener and second-grader “The problem is getting people involved. The first couple of meetings we filled the auditorium. After that it cut in half, then it was 20 people for the rest of the year. A lot of parents don’t get home from work in time to go to parent meetings. Our plan for next year is saying, ‘This is what we want to do this year’ and giving parents choices. We’ll let people pick the projects they want to work on and the hours they want to do it.” *Bryson Avenue Elementary Wilshire area Merrilee Holzhauser, Assistant principal “Many of the programs we have are not adequate to meet our needs. A number of children or parents have emotional or other problems. We’re in the initial stages of making connections with a local clinic to partner with us. With LEARN, we’re discovering all these levels of services and people interested in assisting us that were never there before. Because we’re here every day running a school, we were very used to being isolated. Now we’re seeking out partnerships, whereas before we were used to doing things alone.” *Richard Ingalls, Sixth-grade teacher “This is a ‘we’ effort. You just start feeling better about the type of job you’re doing. That’s right now the positive thing you could say about LEARN in the first year, that staff morale has been brought up. Under the goals we’ve set schoolwide, with parents, teachers, administrators and other staff, when a student gets to me in sixth grade, I will have known what they were given in the fifth, and my program will be a build-upon. We will now build in first grade on what happens in kindergarten, and then all the way up.” *Melody Hernandez, Mother of a fifth-and first-graders “LEARN has helped the parents to be part of the school. I used to be on the other side of the fence, watch my children go through, and go home. Now I can go in and help other children. We have a new program called Bulldog Buddy. Parents take a child that needs reading, and help that child maybe half an hour. It’s not just their own child, just whoever needs it. It’s not the kid’s school or the principal’s school, it’s the community’s school. That’s what’s important. If you have the community to help, you’re going to have a successful school.”

HOW SOME SEE IT State Sen David Roberti, D-Van Nuys “LEARN is trying very hard but the solution lies in the parents having more input and control over the children’s education. That can only come with the breakup of the LAUSD. Ten years ago, LEARN would have been just what the doctor ordered but unfortunately the patient is still critically ill.” *Helen Bernstein, President United Teachers of Los Angeles, union for the district’s 33,000 teachers. “You can only be held accountable for those things you can control. This gives teachers a great deal of control over things that for years they said they wanted control of.

“The training is invaluable. The money is raised privately and that is an opportunity that should not be missed. We’ve never had good professional development. We should find out once and for all if that does make a difference.” *Walter Backstrom, Managing director of Service Employees International, Local 99, which represents 28,000 custodians, gardenes and teaching aides. “LEARN has been a learning process for teachers and administrators and our employees, because if there’s a meeting about the budget or anything, classified employees are supposed to be in the room. It’s been richly rewarding but difficult a times. It’s been like a family, where you sometimes argue but you get together and are better for it.” *Mike Ross, LEARN president and CEO “It’s no surprise to us that a the district moves to public school choice, there is little-usually no-availability in the LEARN schools. I was having lunch with an Armenian fellow who develops low-end apartments. He was telling me he got a call at the beginning of the school year from a guy who manages one of his buildings in Sun Valley, a building he characterized as hard to rent. The manager said all of these people are applying to move in. The owner said to find out what’s happening, and the answer came back from every applicant, “There’s a LEARN school here and we want our kids to go there.” *Sid Thompson, Superintendent, LAUSD “Other reform movements, such as charter schools, represent individual school efforts to improve education. LEARN, on the other hand, is a system-wide reform movement. It has as its basic concept the return of the public schools to the people. Its objective is improved instruction through a collaborative system in which all members of a school community will have a hand in the governance.”

Other Reform Efforts LAUSD reform is happening on more than one front. Besides LEARN, two other programs aim to increase authority of school principals, teachers, and parents over curriculum, staffing and budgets. Schools may participate in more than on effort. School-Based-Management: It was launched by the district in 1990 as part of its settlement of the 1989 teacher’s strike. It broadened school autonomy in a three-phase process. Each school is run based on ideas generated by an elected leadership council of parents, principal and teachers. Waivers are granted for schools to operate outside district and state rules and labor contract provisions. Schools participating: 92. Charter Schools: A state law effective Jan.1, 1993, allows 10 schools from each district to operate free from control of local districts and exempt from some state educational regulations. LAUSD has 10 charter schools.

TIMELINE 1991 Feb. 27

Dissatisfied with the city’s public schools, business, community and education leaders form the nonprofit Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District. The 13-member working group asks Mike Roos, then speaker pro tem of the California State Assembly, to be LEARN’s president. Spring LEARN polls area residents and finds that 68% believe that the schools are doing a poor job preparing students for the job market. However, more than 80% would give city schools more money if they knew it would be spent more efficiently.

June-December LEARN gathers data on school reform practices throughout North America and drafts initial reform proposal. 1992 January-October Educators, business and community volunteers form seven task forces. They look at how to reshape student learning and assessment, educator professional development, parental involvement, school to work transition, and school governance, accountability, social services, facilities and finance. October LEARN sends its draft to 625 trustees--a cross-section of academic, community and business leaders. They make some changes and help to ratify the plan. 1993 March 15

Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously approves the LEARN plan in the face of a campaign to break up the district and a statewide ballot initiative to give parents vouchers to send their children to private schools. Both efforts fail. May 17 Thirty-four Los Angeles schools formally join LEARN program.

July 11 A principal and one teacher from each school begin an intensive training course developed by UCLA’s business and education schools. Parents and school staffs receive separate training. LEARN raises $1.2 million in private funds to underwrite these costs. 1994 February A teams of parents, teachers, administrators, classified staffers and the principal from each LEARN school begin attending a series of workshops, developed by Los Angeles Educational Partnership, to produce actual plans for improving student achievement. Each school is also assigned a BUSINESS consultant to be an “in-house coach” for implementation. April Parents, teachers, students and staff are surveyed on how they feel about LEARN’s first year. Results are expected by July. May An additional 53 schools apply to LEARN program. LEARN officials begin raising about $2.4 million for training that will begin this summer for the new group of schools. May 16 LAUSD trustees reaffirm their commitment to LEARN by formalizing and streamlining funding for LEARN schools.