L.A. School District Can’t Do It All by Itself

The new Los Angeles school board faces a crisis graver than the environmentally challenged Belmont Learning Complex. The district lacks the executive leadership, technical expertise and acumen necessary to carry out the task of building 100 to 150 new schools it needs to accommodate a burgeoning student population. This is an inescapable conclusion of the report on L.A. Unified’s mismanagement of Belmont, released Sept. 14. The harsh--and ironic--reality is, the board cannot possibly meet the state’s July 2000 deadline for applying for new-school construction funds if it judiciously selects the sites. In short, it needs outside help.

This is not an easy truth to embrace, and some board members deny it. Yet, at subcommittee and board meetings during the same week the report was issued, the disconnect between district site-selection planning and community interests was wide enough to make it seem as if planners were aliens who had never visited the district’s communities. For example, should the district pick a site on which a neighborhood church has just received a multimillion-dollar federal grant to build much-needed senior-citizen housing? Or should hundreds of housing units be condemned and torn down to make room for a school while vacant sites are overlooked? These are the types of choices the board was given.

The immediate problem is the district’s inability to pay for the new schools it needs and its corresponding dependency on the state to make up the shortfall. In order to apply for state funds, the district must compile a list of sites and plans to develop them into schools, tasks that can take months to complete. But it is nowhere near fulfilling these requirements, a failure that jeopardizes its chances of capturing state funding. This creates panic, and panic leads to unwise decision-making.

The school bureaucracy has long used “urgent” deadlines and other gimmicks to achieve, with minimum review and debate, policy and program choices otherwise too weak to stand the test of critical analysis. This was the decision-making process that produced the board’s 4-3 vote in 1997 to build Belmont despite ample environmental warnings.

The potential danger of building a school for 5,000 students and more than 150 staff on an old, poorly defined, shallow oil field was well known. The 1985 Fairfax methane explosion and fire, which injured 24 people, was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Key safety questions were asked, but district leaders evaded and dismissed them. The project’s most zealous advocate, board member and former school principal Victoria Castro, rode the wave of ethnic politics and personal rancor to victory.

If this habit of decision-making is not broken, if in-depth analysis and thorough deliberation continue to be absent at board meetings, reform is doomed and the Belmont fiasco is a harbinger of an even more dismal future. This is surely not what board members want, but do they have the astuteness and steadfastness required to change entrenched practices?

The board’s appointment last Tuesday of Howard B. Miller to oversee the district’s school-construction plans wasn’t encouraging. On Saturday, Steve Soboroff, chairman of the Proposition BB Oversight Committee, recommended Miller, a former board member, for the job. Board member David Tokofsky immediately rejected the idea. But three days later, at a hastily called board meeting, Tokofsky made the motion, which passed 4-3, to appoint Miller “facilities reform executive.” When asked to describe the duties, salary and relationship of the new position to Lynn Roberts, who now heads facilities, he admitted he had no answers.

As the new facilities czar, Miller at first answered only to the board. Supt. Ruben Zacarias was not even consulted by board members about Miller’s appointment or role. On Wednesday, after Latino legislators supportive of Zacarias complained, board president Genethia Hayes unilaterally inserted the superintendent back into the loop. Miller now reports to the superintendent and the board.

The Belmont report by Don L. Mullinax, LAUSD’s chief auditor, recommends disciplining and, perhaps, firing a large number of top district officials involved in the construction of new schools. The board is proceeding with his recommendations. Yet, the loss of these executives would further erode the district’s chances of meeting the July deadline for obtaining construction funds. Short of that, district rules and due-process requirements guarantee that the disciplinary process will take months to complete. During such times of uncertainty, bureaucrats often circle their wagons. It is easy to imagine the emergence of various hostile cliques engaging in protracted infighting and recriminations that would further paralyze LAUSD. Indeed, last week Zacarias, who was criticized in the report, hinted that he may sue Mullinax, his appointee, for defamation of character.

The district’s 700 existing schools and the 100-plus it needs to build do not solely belong to Los Angeles. The school system is also state. Sacramento provides most of its funding and makes most of its rules. The district’s school-construction crisis is thus a state problem, too.

Accordingly, the school board should appeal to the governor, state legislators, state agencies, such as the Department of General Services, city and county leaders, and the business and labor communities to join with it to form a special task force that would plan and carry out the new-school construction program. This new partnership should select the person to head the operation. Staffed by specialists, including school architects, the task force should have one additional responsibility: to recruit the team that replaces it.

Besides being responsible to LAUSD’s superintendent, the task force would also report to the board’s facilities subcommittee. Why to Zacarias? Because it is paramount that the principle of executive leadership and accountability be advanced in the district.

The state, as the district’s partner, would ensure that, at the appropriate times, an equitable amount of construction funds would be available, deadline or no deadline. It is in the state’s interest, no less than Los Angeles’, to assure that the 100-plus new schools are built as expeditiously as possible and in a way that validates the community-school link. The difficult job of locating the best site for each new school must begin in each community with parents and leaders.

The unwavering commitment of the new school board to the Belmont Review Commission, which will make recommendations on whether to proceed with the Belmont Learning Complex, and the Office of Internal Audit and Special Investigations, which produced the Belmont report, should demonstrate to the governor, mayor and other partners that a new day is dawning in LAUSD. This school board is the best and only hope for revitalizing the district.

Fortunately, there are believers. Last week, the State Allocation Board agreed to release $278 million in Proposition 1A funds after district officials agreed to accept greater oversight in school construction. The money, which was held up because of Belmont, will be used to build elementary schools and primary centers, and buy land for playgrounds.

Solving the district’s school-construction problems will require extraordinary leadership, interagency cooperation and technical expertise. Los Angeles and California have the talent required to provide this. The question is, do its leaders have the political will? *