Steve with L.A.U.S.D. students during Teach For America Week.

There is no more important issue facing the people of Los Angeles than the reform of our public schools. For 33 years, I have been active in efforts to expand opportunities for children, including service as President of Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles, as a member of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee for the recent school bond, and as a President of the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission. Now, as a candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, I will continue that work by offering this Education Policy Plan to dramatically improve the quality of education for all children in Los Angeles.

The LAUSD is Broken

Unfortunately, the LAUSD has proven, over the past two decades, that it cannot effectively deliver a quality education in a nurturing safe environment to the children of Los Angeles.

I believe that the central problem LAUSD faces is its own size. Superintendents are capable and well meaning, administrators are dedicated, and teachers are devoted. But, the District is simply too big and too bureaucratic to deliver on the promise of excellence. I'm not alone in criticizing the size of LAUSD. The Little Hoover Commission said, "LAUSD has grown too large to meet the needs of its students. The sheer size of the district, its student body and its facilities are beyond the ability of the school board and administrators to manage." In fact, there have been some important studies that show that larger school districts create what researchers call "diseconomies of scale" where the larger the district becomes the more inefficient and unproductive it becomes (Herbert J. Walberg, On Local Control, Is Bigger Better?, 1992).

In the Spring of 2000, the Board of LAUSD approved a Plan to break the district into 11 semi-autonomous districts. The Plan provided that the 11 sub-districts would have "extensive authority and responsibility over the delivery of education to students and families." The Plan also called for "slimming down the central bureaucracy and moving many administrative tasks closer to schools." While the Plan is a step in the right direction, it does not go far enough.

Neighborhood School Districts Are the Answer

I believe that LAUSD should be broken-up into 20-40 neighborhood school districts, each comprising 1-3 high schools and their associated feeder schools. Neighborhood Schools give parents, teachers and principals the power to control education at a local level without having to go downtown for approval. In neighborhood schools, the power to set policy and curriculum is vested in local officials, parents, and teachers, and those officials, parents, and teachers are directly accountable to the community they serve. Neighborhood schools also give parents the opportunity to get more involved in their children's education.

Neighborhood School Districts Promote Core Educational Values

Neighborhood School Districts better promote the basic reading writing and math principles that are the core to public education in the 21st Century.

• Neighborhood Schools Districts Will Allow Us to Build New Schools Faster and Cheaper - It has been proven that smaller school districts have the ability to build more schools faster, buy cutting through the bureaucracy
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts Enable Continuity - Neighborhood school districts enhance the creation and maintenance of stable learning communities. Smaller districts with local control encourage stability of the student, faculty, and administration populations, and ease the coordination of student transition within and among schools.
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts Emphasize Accountability - Local control means that performance of teachers and administrators can be accounted for locally. Students and parents have direct, local access to the oversight function of the District. They will also have much needed control over the budgets of their schools.
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts Promote Fairness - Neighborhood control facilitates environments in which every child has the opportunity to engage in a broad spectrum of intellectually challenging learning activities and curriculum.
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts Provide Autonomy - Decisions directly affecting students and teachers are made closer to those students and teachers; administrators make decisions for students who live in their neighborhood, not on the other side of the City. This way, administration can be more sensitive to the needs of a specific community.
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts Promote Efficiency - Neighborhood school districts will significantly reduce the amount of money spent on bureaucracy. A structure of neighborhood school districts allows those districts to take advantage of economies of scale and sharing of services and expertise, where appropriate, while continuing to support the operation of smaller school districts. While districts are autonomous, they can come together where appropriate to share knowledge or increase their bargaining power.
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts Continue to Enfranchise Parents - Wouldn't it be great to run into your local school board member at the grocery store. To be able to drive a few minutes to attend a meeting of your local school board. To be able to know the superintendent. This is what neighborhood school districts offer - they allow parents, teachers and administrators to develop meaningful working relationships and affect real change. Wouldn't it be great to be able to attend a teacher meeting and not have to miss a day of work?
  
  
• Neighborhood School Districts are Economically Viable - Neighborhood school districts are designed in a manner that will demonstrate and insure the economic viability and financial stability required to meet the operational and educational needs of schools, employees and students. The UCLA Study conducted in 1997 noted that a well-defined process is in place to ensure the equitable distribution of LAUSD assets and liabilities across the newly-formed districts.

Benefits of LAUSD Break-up and Neighborhood Schools

1. Faster Response Time to Community Concerns - Parents, teachers, and administrators can react to community concerns without having to go downtown for approval.
   
   
2. Improved Oversight - Parents, teachers and community leaders have local easy access to local oversight functions of neighborhood school districts.
   
   
3. More Efficient Implementation of New Initiatives - Neighborhood school districts allow for rapid deployment of new initiatives because of their smaller scale.
   
   
4. Greater Accountability - Parents, teachers and administrators know each other more intimately in neighborhood schools and are thus more accountable to one another for performance.
   
   
5. Decentralized Governance Definitely Provides Greater Local Control - Districts controlled at the neighborhood level allow for true local control.
   
   
6. Decrease the number of hours that children spend on diesel buses and allow more time for children to spend working on the basics.