On Saturday, parents, teachers, students, neighbors – truth is, anyone who feels like it – will have another chance to vote on who should take over 30 Los Angeles Unified schools.

If the balloting is anything like Tuesday’s fiasco at the polls, Superintendent Ramon Cortines should take all the votes and shred them. That chaotic exercise in democracy threatened to discredit  the district’s bold experiment in school choice.

In a move that has drawn national attention, last fall the school board agreed to open up 12 failing schools and 18 new schools to bids from charter schools, community organizations and in-district groups of teachers and administrators. It’s the first round of a multi-year process that promises to transform the nation’s second largest district – and one of the nation’s most intransigent.

Holding public presentations on  applications for each campus, then having community residents vote their  preferences is the first layer of review that is supposed to inform Cortines’ recommendations and the school board’s final decision later this month. Cortines also has appointed a large panel of evaluators to  review all of the proposals.  But Cortines won’t be bound by its findings, and few doubt there will be some behind-the-scenes deal-making.

It’s fortunate that the people’s vote will be  advisory, because the electioneering, particularly by teachers and district staff pushing their proposals, turned the balloting at school sites on Tuesday into a farce. According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News, there were complaints that elementary school children were brought in to vote (there was no age limit), that teachers were instructing impressionistic immigrant parents on how to vote and that school employees voted more multiple times (once in the teacher category, once as a community member; again, no explicit prohibition).  In the weeks leading up to the vote, administrators received enough complaints – of administrators wearing No Outsiders buttons, of parents being told that charter schools would cast out handicapped students – that Cortines issued a caution against campaigning.

All  this and more from those who teach civics.

Signs of changing times

But all of the craziness shouldn’t overshadow a monumental process that could shake up L.A. Unified. After years of bemoaning failing schools,  trustees are doing something radical about them. After long battles with charter schools over facilities, charter operators are competing for newly constructed  schools.  After resisting change though their union, groups of United Teachers Los Angeles members spent weeks designing schools that would require significant  changes to their contracts.

The time frame leading to operators taking over the schools in September was compressed, and the process of deciding the requirements for running the schools was contentious. That’s one reason fewer than expected charter school operators submitted applications by the deadline last month. And only one prominent charter  operator, ICEF Public Schools, bid for an existing school – much to the disappointment of the community activist group Parent Revolution.

At least one charter school bid for nearly every new school, and there were multiple bids for several schools. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools bid for three schools. The local district administration joined with union teachers to bid for most of the sites. If the selection process is perceived as fair, there will be pressure for more charter operators to compete for existing schools in the next round.

The hard-core campaigning by UTLA could signal hard battles ahead, when Parent Revolution starts organizing families to exercise a “trigger” mechanism that the Legislature adopted as part of its Race to the Top legislation. Under the trigger,  a school board must consider inviting in a charter operator as one of  several options for a struggling  school if a majority of parents sign a petition demanding a change.

This week’s voting is the latest skirmish in an escalating  war over control of L.A. schools.  Cortines’ and the school board’s actions later this month will be watched closely by charter activists, superintendents and union leaders  across the state – and beyond.

By John Fensterwald on February 5th, 2010