Yeah we know what his agenda is. The voters better wake up! They are headed for a dictatorship in LA whose loyalty is not to the Unted States but to Mexico!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... ck=tothtml


Mayor's School Takeover Would Bypass Local Voters
Villaraigosa plans to ask legislators for control. He would lead a council that approves the budget and decides the superintendent's fate.
By Duke Helfand and Steve Hymon
Times Staff Writers

April 19, 2006

Finally showing his hand after months of deliberation, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Tuesday that he would ask the Legislature to give him overwhelming authority to run the city's embattled public schools.

Villaraigosa unveiled his takeover strategy in his first State of the City address, during which he called for a "council of mayors" to oversee the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District, second-largest in the nation.

That council — including leaders from the 26 smaller cities served by L.A. Unified and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors — would hire the superintendent and approve the district's multibillion-dollar budget.

But Villaraigosa would retain the reins of power because council votes would be in proportion to the member cities' population and Los Angeles is bigger by far than all the others combined.

The elected Los Angeles Board of Education would not be disbanded but would be relegated to advocating for parents, ruling on student discipline and preparing annual reports on the effectiveness of schools.

The mayor launched his ambitious and politically perilous campaign from the gym of a gleaming new charter school in South Los Angeles.

By offering a program that depends on approval by state legislators rather than local voters, he shifted the contours of the debate from a ballot fight in Los Angeles to a struggle in Sacramento.

The outcome already promises to define Villaraigosa's tenure as he increasingly stakes his reputation on a determination to reform and improve the school system. Moreover, the fight over the schools places him at odds with his traditional allies in organized labor.

"I believe we need to wake up and shake up the bureaucracy at LAUSD," Villaraigosa told an audience of city officials, educators, labor leaders and students in a 30-minute speech.

The address, interrupted by applause 49 times, was also broadcast live over local television just before the nightly newscasts.

"The buck needs to stop at the top," he added. "Voters need to be able to hire and fire one person accountable to parents, teachers and taxpayers, a leader who is ultimately responsible for systemwide performance."

Los Angeles School Board President Marlene Canter dismissed the mayor's call for a new governing scheme, saying that it would deprive voters of any meaningful right to select the district's leadership.

"The last time I checked," she said, "this country was still a democracy."

Villaraigosa showed a willingness to have his plan reviewed. Mayoral control would have to be reauthorized by the Legislature in six years.

During his address, Villaraigosa outlined his vision of Los Angeles as a fiscally disciplined city with more police, more parks, more opportunity and more compassion for its homeless.

He pledged to expand the Los Angeles Police Department by 1,000 officers over five years by raising fees for residential trash collection, and he unveiled plans for a "performance unit" in his office to scour city departments for savings.

He vowed to eliminate the city's nearly $300-million budget shortfall within five years, saying that he was making a $47-million "down payment" toward the debt in the upcoming year.

Villaraigosa also promised to reduce traffic at the city's most congested intersections by deploying a "gridlock tiger team" to attack problems, and he spoke of increasing money for street resurfacing.

And finally, he talked about his plans for turning Los Angeles into the "greenest and cleanest big city in America" by planting 1 million trees, restoring the Los Angeles River, reducing air pollution from the city's port and diverting trash from landfills. He had raised all those points during his election campaign.

"The state of our city is up to all of us, each and every one of us," Villaraigosa said. "Let's write a new chapter in the history of progressive reform in our city."

The crux of that reform, he said, rests squarely on his efforts to improve the public schools, an issue that has dominated his administration since he took office nine months ago.

Villaraigosa's announcement made it clear that he intends to move not only aggressively but also quickly, as he said he hopes the Legislature would begin discussion on his proposal as early as next week.

Some officials from smaller cities served by L.A. Unified voiced their support for the proposed council of mayors.

George Cole, who has served five one-year terms as mayor of the southeast-area city of Bell, said Los Angeles deserves a greater voice because of its size.

But Cole, who is now a councilman, emphasized the need for Villaraigosa to listen to smaller cities such as Bell, with a population of 40,000, roughly one-hundredth the size of Los Angeles.

"It shouldn't be one-sided," Cole said. "I've known Villaraigosa for a long time. He's a real consensus-builder. That's the kind of leader he is. But he is not always going to be the mayor."

While Villaraigosa outlined the broad strokes of his legislative assault, he also filled in the finer details of the changes he would want to see in the school district.

He would give the superintendent greater operational control over the district and "trim the fat" of the bureaucracy to raise teachers' pay and move more money to classrooms.

He also would lengthen the school day and year, and pay teachers extra for the additional work time.

And building on reforms that have shown promise in other school districts with mayoral control, such as New York City, Villaraigosa would launch a new leadership academy for principals, place parent coordinators at all schools and expand the number of charter schools — campuses that are freed from many local and state regulations in exchange for agreements to raise students' achievement.

Students would be required to wear uniforms.

"I believe we need to replace the culture of low expectations with a culture of accountability and respect," he said.

But Villaraigosa, aware of the anxiety that his remarks might provoke, sought to reassure teachers of their central role in a newly constituted school system. Indeed, Villaraigosa reminded teachers that the union gave him a job and "a calling," and that his wife is a public school teacher.

"I know this proposal will raise some concern and spark some controversy," he said. "Change is never comfortable. I believe that any serious effort to improve our schools begins and ends with you."

In an effort to calm teachers even before his address, Villaraigosa met over the weekend with leaders of the Los Angeles and California teachers unions to preview his plans and seek common ground.

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy called the meeting constructive but said he still had many concerns.

"The sticking point is mayoral control versus mayoral participation," Duffy said. "We agreed to continue the dialogue. We need to continue to talk to one another."

Business leaders in Los Angeles also urged the mayor to tread carefully as he charts the takeover.

"We urge the mayor, the school district and the unions to commit to a collaborative process and begin authentically working together," the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce said in a statement.

But Villaraigosa remained undaunted. He said the decision to give his speech at the Accelerated School — a college-like charter school that he called a "temple of high expectations" — underscored his desire to improve the lives of young people, and by extension, the city.

The school and its impoverished location in the heart of South Los Angeles offered a picture of "both our feats and our failures."

He hailed the school's two founders — teachers who went door to door, seeking students for their dream campus.

"Angelenos, I intend to follow their example," Villaraigosa said. "I intend to walk door to door myself to fight for fundamental reform in our schools."