L.A. School District Gets Down to Business

United Teachers-Los Angeles President John Perez claims in his Dec. 6 letter that the L.A. Unified School District board members whom Mayor Richard Riordan backed in 1999 (myself included) “shifted hundreds of millions of dollars from classrooms to cover construction overruns and hired consultants.” Bond funds pay for school construction and the consultants who plan, design and build those schools, period. Schools don’t get fixed or built without the right people in charge, and the previous board did not have the experts to do the job; we brought them in and schools are being built and repaired at a phenomenal pace. Despite the failures of past boards, we are using our bond funds in a responsible and effective manner.

Perez also mentions that the board “created mini-districts” and “strangled LEARN schools.” Before there were 11 semiautonomous local districts, there were 27 “clusters” covering the entire school district and failing to provide proper support to schools. I’m proud that we reduced that number to 11, thereby cutting waste and consolidating resources at the local level.

Perez chastises the “business model” for school districts. As a former teacher and administrator, I know that many schools live and die by their budgets, so why is he so against applying businesslike concepts to school districts and school sites?

If this were circa 1900, when kids attended single-classroom schools, Perez would have a point. However, with a $13.3-billion budget and assets in the hundreds of billions, the LAUSD is larger than many Fortune 500 corporations. Yes, we brought in several experts from the private sector to help us get the business side of our house in order. Over the past four years, LAUSD has had a much more open budget process due to that effort, and board members understand where money is spent and why. We need to bring those types of individuals (business managers) to each school to manage the fiscal affairs of campuses and allow principals to be the instructional leaders of their schools.

Mike Lansing

Board Member, L.A.

Unified School District