No wonder our public schools have so many problems. Try to help and you're faced with hurdles at every turn. It seems it's more about "process" than getting results.

Take the case of Los Angele Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The mayor wanted to mentor a high school student who tagged a bus that Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent were riding near the school. The photo of the grafitti incident was captured in the Los Angeles Times and the news story got wide play.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Villaraigosa offered to help the tagger, but the school bureaucracy raised its ugly head.

"But before Villaraigosa can don his mentor cap, he must complete a one-page application, undergo a tuberculosis test, and submit to fingerprinting and an interview by the school's principal -- procedures that can take as long as a month," the Times reported.

This is typical. These rules aren't about protecting schools. They are about raising barriers to the public getting involved in the schools. It's a closed system, no matter what the educational establishment says about needing help from the community.

Posted by Jim Boren at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is following Fresno Mayor Alan Autry in trying to take over the school system in his community. While Autry failed to get the support to change the law, Villaraigosa has a much better chance of getting a special bill passed in the Legislature because he's the former speaker of the California Assembly and still has plenty of pals in Sacramento.

No matter. It's still a bad idea. Here's my column in today's Bee in which I point out the problems with Villaraigosa's effort to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Villaraigosa, like Autry before him, can help the schools by doing his job as mayor. School test scores follow the poverty line. Improve the economic plight of Los Angeles and it will help the children of L.A. Unified.

Is the city of Los Angeles running so smoothly that Villaraigosa can now turn his attention to the Los Angeles school system? Tell that to all the people complaining about City Hall's lack of responsiveness to their problems.

Posted by Jim Boren at 9:41 PM | Permalink