Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Watch: Los Angeles Unified School District Takeover Would Bypass Voter Approval

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa delivers his State of the City speech at the Accelerated School in South Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Times: 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.

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.

How do you spell IDIOTIC POWER GRAB?

And how will this bureaucratic shuffle help the students of the Los Angeles Unified School District?

Mayor Villaraigosa tried to take over the Metropolitan Water District and now LAUSD – NO WAY!

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.

Well, Republican legislators will never approve of Mayor and former Democrat Assembly Speaker AV’s lust for CONTROL.

And will the California Teachers Association and other major state unions approve?

Doubtful….

The text of the Mayor’s speech is here.

The Quotes:

“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 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.”

Mayor Villaraigosa has been AWOL for decades while LAUSD schools have disintegrated into chaos. Superintendent Roy Romer has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars in school construction funds to primarily refurbish and newly constuct schools for the children of Los Angeles illegal aliens, of Mexican decent, like the mayor.

Now, the Mayor wishes to control the system without LAUSD voter approval.

Shameful and frankly it won’t happen.

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