LOS ANGELES _ Los Angeles schools chief Austin Beutner is working out a plan to radically reshape the nation's second-largest school district by greatly shrinking the central bureaucracy and moving decision-making closer to schools.
The aim is to boost student success and also to save money at a time when district officials insist that grave financial problems threaten the Los Angeles Unified School District with insolvency.
Under a proposal being developed confidentially, Beutner, who spent much of his career in business, would divide the school system into 32 "networks," bringing authority and resources out of the central office and into neighborhoods.
In the downtown headquarters, managers and other employees recently have been asked to explain their duties _ and to justify why their particular jobs should continue to exist in a leaner, more efficient, more localized school system.
The network strategy is not a plan to break up or end L.A. Unified, but it could transform the way the school system functions.
"The superintendent is trying to move toward a decentralized system that puts the student first," said one person close to the process, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak. "He's trying to generate better educational outcomes. That's the No. 1 goal."
"Savings from the central bureaucracy could be plowed back into education at the school level as well as to deal with the fiscal crisis the district faces," he added.
Beutner declined to comment, saying it would be premature to talk about a work in progress.
The Los Angeles Times learned details of Beutner's developing strategy through documents and interviews. The broad outlines of the plan were confirmed by numerous people involved in the work at various levels. No one was willing to be quoted on the record.
The record of similar attempts is not necessarily on Beutner's side. Some past L.A. Unified reorganizations have been short-lived or fell far short of expectations. Sometimes what's meant to save money turns out to be costly.
"If the underlying services are not different or better, then the structure doesn't matter much," said another insider, who also was not authorized to speak and asked to remain anonymous. "If you end up reorganizing for the sake of reorganizing, you can cause a lot of chaos."
Although the internal planning has been confidential, officials say they have collected input from about 1,500 parents, teachers, administrators and community members in a variety of meetings since August.
The way the networks would be shaped and the duties they would have still is being refined, with the assistance of consultants paid for by outside philanthropy. One of the consulting firms, Kitamba, has senior executives who have been involved in high-profile reform efforts elsewhere, some of them controversial. London-based business consulting firm Ernst & Young is working on the goal of improving efficiency.
A major restructuring would require approval by the Board of Education. Beutner has been working more closely with some board members than others _ an apparent effort to minimize leaks.
Although change is never easy in L.A. Unified, Beutner has had the added challenge of making his push at a time when an ongoing contract dispute with the teachers union could lead to a strike. When his plan becomes public, probably in December, it could become embroiled in the labor dispute.
One consistent argument underlies both the contract negotiations and the "reimagining" plan, as it is often referred to internally. Beutner has repeatedly pointed to analyses that conclude the district is now spending $500 million a year more than it takes in. Unless that course is reversed, district reserves will run dry within three to four years, according to projections. The teachers union has rejected these forecasts.
The hiring of Beutner, a wealthy businessman without a background in education, was championed by philanthropists and a group within the local civic elite. They largely view L.A. Unified as a failed institution because of the looming fiscal problems and student test scores that trail state averages. They see in Beutner a committed leader with the financial savvy and outsider's perspective necessary to shake up an entrenched and complacent system.
Some specifics of Beutner's plan probably will change, but the following outline appears to have emerged:
The networks of schools would be based mainly on geography. For example, the schools in South Gate might be in the same network.
Each network would include elementary, middle and high schools _ with cohesive academic programs for students as they progress through the system.
Each network would report to one of several regional headquarters.
Staffing at the central district office downtown would be sharply reduced, as would the areas over which it currently asserts authority.
Schools and their networks would get more control in key areas such as hiring and budgets.
Major elements remain under discussion, including which duties would be under the control of schools and networks and which would remain centralized. One topic of debate has been how much to let traditional district-run schools begin to operate like independent charter schools.
Charters are started by outside groups or companies under their own boards of directors. They are exempt from some regulations that govern district-run schools and most are non-union. The school district plays no role in a charter's day-to-day management, though it does decide every five years whether to renew a charter's right to operate. Charters are supposed to be held accountable for student performance and financial propriety, although few have closed for failing to deliver.
To some insiders, the new plan seems like rearranging deck chairs, because six regional district offices already exist and deal extensively with local schools. Academic coordinators in these regional offices already oversee students' step-by-step, grade-by-grade progress in key subjects such as math and English.
Central office staff members, however, clearly are nervous.
"Nobody knows what the future is going to look like for the district or for their jobs," said one central office staff person, who, like the others, was not authorized to speak and asked to remain anonymous. "Ernst & Young is evaluating positions in every division along the lines of whether they are discretionary."
One email obtained by the Times that has been circulating in the fiscal division set out the task to those being asked to justify their roles: "Please work with your teams to identify four to six primary functions that your Division performs."
"The superintendent's office is the audience for this project," the email said, "so make sure that the functions are easy for someone outside of your office to understand. We also suggest preparing brief definitions for each function on a separate tab of the worksheet."
Kitamba partner and chief executive Rajeev Bajaj, while heading different companies, became a major consultant in 2010 and 2011 for the school-reform effort in Newark, N.J. The companies in which he was involved came under media scrutiny because of potential conflicts involving business ties to state and local officials.
His partner at Kitamba, Erin McGoldrick Brewster, served as chief of data and accountability for the District of Columbia Public Schools, under hard-charging former Supt. Michelle Rhee. In 2009, McGoldrick Brewster, along with Rhee, came under critical scrutiny for not pushing harder to investigate credible allegations of cheating at schools that showed huge gains on student standardized tests.
The work of Kitamba and Ernst & Young is being paid for by the recently established Fund for Equity and Excellence. Its donors include the Ballmer Group, the California Community Foundation, the California Endowment, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.
The current L.A. Unified proposal may sound familiar to those with a long memory. In 1993, the district announced it would divide the school system into 32 self-governing "clusters." That plan ultimately morphed into another plan and another and another without much affecting the central bureaucracy.
New York City also has experimented with its version of networks. In 2007, the city's schools system replaced its centralized bureaucracy with several dozen networks, some run by the city's Department of Education and some operated by nonprofit groups.
The networks got mixed reviews, in large part because they weren't geographically based. They were also criticized for muddying the lines of authority. The city's decentralization push did cut costs, but it had little effect on students' academic performance.
About eight years after the networks were created, they were largely dismantled. The city's schools returned to a more traditional system that empowered regional superintendents.
