Pravin Visakan: City mayor’s push for after-school programs could revitalize LAUSD

The Los Angeles Unified School District has seen better days.

Over the last decade, LAUSD’s enrollment has dropped by approximately 200,000, and the system faces a projected $1.46 billion cumulative deficit by 2019.

Betsy DeVos, our current national secretary of education, has threatened to make matters even worse by voicing support for a school voucher system that could direct funds away from the public parts of the LAUSD.

LAUSD has a reputation as a large, underperforming mess – and yet, the current candidates for mayor have let the problem go unaddressed.

As the head executive of the city, the mayor must make more of an effort to support local schools.

Unfortunately, there is no simple legislative trick for the office of the mayor to employ because the city has no direct authority over the district. The LAUSD operates as an independent branch of government under the control of the state and its own board of elected officials. However, the city can still work with the school board and provide overall funding and partner with the school board on individual programs to aid students, such as after-school enrichment activities.

In the past, collaboration between the city and school district has resulted in small but successful solutions to problems facing students in Los Angeles, like juvenile crime and low graduation rates.

For example, former Mayor Tom Bradley kickstarted the LA’s BEST program in 1988. It runs several after-school activities like science workshops, performances and typing classes – constructive uses for students’ time after school.

These kinds of programs matter. According to two studies by UCLA’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, students who participated in the program were significantly less likely to drop out of school or commit crime.

The influence of local government has not been restricted to after-school programs, however. County officials have helped fund school recreational centers, according to former County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors member Zev Yaroslavsky. These facilities are open to the public and benefit both students and the local community. The city can carry on this legacy by providing money to build public recreation infrastructure, such as gymnasiums and playgrounds. The model of “dual funding, dual use” could extend to other facilities, like libraries and computer labs.

And the current municipal government has actually engaged in this sort of collaboration. In the summer of 2014, it helped organize the Los Angeles Summer of Learning. Several workshops in museums across the city offered classes in subjects such as coding and photography. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced later that year that the effort created 10,000 jobs for city youths.

But the Summer of Learning has ceased operation, leaving few traces of its existence. Reviving it could be an easy first step for the city. But the city should go beyond that and experiment with more projects and more extensive collaboration with LAUSD in other areas, such as optimizing bureaucratic processes or providing financial assistance to promising programs.

Admittedly, some previous reforms by the mayor’s office failed to improve school performance. Former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa created a nonprofit organization to directly manage underperforming schools, but the experiment resulted in questionable gains. Academically, many of the schools performed similarly to others in the district – they did not do better, contrary to the expectations set by the mayor.

And while graduation rates in the overall system and the number of high-performing schools both increased per the state Academic Performance Index, these changes are consistent with trends present before he took office.

Directly taking over schools are not the best route forward for the current administration. Villaraigosa’s actions, however, show the power over public discourse that the mayor holds. For a time, the media and the public took a closer look at the city’s schools.

A simple statement by the leader of city government would make the current system subject to greater scrutiny. But by staying relatively silent on education – apart from showing some effort with the Summer of Learning program – Garcetti has conceded to the status quo. Furthermore, his words must be backed by action; organizing after-school programs and directly funding schools are concrete steps the mayor can take to combat school-related issues.

In the short term, city leaders should attempt to create and sustain more of these programs, which will bring schools back into the limelight and set the district up for long-term successes.

The different aspects of city life are inter-related. Shortcomings in the school system can have ramifications beyond the scope of education. Keeping students engaged reduces crime rates. Group activities foster a sense of community.

And so, the mayor should do the smart thing and make education a big part of his agenda.