Decentralization Dilemma

There are two persistent complaints about the nation's big-city school systems: 1) they are burdened down with top-heavy bureaucracies, and 2) they are unresponsive to the special needs of the neighborhoods they serve. One obvious way to ease both problems is to break up big systems into smaller ones -- and, indeed, almost every major U.S. city is now considering some form of decentralization. Not surprisingly, New York, which has both the biggest system and the worst problems, is debating the most drastic remedy: a plan to create up to 60 semiautonomous neighborhood school districts.

The proposal was put forward by a blue-ribbon advisory panel headed by Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy and including former U.S. Education Commissioner Francis Keppel.

The panel envisioned suburban-like school districts within the city, each with its own superintendent and a policy-setting board that would have full power to hire and fire personnel, design the curriculum and spend centrally allotted funds. The plan has been approved by Mayor John Lindsay, and will be debated in the next session of the New York legislature, which must change existing state laws if it is to go into effect.

Selection by Race. The discussion is certain to be lively. The plan has been assailed as going too far and too fast by New York City's Board of Education. Superintendent Bernard Donovan claims that it would lead to the selection of teachers and principals on the basis of "pull, influence, race, or some other way instead of merit." Albert Shanker,*president of New York's United Federation of Teachers, con tends that it would create "chaos" through conflict between districts and confusion in contract negotiations; if the plan is approved, he predicts that teacher unrest would lead to "thou sands" of resignations. Most Puerto Rican and Negro civil rights organiza tions, however, strongly endorse the Bundy proposal in the hope that local control of schools will lead to better education for their children -- and they now give such improvement a much higher priority than enforced integration by bussing pupils around town.

Many other U.S. cities have moved toward decentralization -- although not to the degree envisioned by the Bundy panel. Most of the plans have kept power in central boards, delegating only limited authority to district superintendents. The aim has been to give in dividual schools, and sometimes citizens' advisory boards, a more forceful voice at central headquarters while avoiding a bottleneck of minor decision-making at the top.

Order of the Day. Philadelphia this year gave the superintendents of its eight school districts some power over curriculum, and is now studying a plan to let them decide how to distribute available school funds within their area. Philadelphia Superintendent Mark Shedd, an advocate of decentralization, sees dangers in local autonomy but argues that "the alternative risk of increased community alienation toward the schools is greater." To complaints that local districts tend to freeze racial boundaries, Shedd points out that "de facto segregated schools for many youngsters are going to be the order of the day for many years."

The Atlanta schools are divided into five districts, and the area superintendent can transfer teachers and pupils within schools of his jurisdiction. Los Angeles has eight elementary school districts, four secondary districts, each of which has its own administrative staff; they mostly serve to screen proposals --and complaints--moving from localities to headquarters downtown. In a much praised 1954 decentralization program, Chicago broke its system into 27 districts, but former Superintendent Benjamin Willis, a stern and domineering administrator, throttled much of the initiative of area officials. The new superintendent, James Redmond, leans toward a plan for three self-governing districts--each containing wealthy as well as slum neighborhoods--to relieve the administrative workload at his office and free the school board for purely policy matters.

Iron Curtains. Based on their own experience, most city school officials consider the Bundy plan too radical. Chicago's Redmond sees no real need for giving neighborhood boards more than advisory powers, and Cleveland Superintendent Paul Briggs fears that the Bundy plan would "build iron curtains around neighborhoods and freeze the ghetto." Some educators worry about the possibility that neighborhood boards could be taken over by extremists of either the left or right, ward-type politicians, or as Atlanta School Board Member Mrs. Sara Mitchell puts it, people "who have little minds and don't think big enough." Philadelphia P.T.A. President Mrs. David Ewing likens multiple districts to "Daylight Saving Time in one area and Eastern Standard Time in another."

No one sees decentralization as an instant panacea for what the Bundy panel calls the "spiral of decline" in big city schools. Indeed, the panel warns that "the troubles of our public schools have been many years in the making, and they will be many years in the mending." Yet so many children are emerging from schools without having mastered the basics of reading and writing that decentralization seems well worth a long and serious try. It should, says the Bundy report, create "a reconnection for learning" in which parents, teachers, supervisors, governing boards and students can stop blaming each other for failure and start working together for better schools.

*Who last week began a 15-day jail sentence imposed by the court as a result of last fall's teacher strike.

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