BUILDING FOR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY - Kennedy Bibliothek

problems associated with them. None of the participants had previous
experience in planning at this scale. In fact, no master plan at the
metropolitan level, coupled with a capital program, would immediately be
implemented at the local level. Social and personal conflicts erupted
into crises of various sorts during the period under review. One of the
top administrators committed suicide, meetings were at times interrupted
by physical violence, and one of the Board of Education buildings was
destroyed by arson. Although the planning processes probably provided
the occasion for some of these crises to erupt, the processes were certainly
not the cause. • •
155. Everyone at the central administration was new. They were forced
to move with a great deal of urgency because the construction of two
schools, Mack and Slauson, had been promised in a previous capital program
funded by a bond issue. Local committees associated with those projects
had already done considerable programming work. Therefore, the central
administration allowed the consultants and local committees to have a free
planning rein, provided they did not exceed the cost ceiling of the bond
issue. At the time this seemed a wise policy. But things turned out
differently. There were in fact many decisions which had to be made
centrally, e.g. budget priorities, staffing policies, agreements with
teachers' unions, inter-agency negotiations use of technologies, supplies,
state and federal programs, etc. It happened that local committees,
having made one decision, discovered later that it either could not be
accepted at the central level or had to be modified. This slowly eroded
the central administration's credibility with the local committees at
some pivotal points in the planning process.
156. The consultants fell into a similar trap. When local committees were
less confident about a particular issue because of the absence of representatives
from the central administration, they would turn to the consultants
for an opinion. Thus, put in the position of a surrogate for the
central administration and keen on describing the issues as openly as
possible, the consultants usually offered too many options which led to
confusion. As the program grew more complex and ambiguities became more
frequent, these difficulties finally eroded the objective status of the
consultants. The hard fact emerged that democracy works best when issues
are properly defined, and everyone Involved in choice and decision works
on the issues together.
157. In the light of these experiences, UDA therefore recommended that:
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