School’s Autonomy Bid Advances : Education: A state panel approves the charter petition from Vaughn Street campus in Pacoima. The full board is expected to ratify the vote today.

In a victory for a group of ambitious Pacoima parents and teachers, a state Board of Education committee Thursday voted to accept Vaughn Street School’s petition to free the campus from control of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Meeting in Sacramento, the state board’s policy and planning committee unanimously approved the school’s charter petition, an educational blueprint that gives Vaughn Street officials broad authority over everything from curriculum to finances. The full Board of Education is expected to ratify the committee vote today.

“So far as we are concerned . . . it’s a done deal,” said Principal Yvonne Chan, who helped spearhead the campaign for autonomy at Vaughn Street. “We are a charter school.”

Final approval would make the school only the second in the mammoth Los Angeles school district--and the first in the San Fernando Valley--to receive charter designation under last year’s state Charter Schools Act. The program was created by the Legislature to remove cumbersome state and local regulations and allow educators wide latitude to improve student achievement.

The district’s first charter campus, a magnet school on the Westside, is already known for innovative teaching methods.

At Vaughn Street, the authors of the petition envision smaller classes and new instructional concepts--such as different ways of grouping students--to boost the academic performance of the school’s 1,100, mostly poor and minority youngsters.

But besides its curricular goals, Vaughn Street’s charter impressed both district and state authorities with its call for the school staff to assume control over most campus operations, including hiring, maintenance, liability insurance, accounting and other services currently provided by the district’s central bureaucracy.

“What makes Vaughn Street’s (charter) powerful is that it has a clear educational program, but is also pitching for significant autonomy over fiscal matters and staffing in a large urban district,” said Dave Patterson, a consultant with the state Department of Education who advises the state board on charter applications.

Vaughn Street is one of the few schools participating in the state charter program to seek wide administrative and budgetary powers in addition to educational authority, Patterson said.

Los Angeles district Assistant Supt. Sara A. Coughlin, who oversees the Valley’s 130 elementary schools, said the Vaughn Street staff now has an opportunity to plow ahead with reforms the school had already started to implement in smaller steps.

Backed by an array of grants from both public and private sources, the campus over the last two years has steadily risen from its position as one of the worst schools in the district to one often cited for its educational reform efforts.

School officials are already gearing up for the shift in power under their charter, which is to take effect July 1. Chan said several teachers have been hired within the past few weeks according to the process outlined in the charter.

Despite its bid to break free from the nation’s second-largest public school system, however, Vaughn Street will continue to work with nearby campuses to provide social assistance to area residents, such as campus health care and parenting classes, said Coughlin.

“We do not see them as completely separating themselves” from the wider school community in the northeast Valley, she said. “And we’ll be looking forward to learning a lot from them.”

Another elementary school in the northeast Valley, Fenton Avenue in Lake View Terrace, is also seeking independence through a charter petition.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles school board held a public hearing on Fenton Avenue’s proposal, which is closely patterned after Vaughn Street’s. The board has until the end of July to vote on the petition, which also requires state approval.