Villaraigosa Talks Education on CNN, Previews State of the City

In a show of what to expect at his State of the City speech this week, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appeared on CNN this morning to push for an improved education system, which he said would turn around a down economy.

Though the Los Angeles Unified School District is not under the mayor’s umbrella, Villaraigosa has spent much of his time in office focused on education, ultimately creating the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. With that group, Villaraigosa has oversight of 21 underperforming schools.

“If L.A. is going to be competitive in the world economy that’s founded on the intellectual capital, we’re going to have to do a lot better job to educate our kids, to graduate more of them, to set higher standards, to continue the reform efforts that we’ve engaged in the last five and a half years,” Villaraigosa said.

On the subject of the economy and the city’s massive budget shortfall, Villaraigosa pointed to the recent agreement with the Coalition of L.A. City Unions, which calls for employees to start paying into their retiree health benefits.

“We’re focusing on a number of areas. First of all, we need to get our own budget house in order. We’ll be solving almost $500 million in a deficit this year, making touch choices,” Villaraigosa said, in reference to fiscal year 2011-12. “As you know, we passed a landmark pension reform bill, moving our pension for 19,000 workers to about 11 percent, from 7 percent.”

The mayor also used his appearance on the network to push America Fast Forward, which is a plan to get the federal government to advance money for public transportation projects. Doing nothing to quiet rumors that he is angling for a job in Washington, D.C., Villaraigosa also took jab at Republicans and the threatened government shutdown.

“America Fast Forward was one of our solutions, one of our proposals, but we’ve got a big challenge here. We’ve got to educate more people because disproportionately people who are unemployed are also under-educated. Ultimately, the federal government, instead of shutting down, has to invest in job creation instead of focusing on women’s reproductive health,” he said.

The State of the City address will be given on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles.