Integration Ruling May Put L.A. School Plans on Hold

The reopening of Los Angeles’ school desegregation case may put on hold all or parts of the school district’s sweeping plan to accommodate an extra 70,000 students over the next five years, officials said Tuesday.

In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday opening the way for a new desegregation trial, several school board members said they would oppose school Supt. Harry Handler’s plan, which, among other things, would put all schools on a year-round schedule.

“I am certainly not going to make a move until we know what the courts will do,” said San Fernando Valley school board member Roberta Weintraub.

Several of the steps proposed by Handler last month “could be considered acts of segregation by a court,” she said, “so, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all on hold.”

Other board members, however, said they would oppose only the planned changes affecting minority schools, adding that they could still move to put all 618 schools on a year-round schedule by 1990.

Voicing still another opinion, school board President Rita Walters, who represents South-Central Los Angeles, said changing the controversial integration formulas would be a “positive sign” that could help the district in its court battle.

Whatever the case, the high court’s decision has thrown a wrench into Handler’s proposal to gain a quick approval of a 10-step plan that would affect all parts of the sprawling district.

For his part, Handler pointed out that the school board has little choice but to take some action. School enrollment in Los Angeles has been growing by 13,000 students a year, and the district is fast running out of classroom seats.

“It is difficult to predict what influence” the court decision will have on the overcrowding plan, Handler said. “I presented a number of components to the board, and eliminating some of the components . . . doesn’t mean you can’t develop a plan.”

He added, “We need decisions by December so that we can appropriately plan to house (find classroom seats for) an additional 14,000 students” by the next school year.

The toughest issue for the school board concerns the integration formulas that grew out of the last desegregation trial, which ended in 1981. The district has defined an “integrated school” as one with no more than 60% minority students. As a result, some Central City schools have empty seats, even though others nearby are badly overcrowded.

For example, Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles has 898 empty seats. However, Latino students from Roosevelt High in East Los Angeles are bused past the school each day on the Santa Monica Freeway to Palisades High at the extreme western end of Los Angeles. Because Hamilton has more than 60% minority students, district lawyers say busing more minority students there would violate the earlier desegregation order.

In September, Handler proposed a revised formula that would allow schools such as Hamilton to take in more students, even if they were Latino, black or Asian.

In addition, he proposed that predominantly minority schools take 29 students per teacher, up from the current 27 that was also set after the earlier court battle. The combination of the changes affecting the minority schools could open up 37,000 extra seats, according to district officials.

The district’s lawyers, while not saying they have urged the board to scrap those proposals, nevertheless said Tuesday that school officials may have to rethink the plans.

“I can’t tell you exactly what we have advised, but anytime you have a trial on the desegregation of schools, you have to act very cautiously,” said Peter James, a private attorney who works on desegregation matters for the district.

School board member David Armor, who is a national expert on school desegregation, said:

“The idea of changing those desegregation ratios is out of the question now,” he said. “Now that we know we are going to be on trial, we can’t do anything that would differentially impact minority students.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge) has asked U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to intervene in the Los Angeles case on behalf of the school district. Fiedler, a former school board member who gained prominence during the first desegregation trial in the late 1970s, said she hopes that the Reagan Administration can strengthen the district’s case in court.