State Panel Urges Vote on Splitting Peninsula District

A parents’ movement to set up a new school district on the east side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula received a boost this week when state officials recommended a public vote on the proposal.

The recommendation to the State Board of Education, made by staffers in the State Department of Education, is a blow to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, which will lose students and territory if the east side of the district is allowed to secede.

Supt. Jack Rice said, however, that the departmental recommendation in favor of a vote was expected and that the school district will oppose it at meetings of the State Board of Education on March 7 and 8.

The secessionist movement was prompted by the district’s decision last year to close the east side’s only secondary school, Miraleste High School. District officials, pointing to low enrollment, said that there are not enough students to fill three high schools on the peninsula and that Miraleste, on the less populous east side, should be closed to save money and preserve educational programs at the two remaining high schools.

5,600 Signatures

East-side residents fighting to keep Miraleste open collected about 5,600 signatures to petition the state board for an election on a separate school district and also filed a lawsuit to prevent the closure of Miraleste.

If a vote is set, the state board must decide a key issue: Who votes?

If the entire Peninsula votes, the east side may be swamped by the anti-secessionist forces. If only the east side votes, west-siders argue that they will be disenfranchised in a decision that affects them.

The State Department of Education did not make any recommendation about voter eligibility.

Tony Turcotte, a field representative for the department ‘s School District Organization Unit, said the department staff recommended an election because the east-side petition met all the criteria for a new district set out in state education laws:

A minimum of 1,501 students. Enrollment estimates say the new district would have between 1,600 and 1,700 students in 1990, when it would form, Turcotte said.

Substantial community identity. “In this case . . . 54.6% of the people living in the area signed the petition. The fact that the petition exists indicates some community identity,” he said.

No problem with racial or ethnic ratios. Turcotte said state officials studied the percentages of racial and ethnic groups in the current district and in the two districts that would emerge and concluded that no impermissible imbalance would occur.

An equitable division on property. The state official said an arbitration committee would be established to work out a fair division of school property if voters approve two districts.

Limited financial impact. “We worry whether forming this new district would increase costs to the state,” he said. “In this case, (there is) no cost to the state.”

No substantial disruption of the educational programs of surrounding districts. The state official said there is no indication that programs in the remainder of the existing district would suffer much.

Programs Said Suffering

District officials say they will argue that the department is wrong about that. Rice said programs have been suffering for lack of funds and that many teachers have had to teach subjects outside their specialties.

Rice added that district officials had talked to Turcotte earlier and felt that he would favor a vote. “None of us is surprised at this recommendation,” he said.

The state recommendation runs counter to the advice of the County Committee on School District Organization, which voted 7 to 1 in July against secession.