Bill to Aid Minorities in School Board Races Gains

Legislation designed to give Latinos and other minorities more political clout in local school board elections was narrowly passed by the Senate on Wednesday.

The heavily amended bill, opposed by Gov. George Deukmejian’s education adviser, would require candidates in nine school districts with large minority populations to run in specific electoral districts rather than at large.

Supporters maintained that the political power of rapidly expanding minority groups, especially Latinos, is diffused by at-large school board elections. They said individual election districts would give Latinos, who tend to cluster in specific geographic areas, an enhanced opportunity to win elections.

A spokesman for Deukmejian said the governor has not taken a position on the bill authored by Assemblyman Pete Chacon (D-San Diego). But he said the governor’s education adviser, Peter Mehas, has recommended that the governor reject the measure if it reaches him.

A similar Chacon bill that would have required election of city council members by district in certain municipalities with large minority populations was vetoed Tuesday by Deukmejian. He said it would have denied local voters the right to choose their own form of government.

The school election proposal was approved on a 22-11 vote, one more than the simple majority required, and returned to the Assembly for concurrence in Senate amendmentments.

In Los Angeles County, it would apply to the ABC Unified, Hacienda La Puente Unified and Montebello Unified school districts. It also would apply to the Garden Grove and Orange Unified districts in Orange County and to Sweetwater Union in San Diego County.

Additionally, the bill would affect Riverside Unified in Riverside County and one district each in Alameda and Santa Clara counties whose enrollments in the 1987-88 school year totaled 20,000 or more, of which at least 21% of the students were of an ethnic minority.

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), who carried the bill in the Senate, noted that the California Latino population is swiftly expanding.

“My friends, you cannot forestall it,” he told the Senate.

Sen. Ed Davis of Valencia urged his Republican colleagues to support the bill, arguing that “we know we are going to be essentially a Hispanic state sometime after the turn of the century. . . .”

“Don’t kid yourself, you are not going to hold people back,” he said.

One opponent of the bill, Sen. Don Rogers (R-Bakersfield), contended that local laws now allow voters to change from at-large to individual electoral districts if they wish.