Parents Take Major Step to Secede From L.A. School District : Education: Their petition to send their children to the Palos Verdes district was supported by a vote of a county panel. It must now be put on the ballot for a public vote.

Parents in the Eastview section of Rancho Palos Verdes last week cleared their first major hurdle in their bid to secede from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The parents have been lobbying for years for permission to send their children to schools in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District. The Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization deliberated nearly two hours before voting 10 to 1 in favor of the parents’ petition.

The issue now needs voter approval. The committee tentatively scheduled the vote for April, 1992.

Los Angeles school district officials oppose the secession plan because they say it would spoil the district’s efforts at racial integration in the San Pedro-Lomita area.

“For us, one of the things that is critical any time anything happens that further segregates the school district (is that) then we are subject to a lawsuit,” said Warren Furutani, a Gardena resident who was elected president of the Los Angeles school board last week.

The Los Angeles district will appeal the committee’s decision to the State Board of Education in the next few weeks, said attorney Michael M. Johnson, who represents the district.

If the state board finds that the county committee did not follow proper procedures in making its decision, it may hold a public hearing on the petition, said Tony Turcotte, field representative in the state Department of Education’s school district organization unit. The State Board of Education has the final word.

Although Rancho Palos Verdes annexed the Eastview area in 1983, students have remained in the Los Angeles district. Nearly 800 Eastview students attend five Los Angeles district schools, including Crestwood Elementary School and Dodson Junior High School in Rancho Palos Verdes. The three other schools are in Los Angeles.

About 69% of Dodson’s 1,700 students are members of minority groups. At Crestwood, 35% of the 450 students are minorities.

Both schools “are naturally integrated, successful schools,” Johnson said. “If you take out those 700 white students, you’re going to destroy all that.”

But Eastview parent Anthony J. Vulin, who has two children at Taper Avenue School in the Los Angeles district, disagreed. “In effect, these minority students (at Dodson and Crestwood) are being held prisoner by the Los Angeles Unified School District,” he said. “I think the racial issue is really a smoke screen when minority students would be denied being able to attend the Palos Verdes Peninsula School District.”

If the secession drive succeeds, the Dodson and Crestwood campuses would become the property of the Palos Verdes district. The law does not require the Palos Verdes district to compensate Los Angeles for the sites, but the county committee has recommended that both districts agree to an arrangement that would be equitable for both sides. The school sites have an estimated value of $18 million.

Times Staff Writer Tim Waters contributed to this story.