Parents Vow to Fight Plan to Redraw District : Education: The Westside would lose its seat on the school board under a proposal by the Latino Redistricting Coalition. It seeks new boundaries that reflect minority population percentages after each census.

A little-publicized proposal to remap the Los Angeles Unified School District in a way that would eliminate the Westside’s board seat has galvanized parent activists from Palms to Pacific Palisades, who last week angrily vowed to fight political attempts to carve up the Westside.

Dozens who attended a meeting Wednesday night hastily called by incumbent board member Mark Slavkin voted to form the Westside Coalition to fight the most recent plan quietly put forth by the Latino Redistricting Coalition.

The plan, which redraws school district boundaries to reflect minority population percentages after each census, not only places Slavkin’s West Los Angeles home outside his current district but completely eliminates a cohesive Westside district. Instead, sections of the area are attached to three other districts. A final decision by the City Council is due by June 30.

“The Westside Coalition agrees with the addition of another Hispanic seat on the school board, but strongly opposes the removal of the Westside board district,” said Merridee Marcus of Cheviot Hills, school site council chairman at both Overland Avenue Elementary and Palms Junior High.

“Giving the Hispanic population a greater, more united voice should not require the silencing and diffusion of the Westside’s multiethnic population,” she added.

Marcus pointed out that Westside public schools are less than 29% white and said common interests fall more along geographical and philosophical than racial lines.

Likewise, Pam Bruns of Pacific Palisades, who chairs the Palisades Complex, a group of parents and educators serving nine local public schools, said the Westside Coalition’s aim is not to preserve a white enclave but rather to retain representation for an area historically united by its high level of parental involvement, its willingness to experiment with innovative programs, and its common problems as receiver schools under the capacity-adjustment program and relatively low teacher/student ratios.

But some say the redistricting is a thinly veiled racial battle. “It looks like a planned effort to break up the effective voice of the Westside,” one opponent of the proposal said privately. “They want to shut up the white folk.”

The only plan on the table--although Slavkin and others are said to be drawing up their own proposals in time for a Thursday deadline--would split the current Latino district in East Los Angeles, then pull in other Latino areas from Pacoima and San Fernando in the Valley to create a large enough concentration to justify a second seat. The two districts with a black and Asian board member would be protected, while the remaining four districts would be condensed into three.

Slavkin’s West Los Angeles residence would fall squarely within the seat held by Barbara Boudreaux, who would also gain the Mar Vista and Palms area, which includes the highly regarded music magnet school at Hamilton High.

Part of Brentwood and West Hollywood would be added to Jeff Horton’s current district, which sweeps from East Hollywood to the central city.

And the coastal area stretching from Westchester north through Pacific Palisades would be added to Julie Korenstein’s Valley district.

Latino redistricting proponents who made their initial proposal in March say they are not out to get Slavkin or to sap the Westside’s power; they met with other board members and not with Slavkin, they said, because he did not respond to their initial overtures.

Both Marshall Diaz, chairman of the Latino group, and research chair Alan Clayton, insist that the redrawn boundaries take the only route to a second Latino seat they can envision with minimum disruption to incumbent board members.

“Our first priority was to create a second Latino-dominated district,” Diaz said. “The next was to protect the existing black and Asian incumbents. . . . We were not looking to do Slavkin in originally . . . but this way he’s the only person who’s mad at us.”

Clayton shrugged his shoulders: “You are going to have to weaken the strength of the Westside or the Valley. And since Slavkin would already have to move. . . .”

But Diaz said the coalition plan is not written in stone.

“If they (the City Council) want to change it, if they can come up with something better, that’s fine with us,” he said. “We could do a plan that mirrors the city’s ethnic makeup and makes geographical sense, sure, but it would not fly. It would be opposed by four school board members instead of just one. And they would have all their constituencies pressuring the council.”

The ultimate decision on the plan will be made by the City Council after hearings next month. Most of the council members whose districts would be affected adversely were not available for comment late last week.

However, Westside City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the redistricting committee, said that after creating the three so-called minority seats, there are “an infinite number of ways” to redraw the school district boundaries.

“No one for one moment should assume that the Latino Coalition map is the map that is going to survive the process. It isn’t. It shouldn’t. Where the Westside fits in is not for them to decide. The full (City) Council will make that decision. I want to see the Westside protected in terms of community of interest. It is absurd to have Westchester and Porter Ranch in the same district.

“It would be ridiculous to pass up the opportunity to have one largely Westside district to create a district that fragments that community. There is no question that a community somewhere will be divided in each district. But we shouldn’t divide up a community in 15 different ways: What does Northridge have in common with Pacific Palisades?

“Then there is the political question of which incumbent is going to be inconvenienced (if two land in the same newly created district). The Latino Coalition said Mark Slavkin was odd man out. I am not prepared to accept that. . . . I’m going to look to the school board (for a better plan), especially Mark, since it’s his ox that’s being gored.”

Slavkin, who has maintained a low profile on the question, said he will fight to hang on to the Westside seat but declined to outline his strategy for doing so.

“The Westside is more than just a geographical unit; it shares certain interests,” he said. For example, he said, air-conditioning is an important issue in the West Valley, but not in Westside beach schools. In a decision on how to allocate scarce funds, he questions how a board member representing a largely Valley constituency would vote on the issue.

Slavkin said he is recommending that the school board submit its own plan and, failing that, may put forth one of his own.

“I do not accept the elimination of the Westside’s seat as a fait accompli, “ he said. “If this were to pass, it would cause significant anger and frustration and lead many who already feel not empowered to say ‘that’s the last straw.’ This touches a very raw nerve.”

Many Westsiders say they feel disenfranchised. Some say they are ready to vote for a voucher system that would provide tuition aid to the family’s school of choice; others are pushing for the Westside--or parts of it--to secede from the gigantic district. Still others talk of giving up and sending their children to private schools or moving elsewhere.

“I have not run away,” said Carol Turley, whose six children have gone through Westside public schools. “But I feel I am constantly being pushed away. The school board has pushed as far as I intend to be pushed.”

As word spread of the proposed plan last week, Westsiders phoned each other with what one described as a “red-flag alert” late at night, after work, after tucking in the kids, after strategy meetings.

They said they will write letters and telephone council members, apply political pressure where possible and mobilize the community where, for many, the public school system is still a choice, not a last resort.

Said Marsha Wietecha of Westchester: “We are not going to take this lying down.”