Panel Backs School Board Plan : Redistricting: Proposal would create two Latino-dominated districts. Critics say it will weaken the Valley’s clout.

A Los Angeles City Council panel voted Monday to support a redistricting plan for the city’s school board, over the objections of San Fernando Valley-based critics that it would splinter and weaken the Valley’s voice on school issues.

Council members testily rebuked a multiethnic coalition of Valley protesters, saying the city must adopt such a plan or face court action by Latino groups under federal civil rights laws.

The plan is designed to create two Latino-dominated school board seats: one in the inner city, the other stretching from Boyle Heights on the Eastside to Sylmar.

Latino civil rights groups, the plan’s principal architects, contend the federal Voting Rights Act requires the formation of a second district with a Latino majority in population and a near-majority in registered voters to supplement the school board’s one existing Latino-controlled seat.

Critics, however, said the plan--which places parts of three districts in the Valley--will leave the Valley represented by board members who will be answerable mostly to their larger constituencies in the central city.

“This is a great injustice,” said Robert Scott, president of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley.

But the council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Redistricting voted 4-to-0 to support the plan, rejecting the protests.

Councilwoman Rita Walters lectured the Valley critics, saying they misunderstood the Voting Rights Act. Normally affable Council President John Ferraro was testy with others.

“I’m getting upset with these remarks,” he told one of them.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, a committee member, said he had been warned by the council’s legal and demographic advisers that unless the plan were adopted the city would be sued by the Latino civil rights groups and would lose.

“This city is not going to fight a losing legal battle,” Yaroslavsky said.

The proposed plan would sharply redraw the Valley’s school board districts. Two board members, Roberta Weintraub and Julie Korenstein, currently have districts that are completely in the Valley.

Under the proposal, only Weintraub’s district would remain wholly in the Valley, while about half of Korenstein’s existing West Valley-based district would be merged with board member Mark Slavkin’s Westside district to create a new jurisdiction--half in and half out of the Valley.

Thus, Korenstein and Slavkin would be forced to run against each other next year if both seek reelection.

Additionally, a small portion of board member Jeff Horton’s Hollywood-based seat would extend into Studio City, North Hollywood and Sun Valley.

Finally, heavily Latino Sylmar, Pacoima, Arleta and Lake View Terrace would be connected by a narrow corridor, running through Sun Valley and North Hollywood and at one point only three or four blocks wide, to the Eastside to create the new Latino-dominated district. This seat is now represented by Leticia Quezada, the school board’s only Latino member.

“Keep the Valley together,” said Janet Phillips, president of the Valley-based 31st District PTA, at a Pacoima news conference held Monday by the plan’s Valley critics. “We do not want our leadership from over the hill.”

A multiethnic coalition of Valley residents has emerged to oppose the plan, which was unveiled Friday.

The critics include the Valley PTA; Valley Organized in Community Efforts (VOICE), a Valley-based church group that includes many Latinos; business leaders, and Valley chapters of the Black American Political Assn. of California (BAPAC) and the National Council of Negro Women.

“This is not a black issue but a Valley issue,” said Linda Jones, BAPAC’s Valley chapter chair. With the Valley having fewer than one-fifth of the registered voters in the new Latino district, the Valley’s voice will not be heard, Jones said.

With Valley’s voice on the school board diluted, issues unique to the Valley--such as finding air conditioners to keep summer classrooms comfortable or providing additional nurse services to attend to the health needs of students bused into the Valley--may be ignored, the critics said.

Korenstein also spoke against the plan. Weintraub, the Valley’s other board member, sent a representative to the meeting, saying she supports the Latino coalition plan.

Slavkin told the ad hoc council committee that he agreed that the proposed new West Valley-Westside district was “not ideal,” even as he urged its adoption.

An alternative redistricting plan has been proposed by the PTA leadership.

But although that plan creates two districts in which Latinos are a majority of the population, it does not create two districts in which Latinos are a near-majority of registered voters. David Ely, the council’s redistricting expert, said that under the PTA plan “there’s no way that you could elect a Latino in this decade” to the second Latino seat.