School Board to Weigh Disputed Redistrict Plan : Education: A decision would be just advisory. But it could help break a City Council impasse over the proposal opposed by Valley groups.

The Los Angeles Board of Education will be asked next week to endorse a school redistricting plan that critics contend weakens the influence of the San Fernando Valley over how the school system is run.

To date, board members have declined to take an institutional stand on the politically charged issue of how their own political boundaries are drawn, a responsibility of the Los Angeles City Council.

Although a school board endorsement would be strictly advisory, several City Council members said Wednesday that a board decision could help break the council’s own impasse over two competing plans to realign the boundaries of the board’s seven seats.

“Maybe this will help us break the deadlock,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre, the major champion of the plan that the board will be asked to support at its Monday meeting.

A coalition of Valley parents and lawmakers Tuesday helped stymie Alatorre’s remap plan, which failed on a 6-7 vote. Eight votes are needed for adoption.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, chief advocate of a competing plan backed by Valley residents, said a school board decision Monday to back Alatorre’s plan would certainly not help her cause.

Meanwhile, school board member Jeff Horton predicted Wednesday that the board will adopt a motion supporting the Alatorre plan. “There’s a clear majority for this,” Horton said.

In addition to Horton, board members Leticia Quezada, Barbara Boudreaux and Roberta Weintraub have expressed support for the Alatorre plan, apparently providing enough votes for an endorsement by the seven-member board.

An Alatorre political ally, Quezada on Wednesday placed the item on the board’s Monday agenda, although in April she said it would be “highly unlikely” for the board to produce any proposal of its own or to endorse any plan already submitted.

“The practicality is that you can’t ask the Board of Education to choose whose area will be the Latino seat--that’s the quandary,” she said at the time. “It’s a politically impossible situation to be put in. . . .

“By definition, it would be asking us to make a decision as to who, in fact, would not be on the school board anymore. I wouldn’t put anyone in that position, and I wouldn’t want anyone to put me in that position,” Quezada said in April.

The Alatorre plan would place two of Quezada’s board colleagues, Julie Korenstein and Mark Slavkin, in the same district. Quezada’s own 5th District seat would stretch from Boyle Heights to Sylmar under the plan.

Supporters say such a 5th District would finally give East Valley Latinos a voice on the school board. But foes say the district will fragment the East Valley’s Latino and black communities and make them second-class citizens in a district ruled by Eastside-based politicians beholden to Alatorre.

“It’s about time the board decided to take a stand,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, a key swing vote in the battle between the Alatorre plan and the one preferred by Valley residents. Yaroslavsky’s vote with the Valley faction Tuesday helped block final adoption of the Alatorre plan. But Yaroslavsky did not say how he would vote in the wake of a board endorsement.

Some opponents of the Alatorre plan fear a board endorsement Monday would carry heavy weight with the City Council, which will take up the issue the next day.

“I’m afraid this is going to give the council a backdoor way out of their dilemma of which plan to support,” said Robert Scott, president of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley. He called the board motion a “low tactic.”

“We finally get into a position to stop the Alatorre plan and have the council take a solid look at our alternative--and then they come in with this sneak attack,” Scott said.

If the board backed the Alatorre plan, “I don’t think it will help us get eight votes, but I’m also not certain it will hurt us either,” Picus said.

Picus said that any plan recommended by the board is going to be “one in which they’re protecting each other.” The council, she said, can produce a “more objective plan than they can.”

Based on 1990 census figures, the council is required to draw boundaries that could lead to the election of a second Latino to the board. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has said it would sue the city if two Latino-dominated board seats are not drawn.

Currently, only one of the school system’s seats is dominated by Latinos.

Picus claims her plan creates two Latino districts but also retains two of the school board’s seats located wholly in the Valley. The plan has been endorsed by the 31st District PTSA, the major parent-teacher group in the Valley, and by several Valley-based African-American groups, including the Black American Political Assn. of California.

The Picus plan would create an East Valley-based school board seat, located east of the San Diego Freeway and including the heavily Latino communities of Sylmar, Pacoima and San Fernando--but not the Sunland-Tujunga area. This seat would be represented by Weintraub.

The second Valley seat, represented by Korenstein, would include the West Valley and Sunland-Tujunga. Both of the Latino-dominated seats in the Picus plan would be located wholly outside the Valley.

Under the Alatorre plan, portions of the Valley would be represented by four districts. But only one of these four, Weintraub’s, would be wholly in the Valley.

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

Congress responded to pleas by President Lyndon B. Johnson when it passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act in an effort to halt voter discrimination and to use the Department of Justice to enforce voting rights. The Voting Rights Act prohibits election boundaries that dilute the political clout of ethnic minorities, prompting redistricting efforts for everything from school boards to congressional seats. It has been used often by Latino advocacy groups, from New York to San Diego, who have filed lawsuits seeking greater representation on elected bodies. In Los Angeles County, redistricting led to the election of Gloria Molina as the first Latino supervisor in modern times.