Group Seeks Initiative on School District Representation : Education: A parent-teacher organization that fought a redistricting plan adopted by the City Council will ask voters to give the Valley a stronger voice on L.A. board.

A San Fernando Valley parent-teacher group, which fought a redistricting plan that carved up Valley representation on the Los Angeles Board of Education, Thursday announced a drive to put an initiative before the voters that would replace the new districts with Valley-friendly alternatives.

The executive board of the 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn. unanimously approved the ballot effort during an emergency meeting Thursday.

The action came two weeks after the Los Angeles City Council adopted new school board boundaries that eliminated one of two Valley-based seats and divided Valley representation among four board members--changes designed to give Latino voters control over two seats. Critics contend that the new boundaries weaken the Valley’s voice in educational matters by leaving only one of the seven board members wholly responsible to Valley voters.

The initiative aims to overturn the new districting map and “replace it with an alternative that does not unnecessarily fragment communities and disenfranchise Latinos and African-Americans in the east San Fernando Valley,” 31st District President Janet Phillips said in a prepared statement.

Vice President Cecelia Mansfield said the organization will decide within the next few weeks which alternative map to put before voters, although most likely “it would be a map that looked similar” to one presented during the redistricting battle by Valley Councilwoman Joy Picus, which kept two districts entirely in the Valley.

Nearly 48,000 signatures are necessary to qualify the initiative for the April, 1993, ballot by the Nov. 10 deadline, Mansfield said. Petitions are scheduled to be made available to the district’s 150 campus PTSA groups by mid-August, according to Mansfield, who predicted that the required number of signatures would be easily reached.

She added that her organization will work on qualifying the initiative and funding the campaign to pass it with other Valley groups that also opposed the redistricting plan, such as the United Chambers of Commerce and the Valley chapter of the Black American Political Assn. of California. The coalition is also exploring the possibility of a lawsuit to challenge the new map.

Robert L. Scott, president of the United Chambers, predicted that voters in other communities would also find the coalition’s alternative plan more sensible than the one adopted.

“What we’re fighting here is gerrymandering,” said Scott, whose organization represents 21 chambers of commerce. “We are fighting the fragmenting of communities. You can see the fairness in our map. This would keep communities together.”

Scott said the United Chambers will organize members to gather signatures, and at the same time continue to lobby for a separate Valley school district, a long-discussed idea that has recently been revived. The proposal to secede from the giant Los Angeles district has been greeted with enthusiasm by many parents and some Valley lawmakers, including Councilman Joel Wachs, who Thursday reiterated his support.

On Thursday, the 31st District’s executive board, following a recommendation from its board of directors, also voted unanimously to “support in concept” a separate Valley school district, reversing a decade of opposition to the idea. The executive board cited “dramatic changes” since 1981 that have made a split from Los Angeles more feasible and commissioned a fact-finding group to report to the board by the end of next month.

However, officials warned that any proposal for reorganization would be subject to rigorous criteria set forth by county and state authorities. Thursday’s action, Mansfield said, simply freed PTSA members to support secession activities if they choose, which was previously prohibited as a PTSA activity.