Redistricting Rivals Write ’93 Ballot Measure : Education: The petitions will ask voters to scrap a plan recently approved by the City Council in favor of more Valley representation on the school board.

A San Fernando Valley-based group Friday officially began its campaign to put a measure on the June, 1993, ballot that would scrap a recently adopted school redistricting plan and replace it with one providing more Valley representation on the seven-member school board.

The Coalition Against Unfair School Elections, or CAUSE, asked the city Friday to approve language summarizing its ballot proposal.

If approved, the ballot language would appear on petitions that CAUSE would circulate among voters to put the remap issue before voters via the city’s initiative process. That would bypass City Council members, most of whom are hostile to such a measure. The council approved the existing plan last summer and on Friday approved final minor revisions.

Signatures of 48,000 registered voters must be collected in four months to place the measure on the June ballot.

CAUSE consists of numerous Valley civic groups, including the 31st District PTSA, the Black American Political Assn. of California, the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley and the San Fernando Valley Board of Realtors.

The initiative drive may have an influence on next spring’s mayoral race, observers said.

“It might not be a litmus test, but if you voted for the council plan you might find it tougher going in the Valley if you’re running for mayor,” speculated Councilwoman Joy Picus. Picus wrote a pro-Valley alternative plan that was narrowly rejected by the council during last summer’s heated school remap debate.

Councilman Michael Woo, a candidate for mayor, agreed that the initiative drive will affect the job of courting Valley votes.

Still, Woo, a supporter of the council plan, said the initiative drive is really “an unfortunate distraction from the serious issues of how to improve the quality of education in schools in the Valley and throughout the city.

“I don’t think the battle over school board members’ boundaries is the real issue,” he said.

What city officials should be concentrating on is helping the school system by urging businesses to provide work-experience programs for high school students, and by putting the city’s cable TV system and public libraries to work helping cure illiteracy, Woo said.

The main goal of the city’s remap efforts last summer was to create a second predominantly Latino school board seat.

CAUSE’s substitute plan, which, like the council plan, would create two Latino seats, is virtually identical to the plan Picus wrote.

At a City Hall news conference Friday kicking off the initiative campaign, CAUSE co-chairman Nelson Brestoff reiterated an allegation often made during last summer’s debate that the council plan is “politically motivated.”

Critics have said the council plan seeks to put the Eastside political organization of Councilman Richard Alatorre and his ally, school board President Leticia Quezada, in control of the East Valley’s emerging Latino population.

While none at Friday’s news conference would spell out this theory, Diana Dixon-Davis, a 31st District officer, called the council plan the “Alatorre plan.”

Brestoff said, “The council plan is stretched and gerrymandered.” The real difference between the plans is “not one of legal issues . . . but of fundamental fairness,” he said.

“It’s an impossible situation,” said school board member Julie Korenstein as she described the difficulty she has had representing the vast district allotted her under the council plan. Korenstein backs the initiative drive.

Korenstein now represents an area that stretches from Porter Ranch to Los Angeles International Airport, which she calls an unwieldy creature of politics. Korenstein’s district previously was wholly within the Valley.

Another district, predominantly Latino, reaches from the city’s Eastside, including Boyle Heights, to Sylmar. Quezada represents that district.

A third district, represented by school board member Jeff Horton, reaches from the Hollywood area into North Hollywood.

A fourth, represented by school board member Roberta Weintraub, represents the central Valley and includes the largely Latino areas of the East Valley and the predominantly Anglo areas of Sunland-Tujunga and Shadow Hills.

The three other districts in the council plan do not represent any part of the Valley.

The CAUSE plan would create two districts wholly within the Valley represented by Korenstein and Weintraub.

Supporters of the council plan, including Woo and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, have contended that it is more legally defensible than the Picus plan. If the Picus plan were adopted, Latino civil rights groups would sue to overturn it, they have said.

But proponents of a Valley-based plan have maintained that the differences between the two plans are legally negligible.